JavaScript, Flash, AJAX, AMF, JSON, XMLHttpRequest, oh my.

There are a lot of acronyms flying around out there in nerd world.  A lot of misconceptions as well.  This article aims to clarify a few terms and relationships between internet technologies.  I hope you find this interesting, engaging and informative.  I’ll start with the basics, with the intent on comparing XMLHttpRequest, JSON, Flash and AMF as these terms are often used together.

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Flash CS5 UIKit

I’ve started a new project.  It is a user-interface framework for Flash that mimics the iPhone user-interface framework called “UIKit”.  To Apple’s credit, one of the reasons that the iPhone is so popular is because of it’s intuitiveness.  The UIKit is largely responsible for this interaction.  An iPhone targeted Flash application does not have access to the Objective-C libraries that an Xcode application would have, so I’m building it from scratch.

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VerifyError: Error #1025: An invalid register

Let me guess, you are playing around with XML Namespaces?  Well, maybe not, but if you were, then maybe this post will help you out in getting rid of this entirely un-helpful run-time error.

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AMFPHP – NetConnection.Call.BadVersion

If you get this error when calling a function in your AMFPHP service, most likely you actually have an error in your PHP class.  It’s not exactly the most informative error.  A good way to find the actual error, is to create another PHP file in your services folder, and have it create an instance of your service (PHP class) and call your public functions one by one.  If you have errors turned on, you should see errors get spit out in HTML.  Also, it isolates the debugging to PHP, rather than being concerned that your Flash might be causing the trouble.

Server Error 500 when using AMFPHP with WordPress

If you are getting Server Error 500 when trying to access AMFPHP with WordPress (meaning that your amfphp directory is mixed in with the WordPress files), it might be because of an AMFPHP .htaccess file conflicting with the WordPress .htaccess file.  Deleting the AMFPHP htaccess file fixed the issue for me.  The settings in the AMFPHP .htaccess file are related to error handling, and were not critical for me to keep.  Hope that helps someone.

Mobile Content Segmentation

There are many types of mobile devices out there. Way more than there are desktop browsers. In the world of desktop browsing, I will typically make sure my code looks good on FireFox Mac / PC, IE 8/7/6 and Safari. Opera if I am feeling saucy, and maybe I’ll give Chrome a look just for shits and giggles. Usually, its only the Microsoft browsers that need the tweaking because of unsupported (yet standard) tags. Even then, if you do this long enough, you know what to avoid / expect.

When it comes to mobile web development, there are a lot more players, which means even more opportunities for someone to go to your site on their mobile device and say “this site is JACKED up!”. Nobody wants that. Unlike desktop browser development, there really aren’t standards (even if only community based) for mobile development (no, don’t say WAP). This leaves really two choices. Either find a lowest common denominator, or segment the experiences by groups or even specific devices.

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OS X duplicate Sharepoints

Something that has bothered me for a while, but I’ve been to lazy to look into was that sometimes when I mounted to an external server, the sharepoint name would increment a “-1″ suffix to the end of the name. On the desktop, or in Get Info, the name would be fine, but the POSIX path would always have this stupid suffix. This is a real pain when using Flex Builder and working off a server because to import a project, it uses the actual POSIX path (which kept incrementing the suffix). The next time I would go into Flex Builder, I’d have to re-import the project because the suffix might have changed.

I think the problem occurs when the server is not disconnected properly. Anyway, the solution is to disconnect all external servers, then turn on hidden files. Then navigate to /Volumes, and delete the folders of duplicate sharepoints. Turn off hidden files, reconnect to the server, and your sharepoints should be back to normal (no suffixes!).

SWF metatag properties

The options below are for compiling ActionScript Projects from Flex Builder. This is really for my own reference as I can’t seem to be able to remember them off the top of my head…

width=”#”
height=”#”
widthPercent=”#”
heightPercent=”#”
scriptRecursionLimit=”#”
scriptTimeLimit=”#”
frameRate=”#”
backgroundColor=”#”
pageTitle=”"

example:

[SWF (frameRate="24", backgroundColor="#ffffff")]
public class Main extends Sprite{}


Flash CS4 Crashes in Snow Leopard

So I upgraded to Snow Leopard the day it came out because my “early adopter” urges got the best of me. There are a few quirks that are kind of annoying, but one in particular really set me back. When I opened Flash CS4, any time I open a file, or create a new one, Flash quits. After a little digging, I narrowed it down to a font issue (in the past, when Flash would crash like this, it usually had something to do with fonts). I think it has something to do with Apple moving from .dfont to .ttc for system fonts. Also, I use FontExplorer to manage my activated fonts. Anyway, the way I was able to fix Flash was to first remove the old .dfont references from FontExplorer. You can do this by going to “conflicts” on the left side menu. This should remove the dfont references, and leave the ttc references. Then I turned off ALL activated fonts. FontExplorer won’t allow you to turn off the System fonts, which is a good thing. Then I deleted the Flash preference file ([user]/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.flash-10.0.plist).

After that, Flash started up fine, and I was able to open / create new files again.

Flamingo: What is Flamingo?

“Flamingo” is a technology I’ve been working on that establishes a DIRECT connection between the iPhone and the Flash Player over a wireless network. It is NOT a Flash Player for the iPhone (that is for Apple and Adobe to work out, not me). Also, Flamingo does not require the iPhone to be jail-broken, and does not require the use of a middle man server. When connected, Flash has access to anything the iPhone has access to, and vise-versa. That means things like multi-touch events, accelerometer data, GPS information, the phone’s address book, the phone’s music library and the phone’s photo album are all available to Flash through the ActionScript 3 Flamingo API.

I am working on making a demo video that I will post when it is ready. Stay tuned…