Ok, I’ll get straight to the point: There is a lot to dislike about many websites right now when it comes to how these websites generate revenue. On many sites it is hard to actually find the content you were seeking due to the huge amount of ads that get displayed. I’ve had my browser crash countless times due to poorly designed ads (generally, it is due to Flash ads, but it certainly can happen with JavaScript as well).
Is Flash a problem? With the way it is currently being used by advertisers, it would be hard to argue that it isn’t. However, HTML5 isn’t the solution. In fact, I think HTML5 will be a bigger problem than Flash ever was.
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I've ran into issues using the WebService object in Flash. The thing is incredibly buggy. In certain cases, it works just fine, but in other cases, it flat out does not work. In my last case, the web service loaded perfectly fine (onLoad was called), but the PendingCall would not return anything. The onFault method was never called after I invoked my web service call, but the web service never returned either. Examining the outgoing messages from Flash (using HTTP headers in Firefox) revealed that Flash was never even attempting to call the web service. Flash did correctly acquire the crossdomain.xml file (which allowed access from all domains), and it did load the WSDL. But, for whatever reason, it did not call the web method like it was supposed to.
Well, after a few hours or attempging to make this work, I gave up with the WebService object. Instead, I went to the LoadVars object, something I'm more confident in than the WebService class, simply due to the fact that it has been around much longer and has had more attention from the Adobe / Macromedia team.
Using the WebService object, my code looked like the following:
var _wsdl:String = "http://www.bloodforge.com/webservice.asmx?WSDL"; // <- this is fake for the purpose of this blog
var MailService:WebService = new WebService(_wsdl);
MailService.onLoad = function()
{
var MailServiceResult:PendingCall = MailService.MyMethod("my parameters");
MailServiceResult.onFault = function(fault)
{
trace("it never gets here even though it fails!");
}
MailServiceResult.onResult = function(result)
{
trace("it never got here either!");
}
}
The above was replaced with the code below, and it works perfectly fine:
var result_lv:LoadVars = new LoadVars();
result_lv.onData = function(responseStr:String)
{
if(responseStr == undefined)
{
trace("Error occurred!");
}
else
{
trace("Success... parse my data below...");
}
}
var send_lv:LoadVars = new LoadVars();
send_lv.myWebServiceParam1 = "param 1";
send_lv.myWebServiceParam2 = "param 2";
send_lv.sendAndLoad("http://www.bloodforge.com/webservice.asmx/MyMethod", result_lv, "POST");
Oh, and make sure that if you do this with your web service, that you have the following line in your web.config file. Otherwise, you won't be able to access it using these methods (you should be familiar w/ it anyways if you use Ajax to call web services).
<webServices>
<protocols>
<add name="HttpGet"/>
<add name="HttpPost"/>
</protocols>
</webServices>
I'm not sure why Adobe makes it so hard to install the flash player with a MSI. By going to adobe.com and clicking on the "Get Flash Player" link, it will direct you to a page that automatically will attempt to install Flash in IE. I needed a MSI because I needed to install Flash on a machine with restricted internet access. Fortunately, even though they don't advertise it, you can get a standalone installer for IE as well...
http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/licensing/win/install_flash_player_active_x.msi
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