This is an interactive simulator I built to demonstrate how the Garbage Collector operates in Flash Player 9. It allows you to diagram objects and references, then see how reference counting, and mark and sweep routines would play out.

I’ve just posted my session notes and source code for my talk on Resource Management in AS3 at FlashForward Austin. It’s worth taking a look, even if you’ve read my previous articles as it includes simulations, interactive systems, and additional information. I had a great time in Austin. The city seems to be a lot of fun…

When Segway called us up and invited us to build a mini-site for their brand new product line, I jumped at the chance. As part of the project, they flew me in to New Hampshire to meet the team, and play with the new toys. It was a really fun time. The new product is awesome, and their corporate culture is inspiring…

In this third part of my series on resource management in AS3 I will be focusing on a few new tools in AS3 that let you track and manage memory more effectively. There are only a couple new “official” features that are specifically geared towards resource management, but they are very useful. These are supplemented by a handy unofficial feature…

Dictionary is a new object type in ActionScript 3 that allows you to associate a value with an object key… different references to the same object will act as the same key… You can also set a Dictionary to use weak references as keys… This can be a very handy tool… Note that there is one known bug with Dictionary…

This article will focus on the implications some of the new features of AS3 have on resource management, and the potential headaches they could cause you even in simple projects. Resource management is going to be an important part of AS3 development. Ignoring the issue could result in sluggish content, and potentially stalling users’ systems completely.

Cedric Nehemie asked a great question about why using delete on a property of a sealed (non-dynamic) class throws an error in ActionScript 3, and whether it will delete the actual object in memory.There isn’t a lot of documentation on this topic, so the following is mostly just conjecture and interpolation from related exploration, but I think it is fairly accurate…

With great power comes great responsibility, and this will be very true for AS3. I will look at the underlying mechanics of the Garbage Collector, discuss the problems you are likely to face, examine the new tools available to you for handling resource management in AS3, and offer solutions/code to help you circumvent many of the common problems you will face…