To help get the word out about the fact that Northcode offers custom development work Northcode is offering a very good deal on SWF Studio: buy a copy of SWF Studio V3 Professional and get 4 hours of custom development work ($600 value) for FREE!

Even if you already own a copy of SWF Studio this is worth it - you get custom dev work for half price!

If you were looking for a feature that SWF Studio just doesn’t have this is your chance to get them to add it to a custom build just for you!

Have a requirement for a SWF Studio plugin but don’t have the in-house C/C++ expertise? This is THE opportunity to get it done.

The Northcode team is capable of producing a very wide range of types of applications, specializing in Windows development with and without Flash/Flex. They build solid applications - just look at SWF Studio! V3 took a considerable amount of time and effort, but the payoff was worth it. SWF Studio V3 has been solid and the ability to add features was made easier by thoughtful planning in the early stages. The ActionScript API, player and plugin architecture make adding and updating features painless to our user base.

Northcode has worked on small one-off projects and projects involving development by multiple companies with a user base of millions.

As a member of the Northcode team. I’ve been working with Flash since Flash 4 and seriously started coding with Flash MX. When I started at Northcode, Flash MX was the current version of Flash. Throughout that time I’ve worked with hundreds/thousands of people with various projects, providing development work and/or consultation and support.

Check this link for more details.

Northcode has a promotion on for today only where you can buy SWF Studio for only $99!

And no, you won’t get an extra 10% off if you buy through the link on this site - come on, you’re already getting $200 off!

Why? I think Tim (Northcode CTO, lead developer) has gone batty! Anyhow, save before his meds kick in!

SWF Studio V3 ActionScript API

SWF Studio 3.4 has been released!

3.4 was in beta for a while and has now been officially released. This new version fixes the big issues people had with V3, including the MSVCR80.dll issues. And of course the big one is full Vista support. 3.4 runs on all Vista flavours and has Vista icon support, as well as the ability to include a manifest file so you can work with Vista’s UAC feature.

A quick run-down of the new features:

• run SWF Studio IDE/applications on all versions of Windows Vista
• increased stability
• support for Vista icons
• full Unicode support in plugins
• .NET plugin support and SDK - write plugins with C# and VB.NET
• includes Flash Player 9
• more … (release notes)

You may have noticed that although Flash Player 9 is included in your 3.4 applications, AS3 support is not mentioned. AS3 support is coming in a future version of SWF Studio. In order to increase stability and get proper Vista support a core technology was modified. We felt it would be too much of a change to have that modification AND AS3 support in one release. We wanted to release a MORE stable product, not chase after features at the expense of stability. 3.4 was in beta for a while and we feel as though we’ve released a solid product.

AS3 support isn’t that far away since most of the work was already done - we just put the remaining work on hiatus until 3.4 was tested and released. Another beta will start in the coming weeks with AS3 support. The AS3 beta will be closed so send your registration info to beta at northcode.com if you want in on it.

There’s a new look to the site. The home page gets to the point and the info on the other pages is broken up better so you can find everything a lot easier. It’s still a work in progress. We’ve talked about focusing on certain features every <insert time frame here> for new users and users that just haven’t used that feature yet. As well as a blog that will let us discuss SWF Studio and other related matters. Stay tuned …

Try it out, then come back to this site and click on the link near the top-right: Buy SWF Studio for 10% off!

SWF Studio 3.3 has been released!

Version 3.2 was released March 29th and contained some significant features that should really have been given more marketing attention. Even I am guilty of not posting about it here. So, here are some of the highlights for 3.2 and 3.3:

3.3

• ActiveX support - you can use any registered ActiveX control, like Acrobat or even another Flash control. You can access methods, properties, constants, and events. The API has been updated to let you execute methods on hierchial objects.
• Guides - lets you control the layout of the built-in Media and Browser objects, and the new ActiveX objects, making placement and resizing fast and smooth without any calculations.
• .NET plugins - you can now create and use .NET plugins with SWF Studio.
• UTF 8 support - you can now read, write, and append to UTF 8 files with or without Byte Order Markers (BOMs).
• Extended JScript support - you are no longer limited to executing publicly declared functions - you can now execute methods on nested objects.
• Scratch - write data to your EXE file. Then read it back when your EXE starts up. This lets you write data that is carried with your EXE, opening up a plethora of possibilities.

3.2

• Transparency - the MUCH improved transparency feature, providing great performance and options.
• Relative path support for native Flash commands - a change to many of the native Flash loading commands, that allows you to specify file monikers. It also attempts to find the file in question, opening from the base path or from an internal resource. You can now specify relative paths for FLV files in the FLVPlayback and Media components in the Component/Properties panel.
• MIDI plugin - to allow you get events and information about connected MIDI devices for music (and other) applications.
• Enhanced Dialog support - you can get notifications about any dialog that will appear and then decide to show it or not, and even confirm or cancel it. No more print dialogs or the annoying 15 second script limits warning. Note: SWF Studio lets you inject any amount of time you want but Flash Player 8 contains a bug that limits this to 60 seconds, regardless of the set amount.

Check the forums announcement for more info.

Download the trial here.

When you want to purchase come back to this site and click here to get 10% off.

There are some undocumented actionscript goodies that come with the SWF Studio 3 ActionScript API that I thought I’d share. There are only a few, but they are ones that Flash should have built-in.

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