Peter Elst

If you aren’t yet convinced osflash.org is one of the most essential truck-stops for the Flash community, check out the open source Red5 project by that’s under development there. They’re making some serious progress in reverse-engineering the RTMP protocol used in Macromedia’s Flash Communication Server and have already managed to create a NetConnection with their server.

With a bit of luck we’ll be seeing an open-source FlashComm server, who knows one day even with the ability to stream audio and video like its commercial counter-part. Exciting times ahead for the Flash community!

Aral made an interesting point a few days back on AJAX and the browser as a plugin. I thought I’d pick up on that as its something I’ve been thinking about for a while now.

In many ways computers these days are not stand-alone machines, connectivity has become an integral part in all aspects of computing. Whereas in the past there was a very clear distinction between the web and the desktop, you increasingly see those two worlds overlapping. The very first signs of this started to come up some years ago when businesses started using activeX components etc. for enabling their online application to interface with the client’s computer. The second phase is increasingly prevalent with desktop applications connecting up to the web to exchange data and make it available for offline use. What I expect to see happening in the not too distant future is the ability to move beyond the limitations of the browser or desktop application shell.

If you think about this what immediately comes to mind is ‘widgets’ but its so much more than that. Right now we’ve come to the point where data has escaped from the clutches of the implementation dictatorship, meaning you can use it just about anywhere you want – be it the web, a desktop application or a mixture of the two – no matter where that data is located. But what about the application itself? There things get a bit trickier, you immediately deal with implementation constraints. Does your application run on the server or as a desktop application? That is one example of an implementation constraint you need to take into account the moment you start developing.

Now, if you think about that – why should it matter? It is commonly accepted that data is simply data, the same ubiquity should apply to an application wherever you run it. Whether you navigate to an MXML document using your browser, launch it as a standalone widget or embed it in a desktop application it should not matter.

We’re steadily moving towards applications as services, running self-contained or seemlessly embedded in any other technology. This is a huge paradigm shift but no doubt a very necessary one.

I’ve found a great extension for Thunderbird to help with removing duplicate messages (which occasionally happens when you do a lot of importing, merging folders etc.)

Just right-click and run it on the folder of your choice and it gives you a nice overview of all duplicate emails and suggests what to do with them. You then only need to confirm they can be deleted and the extension those all the work for you.

Download it here

P.S. If you’re running Thunderbird 1.5 beta, you’ll be happy to know the 0.0.11 version of the extension is compatible.

One of my pet peeves when working with FLA’s is that there’s no easy way of finding out what Flash version the file was saved for. Northcode has just released a great freebie called Flaver – it hijacks the FLA format, checks what version it was saved as and launches the corresponding version of the Flash IDE (if you have it installed obviously).

Its a very useful little tool and seems to work very well, there’s almost no additional wait in launching your FLA. A feature I’d love to see is, rather than automatically launching Flash, have it pop up a message stating what version FLA you’re dealing with.

http://www.northcode.com/free/flaver/