TweenLite/TweenMax merges with gTween to form the GreenSock Tweening Platform

Jack Doyle, the mastermind behind the TweenMax tweening engine and Grant Skinner, another Flash titan and the author of the GTween Tweening and Animation Library have decided to merge their libraries into a new tweening platform - the GreenSock Tweening Platform.

Grant Skinner will continue to provide small updates and bugfixes to the gTween library, in order to support the existing users, but no other major evolutions are expected.

The GreenSock Tweening Platform introduces a two new members - TimelineLite and TimelineMax (which evolute from TweenGroup - which will be, in it's turn deprecated) that will provide extensive grouping and sequencing capabilities.

We wish them a fruitful collaboration and a express deep gratitude for the work they have already done for the Flash community.

The announcement on the greensock.com blog.
The announcement on the gskinner.com blog.

The new GreenSock Tweening Platform beta homepage.

LocaleManager - locale resources manager and synchroniser for Flex/Java and .NET

Angela Han has made an utility for managing and synchronizing locale resources for Flex, Java and .NET projects.

You can download the LocaleManager utility from the project's google code page (downloads) , the flex cookbook recipe page or from the codeproject article page.

There's an instruction to the utility here.

It's still a demo version so it has bugs, here's one: sorting resources from the worksheet's column headers will mix the result resources in the target files (and sorting by id does a string-sort instead of a numeric-sort as it should in order to restore the normal order).

Flex SDK 3.3 lansat de Adobe

Versiunea SDK-ului 3.3.0.4852 este cea mai recentă pusă în producţie şi o puteţi scoate de pe opensource.adobe.com sau de pe pagina produsului Flex pe Adobe.com. SDK-ul conţine şi ultimul update AIR 1.5.1.

Notă: dacă folosiţi componentele de vizualizare a datelor, aduceţi-le şi pe acestea la zi.

FileReference won't throw IOErrorEvent for files smaller than 32768 bytes

The case

Target: multiple file uploader.
Subjects: a FileReference and a server-side upload script.

The problem

Upon thorough testing on different cases (script dies, script dead on start, file locked) the most annoying was that when the script was dead, the FileReference doesn't fire an IOErrorEvent if the uploaded file is smaller than 32768 bytes.

The workaround

The solution was suggested by ekalosha of UAFPUG (official site / Adobe Group), whom I thank again.
Basically it consists of using an URLLoader before trying to upload to the script:

Add the following somewhere in your class / frame script / wherever:
var _urlLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
_urlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onScriptTestSuccess);
_urlLoader.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, onScriptTestFailure);
_urlLoader.addEventListener(SecurityErrorEvent.SECURITY_ERROR, onScriptTestFailure);

function onScriptTestSuccess(event:Event):void{
_file.upload( new URLRequest( upload_url ), "Filedata" );
}
function onScriptTestFailure(event:Event):void{
trace("server upload script is dead or inaccessible");
}
and place the following where you start uploading:
_urlLoader.load( new URLRequest( upload_url ) );
instead of uploading right-away to the script.

Bug reported on the Adobe Bug Tracking system.

Adobe lansează runtime-ul AIR versiunea 1.5.1

Adobe AIR 1.5.1 (build 8210) conţine pe lângă un set de bug-fixuri şi o adăugire şi anume clasa InvokeEvent are un câmp nou - reason, care conţine valorie „standart” sau „login” - destinate pentru a face distincţie între modul cum a fost invocată aplicaţia (standart: pornită prin command-line, la deschiderea vreunui fişier asociat sau login: la la startup după logarea utilizatorului).

Puteţi descărca kitul de instalare aici şi citi mai multe pe blogul Adobe AIR.

Progressive download in AS3 won't work together with the YouTube Chromeless Player

or, in other words: progressive download in AVM2 doesn't work after usign progressive download in an AVM1 movie loaded in an AVM2 SWF.

The goal: create a video player that can play YouTube clips alongside with videos from any other source (progressive download by direct URL).

I used the ActionScript 3.0 Wrapper for Chromeless Player for YouTube playback and had several options to choose from for progressive download: FLVPlayback, VideoPlayer (both come in the FLVPlayback.swc (source too) with Flash CS3/CS4) and a custom built video player. All three players worked fine in debugging (mode in which YouTube will refuse to work) but when I started using the YouTubeLoader all three failed. Apparently there was a problem with the NetConnection use by the NetStream inside the players.

Finally after a lot of head-scratching I localized the problem to the constructor of the NetStream which obviously should have worked (as it used a null-connected NetConnection).

I tried the most simple instantiation of a NetStream and the same problem persisted. Finally I had to give up progressive download/playback functionality in favor of just YouTube playback.

The runtime error:
ArgumentError: Error #2126: NetConnection object must be connected.
at flash.net::NetStream/construct()
at flash.net::NetStream()
is thrown by this:
var netConnection:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
netConnection.connect(null);
var netStream:NetStream = new NetStream( netConnection );

If someone can see where is my mistake, please help, because I can't see it. It's the way I've always done progressive download and it's the way AS documentation tells us it's done.

Note: The issue appears only after playing back YouTube videos with the chromeless player.

Bug Reported on Adobe JIRA

Finally, I reported the issue on Adobe's Bug Tracker:

[#FP-1215] NetStream will not connect to NetConnection after using progressive download in a loaded AVM1 SWF, in hope that someone at Adobe may know what's the problem or fix the bug (because that's what it seems to be to me).

Although I know that the discoverability of this problem is minimal, but please vote for this issue if it's not a big of a favor to ask and you see the point in it. :)

Adobe AIR pentru Programatori Flex (Ghid de buzunar)

Urmând îndemnul din postul lui Mike Chambers privind noul sit deschis pentru contribuţii şi traduceri din partea comunităţii în alte limbi decât engleza a resurselor Flash, mi-am adus şi eu aportul contribuţia traducând o bucăţică din ghidul de buzunar pentru Flex/AIR.

Sper să reuşesc în câteva zile să termin traducerea celui de-al doilea capitol.

Puteţi accesa versiunea în română a cărţii aici.

Un ping adăugător spre situl Adobe România.