[thelist] Flash experts? Flash and Ajax?
John Dowdell
jdowdell at adobe.com
Mon Dec 26 21:44:10 CST 2005
Tom Dell'Aringa wrote:
> I'm finding implementing a good isometric grid in html problematic
From what I read in the message, I'm not sure why a still graphic (PNG,
JPG, GIF) would not work...?
> I suppose I could look at Flash, but I'm wondering if it has the
> ability to work asynchronously with the server like Ajax does.
Yes, Macromedia Flash Player 3.0 and above (think I got my versions
straight, but it's from memory ;-) have been able to request fresh text
from the server and integrate it into the current display. I think it
was version 4.0 which introduced the first integrated XML parser.
ECMAScript for XML is in the current alpha, Macromedia Flash Player 8.5,
anticipated due for general consumer release mid-2006.
> I want to build the back end with Ruby on Rails and a mySQL
> database. I just am ignorant of how Flash could interact with
> these tech's.
Sure, the Flash Player client can call out to lots of remote services,
stronger than browsers. More may depend on what you're comfortable
implementing on the server. The easiest and fastest is Remoting, where
local objects and remote objects match state automatically, but if you'd
prefer to hand-roll things in Ruby then any of the common transfer
methods should work.
(For security issues, it's easiest to implement if your application
server and your web server are in the same exact domain. That's because
the client software can work behind someone else's firewall, so it's not
allowed to call arbitrary servers without explicit permissions to do so.
Proxying third-party data through your own application server is another
way to access data from arbitrary servers, because your appserver is
outside of the audiences' firewalls. Anyway, single-domain is easiest.)
Ian Anderson wrote:
> In many ways, the recent crop of AJAX deployments is simply
> catching up with stuff that Flash apps have been doing for
> some time.
I'd agree, but it can get hard to talk about online... sometimes when
people say "AJaX" they're talking about work with XmlHttpRequest,
sometimes they mean advanced JavaScript in general, sometimes they may
mean something else. The meaning of the label often shifts, so it's hard
for discussions to reach consensus right now.
Text is just one media type to refresh independently of the presentation
itself. HTML browsers have long had the ability to refresh static
graphics, too, through JavaScript manipulation of IMG.SRC. Interactions,
motion sequences, audio, video, communications... there are lots more
media types than just text and bitmaps, but that gets more into the
"Rich" in "Rich Internet Applications" than the straight XmlHttpRequest
talk.
Tom Dell'Aringa wrote:
> I suppose Flash has the ability to scale incrementally as
> large groups of users came online
This confuses me -- the Macromedia Flash Player is a clientside engine,
sitting on Someone Else's Computer, and so wouldn't really notice other
users, at least in most applications. It's the server which generally
needs to scale with the size of the audience and its demands. I'm not
sure what info is being sought...?
> I seem to remember Actionscript being touted as "almost the
> same thing" as JavaScript. Is this still/was this ever the
> case? Or is it just a similarity.
JavaScript is the Netscape scripting language; JScript the Microsoft;
ActionScript the Flash scripting language... their common logic and
syntax are documented as ECMAScript. Flash's scripting predates the
ECMAScript specification, but each version has narrowed the gap between
existing deployments and the preferred universal syntax. Now the
ECMAScript committee includes Macromedia/Adobe staffers. In the current
Players you'll find that logical syntax and abstract data structures are
pretty much the same as the scripting engines in browsers, even though
the types of objects they're manipulating are quite different.
The 8.5 Player, now in public alpha, includes ECMAScript for XML
abilities, and will be a nice way to provide easier XML parsing for
audiences in diverse browsers.
> If anyone can point me to any online games that use Flash that
> allow concurrent connections of many users, kind of like an
> rpg, that would be helpful for me to see.
I'm still not sure of this -- the common question would be whether your
Ruby/mySQL implementation could handle all the Flash-enhanced audience
members out there. For "concurrent connections" and "flash" in the same
sentence, we'd probably be talking about something like the Flash Media
Server, the Breeze Presentation Server, and of the various chat servers,
etc... this sounds different from what you're planning, though...?
(Multiplayer games in SWF are legion, but a good match depends on that
being sought.)
jd
--
John Dowdell . Adobe Developer Support . San Francisco CA USA
Weblog: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd
Aggregator: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna
Technotes: http://www.macromedia.com/support/
Spam killed my private email -- public record is best, thanks.
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