art, life and software development

One way to improve server code performance in Flash Media Server is to compile it as Bytecode. I really do not bother much about protecting code as, I feel it is the generousity of others who have not protected their code that has brought me thus far. Having said that it is also a good way to protect your server code if you so desire form peering eyes. In addition you can also archive your server code in the situation where you have more than one script managing the logic on the server. The tool to do this is the FAR executable, a compiler that comes with the FMS install. This tool gives you the options of compiling your *.asc files to *.ase bytecode and your files *.asc or *.ase into an archive that FMS interpretes. This archive is a *.far.
The method I detail below works in the Linux environment - If you use Windows the difference in syntax is nominal

1. Find the FAR executable, in Linux it is in the install folder. An easier way to get it is to untar the FMS package and look inside the root folder.
2. Place the FAR inside the folder of the scripts you want to compile
3. Open a Terminal and 'cd' to the directory.
 ayo@W34PON-X:~/IDE/Tools$ ./far
4. Compile your *asc file into a *.ase file
ayo@W34PON-X:~/IDE/Tools$ ./far -compile ./getbytes.asc
This compiles getbytes.asc into getbytes.ase
5. Deploy the *.ase file to the application on FMS instead of *.asc

My VLC media player suddenly started to disappear every-time I tried to play videos - the audio play-back was fine. This procedure fixed it. Look at your video output settings in VLC. Tools/Preferences/Video/Output. Change the video device out settings. Video play resumed for me without any hassles. Good luck

The only way to describe using the Ubuntu OS and the daily pleasant surprises I get is to compare it to Christmas coming everyday. Honestly its no exaggeration. In my view no OS is better, Ubuntu is just BOSS, period!!! ... and it keeps getting better.
The latest 'Christmas present' comes in the shape of fb4linux a port of the Adobe FlashBuilder for the 'nix' platform. I give my heartfelt THANKS to the wonderful person who has spearheaded this project. Once set up its a perfect working copy of FlashBuilder. I really was not keen on the idea of installing Wine in order to experiece FlashBuilder, and though I could install in VirtualBox that would mean I'd be developing in Windows which I did not want to do.  There is the usual problem of there not being a designview in this IDE as well but, I've been developing on FlexBuilder for Linux for so long that frankly I do not miss it at all.
I installed fb4linux on Ubuntu Karmic 64-bit, my Eclipse build was Gallileo. By Golly does it rocket when you compile, you hit F11 and before you can say 'F11' your build is up. There are some set up procedures to adhere to if you are developing on a 64 bit linux distro. You need to set up a 32 bit Eclipse build as neither FlexBuilder nor FlashBuilder can be run on the 64 bit versions of Eclipse. The instructions for doing this are detailed quite clearly  on this blog .
I have copied the main parts of the blog post relevant to setting up FlashBuilder here (this was how I set it up) on the assumption that you have downloaded Eclipse Gallileo and the fb4linux project zip. With a Ubuntu Karmic 64 bit you need to install ia32-sun-java6-bin and all its dependencies.

1. For 64 bit: In a terminal window run “sudo update-alternatives –config java” and select ia32-java-6-sun as your jre of choice.
2. Unpack your Eclipse download and place it where you want it to be, I like /usr/local/bin/eclipse-galileo, by running “tar zxf eclipse-SDK-3.5RC2-linux-gtk.tar.gz” to unpack it.
3. For 64 bit: Move the eclipse.sh script into your eclipse install folder and run “chmod a+x eclipse.sh“.
4. For 64 bit: Set java back to the regular 64 bit variety using the same method as step 1 (but obviously selecting just java-6-sun).
5. Untar the fb4linux package in a folder of your choice. I would suggest you have a parent directory called FB4Linux and untar your package in here. Mine was placed here home/ayo/Adobe Flash Builder Beta 2 Linux
6. Download the Flash Player 10 debug player for Linux from Adobe. Create a directory wherever you like and place the standalone player there. Mine was placed here '/home/ayo/DebugFlash/
   

Please restart Eclipse after you have done this to be certain that Eclipse works. Once you are in Eclipse go to Help>Software Updates> Configuration. Add the path to where you untarred your download of fb4linux. Thats it - done. Well almost. You need to create an 'sdks' folder in the parent folder, in my case the 'Adobe Flash Builder Beta 2 Linux' directory. You need to set up your SDKs and the location of your web browser and standalone player, in my case /home/ayo/DebugFlash/flashplayer.
Now create your first test project and enjoy the goodless of Ubuntu and FlashBuilder

For a very LIMITED time only download FB4Linux here

After installing Flash player on Ubuntu Karmic 64, I was a bit disconcerted to find that all the Flash video players I tested did not respond to ant mouse clicks. Google-time. this particular solution worked for me.

First you need to open and edit this file: /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer . You can do it from terminal by typing:

gksudo gedit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer

Add the following line before the last line of text

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

Save and close the file. You will have to clear these changes when you next upgrade your system. I hope this works for you :)

I promised myself I would skip one distro and wait before upgrading my Ubuntu OS. Well I did not suceed - I had been reading the pre-release reviews and every thing alluded to the fact that this was arguably the most advanced Ubuntu release ever- naturally. For the first time Ubuntu got mentioned on the BBC news. Seriously I knew that there were a number of new features added to Ubuntu, and lots of improvements. A few of the core changes like the Grub2 and the Ext4 filesystem were introduced in Intrepid but, I felt at the time probably too error prone so I left them alone. At any rate I could not resist the pull of a new OS so on the release date I downloaded and did a fresh install on my HP 8710w. The first ISO did not work so I had to do it again. Success it did work - Gosh, the speed of the thing - installation time definitely much faster, about half the time. I have to say I was a bit disappointed at first glance, the default look is ghastly- wallpaper and all - I cannot believe that such a nasty looking interface can pass Q&A - why oh why does Canonical keep with the this livery - it really has to change. They should take a cue from the Intrepid Ibex wall paper which, in my view, was very nicely done. That should be the benchmark. The default desktop look and feel inspires no confidence with any user whatsoever except, you're colour-blind which I'm not. This is made considerably worse when you know how much resource there is out there with regards to stunning wallpapers, icon themes and GTK2 themes. There really is no excuse for such a poor looking desktop. Fortunately, this so far seems to be the only negative point against Karmic. Now the tough part - checking what worked and what did not.

• Changing my login screen - Impossible, there's a new login screen and no tools and probably no new GDM themes for such a modification at the moment.
• Flash Player 10+ - The plugin-installer does a good job. However I am an Actionscript developer so I need a debug version. The traditional way did not work. Untarring and trying to install via Terminal using ./flashplayer-installer. I got an error stating that my glibc needed updating and that was that. The only way was to do a sudo nautilus and replace the default libflashplayer.so with the debugger version. The destination folder is /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer. After that all was well.
• Eclipse - Installing new application did not work - Buttons clicked did not call the action. Apparently this will be fixed in the next Eclipse build but,that will not help with Flex Buiildre Linux which at the moment can only be deployed on Eclipse Europa 3.3 - no update for that I'm sure. So for FlexBuilder on Europa all you can do is the workaround - click on the button of interest and then hit the Enter key.
• Software Center - I do not really like it and I think the older method of 'add and remove programs' is much better and definitly easier especially when you want to select multiple application for a to install. The Software Center seems targeted at the new Ubuntu convert and may help them see and select software easier but, not for me.
  

Those are the issues I've found so far - other than that all seems better than Jaunty. Sound is so much better and I had no problems with my media after I set up Medibuntu and all the restricted media elements. No issues with hardware drivers at all. Samba network fileshare seems to work somewhat - It never successfully networks with the computer names but, if you know the network IP of the computer then all is well. However this may be a peculiarity of my local network.  I enabled my Compiz Desktop effects at first try and that's the first time I have ever successfully done that on any Ubuntu/Ubuntu-Studio release. Having done all this it was time to update to Ubuntu-Studio Karmic. Ubuntu-Studio is my preferred version of the Ubuntu distro. It ran smoothly from the Synaptic MAnager and was perfect in every way - for me - best of all it restored the old 'Add and Remove' software feature and removed the Software center.
All in all I'm very happy. Its a really nice OS - More bounce to the ounce for Canonical, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio and the Ubuntu Studio team.
3 days later: This is without a doubt the best operating system I have ever used. Its simply beyond amazing. I'm speechless with delight. Bloody Well Done to The Ubuntu/UbuntuStudio Teams!!!.

It's getting a bit irritating to find that when a goodish bit of industry standard software is released, Linux builds always gets released last or not at all. As an Actionscript developer it was nice to know for a while that Adobe had my back and was actually putting some effort into the development of FlexBuilder for Linux. I've used the IDE for over a year and inspite of its obvious shortfalls compared to the Windows version its been great. Now that's coming to an end since it seems that Adobe feels its no longer worth the time and effort to continue that development program. So once again its time to jump into the wild and see what is out there re, Linux - Actionscript / Flex development.
I've been trialing quite a few and in all honesty none come close to FlexBuilder for Linux (of the ones I have tried). However there are a few promising options out there and my hope is that as more attention comes to bear on these tools theire development teams get all the support they need (financial and otherwise) to make these tools true contenders.
My recommendations for the moment are:

1. IntelliJIDEA: Of all the IDEs out there this seems to be the most complete and competitive. Actually it does seem to have quite a few features  that are an improvement on the FlexBuilder/Eclipse format. It has all the debugging features. It also provides and import from Eclipse feature - though I must comfess I was not very successfull using that feature and got a whole gang of errors - from a project that compiled prefectkly in Eclipse. Installiation is a bit ropey in Ubuntu - and I've found myself constantly having to reset the IDEA_JDK=$JDK_HOME in order to activate the IDE. On occasion I've also found the typing to be a tad slow. However when its settled its a very good IDE. I'm not sure if its because I'm not conversant with it but, its customisation features seem to be quite limited. I'm sure this will improve when the user base expands.

2. AXDT: This is a plug into Eclipse and I found it quite comfortable after installation. Installation though was an absolute pain in the neck. The documentaion is scant and if you try to install unto any version of Eclipse before 3.5 you will really find yourself up against it. I lost 2 Eclipse setups on account of my initial efforts. However on Eclipse Gallileo it installed like a breeze. It is worthwhile to read the installation instructions. Once installed its quite nice and can be somewhat FlexBuilderesque - no doubt because of my familiarity with the Eclipse interface. However it is obviously a work in progress and the first thing you will notice is the lack of a debug feature. In addition it seems impossible to get AXDT to allow you view the compile project in the external browser no matter how many times you set it to do so - though that may be my fault. There's stil a lot of work to be done here but when completed it will be a joy to work with. Its customisation features are none-existent and as I said before, there is virtually no documentation.

3: FDT: Probably better than AXDT - In fact I'm sure it is but its very expensive and so I did not try it

4: Spket: A work in progress no doubt but, may actually turn out to be the best of the lot. Its wierd my saying so because it does not compile Actionscript or MXML at the moment - which I guess should be the core functionality of any Flash building IDE. Its built on Eclipse os its interface is very familiar and it has a lovey drag and drop feature for moving compinents from the library unto the MXML editor - not visual - still it is very nice. However until it can actually run and debug Actionscript it remains just a nice concept