6 ms·

Adobe Flash API ported to Dart

62 points by cnp 14y ago

arcos 14y ago
To quote the great Crockford: this is insanely stupid code
noduerme 14y ago
This is a nice project, but I think it's a stretch to call it a port of the Flash API. At this point, HaXe+Jeash is a much more complete framework for bringing AS3 code to JS, and makes it pretty easy to port relatively simple projects. The framerate here is impressive and it seems this could be a good alternative to Jeash down the road. Still there's a lot more work to be done here (not least, flash.net.*) and having to rewrite core code in Dart is more labor intensive than porting into HaXe...
gauravk92 14y ago
AS3 -> Dart -> JS, a bit much don't you think? I'm not sure who is trying to use a web stack three levels deep and dart based no less. I'm skeptical of how long dart is going to last at google, but this is definitely an impressive piece of work regardless. If it was AS3 -> JS and worked as well as it does now, i feel the web would collectively lose its shit. Unfortunately though this is tied to google, and i don't think many people want to be stuck being supported solely by google anymore.
- frenchfries 14y ago
  agreed. Dart even though it has some awesome features, is still a technology preview, so I also wonder when it will be "stable" (some apis aren't "finished" yet) and it's a Google only thing. On the project's github page, you can read "The problem with JavaScript is that it sucks." ... JavaScript sucks if you don't know how it works, just like another language ... and what's the point of writting this when Dart itself compiles to JavaScript (who the fuck uses Dartium as their primary browser), finally the demo throws 18 errors ... fail.
  - detst 14y ago
    > so I also wonder when it will be "stable" It should be out of technology preview later this year. > JavaScript sucks if you don't know how it works It's possible to understand JS and want better. I think the people behind V8 and Dart know how JS works. > what's the point of writting this when Dart itself compiles to JavaScript What's the point of writing anything in any language? The Dart VM will be included with Chrome and other browsers are free to include one, too; Dart->JS is for browsers that don't and the goal is that it'll perform similar to hand-written JS. > who the fuck uses Dartium as their primary browser Nobody. It's for development until the Dart VM is included with Chrome.
    - cnp 14y ago
      Exactly -- that's why this is exciting, particularly the Flash / interactive part. The authors have done a very good job with what they have to work with, with the assumption that they're only working with a preview and that the primary medium will be a VM with a JS fallback. The performance, all said, is very, very good.
  - novalis 14y ago
    "finally the demo throws 18 errors ... fail." I just runned it on FireFox and Chrome, and it didn't have a single error, you running the demo on what browser ? Did you even run the demo ? This is a good start for anyone wanting to learn what Dartium is: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/google-has-released-dartium-a-chromium-build-with-a-dart-vm/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/google-has-released-... Stay happy.
- andrewfelix 14y ago
  Agreed. I would be inclined to invest my energy in a new platform that was built for HTML5 from the get go. This might be useful as stop-gap. But I would hate to bug-test anything built using this method.
  - mxxx 14y ago
    think of all the AS3 developers starting to feel left out in the cold now that Adobe's walking away from Flash. while i'd agree that now's probably the time to jump into JS and HTML5, some people think Dart has a future, and I guess this opens up its potential market.
    - novalis 14y ago
      Adobe is walking away from the mobile player but still has Air out in the wild wich produces a lot of good chart topping titles on the Android and iOS app stores. In my opinion, it is better to pick up Haxe if someone is coming from AS3. You can use javascript for the HTML5 compile target, you get extended Mr. Doob three.js support provided by the author himself, node.js through the Noxe Lib extends, and much more. And that is just for the HTML5 target. It even target compiles to Android and iOS through the Haxe NME framework. They are adding Java support to the thing and it has been doing c++ and php for some years. There are no silly ";" fights and honestly it is good to be able to use the same code source to run on multiple plats. Though Dart may well pick up and Easel is already becoming a thing.
- Jimmie 14y ago
  >AS3 -> Dart -> JS, a bit much don't you think? That's not what this is. The API has been ported, they haven't written a AS3 -> Dart compiler.
  - emillon 14y ago
    Still, it's an indirection because AS3 primitives are not Dart primitives.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- esbwhat 14y ago
  I've never used it, but jangaroo seems promising http://www.jangaroo.net/home/ http://www.jangaroo.net/home/ Example: http://www.jangaroo.net/files/examples/flash/open-flash-chart/data-files/joo.html http://www.jangaroo.net/files/examples/flash/open-flash-char...
DanielRibeiro 14y ago
Easeljs does this pretty well, but in pure js: http://easeljs.com/ http://easeljs.com/
- joneil 14y ago
  Haxe (www.haxe.org) also has ported a decent subset of the API, and can simultaneously target Flash, JS and C++ (native). Not sure about who has better coverage of the full API.
  - novalis 14y ago
    Just to add; and through the Haxe NME framework it compiles to Android and iOS targets.
  - chipsy 14y ago
    Haxe itself is pretty solid and is gaining steam almost every day now. NME is not as easily recommended. It has very high coverage, and it's shipped a few products as demonstrated in the showcase, but the build process still shows immaturity; the Flash target is wonderfully consistent, but other targets remain pretty fragile. The general trend is "better with time" though.
  - phn 14y ago
    Haxe is nice, but it is still not as transparent as one could hope. The differences in the way its various targets work make this understandable. Still, it still isn't "code once, run everywhere". The main problem seems to be flash is really directed to pixel/bitmap manipulation. While on cpp/OpenGL that is extremely slow, and you have to use something like a Vertex Buffer Object. The end result is that you probably will still have to keep two (at least) separate rendering paths if you want to support all targets. That being said, the fact that the mobile platforms (android and iOS) are the same target (cpp), together with desktop (osx, linux and windows) makes it a very nice platform for developing a game. IMO the html5 target is the weakest link at this point.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
wwweston 14y ago
Makes sense; Dart is a closer heir to Flash/AS3 and Java than it is to JavaScript, and there's still a lot of people out there with Flash skills who're experienced building RIAs. It's a fairly natural place for them to go.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
bp74 14y ago
Thanks for sharing the link! I'm the author of the library and the demos. It's great to see some positive feedback. You can also check out some samples (i like the mask sample most): Samples: http://www.dartflash.com http://www.dartflash.com Source: https://github.com/bp74/dartflash/tree/master/samples https://github.com/bp74/dartflash/tree/master/samples Some words about the Dart language. It's great to work with this new langauge and much more fun compared to javascript which is a pain when you come from the ActionScript/Java/C# world. In Dart you feel at home right from the start. Google is very much committed to the project and we will see pretty amazing things in the future. Of course the Chrome browser (Desktop and Android) will support the Dart VM in the future. The dart2js compiler allready works great and has improved a lot over the last weeks.
TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
I'm not a big fan of Dart. From what I've seen, Dart code is far more ugly than JS or AS3, and it produces absolutely massive JS output.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  Agreed, JavaScript can have its quirks, but at least you don't need to read tons of generated code underneath, when trying to debug code.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    Yeah. Thing with Dart is that its goals seem misleading. Google's complaints don't seem to be anything to do with faults of JavaScript, more the fact it isn't like languages they know. They want it to be C or Java, essentially. JS has flaws, of course, but reacting by trying to make a completely different paradigm language that compiles to it seems a bit of an overreaction.
  - bp74 14y ago
    Well, you should see it from another point of view. You write and debug(!) your application in Dart, later you compile it to JavaScript. The dart2js team tries very hard to generate code that runs just like the Dart code does in the VM. Look at the JS-code like the binary code you get from a c++ compiler. There are hardly any people debuging the generated machine code in c++ right? I have allready written tons of Dart code, and i have to admit there were a few issues with the JS-code regarding cross browser compatibilty (btw. it is easy to read the generated js-code). Those issues were problems in the dart2js compiler because it's a alpha-version right now. The dart2js team fixed all those bugs. As soon as the compiler will finally ship we will rely on the generated output - no need to debug "assembly language".
    - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
      That's not my gripe with Dart's JS output. It's just that Dart is so different from JavaScript and has so many thick layers of abstraction that tiny programs can have thousands of lines of JS outputted, a lot coming from having to include Dart's own standard libraries.
esbwhat 14y ago
The example game keeps crashing for me after playing a bit in Firefox. if you want to code html5 flash, I hear another alternative is jangaroo
89a 14y ago
Just what we need, a way for Flash developers to be even more lazy.
- andrewfelix 14y ago
  What's lazy about Flash development?
  - cnp 14y ago
    Yeah, please elaborate?
- novalis 14y ago
  If only they were all a bit more like you, so productive with your dead on zing commentary. And by "on" I meant "beat". We can only dream.

62 points by cnp 14y ago

arcos 14y ago

To quote the great Crockford: this is insanely stupid code

This is a nice project, but I think it's a stretch to call it a port of the Flash API. At this point, HaXe+Jeash is a much more complete framework for bringing AS3 code to JS, and makes it pretty easy to port relatively simple projects. The framerate here is impressive and it seems this could be a good alternative to Jeash down the road. Still there's a lot more work to be done here (not least, flash.net.*) and having to rewrite core code in Dart is more labor intensive than porting into HaXe...

gauravk92 14y ago

AS3 -> Dart -> JS, a bit much don't you think? I'm not sure who is trying to use a web stack three levels deep and dart based no less. I'm skeptical of how long dart is going to last at google, but this is definitely an impressive piece of work regardless. If it was AS3 -> JS and worked as well as it does now, i feel the web would collectively lose its shit. Unfortunately though this is tied to google, and i don't think many people want to be stuck being supported solely by google anymore.

frenchfries 14y ago
agreed. Dart even though it has some awesome features, is still a technology preview, so I also wonder when it will be "stable" (some apis aren't "finished" yet) and it's a Google only thing. On the project's github page, you can read "The problem with JavaScript is that it sucks." ... JavaScript sucks if you don't know how it works, just like another language ... and what's the point of writting this when Dart itself compiles to JavaScript (who the fuck uses Dartium as their primary browser), finally the demo throws 18 errors ... fail.
- detst 14y ago
  > so I also wonder when it will be "stable" It should be out of technology preview later this year. > JavaScript sucks if you don't know how it works It's possible to understand JS and want better. I think the people behind V8 and Dart know how JS works. > what's the point of writting this when Dart itself compiles to JavaScript What's the point of writing anything in any language? The Dart VM will be included with Chrome and other browsers are free to include one, too; Dart->JS is for browsers that don't and the goal is that it'll perform similar to hand-written JS. > who the fuck uses Dartium as their primary browser Nobody. It's for development until the Dart VM is included with Chrome.
  - cnp 14y ago
    Exactly -- that's why this is exciting, particularly the Flash / interactive part. The authors have done a very good job with what they have to work with, with the assumption that they're only working with a preview and that the primary medium will be a VM with a JS fallback. The performance, all said, is very, very good.
- novalis 14y ago
  "finally the demo throws 18 errors ... fail." I just runned it on FireFox and Chrome, and it didn't have a single error, you running the demo on what browser ? Did you even run the demo ? This is a good start for anyone wanting to learn what Dartium is: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/google-has-released-dartium-a-chromium-build-with-a-dart-vm/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/google-has-released-... Stay happy.
andrewfelix 14y ago
Agreed. I would be inclined to invest my energy in a new platform that was built for HTML5 from the get go. This might be useful as stop-gap. But I would hate to bug-test anything built using this method.
- mxxx 14y ago
  think of all the AS3 developers starting to feel left out in the cold now that Adobe's walking away from Flash. while i'd agree that now's probably the time to jump into JS and HTML5, some people think Dart has a future, and I guess this opens up its potential market.
  - novalis 14y ago
    Adobe is walking away from the mobile player but still has Air out in the wild wich produces a lot of good chart topping titles on the Android and iOS app stores. In my opinion, it is better to pick up Haxe if someone is coming from AS3. You can use javascript for the HTML5 compile target, you get extended Mr. Doob three.js support provided by the author himself, node.js through the Noxe Lib extends, and much more. And that is just for the HTML5 target. It even target compiles to Android and iOS through the Haxe NME framework. They are adding Java support to the thing and it has been doing c++ and php for some years. There are no silly ";" fights and honestly it is good to be able to use the same code source to run on multiple plats. Though Dart may well pick up and Easel is already becoming a thing.
Jimmie 14y ago
>AS3 -> Dart -> JS, a bit much don't you think? That's not what this is. The API has been ported, they haven't written a AS3 -> Dart compiler.
- emillon 14y ago
  Still, it's an indirection because AS3 primitives are not Dart primitives.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
esbwhat 14y ago
I've never used it, but jangaroo seems promising http://www.jangaroo.net/home/ http://www.jangaroo.net/home/ Example: http://www.jangaroo.net/files/examples/flash/open-flash-chart/data-files/joo.html http://www.jangaroo.net/files/examples/flash/open-flash-char...

DanielRibeiro 14y ago

Easeljs does this pretty well, but in pure js: http://easeljs.com/ http://easeljs.com/

joneil 14y ago
Haxe (www.haxe.org) also has ported a decent subset of the API, and can simultaneously target Flash, JS and C++ (native). Not sure about who has better coverage of the full API.
- novalis 14y ago
  Just to add; and through the Haxe NME framework it compiles to Android and iOS targets.
- chipsy 14y ago
  Haxe itself is pretty solid and is gaining steam almost every day now. NME is not as easily recommended. It has very high coverage, and it's shipped a few products as demonstrated in the showcase, but the build process still shows immaturity; the Flash target is wonderfully consistent, but other targets remain pretty fragile. The general trend is "better with time" though.
- phn 14y ago
  Haxe is nice, but it is still not as transparent as one could hope. The differences in the way its various targets work make this understandable. Still, it still isn't "code once, run everywhere". The main problem seems to be flash is really directed to pixel/bitmap manipulation. While on cpp/OpenGL that is extremely slow, and you have to use something like a Vertex Buffer Object. The end result is that you probably will still have to keep two (at least) separate rendering paths if you want to support all targets. That being said, the fact that the mobile platforms (android and iOS) are the same target (cpp), together with desktop (osx, linux and windows) makes it a very nice platform for developing a game. IMO the html5 target is the weakest link at this point.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

wwweston 14y ago

Makes sense; Dart is a closer heir to Flash/AS3 and Java than it is to JavaScript, and there's still a lot of people out there with Flash skills who're experienced building RIAs. It's a fairly natural place for them to go.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

bp74 14y ago

Thanks for sharing the link! I'm the author of the library and the demos. It's great to see some positive feedback. You can also check out some samples (i like the mask sample most): Samples: http://www.dartflash.com http://www.dartflash.com Source: https://github.com/bp74/dartflash/tree/master/samples https://github.com/bp74/dartflash/tree/master/samples Some words about the Dart language. It's great to work with this new langauge and much more fun compared to javascript which is a pain when you come from the ActionScript/Java/C# world. In Dart you feel at home right from the start. Google is very much committed to the project and we will see pretty amazing things in the future. Of course the Chrome browser (Desktop and Android) will support the Dart VM in the future. The dart2js compiler allready works great and has improved a lot over the last weeks.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago

I'm not a big fan of Dart. From what I've seen, Dart code is far more ugly than JS or AS3, and it produces absolutely massive JS output.

pjmlp 14y ago
Agreed, JavaScript can have its quirks, but at least you don't need to read tons of generated code underneath, when trying to debug code.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Yeah. Thing with Dart is that its goals seem misleading. Google's complaints don't seem to be anything to do with faults of JavaScript, more the fact it isn't like languages they know. They want it to be C or Java, essentially. JS has flaws, of course, but reacting by trying to make a completely different paradigm language that compiles to it seems a bit of an overreaction.
- bp74 14y ago
  Well, you should see it from another point of view. You write and debug(!) your application in Dart, later you compile it to JavaScript. The dart2js team tries very hard to generate code that runs just like the Dart code does in the VM. Look at the JS-code like the binary code you get from a c++ compiler. There are hardly any people debuging the generated machine code in c++ right? I have allready written tons of Dart code, and i have to admit there were a few issues with the JS-code regarding cross browser compatibilty (btw. it is easy to read the generated js-code). Those issues were problems in the dart2js compiler because it's a alpha-version right now. The dart2js team fixed all those bugs. As soon as the compiler will finally ship we will rely on the generated output - no need to debug "assembly language".
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    That's not my gripe with Dart's JS output. It's just that Dart is so different from JavaScript and has so many thick layers of abstraction that tiny programs can have thousands of lines of JS outputted, a lot coming from having to include Dart's own standard libraries.

esbwhat 14y ago

The example game keeps crashing for me after playing a bit in Firefox. if you want to code html5 flash, I hear another alternative is jangaroo

89a 14y ago

Just what we need, a way for Flash developers to be even more lazy.

andrewfelix 14y ago
What's lazy about Flash development?
- cnp 14y ago
  Yeah, please elaborate?
novalis 14y ago
If only they were all a bit more like you, so productive with your dead on zing commentary. And by "on" I meant "beat". We can only dream.