Topic: Widget Development?

Never having done Flash before, and most of the pages in the Wiki being about three years old - can someone who knows what they are doing have a quick look and update as necessary?

ie., I've downloaded FlashDevelop & the Flex SDK, but it's obviously not as simple as "Just download and install. There are no particular installation tricks for a Chumby dev setup."

Re: Widget Development?

Actually, you really just need FlashDevelop and then the AS2 templates.  Those provide the basic level tools.  I'd then continue with http://wiki.chumby.com/index.php?title= … op/Example which will verify that you can compile a widget, test it locally, then test it on the device.

There's lots of old, cheap books on ActionScript 2 out there.  If you only want to target the 8" devices, you can do ActionScript 3.  You won't have the whole animation environment that Flash Professional provides, though.

Re: Widget Development?

O.k. - still wasn't that simple.  I installed the Flex SDK because it couldn't build an AS3 project without it. But FlashDevelop4 doesn't include AS2 project templates by default.

So - The AS2 project templates need to be downloaded from the FlashDevelop release page as a zip file then renamed with a .fdz extension and opened from within FlashDevelop to install them. That gets the compiler working, but there wasn't any settings for the flash player configured.  So, under tools-> Programs Settings I needed to change the config for the FlashViewer and change the external player path to the Shockwave player (On my Win7 box, this was in C:\Windows\System32\Adobe\Shockwave 12\SwInit.exe, but there's also a 64 bit version under SysWOW64).

Finally - "Hello World" plays.

Re: Widget Development?

The AS2 templates should be installable inside FlashDevelop -- under the Tools menu, there's an "Install Software" command that lists downloads that can be installed.

Also, looks like AS3 is only supported on the Chumby 8.  You can get the C8 software working on an Infocast 8, but I've not tried that project yet.

Re: Widget Development?

if you want to write up changes to what the wiki says, I'll either fix it so you can edit the wiki, or I'll get the changes posted, for other's reference.

Cleaning up any loose bits and bytes.

Re: Widget Development?

unwiredben wrote:

The AS2 templates should be installable inside FlashDevelop -- under the Tools menu, there's an "Install Software" command that lists downloads that can be installed.

Also, looks like AS3 is only supported on the Chumby 8.  You can get the C8 software working on an Infocast 8, but I've not tried that project yet.

I just followed the instructions (vague ones!) on the FlashDevelop forum, but when I do tools->install it just comes up with "Item list could not be downloaded", obviously I need to sort out proxy settings.

As for AS3 only being on the C8 - another example of the wiki needing a major update, I didn't see anywhere on the wiki section on widget development where this was stated.

Yes diamaunt - I'd be happy to edit the wiki.

Re: Widget Development?

And another thing... what are the chances of getting all of the examples ported to flashdevelop?  I can't justify forking out big money on the Adobe suite, and decompiling the code for existing widgets is a pretty slow way of working out how they are implemented.  The whole widget development stream needs to be kick-started again, and standardizing and simplifying widget development would make it a lot easier for people to pitch in. I'm coming from a mainframe and desktop-C background, this whole Flash thing does my head in - why are there so many different ways and flavors of flash development??!?

(Clunky method to look at the source code : View a widget on chumby.com, look at the source and find the "swfobject.embedSWF("/xml/moviefile?id="" line, then open a page using "www.chumby.com/cml/moviefile?id= " while running eventviewer to capture where the swf file is placed, then decompile it using "JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler". I'm going to install the debugging flash/shockwave some time today, that might make it easier ).

Re: Widget Development?

Use haxe!

http://haxe.org/

AS3-like language but it will compile to AVM1 (AS2) or AVM2 (AS3) code.

Re: Widget Development?

Oh diamaunt, I think gmcbay is offering to write up a wiki page on using Haxe to develop widgets. tongue

Looks interesting, but I also notice that FlashDevelop supports Haxe AS2/AS3 flash development.

Re: Widget Development?

twizzle wrote:

Oh diamaunt, I think gmcbay is offering to write up a wiki page on using Haxe to develop widgets. tongue

Looks interesting, but I also notice that FlashDevelop supports Haxe AS2/AS3 flash development.

I can make that doable smile

Cleaning up any loose bits and bytes.

11 (edited by gmcbay 2014-07-16 22:24:17)

Re: Widget Development?

http://gmcbay.com/Haxe-on-chumby-Part-1

Done (sort of; if you want it on the wiki, and that's probably a good idea for longevity, then you'll have to wiki-format it because I hate dealing with wiki formatting).

Also, that's just an intro thing, I'll write more later.

Re: Widget Development?

gmcbay wrote:

http://gmcbay.com/Haxe-on-chumby-Part-1

Done (sort of; if you want it on the wiki, and that's probably a good idea for longevity, then you'll have to wiki-format it because I hate dealing with wiki formatting).

Also, that's just an intro thing, I'll write more later.

awesome, thanks! good to see you back smile

edit: hacked together, here: http://wiki.chumby.com/index.php?title= … umby:_Haxe

Cleaning up any loose bits and bytes.