It is all about developing the mindset, and of course we don’t need to wait until Java will run into Flash Player

It’s interesting to read the issues (from Java developer point of view), read more

http://bozhobg.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/why-i-might-not-want-to-use-flex/

http://joshuajava.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/why-you-might-not-want-to-use-flex/

The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings.

The definition of the TIOBE index can be found here.

Position Nov 2008	Position Nov 2007	Delta in Position	Programming Language	Ratings Nov 2008	Delta Nov 2007	Status
1	1		Java	20.299%	-0.24%	A
2	2		C	15.276%	+1.31%	A
3	4		C++	10.357%	+1.61%	A
4	3		(Visual) Basic	9.270%	-0.96%	A
5	5		PHP	8.940%	+0.25%	A
6	7		Python	5.140%	+0.91%	A
7	8		C#	4.026%	+0.11%	A
8	11		Delphi	4.006%	+1.55%	A
9	6		Perl	3.876%	-0.86%	A
10	10		JavaScript	2.925%	0.00%	A
11	9		Ruby	2.870%	-0.21%	A
12	12		D	1.442%	-0.26%	A
13	13		PL/SQL	0.939%	-0.24%	A
14	14		SAS	0.729%	-0.40%	A–
15	18		ABAP	0.570%	-0.08%	B
16	19		Pascal	0.511%	-0.13%	B
17	17		COBOL	0.510%	-0.20%	B
18	25		ActionScript	0.506%	+0.04%	B
19	23		Logo	0.489%	-0.04%	B
20	16		Lua	0.473%	-0.27%	B

To start standalone help, at the command line execute the following :

Open the web browser and goto http://localhost:4567/help/index.jsp

To stop standalone help, at the command line execute the following :

Note :

After you shut down the help server, links in the help browser will be unavailable until you restart the server.

Set Eclipse home path to eclipse folder, and make sure to specify a correct the org.eclipse.help.base jar library version depending on your Eclipse version. Then put in a source port number - here I’ve used 4567 (manual config).

If we working with external fonts in Actionscript 3.0, the external font must have a class definition for allowing the Font class and ApplicationDomain to detect and register it. We can produce class definition for the external font  with embed tag in Flex or Font symbol in Flash library. 

With Flex 3.0 and mxmlc (Flex SDK 2-3) there’s the embed metatag where you can even define font character ranges which should be embedded for reducing compiled external font swf size:

[Embed(	source='font.ttf', 
	fontName='Font Name', 
	unicodeRange='U+0021-U+0021, ... , U+2122-U+2122')]

or with this tag :

[Embed(	source='font.ttf', 
	fontName='Font Name', 
	fontWeight='bold', 
	fontStyle='italic')]

Another nice article here

Unfortunatelly if we combining subset tag (unicodeRange) with fontWeight / fontStyle tag will cause a Flex compile error. I hope in Flex 4 this issue fixed.

This article explain the same approach, but it need to add extra font family (Bold or Italic) at specific font but Flex will still treat them as separate fonts.

All the examples (both Flash CS3 or Flex 3.0) I’ve seen so far only address the loading of one font either in regular weight or bold, but not one (subset characters ranges) fonts with regular, weight, italic or bold-italic at the same time. And it seem very difficult for export one (subset characters ranges) font as external font, (ie loading the font from an external swf) and change font weight / font style at runtime in loader (main app) swf.

Luckily I was able make something worked, here what I did :

1. Embed font in FLA file with instance textfield at the stage (Benefit: we can make subset of required glyphs only, and font style/weight). We need create four instances textfield (Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold-Italic texfield) and publish the swf for each font, (ie. Verdana_Style.swf for Verdana). In this step the published swf doesn’t contain class definition yet. So we can not import it at runtime.
   
2. Transcoding the published swf (also give a class definition) with Flex 3.0 compiler with Embed metatag and publish to final external swf font (i.e Verdana.swf)

   import flash.display.Sprite;
   import flash.text.Font;                               
    
   public class Verdana extends Sprite
   {
    
   	[Embed(
   	source='library/fontstyle/Verdana_Style.swf', 
   	fontName='Verdana')]
   	public static var regular:Class;
    
   	[Embed(
   	source='library/fontstyle/Verdana_Style.swf', 
   	fontName='Verdana', fontWeight='bold')]
   	public static var bold:Class;
    
   	[Embed(
   	source='library/fontstyle/Verdana_Style.swf', 
   	fontName='Verdana', fontStyle='italic')]
   	public static var italic:Class;
    
   	[Embed(
   	source='library/fontstyle/Verdana_Style.swf',
   	fontName='Verdana', 
   	fontWeight='bold', 
   	fontStyle='italic')]
   	public static var boldItalic:Class;
    
   	public function Verdana()
   	{
   		super();
    
   		Font.registerFont ( regular );
   		Font.registerFont ( bold );
   		Font.registerFont ( italic );
   		Font.registerFont ( boldItalic );
   	}
   }

3. Import the final external swf font at runtime to main application.
   Here the simple actionscript 3.0 with Lithos Pro Regular font demo.

   package {
   import flash.display.Loader;
   import flash.display.Sprite;
   import flash.events.Event;
   import flash.net.URLRequest;
   import flash.text.*;          
    
   public class DemoExternalFontSimple extends Sprite
   {
   	public static const FONT_NAME:String = 
   'Lithos Pro Regular';
   	public static const FONT_LIB:String = 
   "LithosProRegular.swf";
    
   	public function DemoExternalFontSimple ()
   	{
   		loadFont ('fontlib/'+FONT_LIB);
   	}
    
   	private function loadFont ( url:String ) : void
   	{
   	var loader:Loader = new Loader ();
   	loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener ( 
   	Event.COMPLETE, fontLoaded );
    
   	loader.load (new URLRequest ( url));
   	}
    
   	private function fontLoaded ( event:Event ) : void
   	{
   	drawText();
   	}
    
   	public function drawText () : void
   	{
   	var tf:TextField = new TextField ();
   	tf.defaultTextFormat = new TextFormat (
   				FONT_NAME, 16, 0);
   	tf.embedFonts = true;
   	tf.antiAliasType = AntiAliasType.ADVANCED;
   	tf.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
   	tf.text = FONT_NAME + 
   		" Regular was here...:;*&^% ";
   	tf.selectable = false;
   	tf.rotation = 1;
   	tf.x = 10;
   	tf.y = 10
    
   	var tf2:TextField = new TextField ();
   	tf2.defaultTextFormat = new TextFormat (
   				FONT_NAME, 16, 0, true);
   	tf2.embedFonts = true;
   	tf2.antiAliasType = AntiAliasType.ADVANCED;
   	tf2.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
   	tf2.text = FONT_NAME + 
   		" Bold was here...:;*&^% ";
   	tf2.selectable = false;
   	tf2.rotation = 1
   	tf2.x = 10;
   	tf2.y = 50
    
   	var tf3:TextField = new TextField ();
   	tf3.defaultTextFormat = new TextFormat (
   				FONT_NAME, 16, 
   				0, false, true);
   	tf3.embedFonts = true;
   	tf3.antiAliasType = AntiAliasType.ADVANCED;
   	tf3.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
   	tf3.text = FONT_NAME + 
   		" Italic was here...:;*&^% ";
   	tf3.selectable = false;
   	tf3.x = 10;
   	tf3.y = 100
    
   	var tf4:TextField = new TextField ();
   	tf4.defaultTextFormat = new TextFormat(
   				FONT_NAME, 16, 
   				0, true, true);
   	tf4.embedFonts = true;
   	tf4.antiAliasType = AntiAliasType.ADVANCED;
   	tf4.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
   	tf4.text = FONT_NAME + 
   		" Bold Italic was here...:;*&^% ";
   	tf4.selectable = false;
   	tf4.x = 10;
   	tf4.y = 150;
    
   	addChild(tf);
   	addChild(tf2);
   	addChild(tf3);
   	addChild(tf4);
   	}
    
   }
   }

     

    

I think our joint concerns are better served if we keep in mind that most valuable point is abc file , no matter which language it compiling from (actionscript 3.0, haXe or javascript). So let keep saying to yourself “In flash platform I trust..!”

Last evening Adam packaged up first Alpha RC 1 Build! It seems to be bug free and functioning rather nicely!

Read more : http://merapiproject.net/

Nice application to try

Tell me, was it fair enough?
Personally, I will always happy for write it on top of AIR.

Tags: AIR

Could somebody tell, is there possibility of making MIDI player in FP 10?

Tags: Flash, Actionscript 3.0

Mascot Capsule 3D and Mobile 3D Graphics has been used as technologies  for Mobile 3D programming for the Java™ Platform Micro Edition on Sony Ericsson feature phones.

This 3D Engine has been designed from the ground up for mobile devices,
taking into account limited memory, performance and control interfaces.
It completely abstracts the underlying operating system and device
hardware, allowing game developers to develop once on Windows and then
deploy to multiple mobile platforms. Includes complete support for multi-channel audio, 2D and 3D graphics,
a powerful and fully configurable 3D scene graph, collision checking,
physics simulation, networking with both Bluetooth and IP based networks.

It will be strong candidate for competing againts with existed 3D Actionscript engine (PV3D or Away 3D or Sandy3D).

Yesterday one of showcase has been published. Look at ecodazoo.com, this site strongly suspected use M3D engine, similar with Mascot Capsule 3D.

It could be next step 3D Flash website interface just begin, and I think web people will follow.

Further info about M3D see www.touchtao.com
Mobile Capsule 3D see Mobile 3D

In my humble opinion, correct me if i’m wrong!

Tags: Flash, Java, Actionscript 3.0