Open Source Flash 2010

Open Source Flash 101 'G' Gaurav Narain Saxena Akron Linux User Group January 7, 2010

Outline ● Flash ● ActionScript ● Open Source Adobe ● Open Source Flash ● Salasaga ● mtasc ● swfmill ● Swftools ● References

Flash ● "Like television for internet users" ● Written in C++ ● Allows you to: – Annotate web page with: ● Animation, adverts, other flash components ● Navigation – RIA ● Streams of video ● Proprietary

Flash ● Concepts – Timeline – Stage – Objects – Controls – etc.

ActionScript ● Javascript for HTML= ActionScript for Flash ● Scripting language based on ECMAScript ● Extension: .as ● Main points: – Cross platform – Manifested in flash and flex – platforms – Designed by Gary Grossman (1998) – Versions: AS3, AS2

ActionScript Example (AS2): HelloWorld.as class HelloWorld extends MovieClip { public function HelloWorld() {} public function onLoad:Void{ var txtHello:TextField = this.createTextField( “txtHello”,0,0,0,100,100); txtHello.text = “Hello, World!”; }// displays 100x100 box with “Hello, World!” in it.

Open Source Adobe ● Flex SDK – Cross platform framework; provides compilers, libraries, debugger ● Adobe-Mozilla Tamarin – Open engine for ActionScript 3 ● BladeDS – Server based Java remoting and web messaging technology ● Webkit – Open source browser engine, OSX framework used on apple computers

Open Source Adobe ● Text Layout Framework: Typography

Open Source Flash ● "Like sourceforge.net for open source flash enthusiasts" ● Collaboration – list: http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/ – irc: irc://irc.freenode.org##swf ● Hosts and links to projects related to open source flash development

Open Source Flash ● History – May, 2005: Aral Balkan, Sonke Rohde, Nicolas Cannasse (MTASC) “Eureka!” – June, 2005: Number of projects: 10 – January, 2008: Number of projects: 120 – Today: has many more project, a handful of broken links – cool nonetheless

Open Source Flash ● Source code used to be shared – Binary .fla files – ActionScript Classes ● 2004: MTASC2 [MotionTwin ActionScript Compiler]released, – kicked off Flash IDE Dev Projects ● Swfmill, Axdt, AMES, FlashDevelop etc. ● Frameworks started appearing: – Arp, Cairngorm, PureMVC ● Developers: – Started embracing these frameworks – Worked in teams – Build scalable solutions – All this independent of Flash IDE or Flex

Open Source Flash ● OSFlash.org incubates all these projects collected under one roof ● Doesn't stop ! ● Exciting technologies for Flash Platform are created: – Papervision 3D: 3D Library for Flash – Red5: Open Source server to handle audio, video, and real-time shared objects – SWX: Native data format for Flash platform – Flex3, Flex SDK, Compilers

Open Source Flash ● Integrated Development ● Utilities Environment Alternatives ● Flash Applications ● Command line tools, ● Servers and Remoting compilers ● Logging Tools ● Eclipse Plugins ● Debugging tools ● ActionScript libraries ● Documentation Systems ● Frameworks ● Flash Players ● Tweening, Animation and Physics ● SWF Readers ● Unit testing

● Open Source IDE for creating flash based eLearning (alpha software) ● GPL, developed on Linux ● What can you do: – Create instructional videos – Get a feel for timeline and other Concepts

● Demo in Firefox (.swf) or here

mtasc ● First ActionScript 2 Open Source Compiler ● What you can do: – Compile large .as classes in very short time – Generate .swf without flash – the tool itself! ● Superseded by haXe

mtasc ● Example: class Hello { static var app : Hello; function Hello() { _root.createTextField("tf",0,0,0,800,600); // creates a 'tf' TextField size 800x600 at pos 0,0 _root.tf.text = "Hello world !"; // write some text into it } static function main(mc) { // entry point app = new Hello(); } }

mtasc ● $ mtasc -swf hello.swf -main -header 800:600:20 hello.as

swfmill ● Xml2swf swf2xml processor (can import) ● Generates asset libs for MTASC or haXe ● Built around xslt ● What you can do: – Import images, fonts – Add components – Create movieclips – Place clips on the stage – Create text fields

swfmill ● Example.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?> <movie width="320" height="240" framerate="12"> <background color="#ffffff"/> <frame> <library> <clip id="foo" import="library/foo.jpg"/> </library> </frame> </movie>

swfmill ● $ swfmill simple example.xml example.swf

swftools ● Collection of utilities to work with .swf's ● Mostly on command line ● Loves to have: – Freetype libraries from freetype.org – Jpeg libraries from ijg.org

swftools ● What you can do: ● What you can do: – Pdf2swf – Wav2swf – Swfcombine – Avi2swf – Swfstrings – Font2swf – Swfdump – Swfbbox – Jpeg2swf – Swfc – Png2swf – Swfextract – gif2swf – as3compile

swftools Pdf2swf example

Take Home ● Flash has 99.99% market share – (nah, just kidding) ● Tools exist that facilitate usage of the flash platform which you can adopt for your application domain: – Sciences – Programming – Sysadmin? (atleast the command line ones)

Questions?

References ● osflash.org ● Adobe flash ● Open Source Adobe ● salasaga.org ● swfmill.org ● mtasc.org ● swftools.org ● ActionScript Wiki ● ActionScript 2 Language Reference

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Open Source Flash 2010

by Gaurav Saxena on Jan 13, 2010

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