blog-j: Symbolizing, Coding, Objectifying, Processing

Macromedia has (finally) released Flex, an enterprise level application server, dubbing it:

‘The presentation-tier solution for delivering enterprise Rich Internet Applications.’

From my quick look at Flex, I’ve found it to be an incredible tool, though time to play has been somewhat lacking. Regardless, it’s a feature-rich RIA generator, and I look forward to seeing what people (myself included) can do with it.
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Looking at the Starsky and Hutch site, playing around with their games (the pinball is incredible, btw).
They also have a ‘Pimp Name Generator’, which is pretty funny.
Particularly my pimp name.
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An updater for DreamWeaver MX 2004 was release by Macromedia yesterday.

Download @ macromedia.com/…/downloads_updaters.html

Release Notes @ macromedia.com/…/releasenotes.htm

If you’re like me, you like ActionScript 2.0. And you like creating classes with AS 2.0.

And sometimes when you’re working on a class, you make changes to the code, and you republish to test your changes…and WHAM!

Nothing’s changed.

So, I figured (correctly) that Flash is storing a compiled version of all your classes, essentially caching them so (in the event that there are no changes to the code), Flash can use the cached, pre-compiled version without having to recompile the class.

In theory, that’s all well and good. However, what’s not so good is that it doesn’t always detect properly when your file gets changed.

This has been driving me up the wall, because I’d have to close Flash, close my .as files, reload Flash, reset the class linkages, etc, etc, to get it to re-compile the class file. Time being of the essence, I rooted around in the ol’ Local Setting/Application Data folder, and found a directory inside of the Flash MX 2004 Classes directory named ‘ASO’. And in this folder are all sorts of files, named namespace.classname.aso.

Did a quick search online, found this on Kirupa…sure enough, .aso files are pre-compiled Flash classes.

Yay.

End result - if you’re running into this problem, delete your aso folder, and you should be good to go. Or, if you prefer, just delete the specific .aso files that you are trying to test, so that the unchanged classes don’t need to be recompiled.

It’s official - I’ll be speaking at this year’s FlashintheCan festival. I’ll be giving an ‘Ask The Experts’ session on “Programming Fundamentals in ActionScript 2.0″.

The festival runs from April 3-5, starting with a wild party and awards show on Saturday night, followed by two days of presentations, panels, Q&A sessions, and the IronFlash competition. There are over 80 presenters scheduled, include Colin Moock, 2Advanced Studios, Velocity Studios, Josh Davis, Mike Chambers, Dave Yang, and many more. It’s shaping up to be a excellent conference.

For more details, visit the official site (which I had a hand in building - design credits to Velocity Studio - I took care of the backend and most of the Flash development).

Please drop some comments if you will be attending and you have questions that would fit in my Q&A session.