flashalisious

Ok so “Best” may be a little over stated but this really works well for me.

For around a week now I have been wanting to dig into developing Flash Player 10 applications but the problem with this is there is no debugger version of the Flash Player 10 beta. This really sux if you are a Flex or Flash developer that really needs the debugger when building applications.

On top of there not being a debugger there is just no good way to test for different versions of the Flash Player without uninstalling one version and the installing another. That is a really pain in the ass for sure and personally so frustrating that I don’t bother testing other versions of the player at all.

I tried a couple of solutions that I found by doing some Google searching on the matter. The first is Mike Chambers solution. On Mike’s blog he actually came up with a bash script that you could run from terminal. I followed the steps but I used the latest versions of Flash Player as Mikes post was how to switch between Flash Player 8 and 8.5. The solution I thought would work but I never could get it to work without running into some small issue.

Next I found the FireFox plug-in called Flash Switcher. For a wile there was only a version that worked for Windows but they finally did a version for OS X, or at least that is what it says. I say that several people where able to get it to work. I kept getting a Java Script Error when trying to run it on mine.

Here is my solution. I developed a workf low that I am calling FlashSwitcher X. This solution is basically just an easier implementation of Mike Chambers work around but I set up some Automator Scripts to get the job done.

Download FlashSwitcher X 0.1

Read More on How it works

Please provide feedback. I would really like to know if any of you have success with this tool or if you run into any issues and if you are able to tweek and make this even better.

Click To Play

Flash Player 10 beta, code name Astro is out.

I just checked out a great video by Lee Brimelow on http://gotoandlearn.com that will get you up and running with Flash Player 10. Here is the link. http://www.gotoandlearn.com/player.php?id=73.

You can check out the Adobe Labs site for instructions for setting this up and using Flex Builder if you would like to go that route.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

I have not posted anything to the blog in a wile but I hope to change that really soon. I have been really busy with something that just came out of no where. I got a new gig! I am pretty excited to say that I have joined a team of developers at a company in Nashville, TN called RemarkableWit. Some exciting things are going to come out of this company and I am really looking forward to working with the guys over there. I would like to personally thank Marcus Whitney the company founder and owner for contacting me and giving me this great opportunity, so officially you are looking at the new senior Flex / Flash developer for RemarkableWit.

As many of you know I have been self employed and running my own company for a long time now and for me this is going to be a bit of a change but I really believe that this is going to be a good thing. Lets face it as freelance developers all we really want to do is develop. We love the freedom of our own thing but wearing the many hats of a business owner take a way a lot of time from the one true passion that we have. That would be developing projects and learning new technologies to use in the development process.

I want all my customers and future customers to know that I am still here. The difference is that I have a driving force of developers and project managers that will be there to allow me to do what I do best. Building rich internet applications and experiences that will blow away your clients and business partners.

I will keep all of you posted as the team of developers and I build some pretty amazing things over the next few months and thanks again to Marcus and RemarkableWit for allowing me to join the team.

The popular code snippet web site snipplr added MXML to the languages that you can store code snippets for. If you have not used snipplr then you are missing out. As coders you need to learn to work smarter and store valuable code that you will use all the time. This way you don’t have to type the same lines over and over again that you normally use for every project.

The cool thing about snipplr is that they have a TexMate Plugin. So if you are on a Mac and you code your MXML in Texmate you are just a few keystrokes away from accessing your code snippets that you have stored on snipplr. Oh and don’t worry, if you don’t have a internet connection your snippets can be stored locally.

This site promises to be a killer resource for all coders and now that they added MXML and Actionscript to the mix, this is my one stop shop for code snippets for sure.

Oh and one final plug for the site that makes it cool. If you will notice the sidebar on this blog I have

Useful Code Snippets

These are pulled directly from my snipplr account using there cool wordpress plugin, so if you have a blog that is a cool feature of the site as well.

Just started a new Community so join up and contribute if you will. Coders helping coders …. code! I know what you are thinking. Another social network? Well I promise this one is only meant to help you as a programmer grow, learn, teach and build your social contacts in your specific field. I don’t think you will find yourself wasting hours and hours just hanging out. Unless you are just that ultra geek and you can’t get enough of the programming community, but I digress.

I started a local user group here in Nashville TN (http://615flex.com). If you don’t know my name is Matthew Wallace and I am a local Flex user group manager. Over the last year I have really realized that the most learning and growing that I have done as a programmer has been from being involved in this and user groups and really trying to help the community. In my case that would be the Flex community. You would be really surprised how much you will increase your programming skills just by being around others of like mind. My hope for Coder Resource is that it in some small way will benefit whatever programing language you are interested in. I really want this to be a place that other programmers can teach, learn and talk about there skills, so join up right now and contribute and if you don’t see a group for your programming language then start your own group on Coder Resource.

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There has been a lot of buzz about Flex and Flex Builder. This is the IDE for Building Flex RIA’s and also for building pure actionscript 3 projects. After discovering the power of Flex Builder’s coding environment it was clear to me that this would be a great Actionscript 3 editor for my Flash CS3 projects.The following video will walk you through the setup that I use on all my Flash projects. I hope this will help out with your work flow. Let me know what you think.

Bigspaceship uses Flexbuilder for a couple of big AS3 and Flex projects and once you start to develop in Flexbuilder (Eclipse) you maybe don’t wanna go back and use a normal Text Editor. So i was looking for a way to use Flexbuilder for heavy graphical sites that also need the Flash 9 IDE.BigSpaceShip thinks…. http://labs.bigspaceship.com/blog/?p=76read more | digg story

So I have been at Adobe MAX 2007 in Chicago all week. The whole experience has been really great. What was even better than that was a sneak peek at a new application that Adobe says that it will be releasing sometime in 2008 - code name “Thermo”.

I can not tell you how excited I was about this app. What is Thermo you ask? Well let me tell you from my perspective what Thermo is….

Just a week before MAX I was finally wanting to write my first project completely in Flex Builder. This was a really really frustrating thing from a design standpoint. I would be what the industry is referring to as a “Devigner” Half Designer / Half Developer. I can write some code when it comes down to it and I really enjoy figuring out the functionality of an app but I have always done all my sites or apps in the Flash IDE and laid them out in Photoshop before I move everything over to Flash for animation and coding.

When it comes to doing a project by setting up your design in Photoshop and then getting that design into Flex Builder….. well …. let’s just say it. IT IS A PAIN IN THE ASS! As far as I am concerned.

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I am totally not a coding guru just yet, but I have my eyes on the prise and I hope to one day know my stuff, but for now I will admit that I have a little trouble understanding some simple tasks that most programmers would not have any trouble with. We all know and love Textmate. The great text editor for the Mac. Heck I even use it to write my blog posts. You have to check out the blogging bundle if you have not used it for that it is great.

As soon as I got Textmate I started using it for all my actionscript. At the time the bundle was only for AS2. Now that I am starting to dig into AS3 and Flex it would be great to start coding using this editor. It launches way faster than Flex Builder or Eclips. There are some draw backs. The biggest being that you do not get the code hinting quite as much as you do with Flex Builder, but still it is a great tool to work in. In the next few steps I will show you how to install SVN (subversion) client for your Mac so you can utilize all the bundles and updates that are currently being developed for Textmate and most importantly there is an AS3 / Flex bundle that you can download.

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