THIS IS A TEST INSTANCE. ALL YOUR CHANGES WILL BE LOST!!!!
This document describes how to setup the Radiate Radii8 project for development. Radiate Radii8 is an tool to integrate design and development into one workspace work space to make web, mobile and applications easier to create. The main audience is designers working on web, Flex designers and developers and HTML developer and designers. There is still a lot of suffering through problems with web development in the HTML world and those who have do not yet got have a grasp on web development and this aims to soften the edges and introduces web developers to Flex at the same time.
I think you should be able to start web development and design at any stage and progress to any stage and the tool should still be useful. I had a lot of trouble in my early days of software development and I believe that we can give designers tools to do their design work and give developers tools to do their development work in the same software. Drumbeat 2000 had some really great concepts and could scale from beginner to advanced. There are many things that can be better in my opinion than the current development and design workflow.
Flash Builder DV 4.5 design view, Flash Catalyst, and Java FX Scene Builder are good guidelines for to where we want to go ,
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Setup Instructions
for a design view but with support for FXG and SVG vector and primitives support as well.
Setup Instructions
install Flash Builder or compatible IDE. After that follow these steps:
- Clone the following github libraries to your local machine:
- Flexcapacitor - Choose MainLibrary
- Radii8 - Clone the whole directory. Radii8Desktop/Radii8Desktop.mxml is the main desktop application
- FlexIFrame
- AS3-PSD-Parser
- ObjectHandles - ATM it's not used and code could be commented out to not require it
- FTPLibrary - I can't find this library anywhere so it's in the extras folder. It could be swapped out if any alternatives are available
- JSON-API-Plus - this is for integrating with WordPress (required if you want to connect to your own domain)
- Vanilla Theme - for integrating with WordPress (required if you want to see results on your own domain)
- AS3CommonsReflect (AS3CommonsReflect) or AS3CommonsReflect.swc (site appears to be down)
- In Flash Builder import the following Flash Builder projects into your FlashBuilder workspace
/Radii8Desktop - for working on the desktop application
/Radii8Designer - for working on the online web application
/Radii8Library - required
/Radii8LibraryAssets - requiredDownload the github libraries flexcapacitor, Radii8, FlexIFrame and svn libraries AS3Commons (AS3CommonsReflect) and AS3SyntaxHighlighter.
Import the following projects into your FlashBuilder workspace:
/Radii8Designer
/Radii8Library
/Radii8LibraryAssets
/flexcapacitor/MainLibrary (shown as FCLibrary in the screenshots)/flex-iframe/library (shown as FlexIFrame) - required for the online web application
Now that you have the required projects in your workspace verify that the desktop Flash Builder project or the online web based Flash Builder project will build. We will do that by verifying the projects properties.
First we have to verify the Radii8Library is setup. Then after that we can setup the desktop or web projects.
Radii8 Library Project Properties
In Flash Builder open this project and then open the properties. It should look like this:
You may need to add the following swc to the swc folder for the Radii8Library:
/AS3CommonsReflect
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.swc
/Radii8LibraryAssets.swc
/FlexIFrame.swc
Radii8 Desktop Project Properties
In Flash Builder open the Radii8Desktop project and then open the properties:
Radii8 Designer Online Project Properties
The main web project is Radii8Designer. The project properties should look like thissimilar to the desktop version.
Important Note: The web version has not kept up with the desktop version so it may contain errors. I've tried to minimize any problems along the way but have not tested it in a while. The following picture is outdated and you may need to reference the desktop setup image:
Compiler options
Compiler options (text):
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-locale en_US -includes=mx.managers.systemClasses.MarshallingSupport -keep-all-type-selectors=true -link-report linkreport.txt -size-report=sizereport.txt -keep-as3-metadata+=Alternative -keep-as3-metadata+=ArrayElementType -keep-as3-metadata+=DefaultProperty -keep-as3-metadata+=Deprecated -keep-as3-metadata+=Effect -keep-as3-metadata+=Event -keep-as3-metadata+=HostComponent -keep-as3-metadata+=IconFile -keep-as3-metadata+=Inspectable -keep-as3-metadata+=InstanceType -keep-as3-metadata+=RemoteClass -keep-as3-metadata+=RichTextContent -keep-as3-metadata+=SkinPart -keep-as3-metadata+=SkinState -keep-as3-metadata+=Style -keep-as3-metadata+=SWF |
Server options are optional but some functionality will not work at runtime without it:
Builder options are optional but you may need to create a new builder for the version number if you get an error: no longer used but if we choose to use it in the future you can use the following image. IIRC the builder must be moved up one directory from where it is now and then added manually. It is then run automatically every time the compiler is run.
When you create a new builder enter what you see in the screenshot.
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FCLibrary Project Properties
The main project has had an Ant Builder that runs when you compile the project that auto-increments the build number and sets the current date. It may no longer be valid and can probably be removed.has been moved. We now update the version number in the application descriptor of the desktop version and could probably grab that value when building the online version.
Desktop Version: If you do not get any errors in the problems panel in the Radii8Desktop project then launch Radii8Desktop.mxml.
Web Version: If you do not get any errors in the problems panel in the Radii8Designer project then launch Main.mxml.
Wordpress Server Setup
Instructions for saving to the server (saving locally to the file system isn't available yet) using Wordpress:. Read all following steps before starting this process as things may have changed.
- Install your Wordpress blog on your server
In the Radii8Designer project navigate to the php/wordpress/ directory. Copy extras directory download and unzip the json-api directory and upload it to your Wordpress plugins directory. Usually, wordpress_install_directory/wp-content/plugins. In your wp_config.php file add the following:
Code Block define('JSON_API_CONTROLLERS', "core,categories,posts,user,attachments,projects"); define('JSON_API_EMAIL_FROM', "contact@mysite.com"); // this is optional use your own contact email here define('JSON_API_EMAIL_FROM_NAME', "mysite.com"); // this is optional use your own contact name here- Further more detailed instructions are found here and here.
MiniInspector Utility class
At runtime you can use the MiniInspector class let's you can click on an CMD + click on a display object and it will show details about the element. If you do nothing it will then show details about the parent container and so on until you get to the Application. You can set properties and styles on the selected object by clicking on it's name. It can be set to show style declarations and style inheritance in the console. In the main.mxml application set the property showInheritedStyles to true it will show inherited styles on the object in the console when you CMD + click. This can be used as a starting point for a visual panel for CSS.
The main.mxml is the main application. The Radiate.as is the main API.
Notes
This is an in-progress project. You'll find things that don't work.
The development blog for news and new releases from the github repository are currently at www.radii8.com. A google group has been setup here. The donation of the domain and / or hosting costs are being discussed as is the process of working from the Apache repository. Since the current version relies on the domain to save and publish removing this domain will "break" the product. A few other issues such as libraries used that have no license or non-compatible license with Apache and how to set that up are also being discussed.
How to Guide for Developers
A list of how to add new features, new components, new views are in the How To directory of the Radii8Desktop project here.
Goals
Read the readmereadme.txt. It contains the list of goals among other information.
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. It might be outdated. Also, check the website.
The following is features I'd like to see in the design view:
The design view is the most important part of the application.
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• background image (used to compare design spec as you work - onion skin)
ADDITIONAL FEATURE REQUIREMENTS
• Templates - users can use their own MXML, HTML, PHP, etc templates and indicate locations for CSS, script includes, code blocks and layout
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• AST - a syntax tree can be created for code completion, documentation and error handling. NOTE this may be better to integrate with an IDE like FB, IDEA or JetBrains for code editing.
• Compiler integration - compiler can provide a problems panel (desktop only?)
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• Animation timeline - users should be able to animate and trigger effects on elements (see ActionEffects). it may should look like a tree hierarchyeffects should allow nesting for different code paths.
• Export options - panel for setting export options. for example, when converting to HTML, convert text element to an image option
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This list will undoubtedly get out of sync with the readme.txt so check both.
Issues
As you encounter issues mention them in the issue tracker.