Debugging your Flash applications can take some getting used to. Especially, if you’ve never used a debugger before. Having the right tool to aid in debugging your Flash Applications can save a boat load of time. Also when debugging, the debugging tool used should provide easy access to your ActionScript data with little of a learning curve. An innovative debugging tool that I have been pretty fond of lately has been De MonsterDebugger.
What is De MonsterDebugger?
These days my ActionScript 3.0 debugger of choice has been De MonsterDebugger. De MonsterDebugger is an easy to use open source debugger for Adobe Flash,Flex, and AIR created by the guys over at De Monsters. Not only does it provide an Adobe-styled familiar interface, but it comes in a convenient Adobe AIR Application. It’s impressive list of features make it a tough debugger to compete with.
DeMonster Debugger comes with an impressive set of features:
Can be used with Adobe AIR applications
Can be used with Adobe Flex applications
Can be used with full screen Adobe Flash applications
Trace strings, numbers, objects, arrays, XML and even custom classes
Trace the complete structure of multilevel objects
Trace messages in custom colors
Explore your live application
Edit properties at runtime
Run methods and get the results at runtime
Application is lightweight
Auto update
Look and feel of Adobe CS4
Customizable interface
Highlight display objects
Client class included
Example application included
FDT templates included
The one feature that is probably missing from it’s feature set is probably the ability to step through break points, but hey, I won’t be picky. It is still a great debugging tool and best of all it is open source!
Check out the video rundown on De MonsterDebugger!
With all the wonderful Adobe AIR Applications available to the community, a good percentage of those lack the use of handy little install badges. Install badges allow you to create a seamless installation process that installs the needed components for your AIR applications. Many will say that creating one of these badge was tedious and time consuming. To answer those cries Grant Skinner and Adobe teamed up to create an Adobe AIR Application called Badger.
What is Badger?
Badger allows you to load a template install badge, configure all of its options, preview it live. It also takes the pain out of configuring badges by tracking down your application ID, publisher ID, version, and other information.
Badger includes the following features:
Rapid configuration: Simply open the AIR file within the Badger application to retrieve information required for the install badge.
Visual configuration: Preview the badge and make any necessary changes.
Simple cut-and-paste deployment: Export and cut and paste the code to your web page.
Last week I mentioned of a very innovative Adobe AIR application called AIR iPhone. AIR iPhone basically simulates the user interface of the iPhone. It has the capabilities to make calls, receive calls, check voicemail, add contacts and even send voice messages, all using Ribbit.
Below is a video overview of the AIR iPhone created by the creator himself, Joe Johnston. Enjoy the video!
Imagine, a fully-functional iPhone on your desktop that enables users to make calls, take calls and capture voice messages on their computer. Well, now most of that can now be achieved. Joe Johnston has created the AIR iPhone, a desktop application created with Adobe AIR and Adobe Flex 3.
AIR iPhone basically simulates the UI of the iPhone. It has the capabilities to make calls, receive calls, check voicemail, add contacts and even send voice messages, all using Ribbit. If your not familiar with Ribbit, the Ribbit Developer Platform gives developers the ability to make and receive calls, record, send and receive voice messages, as well as add and organize contacts.
Check out this video created by the guys over at Ribbit. It demonstrates the use of this desktop application and how Ribbit has been integrated. Enjoy!
In Your Browser
Well if that wasn’t enough, Joe recently filled users request to put AIR iPhone online within the browser. When compared to the desktop version, everything along with Ribbit works fine except for the weather and browser.
Lee Brimelow mentioned of an AIR application that enables enhanced logging for AIR and Flash applications. The application is named Arthropod and allows you to color-code your log messages for easy viewing. A nice alternative to the existing Flash IDE debugger. Happy debugging!
This post is simply an update to a previous post on Aviary, a suite of web-based AIR applications. Aviary is making great strides and is now offering free beta invites to be one of the first to test their new applications. I recently received an invite and I have got to sat that Aviary is so much cooler than I originally thought.
Earlier last month Aviary posted 16 awesome tutorials that completely shows off the mighty power of their suite. I’ve listed a few here along with a video displaying the process. If you’re interested in a beta invite, be sure head over to Aviary to get one.
One last thing be sure to check out the rest of the 16 awesome Aviary tutorials and make sure you spread the word. Have fun!
Alert Thingy is one of the the first applications built using the new FriendFeed API. This hit AIR application allows users to access the data from people they follow on FriendFeed with the capability to post new messages directly.
Users can basically receive updates from FriendFeed, send and receive tweets from Twitter and post photos to Flickr all from the comfort of your desktop. Simply a nice all-in-one application that will help streamline today’s social spark.
This week’s AIR App of the Week is Lee Brimelow‘s AIRTube. It is a simple AIR application that will extract a video from YouTube by simply entering in the URL of the video. That’s it! Simply a nice AIR application that gets the job done. Check it out for yourself!
Traffic Jam is a new take on an old game. It gets very challenging, and at some point you might even ask yourself if a particular level is even possible. But I assure you, they all are! You will start thinking outside of the box after a few of the more challenging levels. Levels of addiction may vary from user to user. I for one, am an addict already! A game that will consume hours of your time. Check it out!
After some months as a beta download on Adobe Labs, Adobe Media Player (AMP) was released today. You can download it from here. AMP is one of Adobes poster AIR applications and it really shines. You can play back local FLVs as well as some QuickTime movies (h.264 encoded), by adding a video RSS url, you can subscribe to content, follow popular tv shows as well as a lot of good content in the Catalog. All the featured content in the Catalog is encoded as either 480p, 720p or 1080p streams, so the quality is really good. The video is streamed from various locations. Some is streamed from large Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and others from private servers, but we’ve found the quality to be good in general. This could of course change now that the audience will increase.
It is still a great debugging tool and best of all it is open source!
Be sure you check out this video created by Lee Brimelow as he demonstrates some of the coolest features this slick debugging tool has to offer.
