Screenweaver Strikes Back!
Well, the cat's out of the bag. In what is arguably some of the most exciting news the Open Source Flash community has heard recently (and, you must understand, we're used to hearing exciting news on a daily basis), Edwin van Rijkom announced today on the OSFlash mailing list and on his blog that Screenweaver will be making a comeback as an open source project on OSFlash.
Screenweaver was one of the best tools for creating desktop Flash applications before RubberDuck, the company that made it, disbanded. Now, Edwin is working on bringing the Screenweaver 3 codebase up to date for release under the GPL license. In addition to the Screenweaver application, Edwin is going to release Screenweaver Core, an open architecture that wraps the Flash ActiveX for use in desktop applications.
I can't wait to see what Edwin, Darron and the development team do with Screenweaver in the future, especially with the new ExternalInterface feature in Flash 8. (See Darron's ExternalInterface sample application for IFBIN to get a feel for what's possible and read this email on OSFlash for more information from Darron on using ExternalInterface with a desktop host.)
Big thanks to Edwin and Darron for making this possible.
(And, yes, this is one of the two projects I was mentioning in my first OSFlash Week In Review post last week. Stay tuned for the second one...) :)
Related news:- Edwin's original email announcement to the OSFlash list.
- Jesse's post, Screenweaver Goes Open Source, with some additional background on Screenweaver and Edwin's post to the OSFlash mailing list.
- Edwin's blog post announcing the opening sourcing of Screenweaver