Flash & AS3 info, source, & experiments
Archive for April 26, 2007
Flash Network Programming via TCP/IP, part 2
Apr 26th
Today, I give you a free utility class that handles everything you need to handle in order to establish a connection. Tomorrow, I give you the world a class that make it seem like you are calling functions directly on the server and visa versa.
Download the latest version of the ConnectionEstablisher class here.
Usage example:
[as]// To establish a new connection, do the following:
var _server:ConnectionEstablisher = new ConnectionEstablisher(“127.0.0.1″, 4500);
// To send data to the server, do the following:
var xmlPacket:XML =
_server.send(xmlPacket);[/as]
Flex SDK Goes Open Source
Apr 26th
Although I went on a rant about Adobe yesterday, I really do like and respect the company–even more so today. If you haven’t heard yet, Adobe just open sourced the Flex SDK as of this press release. This is definitely a bold move. From the release:
“The definition and evolution of Flex has been influenced by our incredibly talented developer community from day one,” said David Mendels, senior vice president, Enterprise and Developer Business Unit at Adobe. “The decision to open source Flex was a completely natural next step. I am incredibly excited to deeply collaborate with the developer community on Flex, and further fuel its momentum and innovation.”
Now, although this would normally make sense to me, it doesn’t make half as much sense as it would for Adobe to have open sourced the FlashPlayer, which is not a direct source of income for them. The Linux community has been shouting loud for this to happen for some time now (with good reason, imho). If Adobe doesn’t want to support the FlashPlayer on Linux (which I *completely* understand and even agree with to some degree), they should just open source the FlashPlayer. Doing so would allow the community to create a better Linux player, integrate Flash content into more unique /non-traditional applications on any OS, and generally increase the spread of Flash content across all media platforms. Then, the demand for the ability to create Flash content would increase. If Adobe maintained the control of the applications used to develop the content that is used by these players, this would definitely increase their revenue. This seems like more of a “natural next step” then releasing the Flex SDK.
I say this only to question the true motives for going open source, not just to be another complainer. It doesn’t seem a complete coincidence that Microsoft Silverlight was officially released 11 days ago. But regardless of their motives, I tip my hat to Adobe for this bold move. Like Josh Tynjala talked about, there is definitely the possibility that people will be able to develop Flex and perhaps even Flash content without need for Adobe products. And although they will still have a monopoly on their FlashPlayer, this is not the product that brings in money for them.
In any case, I do agree that this will “further fuel its momentum and innovation.” Which, not so coincidentally, will help Flash platform development to remain more attractive than Silverlight (unless Microsoft follows suit). Way to go Adobe.
