Here's a question for you in order to help answer your problem. How exactly do you intend to use Flash? Because as much as I love Flash and spend lots of time coding silly fun things, it's not the be-all end-all development tool for web content or web-based training. It is very strong in interactivity, vector graphics, and recently scripting, but every release before Flash MX is incredibly poor at displaying and manipulating text.
So if you at all intend to display large amounts of text (and since this project is a learning tool I am assuming that you are) you might be better off not using Flash at all - especially if money is a concern. Good ol' fashioned HTML will always be easier to create and run faster than any kind of in-Flash text manipulation (Alternatively, if you have interactivity requirements that you'd like to use Flash for, like a quiz, you can always keep the main text HTML and embed individual Flash movies into the page for the interactivity). Now, I really do think that MX is making leaps and bounds in this area, but you said yourself that the price is very high - and I agree with you. Others have suggested the educational version (which is ~$99) and I would also recommend that.
Now I might be reading too much into your question, but you said that "We'd really like to use Flash as our main language." Very few people ever refer to Flash as a "language" (it's mostly seen as an animation tool), and fewer of them would post your question to Slashdot (you might want to try the Flash message boards on were-here or flashkit). So I'm assuming that you or the people on the project have technical experience and are coming from the prospective of programmers. In this case, you might want to consider doing at least some parts in Java. You don't have to pay anything, there's plenty of free tools out there, it can do interactivity, and the download requirement isn't going to be a whole lot larger than the Flash MX player (though that would depend on which version you'd use). The development time would almost certainly be a lot higher, but again that depends on the specific requirements of the project.
In any case, good luck and if you do end up delving into some serious Flash programming, I have a bunch of good links to advanced Flash actionscripting resources off my little university page.
..is flasm (like JASM). It's a command line assembler/disassembler of actionscript bytecodes (v4 and v5). It's certainly not a replacement for the Flash program itself, but can do some pretty cool things:
- It gives insight into how actionscript is compiled into bytecodes. It's amazing at which commands are compiled into their own bytecodes, and which are not. You can learn interesting things like how Flash compiles a (!condition) into: push condition not not goto.. etc.
- You can hand-optimize critical bottleneck sections of code. Here's a cool example that's linked from the FLASM webpage: first before optimizations, and afterwards.
Whoever said that you can't do geeky things in Flash!
I find it surprising that folks haven't dug deeper into flash vulnerabilities
It's hard enough to dig deep into Flash as a developer, what with the inconsistencies, hacks, and bugs that proliferate the environment - let alone knowing all of those well enough to be able to root out specific exploitable security holes that probably don't even work half the time.
Interestingly enough, a long while back there was some discussion among Flash programmers on a well-known community discussion board about possible security exploits. Months later, a very real Flash virus went around the web based on that very discussion. Slashdot also covered it.
This is because they're counting from Flash 2, and only in the US. Here's the breakdown by version type, according to the same NPD Research study. It's worth noting that these numbers aren't ultimately very helpful, since almost all Flash 5-produced files cannot be executed by a Flash 3 or even Flash 4 player. I would estimate that there are very few web sites out there nowadays that use anything lower than Flash 4.
The real interesting question is how many users have the more _recent_ player. I was actually surprised that Macromedia created another player version with the release of MX, since the Flash 5 penetration was still relatively low (~50-60%) as it had only been released for about a year and a half and was not shipping with OSes. In fact, Macromedia made a big deal about how Windows XP would ship with the Flash 5 player - now they're already out of date.
Here's a strange fact: I can remember that there was a developer called "Ed Boon" that worked on MK, but I can't name a single developer of SF. Why can I remember Ed Boon? Midway always had a thing about putting their developers in their games somehow (remember "toasty" ?).
That's pretty close - Ed Boon is the lead programmer of the MK team and it's actually his voice used for the famous "Get over here!" Scorpion line. The "toasty" guy is Dan Forden, who does the music and sound effects. Once long ago when MK was much more popular than it is now I met Dan Forden through the music technology dept at my university - he was a cool guy. Definitely a sound engineer.
I really like the idea of putting developers into the games in creative ways. Another good example is Chrono Trigger - in one of the many different endings, you get to walk around a level talking to all the game's programmers and designers. That's the sort of team I'd like to work for! Put a little bit of my own personality into the product! (Hm, makes me wonder whose personality Clippy is based on)
God, I'm so geeky that I just can't pass up the opportunity to correct a Simpsons reference, no matter how trivial. And here's the kicker - people like me are allowed to reproduce! Imagine the children! A horde of nerd spawn, each more like the comic book store guy than the last.
Yes, very excellent site. My all-time favorite is the Lemmings theme remix called "Dabomb." There's very little these days that can consistently bring a smile to my face, but that remix somehow always does.
If you have played Lemmings, I don't think you can NOT enjoy that track.
For anybody considering building a multi-monitor setup of their own, you should definitely consult Multi-Monitor Resources which has a database of almost 3000 video card/OS hardware combinations that people have tried, along with their compatibility results. Dualhead and Twinview are very nice as single card solutions, but the old school setup is to use one video card per monitor. One guy in the database has a five-monitor setup, each driven by its own card.
Am I the only one who thought of the "Canyonero" song from the Simpsons?
Can you name the truck with four wheel drive,
Smells like a steak, and seats thirty five?
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Well, it goes real slow with the hammer down
It's the country-fried truck endorsed by a clown
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Hey, hey!
Twelve yards long, two lanes wide,
Sixty five tons of American pride!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Top of the line in utility sports,
Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
She blinds everybody with her super high beams
She's a squirrel-squashin', deer-smackin' drivin' machine
Canyonero! Canyonero! Canyonero!
Whoa, Canyonero! Whoa!
The reason the stand-alone Flash virus file is able to access CMD.EXE has nothing to do with any inherent security hole in the basic Flash player itself. The stand-alone file uses a fairly well known (in the Flash community) function that is only available in the stand-alone Flash player. In fact, Macromedia even has this function documented in their Flash support section. It's the "exec" command that takes an argument of the path to an application to execute.
This virus really has more to do with running an unknown executable than it does exploiting some kind of vulnerability in Flash. This is because any stand-alone Flash player file is an.exe, not a.swf. The stand-alone.exe is composed of 1) The.swf file that runs and 2) The entire Flash player itself (~2megs) in executable form. By including the entire player within the file, the bundled.swf can be run anywhere without any necessary previous installation.
What cracks me up personally is that the very possibility of a Flash virus has been discussed before on Flash community developer message boards. When the "exec" command for the stand-alone player was still undocumented and somebody posted about it (having "discovered" it somehow) there was quite a discussion about the new functionality uses. But, there was also some speculation on how it could be used for malicious purposes. This was around a year ago, IIRC.
I've been writing web applications with Flash for many months now, and I have yet to own any book on the subject. While I've seen many offerings explaining the fundamentals of animation and designed to get a newbie started, very few touch on scripting, let alone complex OO-scripting. So my guide to this point has been the Flash "Actionscript Dictionary" which comes with the application and is available at Macromedia's site along with a glorious number of technotes. After all, what more do you need to use a programming language other than its API and a description of that API? And, since Actionscript is simply an implementation of the ECMA-262 standard, a search on google for OO programming examples in javascript will give excellent examples that can be used in Flash.
So despite this, why is this the book I've been waiting for, the one that I would recommend to anyone considering the more complex side of Flash programming? It's mostly technique. Making code and objects reusable and elegant in Flash is _not_ an easy task. A book that specifically deals with this subject AND OO scripting is far, far more than any other book has touched on. Plus, the coverage of "the complete Flash Player movie clip stack"? That is indeed priceless. That alone is probably reason enough for me to get the book. I have _never_ seen a Macromedia technote on the Flash player stack.
So that's why this will likely be the first Flash book I'll own. For an interview with the author, Colin Moock, Flashkit (which is an excellent resource site) has one in their message boards. (Honestly though, it doesn't say a whole lot that this review doesn't, although it does mention the O'Reilly cover animal choice. It's.. well.. let's just say that O'Reilly must be running out of animals).
The group of artists who created all those works were the GALA committee, which was made up primarily of students and faculty from the University of Georgia and CalArts (hence GA=Georgia LA=Los Angeles). Pictures and video clips of the pieces that made it into the show can be found at the GALA committee website, which has most of them:
Another interesting fact- in order to bring attention to the art while Melrose Place was running, the committee created a fictional Melrose fan named "Eliza" who began to notice strange things happening on the sets. "Eliza" documented these anomolies on her website, and was essentially a mole for GALA in order to arouse speculation among the show's fans.
A long time ago I did the very same thing. Got to Gannon without a sword, and found no way to kill him. Beating wizrobes with bombs when you don't have the wand is quite frustrating, isn't it? But such a good challenge!
It makes me happy to see that somebody else wasted their precious youth in the same way that I did. Looking back on all my childhood years of nintendo playing, the one thing I am most proud of is going through Zelda without ever getting a sword. ......
Well, there are other things from my childhood I'm proud of too.. ......
It's not like I was some kind of nintendo junkie.. ......
I did get out sometimes.. ...... ..when my mom made me.. ...... ......
I've wasted my life.
Avid Technology has been putting together an application called ePublisher. The intent of the program is to allow someone who knows almost nothing about either video or html to create a self-contained web page with streaming video synchronized to html events. A completed project looks somewhat like a powerpoint presentation with video.
The relevance is that you can film a class lecture with whatever equipment you have, import the video into the ePublisher program, import all the class handout materials or slides into the program, create a table of contents that allows a user to jump around to different stages of the lecture, and upload it to a server so that anyone can visit the URL and see the entire lecture.
Although it may sound like it, this isn't a plug for the company or even the program. My university was asked to beta-test the program, and I've since become way too familiar with all the dirty little details. It's in release 1.0 and so has its share of problems and bugs, but definitely has potential for distance learning.
Pros: you can record a lecture/presentation with all the original materials (slides, etc). Anyone in the world who can visit the webpage can view the entire lecture. A user can jump around in the lecture's timeline non-linearly. If something went by too quickly in the lecture, a user can jump back to that section/chapter. If the lecture goes too slow, a user can jump ahead to important sections. Also, Avid provides a USB video capture device with the product, so all you need to import video is svideo-out or composite-out.
Cons: It takes time to complete a project in this way. You need to have some kind of recording equipment to capture the video (although you can also make an audio-only project), and the process of synchronizing events (slides, handouts, etc) to the audio or video within the application is time-consuming. Also, I am fairly sure that there is no Linux version - the release is for 98 right now (In fact, I think they're still working on NT/2000). And on top of all that, the current release is still 1.0. I think that speaks for itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a question for you in order to help answer your problem. How exactly do you intend to use Flash? Because as much as I love Flash and spend lots of time coding silly fun things, it's not the be-all end-all development tool for web content or web-based training. It is very strong in interactivity, vector graphics, and recently scripting, but every release before Flash MX is incredibly poor at displaying and manipulating text.
So if you at all intend to display large amounts of text (and since this project is a learning tool I am assuming that you are) you might be better off not using Flash at all - especially if money is a concern. Good ol' fashioned HTML will always be easier to create and run faster than any kind of in-Flash text manipulation (Alternatively, if you have interactivity requirements that you'd like to use Flash for, like a quiz, you can always keep the main text HTML and embed individual Flash movies into the page for the interactivity). Now, I really do think that MX is making leaps and bounds in this area, but you said yourself that the price is very high - and I agree with you. Others have suggested the educational version (which is ~$99) and I would also recommend that.
Now I might be reading too much into your question, but you said that "We'd really like to use Flash as our main language." Very few people ever refer to Flash as a "language" (it's mostly seen as an animation tool), and fewer of them would post your question to Slashdot (you might want to try the Flash message boards on were-here or flashkit). So I'm assuming that you or the people on the project have technical experience and are coming from the prospective of programmers. In this case, you might want to consider doing at least some parts in Java. You don't have to pay anything, there's plenty of free tools out there, it can do interactivity, and the download requirement isn't going to be a whole lot larger than the Flash MX player (though that would depend on which version you'd use). The development time would almost certainly be a lot higher, but again that depends on the specific requirements of the project.
In any case, good luck and if you do end up delving into some serious Flash programming, I have a bunch of good links to advanced Flash actionscripting resources off my little university page.
..is flasm (like JASM). It's a command line assembler/disassembler of actionscript bytecodes (v4 and v5). It's certainly not a replacement for the Flash program itself, but can do some pretty cool things:
- It gives insight into how actionscript is compiled into bytecodes. It's amazing at which commands are compiled into their own bytecodes, and which are not. You can learn interesting things like how Flash compiles a (!condition) into:
push condition
not
not
goto.. etc.
- You can hand-optimize critical bottleneck sections of code. Here's a cool example that's linked from the FLASM webpage: first before optimizations, and afterwards.
Whoever said that you can't do geeky things in Flash!
It's hard enough to dig deep into Flash as a developer, what with the inconsistencies, hacks, and bugs that proliferate the environment - let alone knowing all of those well enough to be able to root out specific exploitable security holes that probably don't even work half the time.
Interestingly enough, a long while back there was some discussion among Flash programmers on a well-known community discussion board about possible security exploits. Months later, a very real Flash virus went around the web based on that very discussion. Slashdot also covered it.
This is because they're counting from Flash 2, and only in the US. Here's the breakdown by version type, according to the same NPD Research study. It's worth noting that these numbers aren't ultimately very helpful, since almost all Flash 5-produced files cannot be executed by a Flash 3 or even Flash 4 player. I would estimate that there are very few web sites out there nowadays that use anything lower than Flash 4.
The real interesting question is how many users have the more _recent_ player. I was actually surprised that Macromedia created another player version with the release of MX, since the Flash 5 penetration was still relatively low (~50-60%) as it had only been released for about a year and a half and was not shipping with OSes. In fact, Macromedia made a big deal about how Windows XP would ship with the Flash 5 player - now they're already out of date.
Here's a strange fact: I can remember that there was a developer called "Ed Boon" that worked on MK, but I can't name a single developer of SF. Why can I remember Ed Boon? Midway always had a thing about putting their developers in their games somehow (remember "toasty" ?).
That's pretty close - Ed Boon is the lead programmer of the MK team and it's actually his voice used for the famous "Get over here!" Scorpion line. The "toasty" guy is Dan Forden, who does the music and sound effects. Once long ago when MK was much more popular than it is now I met Dan Forden through the music technology dept at my university - he was a cool guy. Definitely a sound engineer.
I really like the idea of putting developers into the games in creative ways. Another good example is Chrono Trigger - in one of the many different endings, you get to walk around a level talking to all the game's programmers and designers. That's the sort of team I'd like to work for! Put a little bit of my own personality into the product! (Hm, makes me wonder whose personality Clippy is based on)
Actually that was Chief Wiggum.
God, I'm so geeky that I just can't pass up the opportunity to correct a Simpsons reference, no matter how trivial. And here's the kicker - people like me are allowed to reproduce! Imagine the children! A horde of nerd spawn, each more like the comic book store guy than the last.
Yes, very excellent site. My all-time favorite is the Lemmings theme remix called "Dabomb." There's very little these days that can consistently bring a smile to my face, but that remix somehow always does.
If you have played Lemmings, I don't think you can NOT enjoy that track.
For anybody considering building a multi-monitor setup of their own, you should definitely consult Multi-Monitor Resources which has a database of almost 3000 video card/OS hardware combinations that people have tried, along with their compatibility results. Dualhead and Twinview are very nice as single card solutions, but the old school setup is to use one video card per monitor. One guy in the database has a five-monitor setup, each driven by its own card.
Am I the only one who thought of the "Canyonero" song from the Simpsons?
Can you name the truck with four wheel drive,
Smells like a steak, and seats thirty five?
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Well, it goes real slow with the hammer down
It's the country-fried truck endorsed by a clown
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Hey, hey!
Twelve yards long, two lanes wide,
Sixty five tons of American pride!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Top of the line in utility sports,
Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
She blinds everybody with her super high beams
She's a squirrel-squashin', deer-smackin' drivin' machine
Canyonero! Canyonero! Canyonero!
Whoa, Canyonero! Whoa!
The reason the stand-alone Flash virus file is able to access CMD.EXE has nothing to do with any inherent security hole in the basic Flash player itself. The stand-alone file uses a fairly well known (in the Flash community) function that is only available in the stand-alone Flash player. In fact, Macromedia even has this function documented in their Flash support section. It's the "exec" command that takes an argument of the path to an application to execute.
.exe, not a .swf. The stand-alone .exe is composed of 1) The .swf file that runs and 2) The entire Flash player itself (~2megs) in executable form. By including the entire player within the file, the bundled .swf can be run anywhere without any necessary previous installation.
This virus really has more to do with running an unknown executable than it does exploiting some kind of vulnerability in Flash. This is because any stand-alone Flash player file is an
What cracks me up personally is that the very possibility of a Flash virus has been discussed before on Flash community developer message boards. When the "exec" command for the stand-alone player was still undocumented and somebody posted about it (having "discovered" it somehow) there was quite a discussion about the new functionality uses. But, there was also some speculation on how it could be used for malicious purposes. This was around a year ago, IIRC.
I've been writing web applications with Flash for many months now, and I have yet to own any book on the subject. While I've seen many offerings explaining the fundamentals of animation and designed to get a newbie started, very few touch on scripting, let alone complex OO-scripting. So my guide to this point has been the Flash "Actionscript Dictionary" which comes with the application and is available at Macromedia's site along with a glorious number of technotes. After all, what more do you need to use a programming language other than its API and a description of that API? And, since Actionscript is simply an implementation of the ECMA-262 standard, a search on google for OO programming examples in javascript will give excellent examples that can be used in Flash.
So despite this, why is this the book I've been waiting for, the one that I would recommend to anyone considering the more complex side of Flash programming? It's mostly technique. Making code and objects reusable and elegant in Flash is _not_ an easy task. A book that specifically deals with this subject AND OO scripting is far, far more than any other book has touched on. Plus, the coverage of "the complete Flash Player movie clip stack"? That is indeed priceless. That alone is probably reason enough for me to get the book. I have _never_ seen a Macromedia technote on the Flash player stack.
So that's why this will likely be the first Flash book I'll own. For an interview with the author, Colin Moock, Flashkit (which is an excellent resource site) has one in their message boards. (Honestly though, it doesn't say a whole lot that this review doesn't, although it does mention the O'Reilly cover animal choice. It's.. well.. let's just say that O'Reilly must be running out of animals).
The group of artists who created all those works were the GALA committee, which was made up primarily of students and faculty from the University of Georgia and CalArts (hence GA=Georgia LA=Los Angeles). Pictures and video clips of the pieces that made it into the show can be found at the GALA committee website, which has most of them:
http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/projects/mpart/
Another interesting fact- in order to bring attention to the art while Melrose Place was running, the committee created a fictional Melrose fan named "Eliza" who began to notice strange things happening on the sets. "Eliza" documented these anomolies on her website, and was essentially a mole for GALA in order to arouse speculation among the show's fans.
An archive of the mole's website is at:
http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/projects/mpart/eliza/
A long time ago I did the very same thing. Got to Gannon without a sword, and found no way to kill him. Beating wizrobes with bombs when you don't have the wand is quite frustrating, isn't it? But such a good challenge!
......
......
......
......
..when my mom made me..
......
......
It makes me happy to see that somebody else wasted their precious youth in the same way that I did. Looking back on all my childhood years of nintendo playing, the one thing I am most proud of is going through Zelda without ever getting a sword.
Well, there are other things from my childhood I'm proud of too..
It's not like I was some kind of nintendo junkie..
I did get out sometimes..
I've wasted my life.
Avid Technology has been putting together an application called ePublisher. The intent of the program is to allow someone who knows almost nothing about either video or html to create a self-contained web page with streaming video synchronized to html events. A completed project looks somewhat like a powerpoint presentation with video.
The relevance is that you can film a class lecture with whatever equipment you have, import the video into the ePublisher program, import all the class handout materials or slides into the program, create a table of contents that allows a user to jump around to different stages of the lecture, and upload it to a server so that anyone can visit the URL and see the entire lecture.
Although it may sound like it, this isn't a plug for the company or even the program. My university was asked to beta-test the program, and I've since become way too familiar with all the dirty little details. It's in release 1.0 and so has its share of problems and bugs, but definitely has potential for distance learning.
Pros: you can record a lecture/presentation with all the original materials (slides, etc). Anyone in the world who can visit the webpage can view the entire lecture. A user can jump around in the lecture's timeline non-linearly. If something went by too quickly in the lecture, a user can jump back to that section/chapter. If the lecture goes too slow, a user can jump ahead to important sections. Also, Avid provides a USB video capture device with the product, so all you need to import video is svideo-out or composite-out.
Cons: It takes time to complete a project in this way. You need to have some kind of recording equipment to capture the video (although you can also make an audio-only project), and the process of synchronizing events (slides, handouts, etc) to the audio or video within the application is time-consuming. Also, I am fairly sure that there is no Linux version - the release is for 98 right now (In fact, I think they're still working on NT/2000). And on top of all that, the current release is still 1.0. I think that speaks for itself.