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.

< Read Part 1

Below is an example that contains a SWF9 that was written in Flex (AS-only) and contains two textfields. The SWF9 loads a SWF8 that also contains two textfields. The top textfields are input fields. The left-hand contents belong to the SWF9 and the right-hand contents belong to the SWF8. When you type in the top-left textfield, which resides in the SWF9, the text will get sent to the bottom-right textfield, which resides in the SWF8. When you type in the top-right textfield, which resides in the SWF8, the text will get sent to the bottom-left textfield, which resides in the SWF9.
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It seems everywhere I’ve read when someone asks how to communicate between a version 9 SWF and a version 8 SWF that it loads, the answer is always “You have to use LocalConnection”. I’ve seen that response from Adobe people as well as others.

However, when I started looking into browser communication with my SWFs and then looked into the Flex-AJAX Bridge (FABridge), I thought maybe there was a better way. And there is: ExternalInterface.
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Why is the Flash Player Global Settings Manager (GSM I’ll call it) still the same as it’s been a couple of years now? Anyone that creates Flash content that I’ve ever talked to about the GSM says it’s bad. I think even someone from Adobe (Macromedia at the time) agreed, in a diplomatic way of course.
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Star Wars Transformers Deluxe Millennium Falcon

I had to blog this - way too cool. Yes, I am a geek who still loves Transformers - Gen1, seasons 1 and 2. I saw some episodes of season 3 not too long ago and remembered why I stopped watching. After the movie, the series blew chunks.

Going back a bit here, but was anyone else completely shocked and dismayed in the first five minutes of the Transformers movie when they killed off almost all of the characters? “We need to sell more toys so we’ll obliterate all the current characters and replace them with the new ones in one fell swoop” Yeah, that worked well … As corny as the characters were, and as bad as some of the animation was, it was still 5 stars above the crap they came out with after the movie. Not that I’m bitter …