At some point, Flash and Flex developers encounter the issues of modifying a Flex/Flash rich internet application (RIA) to support another language and accomodate software changes for specific cultural preferences. This article focuses on localization of Flash solutions implemented with Flex 3 or Flex 4. Both Flash CS4 and the Flex frameworks provide localization tools and programmatic support features for Flash applications and widgets. Unfortunately the support for localization differs significantly between the toolsets and frameworks offered. Internationalization (i18n)[1] is the process of...

I have been working on a new ThunderBay SaaS product for months now. And two of the myriad issues I have had to consider is that of user management and licensing and intellectual property protection (IPP). Now many people will argue that one should not protect source code as IP, but rather business processes as IP. When it comes to online Flex products, however, I could not disagree more![1] Do you know how ridiculously easy it is to reverse-engineer/decompile a Flex 3 application and its AVM byte code? Try it: simply use SWFDecompiler to open any SWF. Even if that .swf file has been optimized...