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Flash MX 2004 introduced a brand new customizable authoring environment allowing you to use JavaScript to add functionality to the Flash IDE. Extending Flash MX 2004 is the first book to be released that focuses on this extensibility in Flash. It's written by the respectable Keith Peters and Todd Yard and should be out within a week or so at the MSRP of $49.99 US.

You can get more information on extending the Flash authoring environment and the book at flashextensibility.com. Friends of ED is the books publisher; more information about the book from them can be found here.

And don't forget the JSAPI documentation from Macromedia.

There are some worries that many of the files in the Downloads section are too difficult to understand. And that can very well be the case - I won't deny it. Many are fairly advanced and not specifically marked as being so. With that in mind, I'm going to start making some more simpler Flash files available. These will cover basic concepts and with any patience on my part, should be well commented and documented.

There's a large project on the table at work right now which I'm about to dive head-first in, so you may not see many of these files soon. However, keep a look out for them if its something you've been wishing for.

Also, concerning the downloads section, I will hope to soon have some files other than Flash source files. I have a few Fireworks components which could use a home as well as a few other things people might find use in.

A Philipp Ringli from the flashcoders mailing list has pointed out a potentially nasty bug dealing with pinned scripts in Flash MX 2004. He states the following:

"this is a pretty malicious bug.

description:
in the actionscript panel you can pin scripts. this is a very handy feature.
thing is, i just had to learn the hard way, that not all pinned scripts get saved into the FLA.
when you test the movie, changes in pinned scripts are reflected, though.
however, if you close the FLA and then reopen it, changes to pinned scritps content aren't saved.

i reproduce this scenario successfully.
steps:
1. make a new fla.
2. make 3 mcs in the library, name them mc1_mc, mc2_mc, mc3_mc
3. doubleclick the first one in the library.
4. in the as-panel, pin it's (empty) script.
5. repeat steps 3-4 for mc2 and mc3.
6. add code to mc1 by selecting its pinned script tab.
write some code which you can remember later. like //mc1_mc ...
7. do the same for mc2 and mc3
8. switch back to mc1's pinned script and press (apple-s, or whatever it is on your machine, to save the movie)
9. close the document.
10. open it again, and inspect the scripts.

on Mac this is definitely reproducible.
i did a clean install of OS X 10.3.2 and flash MX2004 7.0.1.
same results.

i haven't quite figured out the logic in this yet.
but it seems that changes to pinned scripts sometimes do not get saved.

this bug just cost me 4 hours of my day. just before a deadline.

and as always: THANK YOU, macromedia!

phil"

I haven't personally experienced this, but others have. You can read the thread through chattyfig here.

The var keyword in ActionScript declares variables. These variables include those used consistently throughout your movie - those in classes and those defined in the timeline as well as local variables within function blocks. This is where you may have to watch yourself.

Working on getting the new design online now. This will be a gradual process so bear with me as I tinker and tweak. I hope you enjoy the new look.

Update: Ok, its pretty much up now. All that was pink is now replaced with blue and orange. There's still some other more general tweaks to be made - but nothing that wasn't already the case beforehand.

The introduction of ActionScript 2.0 has brought upon us, the care-free and wily developers that we are, some restrictions in our coding practices. No longer are many of the classes we were so used to tweaking and conquering for our own allowing us to do that anymore - at least not through the standard configuration of things. Instead, now, its good "practice" to leave our Color classes, our Math classes and other classes of the such alone in favor of creating new ones from scratch that utilize these in their native state of being. But should we?

I added a bunch of files today as well as fixed the search feature. You may also notice the details for files no longer popup in a new window. This is a good thing.

Some file highlights include:
Propeller cannon game
Mouse trail variants
and
Pixel planets around a sun

Macromedia, starting with MX 2004, have started to put their help contents online with the ability for users to comment and add to the various sections of help listed (though online help content was also available before MX 2004 just without the commenting feature). There have been many requests for improvement on these "LiveDocs" such as a sidebar on the left for easy reference much like the internal Help for Flash - and Macromedia has listened - listened and acted upon. See the results of the new and improved LiveDocs.

I understand that the search option in the files section is a little broken. I'll try to fix that sometime soon. It still finds what you need, it just doesn't properly link it. It shouldn't be a big issue since, at least at this point in time, all of the files are directly accessible from the main files page.

Update: The search feature should work fine now.

Yet again, and in such a short amount of time, I have added some more files. A few are Flash 5 though most are MX. None, this time around, were for MX 2004. A highlight may include... spinning 3D letters, though I think the Point class is a good one as well methinks.