Joseph Labrecque

I fist tried Eclipse as a web development IDE a little over one year ago. At the time, I had mostly just stuck with Dreamweaver for all of my general web/PHP/ColdFusion needs. I had heard that the new version of Flex Builder was being built on Eclipse and figured to give it a shot.

I was severely disappointed initially- the IDE was slow, clunky, and configuration was a nightmare. Performing a quick uninstall and returning to Dreamweaver took all of 30 minutes. I tried installing again from time to time, but things were always the same. When JRE 6 was released, this did speed things up quite a bit and at that time I also discovered the Aptana project. Having a “web IDE” install like Aptana was pretty convenient, but I still remained solid with my regular development platform.

With the release of Flex Builder 2, I couldn’t help but use Eclipse more often for MXML editing and so became more familiar with it as a development IDE. I was still annoyed by some small things like no text drag and drop… file not associated with a project could not be opened… line numbering randomly turning itself off… but things were generally better the more experience gathered.

With the release of Eclipse 3.3 [Europa], I have to say that a lot of my misgivings have been taken care of. Not only can you now drag and drop text from line-to-line and edit files outside of the “Project” paradigm, but it is much more responsive as well. With an update of Aptana I notice that it now has an AIR plug to compile and deploy AIR apps built with HTML/JavaScript. I cannot help but wonder what a killer environment Aptana would be with MXML/AS3 support! That would be a serious development platform!

Same issues as with BitmapData.draw() and RTMP…

SecurityError: Error #2135: Security sandbox violation:
SoundMixer.computeSpectrum: RTMP content cannot be accessed using this API.

I hate to sound like a broken record… and I know there are probably some really good reasons for this- but there should be a way around this RTMP security restriction. Developers want to do all the great things with Flash Media Server as they are able to do with a simple transfer over HTTP. This includes byte-level access to our data streams! To cripple us in this way (however good-intentioned) is bad for Adobe, bad for developers, and bad for Flash as a platform.

We just need some way around this- I personally don’t care how many hoops I have to jump through. Let’s work something out and get this restriction taken care of!

Yesterday, I became so absolutely fed-up with the hosting provider I’ve had since 2002, PowWeb, that I decided to pack up and switch over to BlueHost. After a year of lousy customer service and even worse actual hosting services, it was time to call it quits. I still have some client sites with them, and will recommend they transfer as well once their contracts are up.

The primary reason for jumping ship was that, over the past few months, the database servers were slower than molasses during an arctic winter. This website is heavy on that end, of course, and at times it would take 30-60 seconds to load! That’s insane. On the new host it is instantaneous. I’ve noticed that static sites load a lot faster as well- even large photographs through Flash (FileReference) have a much higher delivery speed.

PowWeb was bought out by Endurance International last year and ever since then, things have been getting worse and worse. I feel a bit bad having to leave after so many years- but am very pleased with BlueHost so far. I heard lots of negative comments about the new owners during the takeover, but I like to be fair and give people the benefit of a doubt… bad choice, in this particular case.

Although the DNS propagation is ongoing, just about everything is in place. My ISP only has the updated DNS records for half of the domains- so I’m actually writing this update through VPN to my office machine.

Many thanks to those who recommended hosting providers after my initial rant. Very helpful information!