blog-j: Symbolizing, Coding, Objectifying, Processing

My son Phillip is almost 16 months old. The time has, cliche that it is, flown by. It has been the most rewarding experience of my life, watching him grow and learn. He is fun, affectionate, talkative (fairly understandably, in fact - and incredibly cute, iidssm).
That said, like everything in life, it’s not all roses and peaches.
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Via FlashMagazine:

Post-processing

Flash 8 also contains a couple new features that can extend Flash in new ways. At the bottom of the Flash Publish window, you can find a dropdown allowing you to select “Post-processors”. A quick look in the documentation reveals “Post-processors are Window?s dlls or Macintosh bundles that perform a specific operation on a SWF file at the time it is created. For example, a post-processor could be used to replace certain words, or create an extra copy of the SWF file you are publishing. Macromedia mainly foresees using this functionality as a way to fix SWF files for use on mobile devices as new versions of devices are introduced to the market.”. Maybe this also could be used by the third-party Projector Tool Vendors? Could be used to skip some application switching?

Interesting. Very interesting. I wonder if one can write those with .NET, or if they have to be C/C++. Either way, lots o’ fun to be had.
Now why can’t they open it up for a pre-processor? That would be really sweet!

If anyone has more info on the above info, please drop it in the comments. Cheers.

By now you’ve all heard. Macromedia announced Studio 8 (-MX) (available for pre-order now, shipping in September). Which obviously includes, drum roll please, Flash 8 (Basic and Professional - it seems this time they’re emphasizing the Basic…). And, check it, Normal Mode is back. Yay!
Ok, actually, that doesn’t really register on my radar, but I thought it worth mentioning.
In any case, the point here wasn’t to talk about Flash. Enough people are talking about that. Not that it isn’t cool (it is), and not that it isn’t exciting (it is).
Dreamweaver, on the other hand, I haven’t heard a heckuva lotta talk about. And this morning I saw a little image that rocked my world:

Code folding is, in my opinion, the bees knees. It is one of the most useful features of a coding IDE. And, finally, finally, finally, Dreamweaver will have it. (My only question with this is whether it’s only tag based folding collapsing, or if it can handle server/client-side script as well…)
I guess it would be too much to expect that it’s filtered into the Flash Script Kiddie Window IDE.
Not to mention, real Intellisense would be really nice.. Maybe in Flash 9.
Anyway, go back to your perusal of the vast array of information available on the new version of Flash. I’m looking forward to it, too. But for me, I think I’ll crack open Dreamweaver.
For about a minute. Then jump into Flash.

Saw a link to this article on comp.object today, and was somewhat intrigued. Full article was a bit of a let-down, though I haven’t had time to really let it sink in. Mostly I feel like the whole idea just talks about creating DSL’s, but to me it seems like a whole lot of work with little reward. Seemed to me that his whole focus is on how badly Java libraries are implemented (java.util and Swing specifically). A lot of the enhanced programming abilities he seeks to utilize with his version LOP are already available within Visual Studio, and quite a few other IDE’s. The whole idea of being able to define a program graphically or textually is already there - look at Flash (or Visual Studio, or a myriad of others)!

Initial reaction is just that it makes little sense. I understand that DSL’s are great (SQL being a prime example), but that said, there’s something to be said for having a standard ‘language’ structure and syntax. Having to learn a DSL for every bit of an application seems a little heavy to me…

Read the article here, and responses on comp.object here