Mike Chambers

I am heading to Europe in a little over a week for a couple of conferences. First up is FITC Amsterdam (sold out) where I will be helping Serge and Lee out with the keynote, and doing a session on Advanced Desktop Development with Adobe AIR. After Amsterdam, Serge, Lee and I will be heading over to London for the FlashCamp London, where I will be doing a session on migrating from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3, targeting at non-developers.

Ill be in Amsterdam a couple of days before the event, so if anyone wants to grab a beer, or some Frietjes and lekkerbek, just ping me.

There is a known issue with the Adobe AIR 1.5 install on Mac where in certain circumstances the install dialog will appear in the wrong language (usually Japanese or Chinese). If you run into this, here are the steps to work around it:

1. Go to System Preferences
2. Select International
3. Make some changes to the Language list: add a language, re-order a language. Also, might want to make sure English is the first one in his list at this point.
4. Try installing Air again.

This is a known issue and will be fixed in the next AIR dot release.

As part of some of my recent work and research into ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3 migration, I am working on an AS2 to AS3 migration reference cookbook. The core of the reference is the cookbook section which shows how to do commons tasks in ActionScript 2 and then ActionScript 3. The reference is targeted at users using Flash Pro to create animations and / or motion graphics and includes cookbook examples such as opening a URL, playing a sound, etc…

So, what cookbook examples would you like to see? I am looking for frequently used code snippets / tasks that may require different code in ActionScript 3.

Post any suggestions in the comments.

Btw, the guide will be released for free under a Creative Commons license.

The iTunes app store has just approved my first application, and has posted it online. The application is an ActionScript 3 class reference for the iPhone and allows quick and easy access to the ActionScript 3 class reference docs for Flash Player 10, AIR 1.5, and Flex 3.2.
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From the press release:

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced plans to publish the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) specification, which is designed for high-performance transmission of audio, video, and data between Adobe® Flash® Platform technologies.

The RTMP specification is expected to be posted on the Adobe Developer Connection in the first half of 2009.

You can read the entire press release here.

As you may have noticed from some of my recent posts (here and here), I have been spending some time lately thinking about the ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3 transition. I am working on some stuff to make this transition easier (especially for non-developers), but I wanted to make a quick post and get the community’s input.

How can we make the transition from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3 easier? I am specifically interested in input from anyone who does not consider themselves hardcore developers.

Post your input in the comments.

Darron Schall has just checked in some changes and bug fixes to the JSON support in as3corelib. Among other things, Darron has added a strict mode which allows you to specify how strict of a conformance to the JSON spec you want the library to follow.
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You can read more about it here, and download it here.

As you have probably heard by now, Adobe announced a number of layoffs yesterday. The layoffs were in response to the global economic downturn, and lower than expected sales of Adobe CS4 (due to the economic situation). You can find the press release for the revised revenue expectations and restructuring here (pdf). In total, about 600 people were let go.

Even if you have been through something like this before, it is still a big shock, and can be a difficult time. Unfortunately, it is one of the realities of our economic system.
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The title pretty much sums it up. Have you run into any new issues in Adobe AIR 1.5? Specifically, I am looking for anything that may have worked in AIR 1.1, which no longer works in AIR 1.5.

For example:
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