When is a FCS bug not a bug.... but it's a bug

I'm sure there are others that feel the same way I do. There are some bugs in FCS that are truly annoying. Why does the title say they are not a bug? well it's not that they aren't a bug, but when it's brought up to MM they will never say it's a bug. Most likely "it's being looked into". Not to flame MM though. They did get a nice patch that made FCS 1.5 a lot more stable.. I won't even start on FCS 1.0, we can call that a public beta or something....

I'd like to make this post less of a rant and much more of a useful post by mentioning a couple of the workarounds for the "non-bugs".

1. setInterval() on the server side on Windows. Linux seems to be fine, in fact the patch fixed it for linux but messed it up for Windows. The other funny thing is that this only happens on virtual hosts. How do you get around this? Clear your interval everytime you run the function that it's supposed to run. Then set it again. But this bug doesn't exist :) But it's being looked into.

2. If there is no action in your app between you and the server for a few minutes, you will stay connected but FCS will not respond to your pleas to do something. This is weird too. You are connected, which means you are alive and well to FCS, but the calls, or onSyncs stop working. How do you solve it? Set up a pinger function. You'll need to send some data, or get some data, or call a function on the server to make sure that the server understands you are still there. I recommend doing this every minute. If you have bought Phillip Kermans new book, you probably have read that he has the same recommendation, and if I remember correctly he brought it up (to no response) in the Chattyfig flashcom list. This isn't a bug, nor is it being looked into.

3. onDisconnect() doesn't get called on the server when a client disconnects. Yes.. this is a biggy. You need to let a few people know that this client has disappeared out of the app. This generally happens when the user doesn't use a close() method on the netConnection and just closes the browser or desktop app. How to get around this one? Ping the client every 5 seconds or so.... if the ping doesn't come back.. they are not there? Theoretically yes. Not sure if this is a bug of FCS or the flash player. Sure wish there was some more input from MM on this. A lot of people have brought this up.

4. When playing a video and you pause it, all the video/audio that was in the buffer... disappears. This sucks and there is no way around it, especially if you have buffered a nice amount or you are on a dial up, or BOTH! Ah well..

5. On high quality video publishing 95 or so, and putting the size at the highest the camera can handle, the first time you speak into the mic (or make any sound) the video will stop being sent to FCS for a few seconds. Though if you make a noise in the mic before publishing (to initialize the audio in the flash player?) it will usually work fine. This happens only on the first time of making some kind of noise into the mic. This is totally weird, and I have only had it happen in one app. Though my publishing code is absolutely no different between apps so I know it's not that. The only thing I could think of was the quality and size of the video. Bug? not sure. But no response from MM which means they are either baffled and don't want to touch it with a ten foot pole or they have seen it too and hope the cat doesn't get out of the bag. But I don't see MM as that kind of company. Most likely a flash player problem more than an FCS problem

I think that's about it for now. I'm sure there are others but I can't recall them to mind, which means they aren't so big. If anybody else has a funny bug (but not a bug) speak up a bit. I'd like to know, and I'm pretty sure MM reads everything they can. If I'm wrong on any of the above and there is a real reason as to why they happen I'd like to hear that too. Until then... it's workaround time, but this of course is for any software out there.

To conclude, I would like to say that for the most part FCS is absolutely rad and I can't wait to see what they bring out in the next version. I work with it every single day and I have quite a few desktop apps that I use everyday, if I didn't have them I'd be screwed. Lots of work thinking of all the variables you get with live data, vid, aud, connections, SO's, but... it's a lot of fun. :)

Posted by Graeme at December 14, 2003 11:22 PM