Vizzy Flash Tracer developer's tool

[ir73]

Hi everybody!

Would like to present you a new flash tracing and debugging tool called Vizzy
You can download it here.

http://code.google.com/p/flash-tracer/

Why use it and not some other trace tool (like Firefox tracer)?
Because:

* Multiplatform (Windows, Mac, Linux)
* Automatic updates
* Customize font and font size
* Automatically creates mm.cfg file
* Automatically detects flashlog.txt file location
* Comma separated filtering for multiple keywords support added
* Allows to set max limit of bytes loaded from the end of flashlog.txt
* and much more, full list of features (http://code.google.com/p/flash-tracer/)

Please write here your comments and what you would like to change/add there. If this sounds good, I will implement your request.

Regards,
ir73

[rossisen]

What a great tool! It captures traces from Flash IDE, Firefox and IE. Very useful. I just happened to find it on the day it was updated.

[ir73]

Thanks :)

[.ral:cr]

i don't have this path on my leopard
/Users/Cristi/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/Logs/flashlog.txt
Logs is missing

i wanted to see if works from flash ide, which i don't use anyway. i always have dynamic swfs which needs to run in a browser, and firebug or safari built in debugger are all i need

[birdwing]

wow spam bots work in teams now...

[ir73]

i don't have this path on my leopard
/Users/Cristi/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/Logs/flashlog.txt
Logs is missing

i wanted to see if works from flash ide, which i don't use anyway. i always have dynamic swfs which needs to run in a browser, and firebug or safari built in debugger are all i need

are you sure if you have debug flash player installed? If not, the please install it from here http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html . Also, please check that mm.cfg file is located in /Library/Application Support/Macromedia directory. Vizzy should create that file on it's own if it does not exist, but if it fails, then you will need to do that yourself. Please check Troubleshooting chapter here http://code.google.com/p/flash-tracer/

Vizzy captures all the traces from everywhere (browsers, flash IDE, etc) once you have your DEBUG player installed.

[ir73]

wow spam bots work in teams now...

what do you mean?

[birdwing]

:lol: nevermind :pac:

Usually users with less than 10 posts posting stuff like this are spam bots, thats what I mistook you for ... sry :beer: :hr:

[ir73]

There are now some fixed added to new version for Mac OSX setup, so all who experienced problems with Vizzy before could try the update.

[ir73]

new version is out: now you can see visually your search results in the panel beside the scroll bar.

[gibbitz]

For those who are naysayers, I'd like to present a situation I found myself in where this tracer was very helpful. I have been working on a project where two servers are communicating through a firewall with one another to transfer data via SSH to the Flash movie embedded in a CMS delivered page. Neither IDE debugger was very helpful since they exist in a sterile local environment, often without access to server code to embed in a dynamically rendered page. This tool allows me to see traceouts without writing external interface code just to get them via JS (ala Firebug). Previously I had been using sephiroth's Flash Tracer FF add-on, but it was causing performance issues in the browser. This allows me to see these trace statements without the performance hit. Since I do alot of in-browser testing and work within CMS sites, this tool is very useful. Thanks.

[ir73]

thanks gibbitz

[-mh-]

Nice little tool. Just what I have been looking for. Thanks a lot.

I have noticed that sometimes the log is recreated for every new message. Any idea why it is happening?

-mh-

[ir73]

log file is created by flash player or air runtime. Vizzy just reads that. So, I am not sure why is this happening to you. However, if you have some AIR application running on your machine, you will notice that trace file is being recreated all the time and it's not possible to delete that unless you close all AIR apps.

[-mh-]

I see. I don't have any AIR apps running and don't see any pattern to this behavior so far. I will post it if I figure out how to reproduce it.

[ir73]

I have added DEBUG flash player detection feature (plus download links) to 1.25 version. This is not a critical update, but it would be useful for new users that have not set up their environment yet for debugging.

[ir73]

As the new version of Flash Tracer has been released I would like to mention some killer features that might be interesting to developers who are debugging flash applications with trace.

The first one (and my favorite) is that you can double click stack trace which will open you a source file in your AS editor. Also, moving the mouse over the stack trace will open a code pop-up (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9443658/vizzy/screens/explore_code.jpg) showing you the code with buggy line highlighted.

Another thing I would like to point out is the it is possible to make all your traces clickable (http://code.google.com/p/flash-tracer/wiki/VizzyTrace)! Double click on any trace line in Vizzy and you will get that file opened in your AS editor with a proper line highlighted. This thing requires some tiny code modifications, but this is worth of it: link VizzyTrace (http://code.google.com/p/flash-tracer/downloads/list)swc library to your project replace all your 'trace' calls with 'trc'.

I would be glad if someone could check all this stuff and say his/her opinion about that :)
http://code.google.com/p/flash-tracer/

PS. Mac user finally got native executable