This weekend I spent much time on creating a Flash projector for a menu based installation of Office and other programs. The screenshot below explains better what I was trying to accomplish, when someone clicks on the button named Engelsk (Engelsk = English) I wanted setup.exe to launch with a transform file applied to it.

I spent a lot of time playing around with the FSCommand EXEC, but it would not work. This was how you did it in previous versions of Flash. So after some trying and failing I started to google the problem and it turned out that the FSCommand EXEC is no longer working as it used to in Flash CS3.

So I needed to find another solution, I then came over a great tool called Proxy from Northcode that solved all my problems and the best thing: It’s free

Here is a summary from Nothcode’s blog about why this tool was developed and how it works;

A typical requirement you’ll run across when developing CD based Flash projects is the need to open documents from your Flash projector. You can use getURL to open most documents, but sometimes the document opens behind the projector. The EXEC fscommand could be used to launch a helper application, but unfortunately the EXEC fscommand doesn’t allow you to pass parameters to external applications so you have no way to tell the outside world which file you want to open.

You can thank the creators of the first Flash virus (SWF/LFM-926) for the fact that every version of the stand-alone Flash player since Flash MX has restricted the use of the EXEC command. This change made it impossible for anyone to create any new Flash based viruses, but it also crippled the Flash projector as a tool for legitimate users by instantly rendering many free projector extension tools useless.

There are four key restrictions that you have to keep in mind when working with the EXEC fscommand and standalone Flash projectors. (i) Executables you want to run via the EXEC fscommand have to be in a special sandboxed folder called fscommand in the same directory as the projector. (ii) You can’t specify a path in the EXEC command, just a filename. If the specified file is not found in the fscommand folder, it won’t run. (iii) The only argument allowed by the EXEC fscommand is a filename, there is no way to pass arguments to the executables that you want to run. (iv) You can’t use EXEC from an SWF file, it will only work from a projector (EXE). The last restriction doesn’t really concern us, but if you’re trying to test your EXEC calls, being aware of it will save you some frustration.

One additional restriction you will have to deal with is the fact that Flash 9 projectors can’t launch BAT files on Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

One solution to get around the limitations of the EXEC fscommand is to create one exectuable file for each file that you want to open, but what can you do if you don’t know how to make EXE files? Windows and Flash both consider a BAT file as an executable file so the easy solution is to create a BAT file for each file you want to open and EXEC the BAT file from Flash. You don’t need to be a BAT file wizard to do this, the simple one-liner below (let’s call it mydoc.bat) will do the trick:

That example assumes that both mydoc.bat and mydoc.pdf are in the fscommand folder. You can change the BAT file to launch the PDF file from anywhere you like, as long as you can create a valid path to the file. Now all you have to do is create a BAT file for every file you want to open and call it from Flash like this:

The only problem with this approach is that your user is going to see the ugly black DOS box appear every time they open a file. That’s where the proxy utility can help you create a more professional looking end product for your users. Proxy is able to launch BAT files and suppress the ugly DOS box.

usage: proxy.exe

When you run the proxy utility, the first thing it does is look at its own name, in this case proxy.exe. It then looks for a BAT file in the same directory with the same base name, i.e. proxy.bat, and runs that BAT file. If you rename the proxy utility to xyz.exe then the utility will look for and try to run xyz.bat. If a BAT file with the same name can’t be found, proxy will just fail silently.

By making copies of proxy.exe with different names and creating multiple BAT files you can run as many “hidden” BAT files as you need, neatly sidestepping the Flash limitation on passing parameters to external applications.

Here are step by step instructions to use the proxy utility to open a PDF file without the ugly DOS box.

1. Create a BAT file called file1.bat that contains just the following line. This is a plain text file that you can create with notepad or your favorite text editor.
   
   
2. Put the BAT file in a folder called fscommand along with a copy of proxy.exe.
3. Rename the copy of proxy.exe to file1.exe (same base name as the BAT file you created).
4. Place your PDF document (called file1.pdf) in the fscommand folder with the BAT and EXE files. You don’t have to store the files you want to open in the fscommand folder, but for your first test this makes things easier.
5. Add the following command to your FLA where you want to open the PDF document (probably on a button release action).
   

   

Now put your Flash EXE and the fscommand folder on your desktop and run the Flash EXE. When the EXEC command is called your PDF document should open.

To read more about proxy or to download it you can go here.

Windows Vista operates external hard drives that are connected with USB differently than internal drives. Write caching is disabled so that you can safely remove the drive at almost any time. This is a great feature for USB thumb drives that are frequently inserted and removed from your computer. But if you have a large hard drive that is in an external enclosure that you never disconnect from your computer, write caching is also disabled which can decrease performance.

This tweak is going to show you how to increase the performance of your external hard drives by turning write caching back on as well as activating advanced performance. Let’s get started: (more…)

advanced performance, computer, device manager, external enclosure, external hard drives, Hardware, hard drive, optimize, reboot, thumb drives, tweak

I closed out this week speaking with Nigel Keam, Architect, and Mark Bolger, Director of Marketing for Microsoft Surface.  Both are very proud of their product and have every reason to be.

Microsoft Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor designed to bring friends and family together through the sharing of technology.  Users can share photos, play games and complete everyday tasks by using hand gestures, touch or other physical objects with Microsoft Surface.  This new custom software platform runs atop Windows Vista and is a good way to highlight the flexibility of the new OS in conjunction with new hardware and applications designed specifically for Windows Vista.  Although it’s maybe hard to imagine all that Surface will be able to do in the future, I have to say that today, even in its infancy, it’s astonishing!

It all started with the idea of blending the physical and the virtual worlds through technology, because although technology might bring us closer together in some ways, it can isolate us in others.  Family members often use computers in separate rooms and email or instant message each other to communicate (how many of you can relate?).  One main goal of Surface is to bring people together at a point where the technology can be shared amongst users of a single unit — for example, allowing family members to interact with each other face-to-face instead of in isolation.

Surface is the brainchild of Stevie Bathiche from the Microsoft Hardware Group and Andy Wilson from MS Research.  The first prototype was built in 2003 and it subsequently took four years to complete a working model, business plan and the other steps necessary to get a product ready to go to market.  In May of this year, Microsoft Surface was announced at Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference in San Diego.

But what’s it really all about? 

Think of Surface as being similar to a rear-projection TV on steroids, the difference being that you can interact with it by touch rather than with a remote.  Surface uses DLP lighting and 5 cameras that are locked in place.  Infrared sensors within Surface track movements, letting you do things like draw directly on the screen using your finger, a brush or other techniques.  All Surface applications are written in managed code and most use WPF or XMA; Flash was used in early development, but was replaced before launch.

Surprisingly, there aren’t 3 or 4 discrete computers sitting underneath the tabletop:  Microsoft Surface runs on a standard Core2Duo processor with only 2GB of RAM.  Earlier prototypes executed image processing from the CPU, but with the advent of graphics processing off-loading enabled by Windows Vista, the GPU now uses DirectX 9 and C# for real-time image processing.  This does require a higher-end graphics card, as anyone running Windows Vista probably knows.

Home users could make infinite use of Surface.  For example, according to analyst reports, 37% of current digital camera users never transfer their photos or videos to their computers (many of them just take the disc to a photo printer).  Imagine having a Surface-based system in your home where you place the camera on it and the images instantly appear on the screen, without the need to connect cables, install drivers or download from the camera.  The system could even allow you to resize or edit photos right from its touch-screen interface.  You’ll then be able to email them immediately to friends and family, writing a note using nothing more than your finger.  You’ll also be able to pull photos and videos from the Web directly to Surface via a Wi-Fi connection. 

Microsoft Surface recognizes specific objects by using identification tags.  Take phones for example:  in a mobile phone store, a customer places the phone of their choice on the Surface system and the unit’s features appear on the screen in a list.  Then, a second phone is added to the table and the system shows a comparison between the two units.  Pricing for different service options can be dragged to each phone to show the potential buyer what the monthly charge will be.  Adding and removing options are as simple as using your finger to drag and drop them onto or off of the phone.  You could even take an existing phone and add or remove service options in the same way.

Although the videos on the Surface site do a good job of showing some of the possibilities, I have to say that the reality of Microsoft Surface is so much more.  Live demonstrations I’ve seen at WinHEC and by Bill Gates at the company meeting earlier this month have drawn crowds of people, some of whom have a hard time believing what they’re seeing.  If you get a chance to see a live demo, I encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity, as Surface not only demonstrates the existing possibilities of the technology, but points the way to the computing of the future.

Microsoft Surface should start appearing in businesses such as hotels, restaurants, stores and entertainment venues around the end of the year.  Meanwhile, check out www.surface.com.

I closed out this week speaking with Nigel Keam, Architect, and Mark Bolger, Director of Marketing for Microsoft Surface. Both are very proud of their product and have every reason to be. Microsoft Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor Read More……(read more)

In this episode of “The Never-Ending Quest for Better Server Performance,” we follow our heroes’ journey through the dangerous and murky woods of PHP opcode caching engines, where they aren’t content with just installing an opcode caching engine, but <gasp> becoming one with it too!

Yep, you heard that right. We’ve just released two new plugins for the WordPress users out there, that take opcode caching to the next level. If you haven’t already installed an opcode caching engine like XCache (our favorite!), eAccelerator, Turck MMcache, Memcached, APC, or PHPA then you really need to do that right now before even continuing this article. Really, what were you waiting for!?

When Microsoft shipped the “Microsoft industrial design toolkit” to over 70 original equipment manufacturers last year before the launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft hoped to get rid of the “beige box” ideology and turn PCs into objects of desire. More than a year on, as charming John Hodgeman might be, the sad fact is that most OEM PCs today with a few premium exceptions are still bulky boxes with just as many stickers are wires connected.

It might probably take more than a year for an industry thriving around function over form to do the opposite, but Apple’s iPod and iMac demonstrates most people are even willing to sell body-parts to look good. Apart from the minority who likes to tinker with the hardware, there’s no reason why the PC can’t be more compact and integrated.

Today I stumbled across Carbon Design Group’s portfolio, a Seattle-based industrial design company who’s worked on many Microsoft projects including the X360 controller, racing wheel, LifeCam, Laser Desktop 6000 and Windows Home Server. One other was the “Vista PC“. A set of 9 images provide a pretty good example of what Carbon and Microsoft envisioned for the “Vista-generation” of computers.

With the launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft embarked on a never-been-tried-before initiative that spanned the entire hardware industry and attempted to bring the hardware and software design and development closer together than ever before. The design strategy was communicated in an Industrial Design Toolkit, which contained all the design components and specifications to create tangible visual representations of the colors, materials, fonts, and form language in the Windows Vista operating system.

Microsoft engaged Carbon’s design and engineering team to create a flagship concept PC to inspire as well as validate Microsoft’s Industrial Design Toolkit. The Vista Concept PC emphasizes the dual nature of the PC as both a productivity tool and an entertainment device and became the purest embodiment of the Vista design language. The work is helping industry design the wave of next generation PC’s.

It’s hard not to say it reminds me of the new iMac and Mighty Mouse, but assuming these were done in 2006 it’s interesting to see the two converge. The hybrid remote-mouse is definitely a winner though. But I’m not too sure about the stainless typewriter keyboard.