Flash tidbits, struggles, revelations, and teaching

Flash Catalyst isn’t even in public beta yet, but based on the potential I see with the preview release handed out at Adobe MAX, I could see Flash Catalyst replace the Flash IDE eventually.

Now currently, FC is being billed as a tool for interation designers for creating UI mockups to use for wireframing, adding interactivity to your AI, PSD or FW files, getting client sign-off and handing off to your developer. The big goal is that behind the scenes, FC is built on Eclipse and actually is building a Flex Project file (FXP actually) to take into Flex Builder and wire up to live data. Talking this idea over with others, I’ve heard some same that isn’t the focus of Flash Catalyst or its not intended for that, yada yada.  But when FutureSplash hit the market, who thought we’d be building web applications with it eventually?

Looking very briefly at both Flash CS4 and Flash Catalyst while wearing the “designer hat” , in both tools I can draw, import from existing Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks files, animate using the more intuitive After Effects-like timeline , add interactivity via built-in features/behaviours and even go “behind the scenes” and add more advanced interactivity via ActionScript. I can easily see users looking at FC to build what they currently use Flash IDE for. Even Adobe’s own marketing on the FC site states “Flash Catalyst can output a finished Flash SWF or AIR application that’s ready to publish on the web.”

Ok. so Flash Catalyst 1.0 won’t kill off Flash CS4, but given a bit of work and some tools we haven’t seen yet, and the desire by Adobe, I could easily see FC 1.5 or 2.0 replace the Flash IDE and for the record, I see that as a good thing.  Here are the PRO’s for killing off the Flash IDE in favor of Flash Catalyst 2.0

1. The Flash IDE has a horrible ActionScript editor. We complain about it all the time, and I’m not convinced that Adobe wants to fix it. Seems like a lot of Flashers jump into Flex for the code editor first, and then play with the Flex SDK later on.
2. No longer held back by the Flash .FLA file type.  The .FLA blows. Every new version of Flash creates a new FLA that isn’t backwards compatible. Its not efficient when working with a team who uses SVN (can’t be diffed).
3. Finally on a level playing field with the “Flex guys”.  Under the hood, we’d be using the same tool, same code base, same components and would have a shared project file. No longer feeling slighted because one or the other got tools that the other didn’t.

So for this to happen, a lot of work would need to happen to Flash Catalyst to make it compete with the Flash IDE. First off, we’d need more drawing tools. The preview release of Flash Catalyst from Adobe MAX only had the bare minimum of tools, and I would image Adobe is hard at work on a lot more drawing tools.  We’d also need a Motion Editor for Flash Catalyst, along with the 3d and IK tools that the Flash IDE has.  There are more items that would be required but those are the essentials to bring Flash Catalyst on par with the current Flash IDE. Its something that I think is very achievable by Adobe.  And maybe… its something they are planning as well.

Way back in April, I had been looking for an Eclipse plugin to format MXML and came up blank.  Today I found one (thanks to Digital Media Minute) and it works great. I just used to clean up some old code of mine, plus reformat some code I inherited from another developer.

Flex Formatter:  http://flexformatter.sourceforge.net/ Download the .jar file and place in your Flex Builder or Eclipse plugins folder and restart FB or Eclipse.  There is a pretty extensive configuration panel that you can use to modify the formatting to your standards (Window > Preferences > Flex Formatter). Additional information on the formatting options is here: http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=137421&group_id=248408. You can also import/export your settings so you can share with your team.

I’m a bit late to the party, but started really looking at Flex4 this week … FXG in particular. I looked over the few basic FXG Shapes (Rect, Ellipsis, and Line) and thought it looked pretty limited. I had used Degrafa on a few projects and really got used to the Round Rectangle Complex and the ability to set each rectangle corner with a different radius.  The FXG Rect has the ability to set corner radius, but its every corner and lacks the the control.  So… i figured with FXG the new standard for Adobe, I’d look at how hard it would be to create a custom FXG class.

Well, not too hard at all.  I started by looking at the Rect class in Flex, and then had to hunt around for simulate Cubic Beziers using the curveTo method (Thanks Senocular for that answer).

If you want to play around with it (requires Flash Player 10):Â View Source

Up until today, I haven’t had much time to play with Flash CS4′s new 3d capabilities except some basic code examples. Today, I played around in the IDE and was trying to work with the 3d tools.

I have to admit I’m a bit puzzled about the Z axis in Flash CS4 and how Flash chooses to rotate an object. I was toying around with some animations just visually and then tried to set up some objects there were pointing in a particular direction and was running into issues.  The Z coordinates were changing while I was rotating the object. It took a few minutes for me to figure out what was going on (I wasn’t my normal sharp self – haa haa). The 3d rotation tool was always picking the center of my object to rotate around, instead of the registration point.  I guess I never noticed that its that same way for 2d transforms as well.  Of course, my limited experiments using just code of course using rotationY, rotationX, and rotationZ only rotate around the registration point.  I spent all these years forcing myself to work with 0,0 as a registation point because it was easier when working when working with dynamicaly sized objects and loading of assets, and it seeems if you want to play with 3d, at least in the IDE, you’re better off only using a center registration point.    It would be nice in a CS4.0.1 update if there was a way to set this as default in the system prefs.  Maybe a nice little toggle in 3d Center Point? (Hint Hint Adobe)

The other part that is just sort of an annoyance is that the 3d position and view information only shows X,Y and Z coordinates but you have to get X,Y,Z rotation from the transform panel. I know the Transform panel is where rotation has always been, but if you are going through the hassle of redoing the interface, it seems fairly logical to maybe cluster these pieces together finally.

I don’t want this to sound like I’m only complaining. I really love Flash CS4. Years ago, I dreamed of an After Effects timeline in Flash. Seems like only yesterday that I was dreaming of what Flash CS4 was to become (Dec 2005: Return of LiveMotion). Just need that motion vector Blur and I’ll be 3 for 3.

Not sure how I’ve never noticed this, but when existing fullscreen flash video, focus isn’t returned to the original HTML page. If you notice in the screenshots (probably way too large for this purpose), prior to clicking on the fullscreen button, everything is peachy.  After exiting fullscreen (2nd screenshot), the original window has lost focus.  This isn’t “end of the world” but it leaves the user having to click twice –and gives the appearance that the app is broken.  This appears to be a Mac-only issue and I tested it on two different Mac’s and on both Firefox 3 and Safari. It worked under WinXP under both Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer.

Is this a bug in the Flash player? or just how it is on Mac?  I can’t believe I never noticed it before.  I haven’t looked for a workaround yet. I imagine I’ll need some javascript, but odd that I couldnt’ find much online about it either.

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

[Update 11PM 12/22/08 - I didn't find it in the Adobe Flash Player bugbase, so I logged it --> LINK ]