Comments on: Flash desktop apps go open source

By: Carlos

Carlos — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:04:34 +0000

Can Flash desktop apps query database servers? Sql Server? Oracle?
Can they access hardware specific features?
Basic things such as writing a file to disk, parsing xml serialized database, etc?
How about networking libraries (tcp, upd, or upnp connections)?
Is it possible to manage the memory or multi-thread?

If “yes” to all questions, then I’ll start using flash for the real thing. Otherwise, flash is just eye-candy.

By: silverfish

silverfish — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 04:35:40 +0000

>These days my CD projects are largely flash based, in a director >shell for the occasions when I need a bit more local access than >flash can provide itself.

Jim, what plays your flash CD projects? Do you bundle the stand-alone Flash player?

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 10:10:40 +0000

> but it does not let you write code that interacts with the actual Flash content

I beg to differ! these days (Director MX 2004), you have pretty complete interaction with any embedded flash objects, call your actionscript functions, have them call director etc etc.

These days my CD projects are largely flash based, in a director shell for the occasions when I need a bit more local access than flash can provide itself.

By: Erik

Erik — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 22:10:31 +0000

Macromedia Director is a good product, but it does not let you write code that interacts with the actual Flash content. You can only embed it like other multimedia content. My understanding of this project is that you are given an API to allow programs to interact with the actual Flash environment. I am excited about this, I have wanted to do this for a while but it natively the Flash ActiveX component does not let you interact with the flash animation, just display, start, stop, etc.

By: the duke

the duke — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 06:19:36 +0000

I believe that screenweaver os can really learn something from this company http://www.flashprojector.com they seem to have the best Flash Desktop application development tool in the marker not because of their Synchronized AS but also their ActiveX Control hosting, I mean with this tool I was able to use all my AX in flash just like using Flash Objects, it just can’t get better than that… anyway I hope that screenweaver grows and includes the AX feature.

By: dinke

dinke — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 23:45:27 +0000

You can make cool Desktop Applications already with other Macromedia tool - Macromedia Director. You can use various xtras (plug-ins) with it, combine it with vbscript, office applications, databases etc. Flash is much more limited in that field.

By: Redivider

Redivider — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 15:23:17 +0000

Here’s a (still commercial) piece of software that’s similar to Screenweaver, except that it has the capability of creating cross-platform apps (PC/Mac) from one .swf. There’s also a version for developing Pocket PC apps.

http://www.multidmedia.com/software/zinc/

I’m not sure how successful (finacially) they are, but it seems to be doing well so far.

Either way it’s good to see Screenweaver continuing on as an open source project. If they can add support for creating OS X apps, I might just make the switch.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 11:07:55 +0000

Why make desktop applications in Flash? Despite the new developments planned for flash 8, the development tools are amazingly poor when compared to normal desktop application development. Flash’s performance is also woefull when it’s used for anything serious.