Macromedia Central

Hope, I am not so late on posting something for Central, I am infact posting this as an inauguration of my category archive for “Macromedia Central” and a reminder/reference for me and everyone else. Macromedia Central is an environment, a special browser made just for flash.

In this new environment flash files can work on-line or off-line transparently to give birth to what Macromedia calls “Occasionally Connected Applications”. Some of the prominent links about Macromedia Central can be found at Devnet on Central, central whitepaper pdf, Public SDK, Install Macromedia Central, Central Category at MXNA, Quick Start Guide, Central MX weblog, Central Apps.

“Central basically runs the Central application main window, Console and Agent Manager SWF files and the Central Applications. It has the ability to make calls to remote services directly through Network Connections, install/uninstall applications, live data access, configuration information, local caching, simple data types and the routing of function calls. Central Shell and Console provide the user and programming interfaces for your product, and the Agent Manager controls your agents and provides the programming interface for the agents you design. Central can have both private and public applications, you can have it install your application from your own web page or internal intranet, you don’t have to publish your app on the public App Finder at macromedia.com”.

It is believed that Central have many benefits, like providing the users,

• Consistence User Experience
• Online/Offline Support
• Cooperative Applications
• Dynamic Notification
• Trial Applications

And for the Flash Developers,

• Ease of installation, you know which version and player to target
• Integrated Transaction Support, but it should be remembered here that “Central is NOT saving any credit card info. If the user chooses, they can save this information upon the purchase of a Try/Buy product. The information is sent to third party partner that handles the transaction. When a user returns and wants to purchase another product, they can retrieve their saved credit card with a PIN number. This PIN is sent to the third party and NEVER save the credit card info or the PIN.”
• Central Environment
• Central Components
• Central Application Programming Interface
• Native web service support
• Regular Expression Support
• Data Cashing API
• Dynamic Image Loading
• Auto Update Support

“Pods” are SWF files that just provide redundant access to your applications, or extend the functionality of your Applications. “Agents” are SWF files that can provide extra programming logic, that would be common to the application and the pod, or code that would need to be run in the background and kept separate from the application, they do not have a GUI interface. “Notices” are dynamically generated messages that can be produced form the Application, Pod or Agents. Notices can set to require a user response or be dismissed by them. It had been advised among the Central Development community to make your Central application run properly, are to avoiding the use of _global or _root calls.