flash tekkie

If you’ve installed ImageMagick from MacPorts, e.g. for a 32-bit Mac for which there are no prebuilt binaries, you could have seen ImageMagick not working with PHP exec() on localhost even though it works from  the command line. Read the rest of this entry »

Powerflasher has just announced FDT 4 Open Beta programme according to which all are eligible for a fully-flavoured FDT 4 until October 17th 2010. It’s a 1-month trial software that you can try out before FDT 4 gets out of the RC status and hits the streets.

Get your free licence code from www.fdt.powerflasher.com/getlicense.
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The following benchmark proves that a traditional single site Drupal setup isn’t any faster than its multisite counterpart.

Tested setups:

1. Single site installation of Drupal 6.17 from Drupal.org
2. Multisite installation of Drupal 6.6 from Debian Lenny. Although there’s a version difference and Debian’s release lags behind by a number of versions, it has the latest security patches applied.

Benchmark data by ApacheBench as per commands:

1. ab -n 100 -c 10 http://drupal_single_site_address.tld
2. ab -n 100 -c 10 http://drupal_multisite_address.tld

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Even though the point of code obfuscation will always remain arguable, it may sometimes be a good idea to mess around a bit and make your ActionScript code harder to steal. The following review will highlight the features of SWF Protector, analyse the code and impact on SWF file size as well as performance. Read the rest of this entry »

If for whatever reason a lot of your work gets done in Flash IDE and you’re working on the open-source Eclipse Flash development platform, it may get seriously annoying to seek for that tiny Run button on the Eclipse toolbar. To hook up Cmd + Enter* in Eclipse, do the following:

1. Open the Preferences of your Eclipse IDE
2. Locate General > Keys
3. Type Run in the field with type filter text tip in it
4. Scroll down and find the Run command,  it should display Shift + Cmd + F11 by default
5. Click Unbind Command
6. Click the Binding field and Cmd + Enter to set the new shortcut
7. Click Apply and Ok to finish

* the guide applies to Mac OS X version of Eclipse, but can easily deployed for Ctrl + Enter on Windows (or Linux). Read the rest of this entry »

Most cross-platform Flash development tools are not available for free. The best ones, Flash Builder and FDT, will set you back €600.

Fortunately a few open-source and free alternatives exist. AXDT is one such alternative – it’s a set of plug-ins for the Eclipse Platform that enable you to write ActionScript 3 code in an integrated environment. Read the rest of this entry »

LogWatcher is the kind of open-source Eclipse plugin that enables hooking a view of a certain log file to the Eclipse IDE. It comes in handy for open-source AXDT Flash development plugin of Eclipse that currently (at version 0.0.7.1) doesn’t have a built-in debugger and is yet to receive it in milestone 0.1.0. Read the rest of this entry »

Pretty much everyone who has ever used Safari well knows that this platform is the top dog when it comes to eating up memory. Say what you will, but it really must be the most leaking browser platform there is. In this regard Safari 5 is no different from Safari 4 and all the fancy features that were added don’t make up for the memory failures. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the fact that M2 isn’t the final release of FDT 4 and even the feature sets of Pure, Pro and Enterprise versions are yet to be determined, it’s a solid Flash development tool already.

Even so one of the first issues to tackle with on a Mac is the FDT 4 Debugger throwing back Flash sandbox violation. Read the rest of this entry »

The following has already been listed as a feature request at Adobe Bug System and is only to illustrate the situation which is basically the lack of badly needed functionality in ActionScript 3.

The problem relates to flash.geom.PerspectiveProjection introduced with the load of native 3D in Flash 10. Read the rest of this entry »