Albertx blog

As you could remember RSA, the Security Division of EMC Corporation suffered a security attack last month. It’s completely ironic because one of the RSA jobs is to prevent these kind of information security attacks.

If you want to know the details there is a lot of information on Internet

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/1528805/RSA-breached-in-APT-attack-SecureID-info-stolen

http://www.rsa.com/node.aspx?id=3872

You can just Google it and you’ll find hundreds of articles and posts related to this incident.

In this post I will focused on the role of the Flash Platform in this incident.
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La próxima semana, en los días 29 y 30 de Octubre de 2010, comenzará un extraordinario evento llamado “Latin Flash Tour”. Será la segunda ocasión que se realiza este evento teniendo por objetivo visitar diferentes paises de América latina mostrando las capacidades, funcionalidades y mejores aplicaciones de la plataforma Flash.
Este año el evento comenzará en la ciudad de México y finalizará en Río de Janeiro Brasil, pasando por Bogotá, Lima, Santiago y Buenos Aires.
El evento será de gran calidad y comenzará en la Universidad Iberoamericana con conferencias impartidas por Grant Garrett (Influxis), Jerry Chabolla (Influxis), Enrique Duvos (Adobe) y Lee Brimelow (Adobe).
Serán dos días intensos de conferencias y talleres que no se pueden perder.La página principal del evento es http://www.latinflashtour.com/ y el site del evento en la ciudad de México es http://www.latinflashtour.com.mx donde también pueden entcontrar la agenda de los días 29 y 30 de Oct y el registro.
Los temas de las conferencias y talleres son muy diversos y van desde Ilustración con Flash y Plataforma Flash para Diseñadores hasta AS3 en iPhone para Diseñadores Flash y Experiencias Multitouch pasando por FX con Flash y After Effects, APIs Sociales para Flash y muchos, muchos temas más.No se lo pierdan.

This article shows how you can configure Adobe Flash and Flash Builder to work in a project. Let’s start.
I created this post ’cause I love the programming tool of Flash Builder but there are projects that need to be created mainly in Flash. So, following these steps you will be able to have all the coding advantages of the Eclipse platform and still use Flash for the visual part of the project.

1) Removing the Build Automatically option in Flash Builder: First open Adobe Flash Builder and before create any project or anything just remove the Build Automatically option located under Project -> Build Automatically. This will avoid Flash Builder to compile the code every time you save a file.
2) Create an ActionScript project in Flash Builder: Let me tell you that the project structure created by Flash Builder is very useful so we’ll try to keep it. Select File -> New… -> ActionScript project. Chose a name for the project and the location, just remember that this will be the location where all the files, including FLA and asset files, will be stored.Click Next and here we will change two fields. First, for the “main source folder” we will type src/classes and for the “output folder” it will be deploy. These two changes will help us with the Flash / Flash Builder project.You can now click Finish.


3) Change the super class of the main class to be MovieClip: This is because we’ll use this main class as the Document Class in the Flash file and if you don’t change the super class to MovieClip yo won’t be able to invoke methods like gotoAndPlay, gotoAndStop, nextFrame, stop, etc. If you don’t need to invoke this kind of methods you can leave Sprite as the super class.

package{import flash.display.MovieClip;public class MyApplication extends MovieClip{public function MyApplication(){}}}

4) Create the Fla file in Adobe Flash and place it in the right location: Open Adobe Flash, create a new Flash file and save the file under a folder named /flas that has to be at the same level of the folder named /classes. This folder is, remember, in the Flash Builder project.Once you save the file, change the publish settings in Flash and for the exported swf point to the folder named /deploy that is two levels up the folder where the fla file is stored.Export the swf, refresh the Flash Project Folders in Flash Builder and see if your project looks like this.


5) Set up the classpath in Flash and set the main class of the Flash Builder project to be the Document Class in the Flash File: Go to Publish settings in Flash, in the Flash tab locate the “Settings…” button under the script section. Once there, set the source path to be ../classes/ and then, in the field “Document Class” type the name of the class generated by Flash Builder.

6) Final steps… Run, Debug and Profile configurations in Flash Builder: Go back to Flash Builder an press the little black arrow located just next to the Run button, yes the one that seems like a music stand play button. Select Run configurations… and then we just have to change the files that Flash Builder will run when we press the Run, Debug and Profile buttons. Locate Web Application in the left side, select it and the press the “New launch Configuration…” button located in the top side of that panel. Then type any name for the configuration and the most important step is to change the files that Flash Builder will launch. We do this unchecking the option “Use defaults” in the “URL or path to launch” section and, for the new names, we’ll just change the name of the file, not all the location. We have to point to the html or swf generated by Adobe Flash located in the same folder name /deploy. We have to change the 3 fields (one per action). If we do this step right, when we press “Run”, Flash Builder will launch the files generated and compiled by Adobe Flash.
7) Enable the debug mode in the fla file: If you try to debug or profile the swf file from Flash Builder after doing the previous step, you’ll notice a message saying that the swf file was not compiled for debugging. That’s true. Unlike Flash Builder, swf files generated by Adobe Flash are not for debugging by default. If we want to enable them for debugging we have to go to publish settings, once again in Adobe Flash, and in the Flash tab just enable the option “Permit Debugging”. Recompile the swf file from Flash and try to debug the Flash Builder project. You will get no errors now. Just, DON’T FORGET TO UNCHECK THE OPTION PERMIT DEBUGGING when you deploy the final project.

Unfortunately we don’t have a way to compile a fla file to a swf without Adobe Flash so, anytime you want to compile the project you have to switch back to Adobe Flash and press Ctrl + Enter to export the swf. The advantage here is that you can code in Flash Builder and use all the features it has. The main class in Flash Builder is the Document Class in the Fla file so you can control everything from that class. Also yo can create more classes and packages all from Flash Builder. Actually you will use Flash for compiling and for adding visual information with the Flash tools.
Enjoy the article and see you soon.

If you use to create Flex Apps I’m almost sure you profile your applications with Flex Builder or with another tool related to. This time I’ll talk about profiling applications.
Profiling an application means to inspect the elements that your application is running, how much memory you application is consuming, how many instances of each class your application is executing and more information. You can compare memory snapshots of the same application but in different execution time, etc.
You can profile with Flex Builder any application generated as swf file, this includes Flex Applications, Flash Applications/Web sites/animations and any swf created with any tool that has the capability to export the project as swf file.
Before you profile an application you must ensure that the swf file has been compiled with debugging capabilities. Flex does this job for you every time you run, debug or profile your application from Flex Builder, but in Flash this doesn’t happen. You must explicitly tell Flash that your swf must be compiled for debugging. You can do this from the publish settings panel. In the flash tab you have a checkbox unselected by default which says “Permit debugging” and you must turn it on.

When you turn on this option your application will be compiled with the compiler argument “debug=true”. (You can also compile your application directly with that compile argument if you have a Flash Compiler). The compiler will embed to the swf file information needed for debugging the application, also it will try to connect the application by socket to a socket server when it starts. Flex Builder starts up that socket server when you profile or debug a swf file from Flex Builder with the green buttons in the toolbar, so, as you can imagine, you should first start up the server and then execute the swf file.
From Flex builder you have to profile an external application. You will find this option in the Menu bar – Profile – Profile External Application. This will launch a pop up window that will ask you for the swf file of the application you want to profile. You also have the option to just prepare Flex Builder for profiling and let it wait for the application to execute and connect to Flex Builder (for this you have to choose “Launch the application manually outside Flex Builder”). I will emphasize the first option which profiles directly the selected application. In this window you can browse for the swf file compiled previously in Flash or Flex with the debug option and then you just launch the profiling process and that’s all.


Don’t forget to turn off the “Permit debug” option from Flash or clear the “debug” compile argument in production mode because someone could debug you application remotely from his computer.
Enjoy it.