Debug flash communication
For a few recent projects we have been implementing a RIA (Rich Internet Application) interface to browse the website. Namely Adobe Flash. When running the flash movies in the browser player it is often difficult to diagnose communication problems that occur, such as HTTP errors (like 404, 501) as well as XML, SSL and Flash Remoting.
After having a bit of a play around I found that Macromedia/Adobe installs a few debug flash movies to aid your diagnosis when you install the Flash Remoting extensions. These are located in your application data, usually something like:
“C:\Documents and Settings\cman\Local Settings\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash 8\en\Configuration\WindowSWF\NetConnection Debugger.swf”
Note: You may need to change your folder view settings in windows so you can see hidden folders.
While this is a great start and can often be just what you need, another good tool that I found for helping you diagnose communication between the server and your browser generically for all sorts of comms (eg, showing your HTTP generated by your HTML) is ServiceCapture.
I had used this to view the returned Flash Remoting packages, which ServiceCapture kindly deflates and presents returned results for you, as well as timing the requests, size of request packets etc. The program comes with a trial period, by required you to pay US$34.95. But the amount of time it saves you and how much you come to rely on its diagnosis it is well worth the investment.
As most testing goes, it is about your toolkit. Giving you a good set of tools that you can configure to give you answers about why things are going wrong saves you a lot of additional trace statements.
