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As I mentioned before, I was working on a "tutorial" concerning versioning within the Flash Platform. This is now done enough to share: Flash Platform Versions. It's a little heavy, and more of a brain dump than a tutorial, but hopefully it can shed some light. There is one big takeaway: Nothing is in sync anymore. For example Flash Player is currently at version 10.1. Flash Professional, which used to be in sync with Flash Player, is now at 11. Additionally, though the latest SWF version for Flash Player 10.1 remains 10, for 10.2 it will jump to 11. Confused yet?

The new revision of the Transform Tool is still a work in progress. The tool is still in beta but now updates - including new source code - will be made available through a new tutorial page. Feel free to contact me with comments or suggestions.

I can't say that a lot of progress will be quickly, especially since the holidays are arriving, but I wanted to make sure what I had was made available publicly.

If you haven't already heard, A beta version of Flash Player 10.2 is now available from Adobe Labs. New features include enhanced video performance, support for IE 9, custom cursors (which I'm most excited about), and enhanced full screen. More information about the release can be found in the labs site and I'm sure in the many other posts around the web that covered this.

What I'd like to address is something else that's new with this release that you might not pick up on at first: the SWF version update. To use new features in 10.2, you have to publish a SWF to target "Flash Player 11", or more accurately, give the SWF a SWF version of 11 (SWF11). This marks the first time that the Target Player Version, or SWF version, no longer matches the Flash Player version of the player with which it is associated. So while the SWF version moves up to 11, Flash Player remains in 10, instead moving up to a new dot-release of 10.2.

For a while now, I've been slowly working on a successor to my original ActionScript 3 Transform Tool. The code for that original version was a little hacky and if nothing else, complicated and confusing.

Even though it looks the same, this new version greatly improves on the old. In fact, it was written from the ground up to be more modular, easier to understand and, hopefully, easier to use.

This new version is currently in beta; there are a few minor issues I'd still like to work out, but it is, in its current state, very usable. For now, I will provide it simply as a self-contained download with a basic (Flash CS4) usage sample.

• Transform Tool 2 Beta

Expect more information and an update sometime in the future (when I have time).

As mentioned in the recent Security Domains, Application Domains, and More in ActionScript 3.0 tutorial, you have the ability to load SWFs from another domain into your own SWF's security domain when using the Loader class. What wasn't covered was error handling, or specifically, what happens when this fails. In fact, I'll tell you now: a SecurityErrorEvent.SECURITY_ERROR event occurs. This gets dispatched from the Loader's contentLoaderInfo object (a LoaderInfo instance) when a cross-domain policy file does not allow, or does not exist to allow the loading of a cross-domain SWF into the security domain of your SWF. Currently (at least at the time of this writing), however, this is not documented in the AS3 language reference.

So, the next time you add listeners to your LoaderInfo, to be completely covered, make sure you also include one for SecurityErrorEvent.SECURITY_ERROR (though this would only be likely ever to occur if you were messing with security domains which is an unlikely case, nevertheless, you've been warned).

Part 2 is now up. Whereas part 1 covered security domains, this second, and final portion of the tutorial covers application domains. I don't think I'm quite as comfortable with the explanations in this half of the tutorial, but at least its a good few pages shorter than the security half. Also, when writing the portion covering runtime shared libraries, I didn't realize that as of CS5, Flash Pro also started including some framework additions to make dealing with the process a little easier (namely preloading). With Flash and Flex both doing a lot of the heavy work for you there, some of the lower level details maybe aren't so important anymore? Though, in the end, I guess it doesn't hurt to know a little of what's going on under the hood.

Enjoy!

I've just posted part 1 of a new Flash tutorial: Security Domains, Application Domains, and More in ActionScript 3.0. Part 1 covers security domains and all that jazz while part 2 (still being written) will cover application domains. The security domain portion is probably a little less exciting, but no less important. I'm not happy with how long it is (15 pages printed); after all, no one actually likes to read. But I think a lot of important topics are covered and it should serve as a pretty good resource for this stuff later on. I hope to have part 2 done in the next week or so.

I've added a new error to the compiler errors list: Error #1047 Parameter initializer unknown or is not a compile-time constant. This is probably not as common as some of the errors listed there, but I do include a workaround for this sometimes annoying and frustrating error that could hopefully help a few people out there.

If you didn't already know, Flash Player 10.1 - the next major release of Flash Player - will support private browsing, not unlike your current gen browsers! Jimson, whom I met when he was an intern here at Adobe, has the skinny in a new devnet article:

• Private browsing in Flash Player 10.1