Long first day at Flash Forward 2005 in New York City. Lots of useful information from the Flash community, which I've compiled here:

Actionscript as a Toolbox
Branden Hall

Tips for increasing performance of SWFs:
* Branden's tips, as well as Jacob Correia's (which are listed later), are based on that fact that even though Flash is vector based, for every frame it displays, it must first create a raster version of the stage before it can display it. So having no vector graphics will improve performance, but will obviously bloat the file size. So the key is to find a balance between the two.

• - If a movie clip's _alpha is 0, set _visible to false (this prevents Flash from having to use resources to render it and then hide it)
• - Use AS2.0 variable typing (improves your code and speeds up debugging)
• - Do not use lexical scoping (yeah, I didn't know what that was either, and I'm still not sure I do, but this helps)
• - When using "for" loops, do not continually evaluate a condition that will not change, i.e. instead of
  

  for(var i = 1; i < myArray.length; i++) {
  	// do stuff
  }

  use
  
  

  var myVar = myArray.length;
  for(var i = 1; i < myVar; i++) {
  	// do stuff
  }

• - Use local shared objects (which are like cookies for Flash, see Tech Note) to force an obtrusive Flash ad to only annoy the user once.

• - Use external .as files for code (allows for more efficient user control and prevents disaster when an .fla is corrupted)
• - Use "frame breaking," which is basically instead of doing a ton of stuff on one frame, run the function for x seconds on one frame, and then move to the next frame and continue the function from where you left off (see http://www.waxpraxis.org/coding/20/programming-pretty---part-ii for a detailed run down on the technique)
• - Make movieClipLoader and the Delegate class your best friends.

Google, Where's My Flash Site?
Peter Hall

Peter's presentation explained his work on Ripple, which is "is an open-source framework, whose primary objective is to make Flash content searchable by search engines." Check out the project page at osflash.org to learn more.

Ripple makes use of XPath for Flash, which can be downloaded from xfactorstudio.com.

Game Workshop: Designing Online Flash Games
Jacob Correia & John Say from Say Design

The focus of the presentation was on Flash game development, but Jacob's tips expand to other uses of Flash. His presentation and other related files are online.

Topics in the presentation include:

• - Choosing Frame Rate
• - Performance and Optimization
• - Preloaders
• - Bitmap Smoothing
• - JSFL (Javascript Flash)
• - 3rd Party Flash-to-.EXE tools

Jacob also will be posting a useful Frame Rate Counter Component (provides a numeric and graphic representation of the current Frame Rate of the SWF)

Sound Ideas
Craig Swann, Crash!Media

Amazingly awesome presentation on using sound with Flash. Unforunately I didn't get a chance to speak with Craig because he had to leave immediately when his presentation ended at 5pm so he could haul ass to JFK airport to make a 7:30 flight to Barcelona for a wedding. I'm glad he kept his commitment to Flash Foward. Rather than explain here, just check out his files and presentation notes.

Then came the free (as in beer) hors d'oeuvres and alcohol. Yea for sponsors who know how to please.

For more information on Day 1 of the conference, be sure to check out Michael Raichelson's podcast.

Additional Wrap-Ups:

• - FlashForward 2005 NYC, Day 2

• - FlashForward 2005 NYC, Day 3

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