This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition
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Preface
This book is intended to show you how to design and build applications that use
Macromedia’s Flash Communication Server MX. Together, Flash and the Flash
Communication Server (FlashCom) can be used to create a dizzying array of applica-
tions including virtual classrooms, real-time multiplayer games, media-on-demand
services, instant messaging applications, interactive live event broadcasts, video con-
ferencing systems, and more. Macromedia designed FlashCom to simplify develop-
ing these types of communication applications. This book covers everything you
need to know to program for FlashCom, whether creating simple standalone applica-
tions or more complex applications that work with web application servers, data-
bases, and directory servers.
What Does FlashCom Offer?
FlashCom is a real-time communication server. It provides an extensible and cus-
tomizable platform for developing real-time, media-rich, web-based communication
applications. As described in the Foreword, FlashCom takes care of the plumbing
required to create networked applications, allowing you to focus on your unique
application rather than write code to support network protocols.
A Flash movie running in Flash Player 6 or later can connect to a FlashCom Server
and through it exchange audio, video, and ActionScript data with other Flash mov-
ies. Creating communication applications involves scripting using ActionScript on
the client side and its close relative, Server-Side ActionScript, on the server side. Mac-
romedia provides ActionScript classes that make managing real-time multiuser com-
munications much simpler than in other platforms. The NetConnection class used to
connect a Flash movie to the server, and the NetStream class used to stream audio,
video, and data between them are just two examples.
FlashCom Server runs on Windows or Linux, but the Flash client runs on multiple
platforms, including Windows and Macintosh. Authoring is often performed in
Flash MX 2004 or Flash MX Professional 2004 on Windows or Macintosh.
This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition
Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
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|
Preface
Macromedia also provides higher-level communication components that can be used
with a minimum of coding to create a variety of basic applications. Examples include
the PeopleList component that shows who is online and the Chat, WhiteBoard, and
VideoConference components. It is a remarkable experience to create a communica-
tion application by simply dragging some of these components onto Flash’s Stage,
creating a directory and a little code on the server, and then participate in a video
conference complete with text chat, whiteboard, and people list. Applications cre-
ated this way are not really complete—for example, they are usually single room
applications with minimal security—but communication components are powerful
tools that make developing even full-fledged applications much easier. Macromedia
also provides administrative tools to manage, monitor, and log server activity.
What does FlashCom Server offer that you can’t get with the Flash client alone?
FlashCom’s features include:
Streaming video if the user has Flash Player 6 or higher
Real-time video, audio, text, and data exchange
Uploading of video and audio from the user’s Camera and Microphone objects
So how do you know if you need FlashCom?
If you want to stream live video to the Flash Player, you need FlashCom. If you just
want to play back a recorded stream, you can do so without FlashCom, but perfor-
mance might suffer.
For many more details on other advantages of FlashCom, see “Streaming Video with
FlashCom” later in this Preface.
Also refer to the comparison that Macromedia provides at:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/articles/video_primer_03.html
The Flash Communication Server is also evolving. The first release was quickly fol-
lowed with the version 1.5 release that runs on Linux or Windows and included new
features such as HTTP tunneling and MP3 support. Since then, two updaters have
been released that went beyond fixing bugs by extending features or improving per-
formance. The most recent release is FlashCom Version 1.5.2 and is covered in this
book. Regardless of future updates to the software, this book provides a rich under-
standing of FlashCom development. The foundation it provides will help you to
design and build whatever types of applications you decide to create.
For a sneak peek at the next version of FlashCom, see:
http://www.peldi.com/blog/archives/2004/11/recording_of_th.html
An extensive review of the proposed feature set for FlashCom 2.0 can be found at:
http://flash-communications.net/news/max2004SneakPeek/
Robert Reinhardt also wrote a critique of FlashCom 2.0’s proposed feature set at:
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=0F44C

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