That is what this post is all about, I’ve tried to compile a list with things that I think you need to know as a Flash Developer. (Some of it you can find here and here)

1. The Elastic Racetrack
You need to understand when events fire, when code is executed, and when the player renders. It’s really the foundational concept of Flash Player.

http://www.craftymind.com/2008/04/18/updated-elastic-racetrack-for-flash-9-and-avm2/

2. FlexSDK, mxmlc, compc, and all that jazz
You need to know what’s going on when you hit that “run” button in Eclipse.
http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/as3withmxmlc/
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=apparch_08.html

3. Player Events, Custom Events, Event Bubbling
I can’t imagine where flash player would be without frames and mouse clicks.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/event_handling_as3_03.html
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/flash/events/package-detail.html
http://www.tink.ws/blog/custom-events-in-as-30-dont-forget-to-override-the-clone-method/
http://jacwright.com/blog/70/how-to-listen-to-flash-events-that-dont-bubble/

4. Statements, Keywords, and Directives
You should never be surprised by a new “word” in as3. If you don’t know what “static” or “override” or others are, learn them. Now.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/2/langref/statements.html

5. ASDoc
Someday, you’ll re-read your code and have no idea what it does. The stress here is on proper documenting, but generating asdocs is nice too. ASDoc is a tool that does just that, generating documents from comments in code.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=asdoc_3.html

6. Managing visual assets (images, fonts, CSS, etc)
Flash is visual. So you need to know how to manage assets with code.
http://www.funky-monkey.nl/blog/2010/04/09/preloaders-the-best-way-of-doing-it/
http://www.funky-monkey.nl/blog/2008/05/05/font-embedding-in-as3/
http://code.google.com/p/queueloader-as3/
http://code.google.com/p/bulk-loader/

7. Arrays, Collections, Dictionaries, Mapping
You’re not just working with one MovieClip here, so you need to know how to control multiple objects at once.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/Array.html
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2006/07/as3_dictionary.html
http://code.google.com/p/as3ds/

8. Know the difference between MovieClip, Sprite and Shape.
And know when and how to use them. What is used for what circumstance and what is lighter.

9. Programmatic motion (tweening, easing)
If you wanted things to stay still, you should’ve stuck with HTML
http://blog.greensock.com/tweenmaxas3/
http://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Actionscript-3-0-Animation-Making/dp/1590597915/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243014431&sr=8-1

10. Programmatic drawing (assets, gradients, fills, lines etc.)
Since Flash is all about being visual, take some time to understand why you need to draw stuff in comparison to using assets. Drawing is much faster and takes up less memory. Lots of assets bog down your application.
http://www.funky-monkey.nl/blog/2010/04/20/drawing-shapes-in-as3-a-class-to-draw-an-arc-star-gear-cog-wedge-and-a-burst/

11. Cleaning up.
Understand how the Garbage Collector works, how you can make use of it and how to dispose objects, listeners, graphics and other stuff you don’t use anymore.
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2006/06/as3_resource_ma.html
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2006/07/as3_resource_ma_1.html
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2006/08/as3_resource_ma_2.html
http://www.craftymind.com/2008/04/09/kick-starting-the-garbage-collector-in-actionscript-3-with-air/

12. OOP and Coding Against Frameworks
The days of a one huge .as file are over. You need to smartly move your code into organized and reusable objects. Also, now there are plenty of popular AS3 frameworks to help manage your code. Read up on them and start using one.
http://corlan.org/flex-frameworks/
http://tutorialfeed.blogspot.com/2010/05/10-open-source-flash-framework-for.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/oop_as3.html
http://www.actionscript.org/resources/articles/684/1/Object-Oriented-Programming-in-AS3/Page1.html

13. Version control
Unless you think your code is worthless, you need to learn how to back it up properly.
http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads – SVN Application for Windows
http://versionsapp.com/ – SVN App for Mac
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control
http://git-scm.com/

14. ANT
If you start working with an industry standard IDE like Eclipse or FlashDevelop, there will be a day when you need to automate the build- or other processes with ANT. Its fun, its easy and you should learn it
http://blog.alanklement.com/2009/08/10/fdt-and-ant-a-users-guide-part-i/
http://blog.alanklement.com/2009/08/19/fdt-ant-part-two/

15. Know Your IDE
No matter what IDE or editor you use for writing code, make sure you knwo how it works, know the shortcuts, know the file compare function, know the search and replace. Let it work for you, not against you (or your time). If you don’t, make sure you spend some time getting to know it, it is well worth the time.
http://www.pragprog.com/the-pragmatic-programmer
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596519544

http://blog.alanklement.com/2009/08/09/fdt-customize-your-workflow/

16. Know you MVC from your Factory.
Design patterns, use ‘em wisely.
http://www.as3dp.com/

17. Good Writing skills (for team / client communication, documentation, comments, etc)
I’d rather hire someone with good writing skills than someone who cant write. someone who writes knows how to structure things and can explain things clearly.

18. Verbal communication and interpersonal skills for team / client interaction
No explanation needed really

19. A drive to learn and experiment.

20. A love for problem solving.
And of course the ability to think logical and methodical. And look at problems from a higher level.

BONUS: 21. Community awareness.
What is happening around you in the development/Flash world? What libraries exsist? What framework are out there?

BONUS: 22. Reasonable understanding of UX and interaction design / feeling for design.

If you have more to share, don’t agree with something or want to shout at me, post a comment!

One of our testers introduced me to Apaches JMeter. What i like a lot is the ability to record a test. It also allows you to test a lot of different protocols, HTTP, HTTPS, SOAP, Database via JDBC, LDAP, JMS, POP3(S) and IMAP(S) to name just a few.

Make sure you check it out if you want to know how your application will perform with more than 10000 users at the same time!

The StageDisplayState Class in Actionscript 3 has two states, NORMAL and FULL_SCREEN the AIR API add one more; FULL_SCREEN_INTERACTIVE. (WARNING! This is only available in AIR.)

So that means that we now have two modes for full screen, StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN and StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN_INTERACTIVE. The first just resizes your application in full screen however you cannot interact with it. All the controls like input fields and buttons are disabled. The last one, StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN_INTERACTIVE, does allow the user to interact with your application. This can be very convenient when developing for kiosks, fullscreen video players, image viewers etc. Remember that control bar youtube has when playing video in full screen? Now you can have that too! So on with the code!

What works best for me is that i always set the scaleMode to no_scale, so i know that all my content will be shown at 100% and is not stretched. I set it up like so:

stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;

When we click the fullscreen button we need to check in what state we are in and change that to the full screen mode. and we need to be albe to respond to the resize event, so when we switch states our content is sized accordingly. (Also make sure that your content is positioned relatively and not with hard coded values)

stage.nativeWindow.addEventListener( Event.RESIZE, onResizeApp );
fullscreenButton.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, onFullscreenClick );

function onResizeApp( event:Event ):void {
// do repositioning of elements here
}

function onFullscreenClick( event:MouseEvent ):void {
if( stage.displayState == StageDisplayState.NORMAL ) {
stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN_INTERACTIVE;
fullscreenButton.label = "Exit Fullscreen";
} else {
stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.NORMAL;
fullscreenButton.label = "Go Fullscreen";
}
}

So there you have it, an interactive full screen application. Source Files are included for you to play with. Have fun

COME WORK AT THE CODE D’AZUR IN AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS!

Want to work for for an award winning company in the creative heart of Amsterdam? And for clients like SupperClub, Smart, Mendo, Mini, Sanex, Streative and Afbeelding op Canvas to name just a few.

We are currently looking for a Senior Flash Developer, a Senior PHP developer and a Project Manager. If this job got your name written all over it or you know people who fit the profile, you can apply here.

Afbeelding op Canvas

Whats it about? You take your favorite picture, image or graphic you made (or just love), upload it with our tool, rotate, flip and color correct your image, select and canvas size ranging from 30 cm to 200 cm, and let it deliver to your doorstep! Project consists of some really nice features native to Actionscript, like image manipulations, file uploading and i wrote an iDEAL API to communicate to, well iDEAL
(This API I will release to the public domain soon)

Check it out on the Afbeelding op Canvas site and play around with it. Let me know what you think.

So to recap; I write a (dutch) column about Flash, technology in the past and present, and other good stuff.

Go check it out at Code d’Azur. Post a comment to tell me what you think.

(New column will be due in two weeks, ish)