g.wygonik's flash experiments

we're investigating several defect tracking systems at day-job. FogBugz, Gemini, and a few really expensive ones.

anyone have any recommendations? open-source welcome - though preferably classic ASP or .NET based.

thanks
g.

...and other of life's little wonders.

this week has been weird. a mix of high highs and low lows - or at least they seem that way now*

good - day-job released v3.0 of our software. i've been working on it for four years and it's now installed in the first of many schools throughout the U.S.

good - i also was able to release v2.0 of the Question Designer app at day-job. a really cool Flash-based RIA that i can't show anyone due to confidentiality and all that. v2.1 will be out in another two weeks or so with even more cool things added (stuff that will go in v3.2 of the above project)

good - all remixes are done and sent to the bands (though i have no word if they liked them...) so now i can get back to work on our album. finally.

good - adopted a dog this morning from the pound. a really sweet, calm, 1-year old, male collie-mix. haven't picked a name yet. Belvedere? Otto? Oscar? Timmy?

bad - pound vet called to let us know our dog has heartworms.

bad - my dad's not getting much better. all improvements seem to be slowing. his right arm is now muscularly "dead" according to therapists. though he apparently is starting to initiate conversation and speak complete thoughts.

bad - quote came in from the contractor for home repairs. i'll leave it at that.

* i don't know. i drank a 20oz Coke today and now i'm just in the most foul mood. i know the stuff is evil and wrong, but sometimes i just can't pass it up (it was at a small celebration party for the v3 release).

bah

g.

FLASH SOURCE CODE AND ORIGINAL ARTICLE IN WORD DOC FORMAT

NOTE 1 - This article originally appeared shortly after the release of Flash MX (Flash 6). The supplied FLA will not work as written in Flash MX 2004 with AS2, though the concept of the article is still relavent.

NOTE 2 - Due to sice differences between the original article format and the current blog settings, some images may appear crappy. If you want to view the image properly, simply right-click on the image and select "View Image" from the context menu (or similar)

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last several years, you've no doubt been bombarded with the hype surrounding a simple, plain text technology named XML - eXtensible Markup Language. But even with the books, magazines, and web sites dedicated to XML, many developers still have no idea what XML really is, or even how they can use XML in their applications.

WHAT IS XML?

At its core, XML is simply a method of representing and communicating structured data in a logical, plain text format. Instead of being proprietary or in a binary form that only works on one software platform, XML can be read by any platform, software, or device that can read and parse text.

All data elements in an XML document are wrapped by "tags", which can be nested as deep inside each other to create the desired hierarchical structure. Before we go any further, let's look at a simple XML file that will give a better example of what this technology is. Imagine we need to pass data between an address book application and a word processor for mail merge functions. Our address book application could output the required information in XML like this:

Even without any sort of technical background, most people are able to understand the data and the implied hierarchy in this XML document. The power of such an obvious and simple technology may not be apparent at first. Once you realize that any software, regardless of platform or device can use this data, you'll begin to see it's potential. However, many developers don't look past the basic database replacement uses for XML. We are going to look at using XML in a way that some people never think of – integrating XML with Macromedia Flash MX.

WHAT IS FLASH MX?

Macromedia Flash has become the ubiquitous browser plug-in for web animation. According to Macromedia, the player is installed in 94% of all web browsers on the Internet. Flash uses ActionScript as its core programming language. ActionScript is an ECMA-262 based language – the same language specification as JavaScript – so many web developers will be immediately familiar with programming in Flash. Macromedia has incorporated XML capabilities in their Flash development tool since the release of Flash 5 in the fall of 2000. The parsing of XML inside Flash 5 was notoriously slow, and thus was often overlooked for other data handling methods. One of the highlights accompanying the introduction of Flash 6 (now called Flash MX) in March 2002 is the replacement of the old XML parser with one that is now 100 times faster than before, making XML inside Flash a very powerful tool. Rich data-centric applications built with a Flash front-end are now a reality.

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