One of the little gems you will find in the open source ActionScript 3 libraries that we released on labs, is the JSON class found in the corelib library. This class, written for Adobe by Darron Schall, makes it super simple to both serialize and de-serialize JSON data.
What is JSON you ask? From the JSON website:
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write. It is easy for machines to parse and generate. It is based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language, Standard ECMA-262 3rd Edition - December 1999. JSON is a text format that is completely language independent but uses conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many others. These properties make JSON an ideal data-interchange language.
I think I am going to start up a new podcast pretty soon. I already have an idea what I am going to do on it, but wanted to check here and see what everyone would be interested in hearing about, or who I should invite onto the podcast?
Suggestions? Post them in the comments.
As Emmy blogged last week, we have just posted a beta version of Flash Player 8.5 targeted at testing compatibility with existing sites. As always, backwards compatibility is one of our primary goals with the Flash Player, and Player 8.5 is no different.
So, take some time to download the player, check your content, and make sure everything is working correctly. If you find issues with existing content, let us know so we can fix them.
Check out this Newsmap of the most popular posts on MXNA. Created using the Flex 2 / ActionScript 3 beta from labs.
You can view it here.
I just updated new builds of the open source ActionScript 3 API libraries that we released. The new builds have been updated to work with the beta 2 release of Flex (Flex Builder 2.0 and MXMLC). Each zip includes the following:
The libraries available include:
All of the libraries have also been released under the following open source license.
Eric Anderson has written a good overview of some of the new features in the Flex 2 beta 2 release that is on labs right now. This includes
You can read the entire article here.
You can download all of the bits from labs.
Flex is Free!
Ok. I know that is a little annoying, but I keep seeing fundamental misunderstandings around Flex pricing.
So, just to clarify, the Flex 2 SDK, which includes the Framework, compiler, debugger, docs, etc… will cost nothing. Nada, zilch… You ill be able to build and deploy Flex 2 apps using the framework for absolutely no cost (commercial, non-commercial, semi-commercial, etc…).
Btw, we will also have a completely free version of Flex Data Services (more on that in a seperate post).
If you haven’t already started playing with the Flex 2 public beta, make sure that you first check out the beta 1 to beta 2 changes / migration document.
We did an API scrub between beta 1 and beta 2 so the names of a lot of the APIs changed.
Also, make sure that you type all method returns, or else you will end up with a ton of warnings. If your method does not return any values, then type the return as void, like so:
I just posted some screenshots of an Flex 2 based application called “Flow” that Christian, Danny and myself have been working on.
Kevin showed this at FlashForward, and I showed it during the WebDU keynote. It is an application that utilizes the ActionScript 3 libraries we created and released to allow you to easily search and move through different sets of online data and media.
This shows results from delicious, and how you can select a term in the results and start a new Flow.
With the release of Flex beta 2 last week, we also added a new SDK only download. This makes it easy to download and install the SDK on Mac, Windows and Linux (no more install on Windows and copy to Mac).
While this does not provide support for Flex Builder, it does allow you to create, compile and debug your applications on Mac, Windows and Linux using your editor of choice (including Eclipse).
