Photoshop is to Gimp, Illustrator is to Inkscape, Microsoft Office is to Open Office - since 2005, Open Source Flash refers to building knowledge/tools/programs for the Flash platform. Their main website is osflash.org and they serve as a wiki/forum/vehicle to generate awareness and contain useful resources. In the talk I hope to share history and knowledge of a few useful tools that can be used in/developed on linux. Example - compilers, development environments, etc.

1. Open Source Flash 101
'G' Gaurav Narain Saxena
Akron Linux User Group
January 7, 2010

2. Outline
● Flash
● ActionScript
● Open Source Adobe
● Open Source Flash
● Salasaga
● mtasc
● swfmill
● Swftools
● References

3. Flash
● "Like television for internet users"
● Written in C++
● Allows you to:
– Annotate web page with:
● Animation, adverts, other flash components
● Navigation – RIA
● Streams of video
● Proprietary

4. Flash
● Concepts
– Timeline
– Stage
– Objects
– Controls
– etc.

5. Flash

6. ActionScript
● Javascript for HTML= ActionScript for Flash
● Scripting language based on ECMAScript
● Extension: .as
● Main points:
– Cross platform
– Manifested in flash and flex – platforms
– Designed by Gary Grossman (1998)
– Versions: AS3, AS2

7. ActionScript
Example (AS2): HelloWorld.as
class HelloWorld extends MovieClip
{
public function HelloWorld() {}
public function onLoad:Void{
var txtHello:TextField = this.createTextField(
“txtHello”,0,0,0,100,100);
txtHello.text = “Hello, World!”;
}// displays 100x100 box with “Hello, World!” in it.

8. Open Source Adobe
● Flex SDK
– Cross platform framework; provides compilers,
libraries, debugger
● Adobe-Mozilla Tamarin
– Open engine for ActionScript 3
● BladeDS
– Server based Java remoting and web
messaging technology
● Webkit
– Open source browser engine, OSX framework
used on apple computers

9. Open Source Adobe
● Text Layout Framework: Typography

10. Open Source Flash
● "Like sourceforge.net for open source flash
enthusiasts"
● Collaboration
– list: http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/
– irc: irc://irc.freenode.org##swf
● Hosts and links to projects related to open
source flash development

11. Open Source Flash
● History
– May, 2005: Aral Balkan, Sonke Rohde,
Nicolas Cannasse (MTASC) “Eureka!”
– June, 2005: Number of projects: 10
– January, 2008: Number of projects: 120
– Today: has many more project, a handful of
broken links – cool nonetheless

12. Open Source Flash
● Source code used to be shared
– Binary .fla files
– ActionScript Classes
● 2004: MTASC2 [MotionTwin ActionScript Compiler]released,
– kicked off Flash IDE Dev Projects
● Swfmill, Axdt, AMES, FlashDevelop etc.
● Frameworks started appearing:
– Arp, Cairngorm, PureMVC
● Developers:
– Started embracing these frameworks
– Worked in teams
– Build scalable solutions
– All this independent of Flash IDE or Flex

13. Open Source Flash
● OSFlash.org incubates all these projects collected under
one roof
● Doesn't stop !
● Exciting technologies for Flash Platform are created:
– Papervision 3D: 3D Library for Flash
– Red5: Open Source server to handle audio, video,
and real-time shared objects
– SWX: Native data format for Flash platform
– Flex3, Flex SDK, Compilers

14. Open Source Flash
● Integrated Development ● Utilities
Environment Alternatives ● Flash Applications
● Command line tools, ● Servers and Remoting
compilers
● Logging Tools
● Eclipse Plugins
● Debugging tools
● ActionScript libraries
● Documentation Systems
● Frameworks
● Flash Players
● Tweening, Animation and
Physics ● SWF Readers
● Unit testing

15. ● Open Source IDE for creating flash based
eLearning (alpha software)
● GPL, developed on Linux
● What can you do:
– Create instructional videos
– Get a feel for timeline and other Concepts

16. ● Demo in Firefox (.swf) or here

17. mtasc
● First ActionScript 2 Open Source Compiler
● What you can do:
– Compile large .as classes in very short time
– Generate .swf without flash – the tool itself!
● Superseded by haXe

18. mtasc
● Example:
class Hello
{
static var app : Hello;
function Hello() {
_root.createTextField("tf",0,0,0,800,600); // creates a 'tf' TextField size 800x600 at pos 0,0
_root.tf.text = "Hello world !"; // write some text into it
}
static function main(mc) { // entry point
app = new Hello();
}
}

19. mtasc
● $ mtasc -swf hello.swf -main -header
800:600:20 hello.as

20. swfmill
● Xml2swf swf2xml processor (can import)
● Generates asset libs for MTASC or haXe
● Built around xslt
● What you can do:
– Import images, fonts
– Add components
– Create movieclips
– Place clips on the stage
– Create text fields

21. swfmill
● Example.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
<movie width="320" height="240" framerate="12">
<background color="#ffffff"/>
<frame>
<library>
<clip id="foo" import="library/foo.jpg"/>
</library>
</frame>
</movie>

22. swfmill
● $ swfmill simple example.xml example.swf

23. swftools
● Collection of utilities to work with .swf's
● Mostly on command line
● Loves to have:
– Freetype libraries from freetype.org
– Jpeg libraries from ijg.org

24. swftools
● What you can do: ● What you can do:
– Pdf2swf – Wav2swf
– Swfcombine – Avi2swf
– Swfstrings – Font2swf
– Swfdump – Swfbbox
– Jpeg2swf – Swfc
– Png2swf – Swfextract
– gif2swf – as3compile

25. swftools
Pdf2swf
example

26. Take Home
● Flash has 99.99% market share
– (nah, just kidding)
● Tools exist that facilitate usage of the flash
platform which you can adopt for your
application domain:
– Sciences
– Programming
– Sysadmin? (atleast the command line ones)

27. Questions?

28. References
● osflash.org
● Adobe flash
● Open Source Adobe
● salasaga.org
● swfmill.org
● mtasc.org
● swftools.org
● ActionScript Wiki
● ActionScript 2 Language Reference