How feasible is it to create Flash/AS2 apps for Cowon S9 & J3?

[antico]

I am wanting to try my hand at writing applications in Flash / ActionScript 2 for Cowon DAPs, specifically for the J3 and S9

But I am at a disadvantage at the moment because:

(1) I do not yet own either DAP, so I cannot experiment; I cannot load and test any of my SWF files. (Nor have I access to any Windows-hosted Cowon DAP emulator). I hope to buy a J3 soon, but will have to wait until I can afford it.

(2) I no longer have access to the best development tool, Adobe Flash Professional IDE. So I presume that I cannot easily create or edit FLA files directly, or work visually with graphic objects and symbols, frames and timelines. (Correct me if I am wrong.) But I do have a free AS2/SWF compiler, MTASC, and a good free ActionScript file editor, FlashDevelop, so I can carry on with development of AS2 coded apps.

(3) My main problem at this stage is that I have no firm idea as to what features of Flash 7 and AS2 are actually supported in the Flash engine in the S9 or J3. I can make some guesses, but do not know for certain. For example, I presume that customized context menus (ContextMenu class), which normally pop up in response to a right-button click of the mouse in Windows, are unavailable on the Cowon, simply because with a touchscreen, there is no user action to indicate that a touch is intended as a right button click.

I would like to use the following features of Flash MX 2004 (Flash 7) in some of my applications, but do not know if they are supported by whatever standard the Cowon Flash engine is based on (Flash Lite?):

(a) Basic Flash 7 MovieClip class properties and methods, such as createEmptyMovieClip, duplicateMovieClip, attachMovie, removeMovieClip, getNextHighestDepth, swapDepth, hitTest, etc. These are all needed in dynamic applications where movieclips - which are not really "movies" - are often created, manipulated, drawn on and disposed of at run time, in response to the user's actions.

(b) The Flash Drawing API: basic MovieClip methods for setting pen and fill styles, drawing lines, filling closed figures, etc.

(c) Mouse class, its addListener method and its events: MouseUp, MouseDown, MouseMove. I presume these events are also available for MovieClip instances.

(d) V2 UI components, especially the TextArea (for scrollable text display only), CheckBox, RadioButton, List and CombBox classes; and perhaps also the Menu class, since context menus are not available.

(e) The Sound class, so as to add sound effects in my apps, sourced from sounds that are either embedded in the SWF file (retrieved by Sound.attachSound) or loaded at runtime from external mp3 files (Sound.loadSound). By an external file I mean one that is separate from the application SWF file, but resides on the Cowon player in its file system. Two possible applications I have in mind are musician's aids: a metronome app and a pitch-pipe tuner app (that sounds reference notes over a chromatic scale).

(f) XML and LoadVars classes. These would allow me to load plain text or XML formatted text at runtime, loaded from external files. Would require that the onData and onLoad events fire reliably.

(g) SharedObject class, for storing and retrieving application settings between sessions. Just the local shared object (LSO) is needed, to store the settings data in a SOL file on the DAP's file system. I already have reason to believe this facility is available on the Cowon Flash engine, as I have seen postings describing its use (eg, from Claw: http://iaudiophile.net/forums/showthread.php?t=26029).


I would be very grateful to anyone who can inform me, from personal experience or from reading a reliable source, which of these SWF engine features work on the Cowon S9 or J3, and what limitations there are, if any, in their implementations.

Thank you

Mark

[chickenbellyfinn]

I believe that the S9/J3 support most of those. Go to http://www.2souldesign.net/ to find out about making games for S9/J3. It is the website of a very notable developer for S9 and he has lots of good tutorials and code.

I am currently making flash applications and I have not encoutered any problems yet because of the device not supporting features.

[antico]

Thankyou for your prompt and encouraging reply, chickenbellyfinn. I have had a quick look at the 2souldesign site.

[el maco]

MovieClip class should work as expected, including drawing lines/polygons with different styles. User input (touching the screen) creates MouseDown etc events, again as expected. TextArea is available (somehow I just failed to make it scroll) but rest of the UI classes I haven't needed so I don't know about them. SharedObject for writing SOL cookies is available.

[antico]

Thank you, el maco. I will keep developing some apps with Cowon DAPs as an intended target, then wait and see what works when I get an actual device.