I do not want to work in a sector of this industry where the dreams of what the technology promises are to be realized after my death or retirement. Hopefully with inventor’s spirit, the former will happen before the latter…
Televisions and set top boxes are now available at your local retail electronics outlet that have technologies that enable basic interactivity. The content that has been developed to date ( which I have seen ) is tertiary to the TV viewing experience. Based on my conversations with some Hollywood industry professionals, it will probably be some time before we see content being produced that immerses the viewer, now the user, with all of these complimentary technologies. A good pal of mine who produces some high profile television and movie content put me through the ringer when I tried to simply explain this TV tech layer to him. He was more concerned with Neilsens and the Networks than how he could differentiate his future offerings by utilizing this layer in his storytelling. It is after all an advertising game…

I have been in “Interactive TV” in some form or another since 1995. I have been deeply immersed in it since 2000. We all thought it was 2 years away for the last 15 years. Now that it is truly emerging as an available technology, we might only have 10 more years before someone creates the experience that fosters adoption.

It was easy to get confused when sifting through my memories of CS4 demos with the topic = “3D”.  I was lucky enough to attend a few CS4 release showcases at Adobe in SF and there was a lot of cool new 3D in CS4.  The question is,  in what apps did each new amazing feature or capability land?  Well after a lot of hard thinking, searching, linking, and some drinking, it seems my ideas of what Flash CS4 and FP10 have received in the 3D area are a very few changes that have a huge impact.

First off, the first thing I realized was it is not a “this vs that” sort of issue as PV extends what you can do with Flash (AS3 really) and FP10.  I have prepared this matrix to show what is possible in CS4/FP10 versus the older CS3/FP9 and what PV could always do.  Remember PV is a library that runs on top of the base Flash player, therefore inheriting all of its capabilities.  PV is a comprehensive 3D framework capable of just about anything you see in runtime 3D engines like XBox or Unity3D.

The best thing is that FP10 can do a few more things than FP9,  most notably  3D transformations (move and rotate in XYZ).   The UI has tools that allow you to change these values in the Flash IDE, or you can use AS3.    Another good thing here is that now FP10 can now perform 3D operations much faster and “better” than FP9.   At a high level, 3D transformations in FP9 had been calculated via a 3×3 matrix of parameters, this has been extended to a 4×4 matrix in FP10 allowing for the use of more advanced mathematics in 3D calculations.   At least that is what I got from (http://tinyurl.com/7qasdk).

This new performance and the additions will only provide the PV developers with a great opportunity to do some refactoring of the areas of the framework that will benefit most.   Another cool demo I saw was combining Flash filters with PV objects (http://blog.zupko.info/?p=76 and http://papervision2.com/playing-with-filters/) .  Who will combine these things in the next Killer Kludgey way that will amaze all of us and say WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT!!! ?

FP 10’s native 3D capabilities have been referred to as “Postcards in Space” by many (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6731027747102186445) .   This really seems like a good explanation.  A movieclip can be scaled (X,Y), rotated,  and moved in 3D space just like it was moved in 2D space before.  All of the movieclip’s nested children MCs will be affected by these same transformations.  Add these transformations with a simple Z ordering manager (not there by default) and combine the Z depth values with some filters and you have can do some pretty cool stuff.

REFERENCES:
A very interesting blog post that gets even more interesting as you read through the comments:
http://www.robertpenner.com/flashblog/2008/11/misconceptions-about-how-flash-cs4.html

Some observations:

A class in a local classpath will override a class in the SWC’s class path of the same name.

One might conclude:

• you can override a single class within a SWC with a local class with the same name and change the features of its subclasses
• you could “fix a bug” in a SWC package with the same approac

Tests to come:

• Proofs of this in action with examples
• Proofs of collisions in separate swcs that use the same class paths
  • What happens when I use one version of GTween in SWC one and another in SWC two?
    • Do I really need to strip all of the code out of my SWCs so I can share from more than one SWC?

Basic Assumptions:  (all of which are “facts” stated by the professionals I have worked with)

1.8T is capable of 350 foot pounds of torque on the stock rods, that is the first limitation of the hardware.

Drivetrain is good to 450HP (as said by some pros)

The GTRS is capable of 22PSI all the way to 7K RPM.

Methanol Injection at 50/50 water to alcohol is 100% equivalent to 116 octane fuel, allowing for significant HP gains due to more advance under boost.

Nitrous is a power adder that adds fixed HP and torque at any RPM, low or high. Nitrous is a full stroke power adder as the burn is not a quick flame wave, but is distributed across the entire power stroke (told this by my supplier).  He used an analogy to “exploding foam”.  Mikey likey exploding foam analogy…

Stand Alone ECU allows for precise control of fuel, timing, and boost pressures so you can dial in your RPM curves for all of these attributes.

So with those assumptions in mind, there is a lot to tweak here…

• Fuel (11:1 under boost, 14:1 cruising, XX:1 to make it idle)
• Timing (as much as possible without pinging at any RPM / boost)
• Boost (how much at any RPM – maybe even a spike at medium RPM and then taper off as you rev out)
• Methanol (what boost level to activate, what boost level to be at 100%)
• Nitrous (how much HP jetting, what PSI to switch off)

One known fact from my limited 4X experience with Dyno Tuning as well as many years of software engineering (which might only have this one similarity) is that it is very easy to get 90% there, and the last 10% cost and spans about 90% of the money, time, and effort.

Now for the tuning: Start with the basics: Boost, Fuel, Timing.

Boost – You want to run as much boost as your turbo and internals will safely allow. On the 1.8T, that means a lot of boost , so much so that if you do not want to see boost drop off as you pull into the higher RPMs the turbo gets so large that low end boost is just plain gone.  I am talking like 22PSI on 91 octane CA gas.  The GTRS, which can provide this boost, spools nothing like the K03, you have to WAAAAAIIIIIIITTTTTTT for the spool.  It takes FOREVER, and almost anyone in any car can pull anything on you until you hit big boost.  Let’s face it, you are not going to drive around at 5K all the time just so some JA in a neon can’t cut you off in traffic.  FWIW – the GT2X does not spool much faster than the GTRS, but does run out of steam after about 5500.  It is not until you buy one and install it that you find this out.  Yes it can do 20PSI, but only to 5500, then you pull boost down to about 15PSI to 7K.  That is a real bummer feeling.    Skip the GT2X.  I wish I would have.  Any more boost than this and you probably need to change rods, so I did not consider larger turbos.

Verdict – GTRS (and slow spool) is your only choice

Fuel – There are many options here and I chose 034 standalone.  Since then, 034 has began selling the Unichip line.  I am pretty sure they can make a map that works very well with the rest of the hardware I have and I might have just been a bit early on my purchase  there, but alas, I am not really complaining.  Another development and a certain swap for me is the Genesis dual cone injectors.  The folks at 034 swear by them and I figure I can sell my green top and trade up.  They are supposed to have much better drivability.    034 standalone is a nice unit with a very granular control of fuel, spark, and boost maps.  I am sure there are many others out there, both chips, piggybacks, and standalone ECUs.  The point of this section is just to say that you should dial in your fuel so that you are around 11:1 under boost, this is a nice safety margin.  Some folks might say go lower like 10:1, and they are probably right, but it seems a bit rich to me.  Some dyno testing would be nice here to see what power is lost for the safety. You are going to need a wideband O2 sensor here, I like the PLX devices and the Innovate O2 controllers.

Timing - Once you have a safe 11:1 (under boost) fuel map, you can start to add timing.  A good ECU will allow you to have correction factors for air temp, water temp, altitude, etc, so whatever your map is, it can be adjusted for these real life conditions.  If you get on a nice load simulated dyno, like those 4 wheel dynapack jobbies, you can create conditions that allow you to dial timing under various load conditions as boost conditions.   The general rule that running as much timing as possible under load without pinging is going to give you the most power, but I have been told by the dyno folks that this isn’t quite true.  A nice knock sensor with an acoustic adapter, a voltage or graph readout will do the trick here.  Learn how to read your sensors readings and you will see signs of knock before an actual event occurs.  Any high boost knock is bad, even the ones on the dyno, so be careful.  The dyno I mentioned above will actually show you your torque output and if you have a lot of time and money, you can fidget with timing and see where max power is made.

Verdict – Pick the best you can afford… My advice, keep it simple, if you can flash your ECU and run 21PSI, that sounds nice…  There is a lot to take for granted that your remapped stock ECU will provide.

Once I had  21 PSI, 11:1 fuel, and decent timing, I was sad and disappointed in my serious turbo lag.  I needed to do something about the spool.  I started with adding Methanol injection with the thought that if I could add more timing from low boost to high boost, my spool wouldn’t crawl from 2 PSI to 15 PSI as it does before it really “kicks in” and shoots to 21 PSI.  That is a lot of wait time… 6PSI, 7 PSI, 8PSI, 10PSI, 12PSI… come on!!!

Methanol - Truthfully, with a tuning session on a dyno and spark handled by the 034 ECU, the 034 folks themselves could not tune much more than I already had in the timing maps.  There was no sign that my 50/50 methanol water mixture was providing me 116 octane fuel.  I would love to explore this more on a better dyno with a better knock sensor than we had at the time.  We were reading the VAG logs of the factory knock sensor voltages, good enough for Bosch and Audi though .  This was a real let down.  On the other hand, I do feel as though I have a safety margin and a potentially tunable system that is lying dormant here.  It was just that the first tuning session after installing it correctly, jetting it correctly, and having some of the best dyno operators in the area (034) do their thang, I did not leave with 40 more horses, more like 5, and this might have been from adjusting the timing outside of the methanol kit.

I beg anyone good at dyno tuning with methanol to join me for a session, and I challenge any of these companies to increase my HP by just 20 or pay for my dyno time…

The saga held tight with that setup as I had a long commute many miles of which were freeway, therefore I had longer stretches to smoke fools and I was closer to the 4K+ RPMs needed to get into the power band.   Then my job changed, and I was driving mostly short distance surface roads.

This is when it all started to bug me, I had like $10K in this setup (parts / labor / tuning) and it sort of sucked for my situation.  I seriously considered going back to a K03, you cant beat that low end torque on that little 1.8T with a chipped K03… Well, nut unless you have something like nitrous…

So I thought quick, salvaged a rarely used nitrous kit off of my 1970 Camaro (braggart!) and purchased the pieces needed to adapt the kit to the A4.

Nitrous – The idea of nitrous on a turbo will sound crazy to you until you do it, just as methanol might sound to a young tuner, and even chipping could be to the newbies… Many N2O companies sell “quick spool” kits with advanced controls for sensing boost, fuel pressure, and other vitals, but as I see it, with my experience with basic nitrous kits, and no blown motors to date, I could get by with a simple Hobbs switch setup.  A Hobbs switch is a pressure switch that can be adjusted over a range of PSI to either open or close a circuit at a given PSI.  Quick spool kits would have NC (normally closed) switch that operates in the 8-12PSI range.   In my case, with my calculations, and my experience doing this on one other turbo car in the recent past, I figured I would add 50HP up to 8PSI, that should get the turbo spooled and then boost will quickly soar to max!  Sort of…  This solution does solve the lag problem, no question there, it is basically instant boost.  It is nice….  This configuration was decent in low gears at lower RPM ranges, but not enough in higher gears at lower RPM (less than 4K).  In other words, it was pretty good in many cases, but not the best configuration for my driving habits.  So I have recently adjusted to to 40HP and 12PSI cutout.  I did this after a long conversation with one of the nitrous professionals at my supplier.  The folks at 034 want me to pull timing under N2O, but the folks at the nitrous supplier say 50HP is really small and pulling timing at lower boost levels is not necessarily required with small amounts of giggle gas..  So I went 40HP just in case .   This setup is very nice.  You get strong acceleration and a real quick spool up to 12PSI where there is enough boost to help carry you right on up to max.   It is almost seamless with a very small drop in pull at the transition point in 3rd gear and higher.   Maybe someday I will try 30HP to 15PSI, but I would need to buy another Hobb switch that is adjustable in that range, so it will probably never happen.

Verdict – Squeeze is a nice way to get instant spool on a small displacement big turbo motor.

Should have bought an S4… I am sure I would have dropped the $10K still, but I would have at least another 100 ponies.  Live, burn, learn…

References:

http://www.034motorsport.com

http://www.atpturbo.com

http://www.coldfusionnitrous.com/

http://www.nitrousdirect.com/

http://www.plxdevices.com/

http://www.innovatemotorsports.com/

http://www.snowperformance.net/

http://www.alliedelec.com

Cool option from gliffy.  I have been using this service for nearly 4 years (off and on).  It does everything I need as I rarely take things as a system from a UML tool to code generation.  But it definitely provides some good options, good availability, and rapid dev.

Wait, mid post I read the fact that its embed does not work in WordPress and I have to use a simple image… Boo!!!

The emotional let down was akin to this.  I say they could make up for it if they added Publish to UML.

FWIW, the diagram here is a DFD for View/Controller classes and how their controllers affect the models which in tern dispatch events that their views listen to.  I am torn between implementing public methods on the models that the controllers call and using events that the controllers send and the models listen to.  I am pretty sure that a many to one call and a one to many event is the best pattern.  Open for debate starting now…

Oh no they didn’t.  Wait they did!

WebORB is the kitchen sink and then some.  For many of us, just the AMF transport ( “The ABC’s of AMF.” ) of G-zipped SON blobs is all we will ever need, but you never know what you really need until you have to live without it.  One spin around WebORBs management console and your needs will change forever.

It is as easy as 1,2,3.

1. Pick your favorite server technology and install the WebORB server.  I chose .NET.

Hit your WebORB service and you are presented with the management console.  If for some reason you are not, the folks at http://www.themidnightcoders.com/ have created a start page that might just point out exactly what you have to do to get your service up and running.  In my case I was installing it on a Windows Server 2008 VM and it did require some extra attention to get the gateway going.  Once I pushed past this everything was straight forward.

The management console has everything you need to begin to develop with this technology, there is no need to go back to the http://www.themidnightcoders.com/ for docs and examples.  See the console main tabs below.

One cool thing is that the examples are running right there on your server providing the proof that the gateway is functional, there is no question if the code you are writing does not work that it is a server issue.

2. Follow the instructions on how to create a C# data class file and code up a test method, I suggest having at least 1 parameter on this method to make it a realistic test. Compile it and drop it in the WebORB bin folder.

Now for some real magic, go back to the management tab on the console and you will see your DLL listed in the Deployed Assemblies tree control on the Services sub tab.  Expand that DLL, Expand your namespace, expand your service name and presto, there is your test method.  One nice thing about WebORB is that it respects the access specifiers of (public, private, protected) and will not show private methods in this tree (or allow calls via the gateway).  Click on your test method name and the right panel changes to a form that allows you to test your method with params!!!  You didn’t even have to write any client code to test your server code, they are fricken’ holding our hands here people…  Now, go back to the Deployed Assemblies column and click on your service parent.   The Code Generator Tab should show up.  This is actually usable code that mimics the server API on the client, this was my “aye Dios mio” moment.  Now for the capper,  look to the right panels Code format / style and choose your client technology from a long list including Cairngorm, PureMVC, AJAX client, and ARP framework.  Did I mention WebORB is “Free“?

3. Chose the client example that best fits your need and take the pieces you need for your project, change the properties to match your namespace and method names, and wallah, you are transmitting data in arguably one of the the most efficient manners possible across the wire.

As I said, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to WebORB features.  Click around the console and see for yourself just how powerful and feature rich this package is, you will amazed.

My hat is off and I am fully bowed to The Midnight Coders for unequaled performance and delivery of a very usable data service.  Just what does all this other stuff do!

Note:

AMFPHP is pretty decent and may have everything you need.  My team at Method used AMFPHP in our Flex projects during my tenure.  We didn’t know about WebORB at the time or I am certain we would have used it.

Feature Request:

Please make the value fields in the results object browser selectable.  It is a real pain to type in a .net GUID into the params value field for an invocation of a method that is keyed off of that GUID.  Better yet, make it a right click on the result value field and send to param (of choice) option.

!!!

NOTE: Flash CS4 allows for SWC linking, dating some of  this post  to CS3 and previous.

!!!

Forward: Flex AS3 projects publish SWFs and as I understand do not automatically include the Flex RIA framework. It is sort of like authoring for Flash in Flex. If you are going to eventually publish with Flash then be sure to be careful what packages you reference with these projects, some might not be able to be compiled with Flash.

Let’s face it, Flex basically sucks for complex symbol production, and Flash basically sucks for development. Flash kicks butt for complex symbol production and Flex kicks butt for developing. So use both!

Recently I have had the opportunity to work in an environment that supports engineering best practices. In my years of being an architect and developer, I find that all work in the UI space is iterative and that those iterations also apply to process and best practice development. Having the ability to iterate allows for refinement, clean up, optimization, smarter class hierarchies, and significant satisfaction in ones work. Iteration of production process seems to have real payoff by reducing the amount of work that is duplicated from one stage of a UI’s “life” to the next.

My current projects start life as Illustrator AI or Photoshop PSD UI comps that are generally produced for flash consumption.  What I mean by that is that the layers that make up an element are often grouped, and elements and components are logically organized.  This is a tremendous help and if you are smart and lucky enough to work with cooperative designers, you could even provide a naming convention and layer and grouping scheme that could save *you* LOTS of time.  The catch here is that you are not necessarily saving total project time, because the designer is now responsible for at least the first iteration of naming the elements you will be importing.  You might also show your designer how to configure AI or PS to snap to the nearest whole number pixel and how strokes are better as shapes instead of shape outlines.   Add all of these ideas together and you are going shave some significant Flash production time.

Flash’s AI and PSD import filters are a life saver, they provide many options to import the various layer types that AI and PSDs support.  The importer allows you to choose just what to do with every bitmap, vector, and text layer as well as every group.  You can convert each one of these layers to its compatible Flash symbol type.  You can preserve editable text, rasterize it, or create outlines.  You can rasterize vector shapes, and you can choose the compression type and amount for each bitmap element.  You can create movieclips from a groups.  Another nice feature is the import filter respects the visibility of layers in the source file, making it easy to import individual components without having to hunt around for the correct layers within the import dialog.   One can use a design comp that has many components and panel backgrounds in it and just switch on the layers that represent a component set, save, then import.  Best of all you can set your default import preferences for the various element types in the Flash preferences panel.

The amount of work you have to do from there is based on the complexity of the UI elements, components, and panels, as well as how well you are staged as a result of the designer properly following your production guidelines. You will still have to do some “mechanical” production to achieve your desired interactivity and behavioral capabilities.

Flash’s WYSIWYG composition tool is great to make the small adjustments that are often necessary to tighten up a design for production as well as creating symbols for items that are used dynamically.  Now all you have to do is give each symbol a unique and logical linkage class (AS3) or identifier (AS2) name and publish the FLA as a SWC and you can then access these library elements as classes from Flex and other tools like Flash Develop.  A nice shortcut is to create a symlink from the Flex Libs folder to your Assets SWC.  This allows you to put your FLA file where you want it and not have to create a custom path for your SWF/SWC output.  More on this later.

Let’s all admit that editing code with Flash is not the best experience and leaves a lot to be desired.  I have not tried to debug in Flash for a looooong time, but I still believe that debugging in Flash is no where near as capable as debugging in Flex.   Another reason to publish to SWC and code in Flex is that Flash does not support adding SWCs to the class path.  This simply defeats the OO principal of having libraries that you can “re-use”, in this case they are simply UI class libraries.  So if you want to share some symbols from one FLA to another you need to either copy the elements from one library to the other, which can require some library maintenance and might cause some collision on symbol and class naming (BAD), or create components to ’share’ and import those as compiled clips, this way there is only one library symbol for the various symbols that make up that component (GOOD).  My current project requires that I be able to publish in Flash *and* Flex.   Flash to create stand alone Mac and PC projectors, and Flex for my preferred development environment.  Creating components in my shared UI FLAs and importing those into my main FLA is quite easy thank goodness…

Master Components – A nice shortcut for sharing the entire contents of a SWC (or any subset really) is to create a symbol and drag all of the library items desired into that one symbol.  Create a component from that symbol, publish a SWC to the correct Flash folder, refresh your components panel, drag that one component into your main project FLA’s library.  This SWC will contain every element with their class / linkage names, and they will be accessible from AS.   I am not sure what happens if you have a naming collision, but my guess is the symbol in the library will take priority over the symbol in the components ‘library’.

On to Flex:

Flex loves SWCs!   It hooks all of the classes compiled into a SWC, which in my case are all Flash UI symbol classes.  Flex adds these classes to the code hints list automagically, THIS IS HUGE!

I use a “_mc” naming convention on all my UI symbol class names so it is easy to differentiate skins from code classes when coding.  I always have a code class that instantiates its companion UI class as its “clip_mc” var (class composition) . For example a button skin is a Flash UI class named “btn_close_mc” and this would be instantiated as the “clip_mc” var on the “Btn_close” code class. This way of skinning provides for great flexibility and even inheritance and overriding of skin elements. More to come on this in another post… Stay tuned!

Though I am not using any code classes in SWCs for my current work, SWCs can also be a great way to package and even protect entire code libraries.

Developing in Flex is “real” development. It is Eclipse development. The same development environment used for many languages and by many ‘professional’ software developers. Flex (Eclipse) has a great editor, debugger, watcher, and profiler. It has real time build error detection and the problem report panel save lots of time – just try it!   Flex scans your SWCs and code classes and hints them!  It also has:  SVN integration via Subclipse, Multiple project support – Project tree view, Cut and paste files into project view, Refactoring, Find in Files across multiple projects, ASdoc support, Comment and Function collapsing, Syntax highlighting…  The list goes on and on…

Now back to the symlink. As I mentioned earlier I have a requirement to be able to use Flash or Flex to compile and publish my project. Ultimately my project is published to Mac and PC projectors and as I understand it, of the two, only Flash can do this. This is where the trickery comes in. If the the FLA file lives in the root of my Flex projects “src” folder and not in the libs folder then I do not have to change any publish settings for the SWC or move the code classes (com) from Flex’s src folder into the libs folder to compile the project with Flash.

FEATURE REQUEST! – a separate line in the publish preferences for SWCs.  Log that “issue” in JIRA!

Final Thoughts:

Why wouldn’t you use the best tool for the job at hand? In this case, you have to buy  (Try – ad infinium) both tools, but the time saved and the sanity maintained is more than worth the investment (or not).

Building and maintaining complex components in Flex is a PITA, use Flash.

Flex is a feature rich software development tool that promotes professional development practices, don’t use Flash to develop.

Note:

SWCs and Flex are not limited to AS3 project types. MXML provides for pixel accurate reproduction of complex components using the various compatible asset types, but I don’t see any advantage to rebuiling entire UIs in MXML when you can use components imported from design files into Flash and published to SWCs. I will have to try this approach on my next Flex framework based RIA and make sure it is best there as well.

WTH! (heck – for all you owners of 2 hockey sticks)

When did the UX, Dev, and QA teams stop giving a shizzle about tab order?  Not just any tab order, but very specifically the tab order when it comes to drop down lists. Now as any good American I am partial to the drop down list due to the fact that it is another place where the USA imposes its COMPLETE DOMINANCE over *every* other country in the universe and upsets the balance of the western alphabet by putting U before A.  But, I like it! It is convenient! I very much dislike to have to search through a bunch of countries I will never go (save conscription) to find the United States nestled between the UK and the US Minor Outlying Islands. I like it even better when they separate us with a line of dashes “- – - – - – - – -”, now that is a good use of dashes.

Given this affinity for the drop down list and the amount of e-shopping I do, I have recently noticed a pattern that slows me down and spins me out on a frequent basis. Drop downs are being ignored in tab order!  They are just plain skipped over. Why is this and whose fault is it!

I was sure it was the fault of an often flawed development effort.  Believe it or not, many sites on the web are developed “under the gun” and often lack specs and QA before release.  QA comes in the form of customer QA which comes in the form of complains or declining visits.  I digress.

Then as I started to write this post,  I did some searching around on the web and found that it wasn’t the web that changed, it was my  OS (— — — · · ·).  My current gig has provided me with an 8 core bad ass Mac, a workstation that is at least 4x faster than the best of the famed G5 “super computer”.  How could I refuse a run on LEOPARD 10.5!  RAAAAAHHHHRRRRR… (ambiguously straight)

I found this – http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2006/11/how_to_enable_your_t.html

Basically it is Apple’s fault, or Mozilla, at any rate, it is not the fault of some high profile design and brand experience agency’s software development practices, or lack there of… They dodged a bullet again.

Is it Flash?  Is it Flex?  Is is Laszlo?  Is it SWiSH?  Is it Illustrator?  No, its SWF.

The SWF runtime is where your SWFs well………. run.

Flash is a SWF authoring tool that has a GUI for WYSIWYG symbol design and composition.  These symbols are stored in a library and can be programmatically referenced in AS3 code as classes if given a unique class name in their properties dialog. See the ‘Linkage’ column in the image below.

Flash has an excellent import filter for PSD and AI files that provides pixel perfect imports of bitmap and vector layers, as well as preserving the text fields.

The common practice for coding in Flash is to follow the standard folder taxonomy such as in the image below.

Code Classes are added to these folders and “imported” into one another as needed.

The Flash compiler takes the code you write and the library elements you have constructed and spins them into a SWF file for execution in the SWF runtime.   So, it is not a Flash site, or a Flash presentation, or a Flash demo, it is a SWF.

Flex is a SWF authoring tool based on the eclipse IDE.  Flex has a WSYIWYG design and layout component that creates MXML markup.  MXML is unique to Flex and is widely used when coding with the Flex RIA framework.  A developer can use the Flex designer to build UI elements or the developer can procedurally create the view clip hierarchies and nest them appropriately for the desired functionality and behaviors.   Similar to HTML coding of Table or Div hierarchies.  The Flex design view is used to visually construct any number of its advanced and primitive components, but does not support PSD or AI import directly.  Flex developers follow the same standards as Flash for code folder organization which is actually loosely based on the Java project organization.  A Flex project will look similar to a Flash project but will have a library folder where its assets are stored.  These assets can be jpg, png, swf, gif, mp3, fonts, svg, and xml.   This folder should not be confused with the folder containing any assets to be dynamically loaded at run time.  The library folders items are meant to be the assets that are compiled into a SWF.

Wait, there is my point, Flex spins the code and referenced assets into a SWF.  So it is not a Flex site, or a Flex RIA, or a Flex proto, it is a SWF.

OpenLaszlo is a multi-runtime capable development framework that is similar to Flex at least in project organization, declarative syntax (XML), and JavaScript coding.  Code can be organized into similar folder taxonomys and assets are imported at compile time.  OpenLaszlo’s compiler spins the code and assets into a SWF.

Need I say more?

I could go on about all the other SWF authoring tools and utilities, but I am sure you are getting my point.  We are entertained, amused, made productive, advertised to, captivated, etc, by the SWF and the SWF runtimes and players, not Flash or Flex.  If the latter was the case you might be reading a Dreamweaver site right now…

NOTES:

There are other methods of SWF authoring that can combine any number of these tools to benefit from the strengths of many. One example,  Flash can publish its library as a SWC that can be used in Flex therefore getting the best of both worlds.   Another example, SWiSH products and Swift 3D provide SWFs to be consumed and imported into other SWF authoring environments that the authoring environments themselves are no capable of creating (at least easily).  The portability of SWFs provides countless ways for the host of SWF authoring tools to compliment each other.

OpenLaszlo can also publish to DHTML / Javascript runtimes (your web browser) and does not require a plug-in.  Author once, publish many.

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