http://feeds.adobe.com

MXNA is back, it's been given an updated moniker, Adobe Feeds (AXNA?), and is running on CF8. Looking forward to seeing it running speedier as promised.

A few revisions to Gaia have happened since my last post. Here are all the changes that have occurred.

2.1.2 fixed a bug with SEO Scaffolding erasing the CSS required for 100% Width/Height and site centering.

2.1.3 fixed an SEO bug in AS2, updated Gaia's internal API class to use strictly typed public const event names in both AS2 and AS3, best practice with SWFAddress not storing the first goto event in the site history, and a bug in AS2 with GaiaMain during the initialization process.

2.1.4 added the ability to set the depth of the index page, fixed a bug where setting indexFirst="true" would permanently disable the browser history (introduced in 2.1.3), increased stability with the GaiaContextMenu waiting to initialize on an indexFirst site, and fixed a bug in the AS2 PreloaderScaffold which was using the AS3 property scaleX instead of the AS2 property _xscale.

One of the nicest features in FlexBuilder for AS3 development is the error reporting that happens whenever you save a class. It checks for any obvious errors in your code and reports them as line items, complete with a description of what's wrong and where. This is a fantastic tool. The Flash IDE compiler is terrible and misses all kinds of obvious errors that won't show up until run-time. I'd rather see Adobe put effort towards getting a decent compiler in Flash than improving its Actionscript editor.

As devoted fans of FlashDevelop know first-hand, FlashDevelop's auto-completion is hands down the best in the industry. If you haven't used it yet, you should give it a trial run. Nothing comes close and the amount of time it saves and the joy it brings is addictive. I can't code Actionscript with any other editor. Die-hard Mac developers have posted instructions on how to run this Windows-only application (due to its reliance on the .NET framework to achieve this level of auto-completion among its other great features) on their OSX machines seamlessly. Those who have used it know it's well worth the effort.

By contrast, FlexBuilder's auto-completion doesn't come close to FlashDevelop's, but its ability to point out the errors throughout your code meant that you had to either pick one or the other or use both in tandem. However, as I have just discovered, this is no longer the case.

FlashDevelop has the same exact error reporting that FlexBuilder does (minus highlighting exact lines with little x's). It will compile on save and report any errors in the Results panel, telling you the line, the error description, the file and file path, and you can double click on the line item to jump straight to the line and file.

For some reason, this feature is turned off by default in FlashDevelop. I wish I knew why. In order to turn it on, you need to press F10, or go to Tools > Program Settings. Then, under the AS3Context plugin, under "Common", the first item is called "Check Syntax On Save". Set this to True and you're good to go.

Short of spending $500-$1000 on FDT for its outstanding lexical parser which points out your errors on the fly as you code (but doesn't have as good auto-completion as FlashDevelop, though it is better than FlexBuilder), this is as good as it gets for Actionscript developers. If you use FlashDevelop, please consider donating to the project, as I have done. Phillipe and the rest of the team have created an outstanding product which they have given to the community for free and deserve all the praise in the world for their hard work.

Gaia 2.1.1 has a new AS3-only feature, nested pages and assets, which allows you to easily nest your pages and assets inside each other via a new depth attribute value "nested".

There's a new API command, getSiteXML() which returns the raw site.xml, an AS3 bug fix for a really rare goto spamming null pointer exception, and the latest TweenLite family is included, as well.

http://www.gaiaflashframework.com/forum/index.php/topic,365.0.html

Gaia 2.1 is here and with it some incredible new features, the biggest of which is SEO Scaffolding. SEO Scaffolding generates XHTML pages for every seo-enabled page in your site, complete with links to the other pages and a valid sitemap.xml.

But that's not all! Each XHTML page also houses all the copy for your Flash site and makes that copy available directly in your pages! This one-file-per-page solution makes it extremely easy to make your Flash sites optimized for search engines and it's as simple as pressing a button in Gaia's panel. Say goodbye to XML + XSL SEO solutions. One XHTML file, one button press, one revolutionary way to achieve robust white-hat Search Engine Optimization in Flash.

SEO Scaffolding is not the only new feature in Gaia 2.1. You can now dynamically set the path to the site.xml, making localization as simple as one line of code, or use it to load a dynamically generated site.xml file driven by a CMS.

Wait! We're not done, yet! You can now add external assets to pages at runtime. You no longer have to put all your assets in the site.xml. Instead, you can link to an XML list that contains any number of dynamically generated assets. This feature makes building things like image galleries a snap!

Hold up. There's still more. The Gaia panel has undergone some major improvements, as well.

The Gaia Framework Updating now uses a diff-system to only replace the files that changes and it tells you exactly which files were updated and/or added. This also helps Mac users keep their Subversion repositories intact.

The byte accurate preloading engine has been updated, as well, and fully supports the new SEO Scaffolding engine. With one button press, all file sizes for pages, assets and SEO files are injected into your site.xml.

One more thing! The Project Resizing has been completely overhauled and now can be used for any and all of the different dimension choices at any time. It even modifies all of the SEO Scaffolded files for you, all with just one button press. This is just another of Gaia's numerous time-saving techniques.

Developing Flash sites with Gaia is fun and easy! If you haven't checked it out yet, now is a great time to download Gaia and revolutionize your workflow.

Be sure to check out the Gaia Framework Wiki for detailed information on all of these features.

And while you're at it, check out what industry professionals are saying about Gaia.

Gaia Flash Framework v2.1.0 Beta 1 has been released. This is the first in a series of 3 beta releases to test new functionality in a tiered way. The first beta has some great new features including dynamic site.xml pathing for easy localization, and dynamic external asset xml support to make things like image galleries and other dynamically fed content a cinch.

Check out the beta thread for more details, and don't forget to check out the Gaia Wiki, too.

http://www.gaiaflashframework.com/forum/index.php/topic,296.0.html

The Gaia Framework Wiki is finally here. It's in beta right now and so far the response has been extremely positive. Once it's completed, the Wiki will replace the documentation on the forum. You can still get your Gaia support questions answered on the forum by the community of Gaia developers out there.

Check out the Gaia Framework Wiki now!

TweenMax, the highly anticipated tween engine from Jack Doyle, author of TweenLite and TweenFilterLite, has arrived. It offers a slew of new features like bezier tweening, bezier "through", pause/resume, easy sequencing, hex color tweening and more.

Check it out here:
http://blog.greensock.com/tweenmaxas3/

So there's a difference in behavior in AS3 that people have pointed out to me. It has to do with using for…in an Object not returning the values in the order they were added to the Object. In AS2, this works that way, but in AS3, it doesn't.

Take the following code and run it in AS3 and AS2.

var obj:Object = {};
obj.a = 1;
obj.b = 2;
obj.c = 3;
for (var s:String in obj)
{
    trace(s + " = " + obj[s]);
}

You get the following output:

a = 1
b = 2
c = 3

In AS2, you get the opposite:

c = 3
b = 2
a = 1

The AS2 output seems more correct because for…in iterates backwards through whatever you're iterating through.

However, add any more keys to the object and AS3 starts to behave oddly.

var obj:Object = {};
obj.a = 1;
obj.b = 2;
obj.c = 3;
obj.d = 4;
for (var s:String in obj)
{
        trace(s + " = " + obj[s]);
}

In AS2, it outputs what you'd expect:

d = 4
c = 3
b = 2
a = 1

In AS3, however, you get this:

b = 2
d = 4
a = 1
c = 3

In fact, you can add and remove as many keys as you want in AS2 and it will give you consistent results every time you for…in. The most recent key added gets traced first down to the least recent key added.

By contrast, here's what the output in AS3 looks like for 8 keys

b = 2
f = 6
c = 3
g = 7
d = 4
h = 8
a = 1
e = 5

My friend Brad at Cartoon Network asked Grant Skinner about this recently and Grant told him that behavior is expected because those things are not indexed in order. While this makes sense logically, AS2 does not have this issue so it still seems like wonky behavior.

.NET maintains the proper order when you create a Dictionary to do the same thing (first in, first out), so I tried using a Dictionary in AS3, however, I get the same output as Object.

Java, on the other hand, seems to have a similar issue. Five keys results in

d = 4
a = 1
c = 3
b = 2
e = 5

And six keys

d = 4
a = 1
c = 3
f = 6
b = 2
e = 5

So for those making the transition from AS2 to AS3, be aware of this behavior change, especially if you've gotten used to the way AS2 handled it.

Is it just me, or is MXNA down yet again? Man, that site goes down more than [insert lewd reference here].

This might start a flame war, but I think MXNA is a prime example of why ColdFusion is the weakest of all middlewares. MXNA is extremely slow and it crashes constantly. ColdFusion is attractive to non-developers because it enables them to write middleware and backend code, similar to how Dreamweaver enabled non-HTML people to make websites using WYSIWYG. What a great idea! Having a poorly written HTML page is a completely different ballgame than having a poorly written backend.

The proof that it needs constant attention was evident on Easter weekend, when the people who maintain it were on vacation. It was down the entire weekend until Monday when people got back to the office. If your site can't stay up for 12 hours unattended, you've got problems.

MXNA is really in need of a complete rewrite. It's outdated, unstable and painfully slow. MXNA is down more than any other major rss aggregation site on the web. Come on Adobe, it's high time you did something about this. Isn't the daily time you waste trying to keep MXNA up and (barely) running outweighing the time it would take to just rewrite it so it stays up and running?