Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are Flash, usability and Beastie Boys.

I have been banging my head against a wall for days. I am trying to get web services to work in an AIR app built with Flash CS3. My co-workers use a solution that works for Flash only http://labs.qi-ideas.com/2007/12/25/using-flex-compiled-code-within-flash

But every time I tried to use it with an AIR app it would crash.

I then found http://manmachine-tech.blogspot.com/

but after days of frustration I found a critical bug:

In the WSProxy class there is a variable _busyOnCall = true; that gets set within callMethod()

and it gets set to false in onComplete()

but it NEVER GETS SET IN onFault

After that it’s all good. I hope this helps anyone in the same boat as myself.

I can feel it in my bones. And I can’t wait because I’ve wanted to deploy an AIR app for so long but it’s a hard sell to a client to say “Users will have to download a framework, then the app, and then in 2 months update both when it goes 1.0″

This will be a defining moment for Adobe and the web.

When will it become common knowledge that AIR will not open a document in its default application?! I see this same question asked about 2 times a day. If the design of your app requires opening other docs in their default app (ie Word) then you shouldn’t be using AIR or you should be reconsidering the design of your app.

AIR can read the bytes of any file and if you know which bytes are which and what to do with them, then you can effectively recreate any app in AIR but you will never be able to make an AIR app that launches Word. I don’t even understand why someone would want this. Stop thinking about AIR like a jump-off platform for beginner programmers like VB is and start thinking about its unique capabilities: Network connectivity, built-in DB, powerful animation, Flex components, and HTML rendering.

I’m currently working on an AIR app that will load a SWF, take screen grabs at a selected interval and then load the screen grabs back in and allow you to scrub back and forth through them.
The main purpose for this is that many things my coworkers and I do at RT is entirely dynamic and code based with very little on the timeline. This app allows for selecting a specific frame in any SWF, code or timeline based, and for playing back the animation many times repeatedly.
A side benefit to the app is that when creating backup GIFs for banner ads, if you run your banner through this app, will spit out cropped captures of your banner ad and may speed up the most boring part of banner ad creation.
If you’re feeling daring you can install this alpha version of SWF Capture and see how it works
I’ve got a lot of features left to build in but this does the basics.

Also, if you’re interested I’ve got my Flapture FLV Capture toolavailable too. It automates one screen grab per FLV for a folder full of FLVs and was how I learned the basics of AIR.