Hi Erik, On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Erik de Bruin <e...@ixsoftware.nl> wrote:
> Hi. > > With the FalconJS conversation mentioning Jangaroo repeatedly and > since I have no experience with that tool, some questions: > > 1) how does Jangaroo integrate with Flash Builder, allowing for > development of the AS project in that tool? > I personally do not have any experience with Flash Builder. We use IntelliJ IDEA 11 very successfully and have created an IDEA plugin<https://github.com/CoreMedia/jangaroo-idea/wiki>that supports Jangaroo Maven project import (see below) and takes care of invoking the Jangaroo compiler for AS3 sources. I also experimented with FlashDevelop and have created a FlashDevelop project template for Jangaroo <https://github.com/fwienber/jooflash-fd-project>. It invokes the Jangaroo compiler externally through Maven. The trick for libraries is that instead of using SWC, they are JARs containing AS3 source stubs. In IDEA, using a JAR containing AS3 sources works out-of-the-box ("raw ActionScript library"), in FlashDevelop, Philippe Elsass had to add a little feature to support that. So you see we don't use ABC at all in the Jangaroo workflow. > > 2) does Jangaroo have a library of graphical user interface elements > that you can work with "on both sides of the fence" (AS and JS)? > > Almost. At CoreMedia, we use Jangaroo with Ext JS, for which there is no Flash counterpart. Starting as a pet project, I have re-implemented an essential part of the Flash API in ActionScript, using the browser DOM to render the DisplayList. The library is called JooFlash and is on Github<https://github.com/CoreMedia/jangaroo-libs/tree/master/jooflash>. I reverse engineered from the original Flash documentation, compared with "real" Flash and peeked into Lightspark and DartFlash to learn. On the Jangaroo Application page <http://www.jangaroo.net/applications/>, you find several examples of cross-compiled Flash applications, running with JooFlash. What's missing there is the Open Flash Chart demo<http://jangaron.net/ofc4/data-files/joo.html>, another pet project of mine (not OFC, but getting OFC to run with JooFlash). OH: "How many pet projects do you have?" -- "Never, never ask me that question again!" > 3) if the above questions were extremely silly, what is a 'normal' > Jangaroo workflow? > > Of course they are not, since this really was the main problem with getting productive with Jangaroo. We use Maven to build Jangaroo projects on the command line. There is also a direct command line interface and Ant tasks, but using Maven is the best choice for Jangaroo, because it is most convenient and supports modular builds. Once you have Maven installed, you just need a Jangaroo project with a POM, and Maven downloads and builds everything for you. Many developers were irritated by the fact that when using Maven, you do not have to download a Jangaroo SDK at all. Then we import the Maven POM into IntelliJ IDEA, where we have full IDE support for all ActionScript features (completion, navigation, usage search, refactoring, documentation lookup, you name it). For fast development turn-around, we compile from IDEA, taking advantage of the Jangaroo IDEA plugin, which only generates the debuggable version of the JavaScript code. A Jangaroo application can be loaded in debug mode<http://www.jangaroo.net/tutorial/debugging/>, so that classes a loaded a separate files, which works astonishingly well even for larger projects (we easily use 2000+ classes). IDEA triggers incremental compile, so that only changed classes are recompiled into the corresponding JS file, which only takes milliseconds. When reloading in the browser, your code changes are there. When "workflow" also includes which libraries we use, as said above, CoreMedias Jangaroo applications are based on Ext JS. Jangaroo's build process includes a mechanism to load dependent JavaScript libraries, and we created a tool to produce an ActionScript version of the Ext JS API<https://github.com/CoreMedia/jangaroo-tools/tree/master/exml/ext-as-api-generator>, naturally called Ext AS<https://github.com/CoreMedia/jangaroo-libs/tree/master/ext-as>. Like the Haxe guys, we do this for any JavaScript library used frequently, but it is not a requirement: you can also call JavaScript directly in an untyped fashion. Does that answer your question? Need any more details on a certain aspect? Feel free to ask! Greetings, -Frank-
