Flash can be so much fun!

in the beginning I was never that enthousiastic about flash... It was just a cool gizmo to make a simple animation and just use that on top of a website to make it look more animated. Where most important websites are becoming more database driven, and server side scripting is the key feature to make it happen flash was simply not so 'important' anymore. Until I discovered the later versions of flash (mx) and flash 8. While our company has a license of it, and we really don't do that much in flash though (we have it because the complete dreamweaver studio was purchased) I started to screw around a little bit more in flash then I use to have.

My previous experience with Flash...
in the past I did something in flash. It was a flash template in first, and I had to add all kinds of new pages to them. It animated a lot and there was a lot of content on those things. The cool thing I did find was using masked layers in combination with Motion tweening. With that I could establish a couple of cool effects. But the thing was, if it came to 'maintenance' of that big project (over 30Mb in total Fla file size) it was a major drag to do so...

My new experience with Flash...
Since I have become aware of some stuff you can do with php combined with Flash, and also xml streaming with flash, a whole new world has opened for me. I first started a portal site with 100 flash, driven by a small mysql connection script to gain access to something like an phpbb kind of site. This worked pretty well, and the fun part of it would be... posting on a forum changes the portal site to.

My newest experience with Flash...
Since the portal I built was more an 'eye candy' thing, with minor 'scripting' thingy I became curious what will happen if I would dig a little bit more into flash and more something really 'difficult' and still let it be cool...

Here are some issues I wanted to solve with my new flash project:
flash files can become really big when you have like tons of different animations going on at the same time, use alot of pictures etc. My first idea to solve this piece of the puzzle was going for a multiple layer setup. Were there is the main movie, that is the main drive of the page. Loading up different movies in additional layers. Also, add a database layer into it so it can connect multiple databases etc, using one componment and then let it be reused.

So.. in short, the idea visually would look something like this:


The thing I am currently building is a complete BF1942 stats page which is partially compatible with Selectbf project that was made in java. Since I made a lot of modifications in the selectbf project, it isnt an option just to park it on top. I made a couple of modifications if it comes to 'how to track persons', it is now almost fully cabable of tracking teamdeath match, and I remade the cache system because the old cache system contained to much inconsistency errors.

Since this thing was already up and running in html form, I decided to use the above mentioned technique (using different layers in flash) to make a new stats page. And the current results are kinda like.. Wow :D

Anyways. I have just started this project, and it is still a little 'baby' project. There are so many things I still need to add, but the fundemental basics are already there and the kernel of it is alive and kicking.



Cheers!
Hydlide

Another parlement has fallen.. time to write down thoughts

While, watching the dutch news. About the fall of the dutch parlement that just happened this evening.

for those who doent know, the dutch parlement was comming into crisis while having a big depate about immegration issues and such. When a certain faction within the parlement wanted to vote to get rid of the person leading the immegration issues. This resulted into a crisis because the other factions in the parlement supported her judgement.

Anyways, with having seeing the news, the recent debates on this topic. I have not more to add then it was the 'D66' faction wanted to give a final blow into the parlement. In fact, D66 (a democraty party within the parlement) was the smallest faction of the current parlement. And they did not have that many breathing room. So, my thought would be, they needed something to be pissed of about and give the final blow.

personally, I don't get it why they waited this long. I mean the 'negative' vibes have been going on for quite some times now. first a political dispute about sending troops to afghanistan (where the D66 was against at). And then this part about some issue with a person that didnt have the legal papers and lied about here 'dutch rights'.

Anyways, seeing all the interviews, comments etc. This was about to happen anyways. With a small faction having like less influence in the parlement and they just wanted to show their teath. Like "we can be big.. and we can blow up the parlement". Well... Congrats. In fact they did. Even while they wanted the minister of immigration to resign.. but they knew in their back of their heads the parlement would back up the minister. So.. In short... Its a small bug in the system that made the parlement collaps.

And i short, I hope this faction (D66) will vanish from the boards after the next election.

Visual Foxpro Vs Php

Just a site note, in this blog I am refering to "a company", but I will not post the name of this company .

In the past I have done a lot of database driven stuff concirning websites and the thing is, I never gotton around to actually learn php orsomething like that. Where most websites that I made were database driven etc, and the company where I worked at was only using VFP (abbreviation for Visual Foxpro) for the main database engines there was not another alternative just to use it, and swollow it.

The thing I never got was, why VFP? I knew there are a couple of different programming languages out there to serve webpages. Heck, php was even build for that single purpose in my opinion. There are just a few remarks why this company didn't want to use php in the first place... And after doing some testing etc.. I think most of the remarks are in my point of view utter "bull".

VFP is an executable and therefor faster?!

Yeah, right... Tell that to someone who has experience in assembly language (... and lucky me... I have that ;))

This basic remark was underbuild by the fact that php is a scripting language, and therefor (at least their logic) slower. And I have to disagree with this statement totally. Because first of all, VFP itself uses a on the fly compiler as does php. Only major difference is PHP is a text file, VFP is a scrambled "text file" where functions are simply replaced by single characters.

Another thing why VFP is, according to me, using a on the fly compiler is the 'macro substitution'.

Something like:

cstring = "select * from table into cursor"
&cstring

would be executed as a single command. Therefor, it must compile (or interpretate even worse.. QBasic? Anyone) this piece within cstring on the fly. Else it could not be used for further processing.

I still want to run a series of tests just to see which of the two, VFP or PHP, are faster. But then again... I think they would almost have the same processing speed.

VFP's database is more powerfull then mySQL?!

Ok, now there is a statement that I never got. The real fun part about VFP and its 'SQL' clone is that it allows you to use VFP functions inside of a database querry. That is one part that is 'most likely', because it would be just stupid to have a programming language with a whole different set of functions to use in database querries. But that doesn't make the database itself powerfull...

Infact, I believe the DBase based database system of VFP is pretty bad. It has its flaws from the start of Clipper and CA's Visual Objects. And the same things always happen over and over again. Corrupted indexes over networking application and corrupted 'memofields'...

In my experience with MySQL, I have not yet seen any kinds of miss behaviour if it comes to wrong indexes or memofields (text).

Ow, and here's just another thing I just thought of... In VFP it allows you to use 'trim' function in an Index?! Ehr, how stupid is that. It just screws up the index. Also it doesnt add up to use trim functions in an index because that is just simply against the fundements of an index in the first place.

Last but not least, the performance. And I laughed about this. According to "them", VFP is faster then MySQL because MySQL is a Database Management System. And VFP uses a 'powerfull' thing as "Rushmore".

First off all, in my experience Rushmore technology is simply based on 'cashing' the indexes and data when a querry is being used. Therefor the first time a querry has been send, the responds of the database will be slower then the second time using the same querry. MySQL has a similar engine like that.

Second of all, I have made huge databases using MySQL and VFP. And VFP can't compete with the performance of a MySQL database. Heck, I can querry a 1.6GB large database and get the results in 5 seconds while this cannot be done with VFP...

Lets make an end to this story

As you might know, it makes me even frustrated while I am typing this. Because in the last 4 years I have tied myself to VFP and I am feeling very depressed about it. Since I have left that single company, I have started my quest to learn more about php and mysql. And the thing is, the more I learn about it. The more I am loving it.

There, I just wanted to get that of my chest... and it feels good!

Signing of, Hydlide