Does your mother know you click on links with titles like “Dominatrix Girl Guides”? Sicko. 🙂
Just some unintentional porn my girlfriend dug up while looking through her old Girl Guide stuff for costume materials. At first glance, it looks like a pretty interesting handbook…
Man, I can’t wait to see my search engine referral logs for this post. 😛
Gregg Wygonik raised another really good point regarding Macromedia’s wonderful EULA for F04. It basically prohibits distributing third party SWCs (compiled components) built on Macromedia’s framework.
In order to build proper SWCs, you have to use Macromedia sample code (this includes all of the component base classes such as UIObject), which is then compiled into the SWC. However, Macromedia’s EULA specifically disallows you to distribute any “product or application designed for website development” that uses their sample code. Seems to me, any third party Flash component fits that description dead on.
Oh, and you can’t call it a “Flash component” if it uses Macromedia’s component code, either. That would be using “Macromedia trademarks to market your application”, which is also prohibited.
Looks like the only real answer here (unless MM revises the EULA, or gives each of us specific written permission to distribute) is writing a new framework, that isn’t bound by this restrictive licensing agreement. Or, we could just go back to distributing movie clips – then we wouldn’t have to include MM’s sample code. Macromedia wonders why the adoption rate for F04 is so low? Could it be, in small part, because of the derth of code for F04 being shared by the community, and some hesitation as to what this new EULA means to building client projects.
Does anyone at Macromedia know if there’s been any progress on this topic?
I just smacked into an interesting phenomenon with function scope in temporary variables, that appears to be new in F04.
When you call a function that has been assigned to a temporary variable in F04 (a variable declared with var in an execution block), it’s scope is, well… uh, it appears to be non-existant… it has it’s own little scope, in some distant galaxy, far, far away. While this sort of makes sense, it wasn’t what I was expecting.
This occurs in FLAs published to AS1 and AS2 in F04, but does not seem to occur in FMX. It would be interesting to know what exactly has changed, and why.
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For anyone else who is experiencing issues with the F04 documentation auto-update feature, you can download an MXP with the new docs from Macromedia.
It would still be nice to see this fixed, but its nice to see that MM has made this available in the interim. Thanks!
When is Macromedia going to get around to releasing a fix for the bugs with the documentation auto-update feature, or at the very least release a standalone installer for the new docs? I still can’t get the latest documentation – this is what happens for me:
1) I hit the “Update” button in the help panel, and choose “Yes” from the resultant dialog.
2) Flash displays a dialog saying it is “Downloading file 1 of 7”, it gets to about 2%, then flashes up 2 or 3 other dialogs titled “Downloading help content”, and one titled “Downloading file __ of 7” (usually 5 or 7).
The whole process takes about 2 seconds, and when it completes, surprise – the content isn’t installed.
I was hoping this was just an isolated issue with my old powerbook, but I have exactly the same problem with my new powerbook with a clean installation of OSX and Flash MX 2004 Pro. I even tried jacking in the ethernet cable in case it was just a problem with wireless connections – no go. I’ve heard of similar problems from a others as well. Anyone have any ideas?
I wonder if I can just have another Flash developer who’s updating works send me their full documentation for the time being. Most likely that’s in violation of the End User License Agreement, but I’m getting desperate.
Please Macromedia, working with your new framework is problematic enough without restrictive EULAs and no updated documentation!!
PS. Sorry for all the griping lately. I promise I’ll have some more real content soon.
I just ran into this very useful (and free) service online: http://www.mailinator.com/ offers you a way to deal with annoying forums and software downloads that require you to provide an email address, then email you your log-in information. Most people have a hotmail account for this purpose, but Mailinator is cleaner, and smarter.
Just sign up for the forum (or whatever) with any mailinator.com email address (ex. joebob@mailinator.com), then go to http://www.mailinator.com/ , and sign in with the name you chose (ex. joebob). Mailinator will receive the email for you and hold on to it for a few hours so that you can get the log in info and get your download, or scan the forum for the support info you need. It’s completely unsecure, so be careful what you use it for, but it certainly can come in handy.
Sorry for harping on this, but I think it’s important. I just finished re-reading the EULA again, and ran into a possible work-around to the issue of distributing code (maybe), and a host of other potential problems.
All of the problems I’ve found so far are in section 2.f in the F04 EULA, specifically where it describes the terms under which you may distribute Sample Application Code. Admittedly, I’m not a lawyer, but this is how it reads to me:
DENG, the xTechnologies browser built in Flash has officially been released by my good friend Claus Wahlers, and Mozquito. Check it out, it’s inspiring.
