Deep Thought of the Day

Social Games can be non-random. Randomness can arise organically from the random nature of social interactions, not from the algorithms running the game.

Activating Flash Catalyst and FlashBuilder Betas

This was buried when I searched for it on Google. You can activate the Flash Catalyst and FlashBuilder betas so they work past 30 days. Go to the "downloads" page for each on labs.adobe.com.

You need to be logged in with an Adobe ID.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_flashcatalyst
https://freeriatools.adobe.com/flashbuilder4beta/

To receive a FlashBuilder serial number you need to submit a Flex 3 serial number. Catalyst, on the other hand, is free.

Cryptic Flash Error Message of the Week Award

And the winner is...

1180: Call to a possibly undefined method addFrameScript.

If you are using a Document Class, this error will occur if you include any code at all in the first frame of your FLA. Even a lowly comment triggers it.

I hear a lot of complaints about Flash CS4 from people. Since I hardly use it anymore, I don't have much of an opinion. Seriously, if you're a Flash coder, and you're still working in the Flash IDE, you really should take a long hard look at FlexBuilderFlashBuilder. I know it can be overwhelming at first, and it has its drawbacks, but it's still miles ahead of programming in the IDE. And there's nothing you can do in the IDE that you can't do in FlashBuilder. Indeed, I usually set up my projects so they can be built with either tool.

Heck, you can even try it for free for 60 days: get a 30-day trial of FlexBuilder 3 and then get the 30-day trial of FlashBuilder 4 from Adobe Labs (it's reasonably solid for small projects).

Flash 10 For Smart Phones

Flash Camp was cool last night (thanks Adobe), and I can't wait to start poking around in the Flex 4 / Flash Catalyst beta CD they gave out. To me the biggest news, however, was Kelly Lynch mentioning that development of Flash 10 for 6 major smartphone brands -- including of course iPhone. I hope Adobe learned their lessons from the failures of FlashLite, and is ready to enter the mobile space in a big way!

Starcraft 2 Announcement, 2nd Anniversary

It's the second anniversary of Starcraft 2 being announced in Seoul. Congrats, Blizzard. ;)

FlexBuilder becoming FlashBuilder

So according to the gossip online today, FlexBuilder 4 will be changing its name to FlashBuilder 4.

Hallelujah! I've been bitching about this for years. I wonder if this will cut down the number of conversations I have to have explaining what Flex is.

It's a component framework.
No, it's a compiler.
No, it's an IDE.
...

Top 10 Pet Peeves About FlexBuilder 3

10. I can't use relative paths in my ActionScript Build Paths settings. Therefore it is not possible to share project files between Macs and PCs.

9. "Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference." I see this error way too often. Dear compiler, please tell me which object is null so I don't have to waste time poking around in the debugger to figure it out.

8. Data Binding is wonderful... except when it doesn't work the way you want it to. For example, you can't use an XMLList as a data provider for a ButtonBar component.

7. SOAP is supposedly supported, but the auto-generated code is messy and problematic to maintain. Worst of all, some SOAP services simply do not work unless you hack the auto-generated code.

6. Upgrading Flash Player on your machine can ruin Flex's connection to the debug version of Flash. There should be UI within FlexBuilder that lets you specify which Flash Player .exe to use for debugging.

5. "Copy non-embedded files to output folder." I hate this "feature". If you're running within SVN, it will corrupt your SVN meta-files. This setting should be off by default.

4. Does embed syntax really have to be so clumsy? I mean, really, this sort of thing is just plain ugly, and is very difficult to explain to newcomers.
[Embed(source="mask.swf")]
[Bindable]
public var maskSWF:Class;


3. Displaying the hand cursor for Flex components = Major Annoyance. Why do I have to set 3 properties? And seriously, why would a BUTTON component not default to buttonMode="true" ???

2.
What this incredibly unhelpful dialog box is trying to tell you is that you tried debugging an Air app. while a debug session was already running. I'm not sure why Eclipse can't kill the old session at this point.

1. "An internal build error has occurred. Right-click for more information." Needless to say, right-clicking does not provide any useful information. It's time to restart Eclipse.