Adobe Flash API ported to Dart

[gauravk92]

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.

[Jimmie]

>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.

[esbwhat]

I've never used it, but jangaroo seems promising

http://www.jangaroo.net/home/

Example:

http://www.jangaroo.net/files/examples/flash/open-flash-char...

[andrewfelix]

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.

[frenchfries]

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.

[bp74]

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

Source: 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.

[wwweston]

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.

[DanielRibeiro]

Easeljs does this pretty well, but in pure js:

http://easeljs.com/

[joneil]

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.

[esbwhat]

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

[noduerme]

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...

[TazeTSchnitzel]

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]

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.

[89a]

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

[novalis]

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.

[andrewfelix]

What's lazy about Flash development?