Things I Learned At FlashCamp Manila Jan 26, 2011

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FlashCamp Manila Jan 2011 I just attended FlashCamp Manila today at the Leong Hall of the Ateneo de Manila University from 9am to 5pm. It was a great conference. I learned a lot of new and exciting things regarding Adobe’s Flash Platform. Let’s see, what can I recall from the event?

I was able to catch part of John Imbong’s talk on the overview of the Flash Platform and how Flash is ubiquitous on the web and how it has achieved what Java had been intended for, to “Write Once Run Anywhere” a slogan which was to illustrate it’s cross-platform benefits.

There was so much I learned but I am finding it tiring to write it all down. I would probably have to be more persistent at being a writer to be able to become a successful professional blogger. Anyway to try to run through what I learned:

Flash 10.2 3D rendering and optimization

P2P, Multicast, Interpolation, CPU

Flash Catalyst 2.0 a whole lot better that 1.0. Has round-tripping between Illustrator/Photoshop – Flash Catalyst – Flash Builder. -> This is very cool. Still in beta, beta, beta. Available for download at Adobe Labs.

Flash Gaming is BIG, bigger than you think. How big? Very big. Zynga $5.5 Billion valuation. Second only to Activision-Blizzard.

Max Racer

Key2..something Flex Application development. Needs Flex Developers.

and more….

I almost forgot. Flash vs HTML5. Video Codec. H26

Actionscript (AS3) Attributes

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I recently discovered that what I thought were called attributes in actionscript (as3) were actually called metadata tags. An example of metadata tags in an actionscript class file would be:

package
{
import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.events.Event;

/**
* ...
* @author Alexander R. Torrijos
*/
[SWF(backgroundColor="#ffcc00", frameRate="30", width="640", height="480")]
public class Main extends Sprite
{

public function Main():void
{
if (stage) init();
else addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
}

private function init(e:Event = null):void
{
removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
// entry point
graphics.beginFill(0xff0000);
graphics.drawEllipse(100, 100, 100, 100);
graphics.endFill();
}

}

}

The highlighted code above is called a metadata tag in actionscript. In other programming languages they are usually referred to as attributes. When searching for information about attributes in actionscript remember to use the keyword metadata instead of attributes.

For some information on actionscript metadata you may want to check out AS3 Metadata Tags in Flex 4

Error ‘php.exe’ is not recognized as an internal or external command when calling phpunit on Windows XP/Vista/7

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This may be caused by the PHP_PEAR_PHP_BIN environment variable not being set correctly.

To fix this go to Advanced System Settings in Control Panel/System & Maintenance/System.

Select Environment Variables.

Find variable PHP_PEAR_PHP_BIN and change the value from ./php.exe to the correct path\to\php.exe on your system.

References:
PHPUnit ignores pathing to php.exe on Windows for PHPT executions
php_pear_php_bin is not set correctly

Configure a phpunit.xml file in Eclipse PDT on Windows

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In Eclipse PDT, select Run > External Tools > External Tools Configurations…

Click on the New launch configuration icon.

Give it a name. “PHPUnitConfig” for example.

Below is a screenshot of sample settings. Modify according to your evironment.

Configure a phpunit.xml file in Eclipse PDT

On the Main tab, under Location set the path to your php.exe file.

Set Working Directory to: ${workspace_loc}

Set Arguments to: C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.0\phpunit --configuration ${workspace_loc}\${resource_path}

Make sure to set the path to the installation location of phpunit.

Select your phpunit.xml file in the PHP Explorer panel and from the main menu, select Run > External Tools > PHPUnitConfig.