This is not Flash related but I had to post something about as I’m really annoyed. I’m now working all the time on Mac, I believe I couldn’t bear anymore spywares and other Windows annoyances.

Anyway, I’m almost fine on the Mac but there’s one thing I can’t understand is that they didn’t implement a “merge folders” capability when you copy and paste something. On a Mac, if you copy a source folder containing folder and files to paste it to a target folder, if you choose replace, the content of the folders will disappear and be replaced by the source. meaning if you have files on the folder target that doesn’t exist in the source folder, they will just disappear. On Windows, it asks you if you want to overwrite or not because anyway, it is always going to merge.

I could use the Unix command ditto and the terminal, but wow, how is it possible something as simple as that is not implemented? People from windows will know what I’m talking about. Actually, there’s a lot people complaining and tons of app that does the job.

So I tried to find a simple and quick app, which actually wasn’t really easy as they all want to merge the content of the files. I don’t want to do that at all, that’s more a code matter to merge the content of a file. I found 2 or 3 that does the job but kind of heavy for such a common task, I want to do that as quickly as I could do on windows.

The best I found is: Merge Folders

You select the source, the target, if you want to overwrite and that’s it. Perfect? Almost…

My problem was mostly related to SVN, copy file from local copy to other local copy, or whatever. This app would have been perfect if I could choose “include hidden files, yes or not”.

So I need first to export a package not to have the hidden folders .svn and then merge my exported copy to a repo or local copy. That’s ok but again, on a Mac, things are not that easy when it comes to development, maybe I passed too much time on Windows? I’m sorry but Windows and tortoiseSVN is kind of wonderful compare to a what I get on the Mac. So as I can’t make an export with the “SVN-finder-integrated” (scplugin), I use mostly SynchroSVN, great but still a lot slower than on Windows. When you have some delicate actions to make like merging branches, tortoiseSVN on Windows is really great.

I’m sure some of you have the same problem, what are you solutions? What do you use? Is there something simple and quick that I missed?

Romu

Flash Switcher Firefox extension allows you to easily switch from one flash player version to another. It works great but unfortunately only after some tweaking. Flash Switcher still works with the last Firefox version, at the time I’m talking (Firefox 3.5).

There are already some posts about Vista and Flash Switcher, to solve some bugs that are related to folders permissions. I had some trouble to find the folders on Mac and as I still see people asking how to make it work, I’m going to tell you the paths and what to do on Vista and Mac.

First you can install Flash Switcher there:
http://www.sephiroth.it/firefox/flash_switcher/

Restart Firefox.

You need to change the permissions on some folders before you start using it. On the following folders, right click + get info on Mac and right click + properties on windows, and give full access. Your paths will be different, those ones contains my user name and generated Firefox profile string, but you’ll find out.

Vista

Plugin path:
C:\Windows\System32\Macromed

Firefox Plugin path:
C:\Users\romuald\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\squnf11y.default\extensions\flash_switcher@sephiroth.it\plugins\win

Mac

Plugin path:
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins

Firefox Plugin path:
/Users/romuald/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/9ly9womf.default/extensions/flash_switcher@sephiroth.it/plugins/mac

Once done, click on the Flash Switcher icon in the status bar. Save your current Flash Player (or it will be removed the first time you use it, I don’t know why), by selecting it and click on “save as”.

Now it should just work, at least that’s what I’ve done this morning and it is working for me. You should get a javascript alert saying “ok, the new plugin has been installed”, or something similar. And if you still get an error, it is probably still the paths permissions, try to re-apply the permissions (I had to do it twice, don’t ask me why).

To get more players in the list, just uninstall and install other versions, or you can get the plugins files straight from there:

Archive Flash Players

Hope it helps.

Hi everyone,

As I’m close to release Soma v2 (AS3 MVC Framework) and SomaUI v2 (application to generate actionscript source code and deploy files based on Soma), I’d like to share an earlier version with some beta-testers who are interested to help me debug both the framework and the generator.

Mac and Windows available, I didn’t have time to make the Linux one. The generator is in a beta state but the framework and code generated are pretty stable as it has been already used many times in real projects.

I will not send it to everyone, or I will not have time to manage this properly (depending of the feedback), sorry about that.

You can drop me an email from this blog to ask me. Please, participate only to give me a hand and by helping me with your feedback and bug reports. I can provide support, depending of my time if you wish to use it for real projects. For the curious, just be patient, the release will available very soon

Thanks and, happy development!

I found a nice actionscript search engine:

http://www.hexosearch.com/

It looks like a beta for now, but I like the concept. Basically you can register your blog so the search engine will easily find actionscript talks. You can even choose AS2, AS3 or Flex.

Worth trying

By the way, if some of you want a bit more (direct) news about my work, and probably Soma, I’m trying to tweet a bit!

http://twitter.com/soundstep