Monthly Archive for February, 2008

AS3 compiler open-source: the logical consequences

Published on Feb 28, 2008 in Flash and projects. 5 Comments Tags: as3, as3c, flex sdk, opensource.

With the release of the Flex 3 SDK the ActionScript compiler (ASC) became open-source as well. As you know I am working on my own “compiler” to inline bytecode directly with ActionScript. My approach is a post-compile compiler because I wrote it while the ASC was still closed source and ther was no way to do that different.

I still like the approach but it is of course not the best way. The only logical consequence now is to write a patch for the ASC and add some new keywords to it. This would be also easier than what I have to do currently because I am working with bytecode only and the compiler is half a compiler and half a virtual machine. I think it would be great if a community starts to evolve around the SDK and builds a version with more advanced features. Nicolas?

Make some noise!

Published on Feb 21, 2008 in Flash, personal and projects. 8 Comments Tags: hobnox.

Buy some high definition speakers, register for beta and get ready for the Hobnox Audiotool! I am really proud to be a part of this project which is an online music application with ambitions to meet the needs of professional music producers but simple enough to support the creative flow of a musician instead of making it uber-complicated.
The teaser application shows already some of our concepts like an unlimited sized table to arrange your synthesizers and effects or audio signal flow based on cable wiring.

The application itself is part of Hobnox which is a company providing browserbased tools for media production, community functionalities tailored to the needs of creatives and editorial-led webTV channels for media distribution. This means basically that you will find a lot of cutting edge Flash software online at www.hobnox.com soon.

By the way: If you are attending the FITC in Amsterdam — do not miss the session of André and get a sneak preview already there.

People from the US will not be able to access the website until the 28th of February.

FITC Toronto: enthusiASM

Published on Feb 14, 2008 in Flash, experiments, personal and projects. 5 Comments Tags: as3c, fitc 2008.

I am so happy — this year I will speak at FITC Toronto! And it is for me the first conference outside of Europe. So what will it be about? It is the first release and session about my currently nameless inline compiler. This tool allows you to write and debug bytecode by writing ActionScript. It includes also a lot of other nifty features like method injection — which is by the way a real killer-feature. If you do not understand it right now don’t worry: you will love it!

The compiler is currently in a working state (although I finally have to support bytecode 0x1b) and I am implementing several optimization techniques. This is not so easy but I hope to find some solutions to enable branch elimination, constant folding and loop unrolling (which is already getting pretty close) to name a few.

I do not want to spoil the fun so any updates are kept private until the FITC for now.

Flashforum Conference 2008

Published on Feb 8, 2008 in Flash, hydra, personal and projects. 1 Comment Tags: as3c, ffk08, hydra.

A new year, a new Flashforum Conference. The organizers Sascha and Marc invite you from 2nd to the 5th of June to Cologne. It is my third time at the Flashforum Conference and I think it will be a great event just like the last two years. This time the conference will be also a little bit more workshop-based with two extra days (pre and post conference) full of workshops. I will have one session about Hydra like in Amsterdam and another one about my inline bytecode compiler and optimizer. Be prepared — it will definitly rock.