unloadAndStop — This new ActionScript 3.0 API adds unload functionality similar to the unload behavior in ActionScript 2.0. After calling unloadAndStop on loaded content it will be immediately removed stopping all audio, removing eventListeners, and becoming inaccessible through ActionScript.

In short, this should make it much simpler to free a loaded SWF for garbage collection, as opposed to having to resort to hacks like SoundMixer.stopAll() and then praying that the content isn't just floating around somewhere waiting to be picked up.

Grant Skinner had written a post about Flash Player 9's inability to completely free loaded content from memory and force garbage collection. It became a very active post with almost 60 comments, including some from the Flash Player development team.

In the comments of Grant's post I read about an additional item that has found its way into FP10 beta 2: calling System.gc() will now work in all Flash Players, not just the debug versions as stated in the AS3 documentation:

System.gc()
Language Version : ActionScript 3.0
Runtime Versions : AIR 1.0, Flash Player 9.0.115.0

Forces the garbage collection process.

For the Flash Player debugger version and AIR applications only. In an AIR application, the System.gc() method is only enabled in content running in the AIR Debug Launcher (ADL) or, in an installed applcation, in content in the application security sandbox.

Once again, great job Adobe at listening to the requests of your developers!

In my search for ways to enable simple debugging when working in Eclipse with both FDT and FlexBuilder, I managed to find two viable options: Arthropod and LogWatcher.

Arthropod is an AIR application that enables enhanced logging for AIR, Flex and Flash applications. I am surprised there was not more fanfare made of this recently, as it was just released and got a mention on The Flash Blog. Arthropod allows you to use a simple bundled class to write trace statements to the running AIR application. This means, in theory, I could avoid having to switch back and forth to the Flash CS3 IDE to compile and debug with trace() statements. What I like most about Arthropod is how simple it is to use. Import one class, fire up the AIR application, and you are ready to go.

The second option I have come across is LogWatcher. I found this one on Josh Buhler's blog a while back, but never got around to installing it. LogWatcher is a bit more integrated into Eclipse/FDT, as it puts a panel in Eclipse that reads the continuous output of the debug Flash Player. You'll need to set the debug Flash Player to output all trace statements to a text file, but simple instructions can be found here.

Between the both of these options, it looks like I can finally stop having to switch to the Flash IDE to debug my projects.

http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2008/04/the_open_screen_project.html

As a part of the announcement, Adobe is publishing exactly how the SWF format works without restrictions, and removing all other barriers to getting Flash on the widest range of devices. Set top/cable boxes, all mobile phones, televisions, your appliances... anything technical, really. Even those devices without a screen and/or user interface. Bill Perry does a great job of going into more detail on the implications for devices on his blog.

Ryan Stewart has a great post explaining all the implications of this announcement, for devices and desktop computers alike. He goes into more detail on the several parts of the announcement, so it is worth the read.

As someone who makes their living from the Flash ecosystem, you should care greatly about this announcement. It may not seem like it to a non-developer, but this is huge for anyone who knows how to use Flash. The thought of having Flash everywhere is finally a reality for those who want to include it in their products as a user interface layer, or even to allow developers to control the product using ActionScript. And this means that your capabilities to design, develop, and then deploy your Flash experiences just became more marketable and useful.

Lastly, as a member of the Flash community, you should also be excited about the implications this has on open source projects such as SWX, AMFPHP, and the like. The more open the specifications surrounding the various parts of the Flash ecosystem, the easier it is for members of the community to create tools and open source projects which contribute to the growth and prominence of said ecosystem... and make all of our lives as participants in that ecosystem that much more interesting and fun.

For the initial push I posted: SmoothImageLoader (AS2), RegExp (AS2), Tooltip (AS2), BadFilter (AS2), ConstantContact (PHP), and SubmitVerisignPayment (PHP). For more details on these classes, please visit:

http://www.jonnymac.com/blog/code/

Enjoy!

Seriously though, there is some very cool stuff going on with AS3, Flex, and Flash these days. I can only imagine where this will go if Intel and Adobe do indeed get AIR running on mobile devices. It could have the potential to turn wireless carriers into data-only providers -- mobile broadband services.

I would highly suggest when the onAIR tour rolls through your town you check it out. I'll bet they may even have some more Ribbit info they could demo for you while it is in closed beta.

While this is a very nice addition, I doubt this means the end of Flash Lite as there will still be phones with less processing power for quite awhile. However, it is a very welcomed step in the right direction.

There is more information about the presentation on PC Magazine and ZDnet's websites.

That said, this conference was the best value for a conference that I have attended to date. And, I'm not sure the value aspect of the conference could be improved upon. For example, the $360 attendance fee included breakfast, lunch and dinner/parties every day. The welcome kits included great polo shirts (as opposed to regular t-shirts) and beta invites for projects such as Buzzword. And the speakers and their sessions were generally great - I've written reviews/recaps of all the ones I attended here.

But, as is usually the case with conferences, you don't attend just to see the speakers - you attend for the community aspects. To meet like-minded people and to inspire and be inspired. So here's a list of some inspiring people and projects from the conference:

+ Buzzword Beta: For me, this is _the_ example of how Flex and AS3 can be used to build an application. Adobe contributed some money to this project to enable them to bring on additional developers and really make this a showcase for the Flex platform. And, showcase it is. I highly suggest trying to get your hands on a beta invite if you can. If you'd like one leave a comment on my blog and I'll add you as a collaborator on a document, which forces you to create an account and is a sort-of "back door" to a beta invite (Dave or anyone else from Virtual Ubiquity, let me know if this is going to cause a problem for you...). More on Buzzword can be found here.

+ Ribbit: VOIP (voice over IP) in Flex. The example I saw at the conference was where Charles Freedman used Ribbit to call a cell phone of someone in the audience. Being able to place and receive phone calls through Flex is truly cool stuff. Imagine the uses - tech support, fax capabilities... More info at Ribbit's developer site (now taking applications for the beta) and on Charles' blog. There is also a writeup at RIApedia and on Ryan Stewart's blog.

+ Charity Code Jam: As part of the conference there was also a charity code jam which benefited the local food bank, Northwest Harvest. Developers were encouraged to give whatever time they felt comfortable donating toward building an online portal for the charity. According to the project's website, over $158,225 worth of time was spent for the cause, writing a total of 5681 lines of code. That's a lot of work. All in all this appears to have been a very large success, even gathering some press from around the blogosphere. Hopefully other conferences will take this idea and help out a good cause by enabling the collective minds in attendance to work together for charity.

A few sessions I didn't mention in my daily wrap-up posts that are worth mention include:

+ Programmatic Visualizations - Andrew Trice
Andrew has a nice write-up along with his slides and links to some other resources on his blog.

+ Deep Linking Flex Applications - Simeon
Since I have been involved with the SWFAddress project, I have become much more aware of the options available for deep-linking, and how the included scheme with Flex isn't really all it is cracked up to be. Slides and commentary can be found on Simeon's blog.

+ Flex and PHP for Rich Internet Application Development - Charles Bihis
Seeing as how I use PHP for all of my server-side development, this probably should have been at the top of my list of sessions to attend. Now I'm sorry I missed out on it! Code samples, slides and notes on Charles' blog.

All in all 360|Flex was a wonderful conference. Here's hoping the guys from 360 Conferences keep delivering wonderful experiences and maybe even expand out into other interactive development subject matter for future conferences. Well done, guys!

- - -

Keynote - John Wilker, Tom Ortega
The morning keynote was a showcase of different applications including Mixbook, Buzzword, TileUI, and Saffron. It was great to see what the community is doing with Flex and to get a preview of the beta invites everyone at 360|Flex received.

In addition to the showcase, John and Tom also launched their new project RIACommunity.com, and provided more information about how they make 360|Flex a reality - down to the budgets and specifics that I can't say I have seen shared by any other conference before. It truly showed that these guys are in it for the love of the community and not to make themselves rich.

- - -

"FlexBuilder Debugger" - Mike Morearty, Adobe
This was the second or third session I attended that was given by a developer from Adobe. It was great to see Adobe contributing to the conference because it doesn't get any more official than to come from an engineer who wrote the code!

Mike's session focused on tips and tricks, and advanced debugging in FlexBuilder. In addition, Mike previewed the changes/additions in the upcoming FlexBuilder 3 release such as:
+ Debugger tooltips
+ Right-click "Watch Expression"
+ Hierarchical variables view
+ Faster stepping
+ No-launch debugging / remote debugging

- - -

"Project Artemis: Accessing Devices & Processes in AIR" - Adam Flater
I think this session would have actually been better off titled "AIR & Java" because Project Artemis is based on linking AIR with Java on the end-user's computer. With the Java bridge in place AIR can link to Java and allow AIR to do anything on a user's computer that Java can do. For instance, this is how several people have gotten the Wiimote to work with AIR.

While the session allowed me to see what is possible with AIR and Java, it wasn't really for me since I don't develop in Java. Either way, Adam has given this talk at a few other conferences and had I been a Java developer, I am sure I would have been drooling with anticipation of this project's release.

- - -

"Custom Flex Component Development" - Doug McCune
Most Flash and Flex developers have heard of Doug for one of two reasons: his FlexLib components, or his latest experiment TileUI. Doug's session was easily one of the best of the conference and certainly one where I learned the most. Custom component development is the major way of extending Flex, so knowing how to create your own components is essential for any advanced Flex developer.

Oddly enough, Doug gave out a (since removed) link to a beta of his TileUI interface and the next day when I got home a friend IM'd me with the same link. I believe it also made an appearance on Digg. Word travels fast!

Doug has posted his slides on his blog, along with his thoughts on his session. I highly suggest reading both.

- - -

"Creating a Visual Experience - Theory & Strategy" and "Creating a Visual Experience - Part 2, Hands-on" - Juan Sanchez and Andy McIntosh
I have followed Juan's Scale Nine site for quite a while now as a great example of how great Flex could look if developers put in a little effort into skinning their applications. Juan has made it extremely simple to customize the look-and-feel of your Flex apps through CSS skins and has provided a showcase and free download of these skins on his website. That said, going into the session I was expecting to learn a lot from a knowledgeable source -- and that I did.

Juan handled most of the first session while Andy took on most of the second hands-on session. Juan first covered the different means of styling your apps (style tag, css, AS3 setStyle(), packaged SWFs, etc), and then went over how to implement each. I highly suggest you download the presentation (link below) and review the chart where Juan breaks down when and why to use styling (CSS) or skinning (replacing visual elements with graphics). The hands-on was also very helpful and while Juan initially wanted to show a more complicated example, I think keeping it simple turned out for the better as it allowed the core concepts to be shown more easily.

You can download the presentation and source files (before and after), as well as a list of resources on skinning on Andy's website: http://www.andymcintosh.com/360Flex/. Juan has also posted his thoughts on the session on his blog.

- - -

"ByteArray 202" - Ben Stucki
One thing a lot of developers (especially those coming over from Flash/AS2) don't realize about ActionScript 3 is its ability to read in raw binary data. Utilizing this as a tool in AS3 has allowed creations such as AlivePDF (an AS3 PDF maker) and FZip (AS3 ZIP file native read/create). In theory, with enough time and effort you could read or write any type of data using AS3, thus making it expandable for just about any purpose.

Man, did this session ever bring me back to my days of computer science classes in college. Ben started off giving an overview of binary data, bit and bytes, and then created a simple example where he accessed the ID3 data of an MP3 file (including embedded album artwork) from within AS3. Overall, a cool session that showed with a little effort you could have AS3 interact with just about any file type.

Ben has a blog where he posts about his continuing efforts.

- - -

"Buzzword: How'd They Build That?"- David Coletta
I'd have to say, this was one of the most entertaining sessions of the conference. Dave is a great public speaker (be sure to check out his public speaking tips, a reflection on his 360|Flex talk) and was incredibly open about how they built Buzzword. Honestly, I assumed this would be a 80 commercial on Buzzword, but in reality he really dug into the process and code used to create such a complete web application.

A few notes on what stood out for me:
+ The team developed their own testing framework where they can record actions and then reuse those tests on each build before releasing it. The framework actually outputs an AS3 class which when run outputs XML which can be compared to results from prior tests.
+ The application consists of over thirteen Flex projects. This is done for two reasons: build time in FlexBuilder is much shorter when broken down into discrete pieces, and user load times are less (or rather incremental) because the app is broken down into several SWF files that get loaded as needed instead of all at once.

Dave also had the best quote of the conference: “They’re not hacks. They are performance optimizations that are difficult to maintain.”

Dave has a write-up about thoughts on 360|Flex on his blog. He also has round-up posts on each day at the conference on his blog.

- - -

"WebOrb" - Mark Piller
I attended this session because I wanted to see what the difference was between WebOrb and other alternatives such as the free, open source AMFPHP. I mainly develop with PHP as my server-side language, so that was what was of most interest to me. Most of Mark's session focused on Java and their upcoming AIR version which both offer significant advantages over what AMFPHP offers - but in Java.

Overall, this session did end up feeling like a commercial for WebOrb, but it was well presented and if I actually used WebOrb I might of walked away with additional knowledge.