Flash through Flex

Flash is expensive.

We all know this fact, and the current version falls in at just around $700. That's a steep price for a product that you're just learning. There are lots of options though.

You can buy on the cheap. Doing a little searching around you can easily find a copy 1-version older of Flash for quite a bit cheaper ($300-$400).
If you're a student, the student discount will get you a copy even cheaper than that.

If you don't need flash for animation, but instead are interested in it for programming, an excellent alternative is Adobe Flex. Flex uses the same Actionscript 3 libraries as Flash does. Flex applications can be written entirely in Actionscript 3. Hard to believe I know, but checkout this tutorial.

This isn't new knowledge to the flash development world, but if you're looking to get your Actionscript hands dirty, or if you need to spend some time with AS3 and don't have Flash to mess around with, shoot for Flex SDK, you can do more than you think with it.

Temporary Hold

This blog is on hold. My flash Trial ran out! I should have a license in the next few weeks though, so when that's taken care of, we'll get back on track.

Finding the Number of External Variables.

As I've been writing my first real app with flash, I've gotten into sending and receiving data to and from flash. There is quite a bit of information out there about it. In Actionscript 3, the preferred method is to do something like this:



var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader(new URLRequest("http://url_with_data_in_it.com"));

loader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.VARIABLES;
loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, dothisfunction);

function dothisfunction(myevent:Event){
     var loader2:URLLoader = URLLoader(myevent.target);
     var variables:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
     loader2.data = variables;
}


And within the dothisfunction() you can access the variables in an object.
But often you're not just passing a single variable. You're passing quite a few. If you don't know how many items you have (and therefore not the names of all the items), you'll need a reference for the loop that you want to run through. Most places I've seen simply pass the number of variables along with the other data. If for some reason, that doesn't work, you can do the following:

     var loader2:URLLoader = URLLoader(myevent.target);

     var vargroup:String = loader2.data;
     var params:Array = vargroup.split("&");
     var paramCount = params.length;

That's it. With the paramCount you can build a for loop that'll give you the length you need.

Flash, from the beginning

Here we are at the beginning of a blog. I want to wax philosophical, but this blog is not about blogging, but about Flash. I started this blog to write down my accomplishments and spread information to those in need.

A quick "About me": My name is Aaron Eiche. I'm a professional web developer based in Portland, Oregon. In addition to my full time employment I do freelance web development and have a couple of reoccuring gigs as well. It helps pay for my hobbies/toys.

Recently, I started looking at Flash. I've been collaborating on some Facebook projects, and decided after many years that Flash may not be as obnoxious as I first thought. I've seen some absolutely amazing sites, movies, and games made with Flash, and i decided that I wanted to get to learn that a little. I downloaded the CS3 trial (ironically a day after CS4 became available), and have been working with that for 3 weeks. I'm close to the trial end and I'm generating the cash to buy the trial.

So this blog is about my playing around with Flash. My learning it, my trying it, and I think most importantly what I find. As I go about devloping my flash skills, my first source for help (as always) has been the web. I haven't always found what I'm looking for. As I discover what I'm looking for, I want to write that information down so those who go searching the web for such things can find them too.

So there it is, off to FlashLand.