aBowman

1. Fixed the size option for the Spider on iGoogle and Google Desktop.
2. Fixed a problem that caused the Turtle gadget not to render in some browser.

I am now using SWFObject to embed flash in my gadgets. This gets rid of the slightly annoying “Click to activate and use this control” prompt that appears when embedding flash in Internet Explorer without using an external javascript file.

1. Download the Code Browser plugin and place the jar file in jedit’s jars folder.
2. Install Exuberant Ctags. On Ubunutu Linux this can be done by typing: sudo apt-get install exuberant-ctags
3. Place this .ctags file, which describes actionscript 2, in your home directory.
4. Start Jedit and go to Plugins -> Plugin Options -> Code Browser and enter the path to exuberant ctags. On Ubuntu it is /usr/bin/ctags-exuberant.
5. Go to Utilities -> Global Options -> Docking and then select where you want to dock the Code Browser from the dropdown.

I’ve prepared a simple project that shows how I use MTASC, Alcon, Ant, Mozilla, on Linux to create flash movies. You could just as well run this on Windows or Mac.

Before you attempt to run the ant build.xml script, take a look at it and modify the variables to match your current setup. Also, move the Alcon.htm I’ve included in the project to your Alcon folder. This should be the same folder that contains the Alcon.swf and Alcon.cfg files.

Run the ant script by typing “ant run”. The project should compile and then load the swf in Mozilla on the Alcon.htm page. The console will be on the main page and the project in a popup window above it. Once it has loaded in Mozilla, you can recompile the project quickly just by typing ant without the run parameter. Then you can refresh the popup or the main page to see the changes you’ve made.

Notice how you can easily call the trace function for debugging without having to import the debug class package on each of the pages. Check out this page to see the directions I followed for setting up Alcon with MTASC.

I also found this page to be a good resource for learning how to use the Object.registerClass function.

Over the past few months I have been experimenting with creating flash animations using completely free software for Linux and Windows. Here is what I’ve been using:

• jEdit – editor/IDE – http://jedit.org
• ANT- build tool – http://ant.apache.org/
• MTASC – actionscript 2 compiler – http://www.mtasc.org/
• swfmill – create asset libraries – http://iterative.org/swfmill/
• Alcon – for debugging – http://fgpwiki.corewatch.net/wiki/Alcon

You’ll need Java installed before you can install Jedit or Ant. I set up Java and jedit according to my last two posts. To install Ant on Ubuntu Linux type this in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install ant

or you can download it from their site. If you download it, you should make sure your PATH system variable includes the ant bin directory, you have an ANT_HOME variable set to the folder ant was installed to, and a JAVA_HOME variable set to the folder java was installed to.

There are precompiled binaries of MTASC available for Windows, MAC, and Linux.

Swfmill only has binaries for Windows and Mac, so you’ll have to compile it yourself on Linux. On Ubuntu you’ll first need to install build-essential, libxml2-dev, libxslt1-dev, libfreetype6-dev, libpng12-dev, checkinstall. You can do this by typing:

 sudo apt-get install build-essential libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libfreetype6-dev libpng12-dev checkinstall

Extract the swfmill-0.2.11.tar.gz file with this command:

tar -zxvf swfmill-0.2.11.tar.gz

Then navigate to the src folder and type:

./configure
sudo checkinstall -D make install

This will create and install a debian package of swfmill.

To use Alcon you have to import the Debug class into your actionscript project then you’ll be able to send messages to the swf console with the Debug.trace() command. I’ve created a webpage embedded with alcon that loads the swf files I’m debugging in a popup window.

In my next post I will describe how to create a simple test swf using this software.

1. Download the java-based installer from http://www.jedit.org/?page=download
2. In a terminal, cd to the directory you downloaded jedit to and enter the command:

   java -jar jedit43pre3install.jar

   Linux users might want to run the installer as the root user so that it’s installed for all users.
3. You should be able to start jedit by typing jedit in a terminal. If your system doesn’t recognize the command, you might have to add the directory the jedit executable is located in to your PATH environmental variable.
4. Here are a few of my favorite jEdit plugins. Download these to the jars folder or install them through the download manager.
   
   BufferTabs http://plugins.jedit.org/plugins/?BufferTab ProjectViewer http://plugins.jedit.org/plugins/?ProjectViewer CommonControls http://plugins.jedit.org/plugins/?CommonControls Console http://plugins.jedit.org/plugins/?Console ErrorList http://plugins.jedit.org/plugins/?ErrorList
5. Create a file called jedit.props that contains the following text and save it to the properties folder.

   projectviewer.dock-position=left
   console.dock-position=bottom
   vfs.browser.dock-position=left
   view.gutter.lineNumbers=true
   buffer.folding=indent
   view.showBufferSwitcher=false
   buffer.folding=indent
   buffertabs.enabled=true
   console.changedir.pvchange=true
   

   This will dock the plugins we just installed, and enable line numbering and code folding by default for all users.