What do you wish there was in Flash MX 2004?
Here are a few of mine (for ActionScript):
- abstract
- final
- private (a real one that is)
- protected (switch with the current private)
- Runtime type-checking
- True ActionScript 2.0 bytecode for Flash Player 7+
- A better way to distribute code library without source
If there is something you wish to see in a Macromedia product, let them know by filling the wish form. Apparently they read every message (that’s what I was told), and it may well be true because from past experiences, they have implemented almost every item on my wish list! So, go ahead and offer suggestions to improve the products you use.
14 replies on “Not getting what you want?”
Method overload would be a must, too.
I agree that some features should be added to Action Script; but if so many features of a full-fledged programming language are to be added, ActionScript may end up losing its distinct identity and may not be called “script” anymore.
Sergi: Yes, overloading is another one.
Dotnetjunky: In terms of the core language features, AS2 is very modest by comparison when put next to JScript.Net! Why limit your vocabulary or language? Imagine (yes, just imagine) the Flash player supports many languges like .Net’s CLR. Of course this is unlikely to happen because of the limitation of the player size.
I posted a big list for future versions of the IDE on my weblog, but i keep adding stuff for my wishlist.
I really would like to see:
– a profiler
– asdoc ( they have the code for it, what happened to it? )
– bindings at runtime should be viewable through code
and there are definitely some issues i would like to see resolved as well.
oh i see i missed another important one:
– XUL to FUI interface, define the interface components of Flash through XUL and be able to render them through
@dave. if you implement the dynamic runtime on the client ( as you suggested in the player ) you will sacrifice the player size, with a factor 2 to 5. This will ofcourse differ, depending on the languages you want to support and the platform it runs on. For example, the runtime of parrot is between 300 and 700k and that only supports perl 5 and 6. My suggestion is to have a virtual machine implemented in the IDE, to be more precisely, the compiler runs ON the virtual machine. You have to do language-to-language transformation, so you will definitely lose some information on that. The reason to do this, so you still have backwards compatiblity through the SWF bytecode, and you can do minor changes on the SWF specifications so it will support the features of the virtual machine. I am thinking whether it will be a smart idea to implement a language-neutral IL so you have the following translation:
anylanguageyouwant – IL – SWF bytecode
instead of
anylanguageyouwant – SWF bytecode
the latter will definitely give you some performance on compiling though. There is an interesting proof of concept, on java bytecode – parrot bytecode transformations @ http://archive.develooper.com/perl6-internals@perl.org/msg03864.html
i’ll keep you updated ofcourse. 🙂
Compiling behind the scenes (think Eclipse) so you don’t have to test a movie to catch any errors.
I would be lucky if we could have real runtime libraries. A framework for runtime components would be nice too.
I would really like to see code hinting for custom classes. This would not have to be implemented so that it is real time, but just a way to browse to a folder and scan AS files, and then create custom actions xml based on the AS 2 code. This could be third party software, but I really think it would be useful if it were included in the IDE.
XPath
Anchors in text fields.
stability
Hey dave, I’d like to see the ability to attach clips from a loaded swf to ANY PLACE in the layer/clip tree. Working with a lot of standalone flash, the shared for runtime option is not available, and not really suitable anyway.
Perhaps you have discovered a pattern for all visible elements to be layered and managed. I havent, other than giving each UI element a complex mask to make it appear as though it is under other elements. All our products are module based with a wrapper framework.. and we are limited to the following heirarchy (top to bottom):
clipMenus
clipEhpemerides
clipModule -> (loaded swf) -> clips of module contents
clipBG
Which is just not as flexible as I would like. I would like for the module to be able to slide ‘framework’ elements into different places within its own holder clip, or vice versa
1 word: efficiency
2 words: final, as2 bytecode
And: better support for dynamic drawing, splines and 3-d graphics; imagine texture mapping, well to hell with that but fast basic drawing would be nice. 🙂
I’m doing a 3-d “engine” in Flash 7 and performance sucks about as much as in Flash 6, well allmost. I love the new actionscript 2 syntax but its about time that some serious focus shifted towards performance issues.
The new ___bytecode___() looks interesting, but it would also be interesting to know whether all the hand-optimizations described in FLASM docs still hold for swf’s compiled with Flash 7.
If anyone are doin interactive/real-time 3-d graphics in Flash 7 I’d like to hear from your experience with it. 🙂
Internal AS2 Editor should be improve. Something like visual studio.net which include class browser solution explorer and so on.
I have one more idea is that when we create a screen in form application class file will create automatically.