Course Vector

Awesome Tool! I have since replaced FlashTracer with your tool, and have not looked back!
Keep up the brilliant work, looking forwarded to future enhancements. ^_^
Works well for me in PC FF v2 & v3.5 and Mac FF v3.0
Regards!

Awesome Tool. This is way better than FlashTracer.
Couple quick feature requests though (not even sure they are possible):
1. A lot of the time, I would like to know where flash objects are pulling their resources from (such as videos or images when not compiled into the swf), would it be possible to add like a load log that would display the urls of files that are loaded?
2. I noticed the trace log only shows traces from the root-level swf object, would it be possible to have it also display traces from any swfs called by the original one (that sort of run in the background)?
3. The ability to dump the log to a file would be great.
If these features were added, it would make your plugin the single greatest thing since the advent of the tubes (well maby not the greatest, but close). Anyways, keep up the good work, and I can’t wait to see the final product.

@DRayX

1. You can already view this by going to the Net panel in Firebug and selecting the Flash filter. This will show all FLV’s, and SWF’s being loaded in. There isn’t an api to detect anything else that was loaded specifically from a SWF so you just have to know what you are looking for in the Net panel.
2. The trace log should show traces from ALL swfs (including swfs playing in other browsers). The way the trace log works is it’s a single text file used by any instance of the Flash Player. Flashbug isn’t doing anything specific to grab the traces from each swf.
3. Technically this is already dumped in a file but I can see about making it either open the log file directly or save it out somewhere.

Whats up man! Great extension! How hard would it be to allow the @@XML@@ to also format XMLLists or single nodes?

I’d have to look into it. Right now the XML is passed into Firefox’s internal XML parser to see if it’s valid before continuing. I can see if there is another way around that.

Great plugin! I use it daily.
I have one question, is it possible to clear the trace log when I refresh the browser? I find my self clearing everytime I refresh / retest the flash application.

Hmm maybe, I’ll have to see what functionality is available in Firebug/Firefox

Very cool add-on. I’m running OS X 10.6.2, Firefox 3.5.5, Flash debug player 10,0,32,18, Firebug 1.4.5, and Flashbug 1.5.0. In order to get the logging working, I had to move the mm.cfg file:

mv ~/mm.cfg /Library/Application\ Support/Macromedia/mm.cfg

I hope that is helpful.

Excellent, thanks for the tip. Don’t have a Mac so my testing is limited.

Im using Flash Debug Player 10.0.32.18, Firebug 1.4.5 and Firefox 3.5 on Windows XP. Firefox error panel ist empty and Firebug shows the Flash Console tab, but it is disabled and stays that way. I previously had Flash Tracer installed and logging worked fine. If I delete the log-files manually they are recreated in the same place when I start Firefox again. Any ideas?

I know it’s obvious but did you try enabling the panel?

Yeah I tried this, but I don’t know how I should do this exactly. There is no small arrow like in the other tabs (because this arrow only appears when you select them) and opening the tab doesn’t work. It highlights the tabs outline, but clicking has no effect.

Where’s the flashbug console? I don’t see anything for flashbug except for the extension and it’s options. Running FF 3.5.5 and FLASG WIN 10,0,32,18 (Debug player)

Hi, Gabriel
Great Add-On
But do you know what is the name of “Application Data” folder in Germany? “Anwendungsdaten”!!! This is the problem of Nico and me. Danke dir fuer FlashBug :)

I am trying to get a trace of from this url http://v3.player.abacast.com/player/player.php?pid=maverickmedia_kxfxfm

Not seeing any trace data.

I am using
Firefox 3.3.3
Firebug 1.4.5
Flash Player with debuger WIN 10,0,32,18(Debug player)

any ideas?

Firebug 1.4.5

Hello,
your plugin is great. But i have one problem.
But i have one problem. If i use stage.focus = xyz this do not work. I get the focus if i click on the stage but after this i lose the focus. After deactivating vour plugin, anything is allright.
Firefox: 3.56 Flashbug 1.50 and the latest flash player with debuger.
But now when i think about it. Today i installet the new Firefox 3.56. maybe this it is, because i think the last days i havent the problem … bad memory
sorry for my bad english.

Hello,

I have this problem: Firebug works fine without Flashbug But when I install and activate Flashbug, I can run Firebug, but nothing is shown in its window. No content, nothing :-(

My system:
Windows XP
Firefox 3.5.6
Flash Debug Player 10,0,32,18
Firebug 1.4.5
Flashbug 1.5.0

If you gave me some help as a gift for christmas, I would be thankful ;-)

Best regards from Switzerland,
Christian

So I think the underlying issue is that Flashbug is trying to guess where the mm.cfg file goes to make it easier to setup. But I only configured it for en/us setups. Maybe the next step would be to create localized versions of Flashbug that would be configured for Swiss/German/etc setups. Are the folders all named the same except for Application Data?

And yes, sorry for not having any updates sooner. But where I work, the holiday season is super busy. When things slow down (probably in January) i’ll be able to give some attention back to Flashbug. Sorry for the wait!

Frohe Weihnachten!
Merry Christmas!
@Andreas
Your variant is sure OK
2. variant:
replace “Application Data” with “Anwendungsdaten” in lib.js and solReader.js
@gabriel
we have Anwendugsdaten, Lokale Einstellungen, Netzwerkumgebung,…

Wait, it worked! I just edited ~mm.cfg and added this:

ErrorReportingEnable=1
TraceOutputFileEnable=1

Thanks for this great plugin!

HOMEDRIVE=H: bug USERPROFILE is c:\doc… (normal)

This plugin works well on my Mac but fails on my windows PC (corp. image). I think the method of identifying the mmdir is not using USERPROFILE for some reason and fails to find the dir. My mm.cfg works fine and the trace log is in the default win location. I can continue using the log for now, but I like the plugin. Thanks!

“TypeError: dir is null”
Windows XP
Flash Debug Plugin 10,0,42,34
Mozilla 3.5.8
Firebug 1.5.2

I love it! … would love it even more if I could get it to work properly.
(OSX 10.5.8 & FF 3.5.2)
It works (reads/writes to the log) great when I am testing swf files locally, but doesn’t work when I publish my files online?

[...] sort of flash dev, I highly suggest you get your hands on one (or both) of these tools: FlashBug [ get it ] or FlashTrace [ this too ] (eitherway you will need the flash debugger [ need it ]). If you are [...]

[...] stumbled across this fantastic little tool Flashbug.  Features include Displays Trace, Read AMF/Remoting Request Data and Reads SharedObject. Very [...]

[...] Flashbug; debug Flash content within Firefox via Firebug. [...]

[...] after checking out FlashBug, I think I am going to start using it for debugging.  It has some neat features.  I like that you can pretty print xml and html.  The error and warning icons are nice too.  You [...]

This is so great that i made a donation! It will help a lot.
I have one question, how can you clear the log file of all the trace output? Or where is
the log fie located for a Mac?

Thanks
Chris.

@chris

First off, thanks!
You can clear the log output be clicking on the ‘clear’ button. Also the location of the log file on a mac is located here: /Users/username/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/Logs/flashlog.txt

But if you just click on the ‘open’ button it will open the log file directly for you.

[...] Neato! If you understood the title then you should know enough to check this out. http://blog.coursevector.com/flashbug/ [...]

Shared Objects don’t work for localhost or ports. The localhost problem is described under “Specifying a path”:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=lsos_3.html

Here’s the patch to HttpObserver.addDomain():

var domain = getPrettyDomain(href);
var portIndex = domain.lastIndexOf(“:”);
if (portIndex != -1) {
domain = domain.slice(0, portIndex);
}
if (domain == “localhost”) {
domain = “#” + domain;
}

I couldn’t even trace that method from Local File System so I assume it errors out before then. Also I didn’t see anything conspicuous in Flashbug.SOLReader#refresh() but when I click your Refresh button I get my same Shared Object properties even though I know they’ve changed and verify that when I refresh the page?

Fantastic work I use this :)

Something went wrong with this 1.6 update, i’m on Windows 7, Firefox 3.6, firebug 1.5.3, flash player version WIN 10.0.45.2 (Debug player) and it seems that the traces are repeating. When I open the log txt the traces are fine, but in the plugin they are repeating all over again after each trace.

@renan and @jon
Both have been fixed in 1.6.1 which I just uploaded to Mozilla today.

I don’t see any AMF responses or requests. FF3.5.8, FireBug1.5.3 and FlashBug1.6.2 Flash 10,0,45,2

ex. http://cfbugs.adobe.com/ I don’t get anything in the trace log at all.

@User

I’ve emailed you about your problem

I’ve installed the flash debugger, flashbug, and firebug, but I am not seeing any flash traces in the flash console panel. It is reporting that it sees the debug flash player “Player Version:MAC 10,0,0,45,2 (Debug player)”. I’m not confident that it is pointed to the right .txt file for flash traces, and there seems to be no setting to check or change it.

Mac OS X 10.6.2, FF3.6.2, Firebug1.5.3, FlashBug1.6.2rc Flash 10,0,45,2 debug version.
get nothing in the trace log and policy log.

I think I have an idea of whats going on with the Macs. Flash Player has an awesome idea that the mm.cfg can be located in two places. If it doesn’t find it in one place, it should look in the other. Apparently that isn’t happening and is affecting a lot of people. Hopefully if time permits during the week I’ll have another update to resolve this issue as well. So please bear with it for the time being.

yes, after copying mm.cfg to path “/Library/Application Support/Macromedia/”, my issue was fixed

Sorry, actually I copied mm.cfg from /Library/Application Support/Macromedia/ to ~/Library/Application Support/Macromedia/.

I setup the flashbug.
It will create file mm.cfg in d:/

How I replace the default path of “mm.cfg ”

WinXP sp3
FireFox 3.6.3
Firebug 1.5.3
Flashbug 1.6.3

waiting for your answer /email

If you have problems with trace it is probably bacause the latest version of Flash Player is not supported by this addon. So you can use older Flash Player 9 and it works well.

Actually the latest (10.1 RCs) do have debug versions. Keep in mind that Flashbug isn’t ‘supported’ by anything other than Firefox/Firebug. Flashbug reads a text file created by the Flash Player. If the file isn’t being created, that’s the Flash Players fault not necessarily Flashbugs. Always remember to use the debug version of the player or the log file won’t be created.

wasn’t working with flash debugger 10 (since nothing was written in flashlog.txt) I switched to flash debugger 9.0 and now everything works fine.

Nice job thanks a lot for your help towards developpers comunity. This is and will remain trully appreciated!

@weavermedia

No need for the terse comments. As mentioned in my latest posts 1.6.4 isn’t made to support Firebug 1.6, Flashbug 1.7 is. It is currently awaiting review by Mozilla before it can go public. If you still have issues then, I’ll be more than happy to address them then. As for the comments box bug that’s the first issue I’d heard about it and I’ve had it this way for a year or two now. I’ll check it out.

I’ve installed Flashbug. (Firefox 3.6.13 on OS X 10.6.5)
I’m having the same issue reported by William Brown and Tim:
flashbug@coursevector.com/chrome/content/flashbug/version.swf
is trying to communicate with this Internet-enabled location:
chrome:/browser/content/browser.xul

Haven’t read any comment on the issue.
Given that the error is a security issue could I please ask you more info about this matter.

While it sounds scary, all that going on is that there is a super tiny swf that gets loaded in Flashbug and all it does is tell what specific version of the Flash Player you have installed. There should be a trust file being written to avoid that error. I’ll look into it though. But it’s nothing to worry about, it’s more annoying than a security concern.

Not trying to bust status quo but it seems like many people are looking for 1.7 RC10 ASAP. As of writing this, something is broken when trying to install it from the ‘Beta’ button on the official Flashbug Mozilla Add-Ons page.

Direct link: http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/addons/14465/flashbug-1.7.0rc10-fx.xpi

Good news, 1.7 has been made public so just grab it from the main download spot. I’ll be updating the blog tomorrow as it’s really late right now. cheers

[...] Firebug: http://getfirebug.com/ Flashbug: http://blog.coursevector.com/flashbug [...]

tip: pause the flashbug console, the top left button in the window, and ctrl-a to select all and ctrl-c to copy. paste in notepad++ or whatever. if you don’t pause it may be hard to copy all the lines!

I intalled it how do you turn it on? I don’t see anything!

Please read the FAQ.

I was frustrated as others. Eventually, I figured it out. You have to have Firebug installed as well. To find out “Flash Console”, you need to turn on Firebug panel first, and then you will see “Flash Console” on Firebug panel. Hope this is helpful for others.

Maybe it’s because of “After you install Flashbug (make sure you have Firebug installed as well or Flashbug won’t work) go to the ‘Flash Console’ tab.”

There is no ‘Flash Console’ tab on Firefox. The ‘Flash Console’ tab actually is on Firebug panel. For people new to Flashbug, if people do not turn on Firebug, there is no way to find out ‘Flash Console’ tab.

Is there a way to change the location of mm.cfg?

Hey,
First of all nice work with the extension.
I’ve just installed Flashbug and I found that AMF response is not working for me.
AMF requests are working fine, but on AMF response tab I’m getting something like this:
Failed to load source for: https://www.someurl…/amfphp/gateway.php
I’m on Win7 64
Firefox 4
Firebug 1.7
Flash Player Debug 10.2.153.1
On serverside I use AMFPHP 1.9
I previously used AMF Explorer addon for Firebug and ti worked fine but unfortunatelly it’s not updated to FF4 yet and yours is just more powerful. Any ideas?

@MC Thanks for the feedback, I’ll look at revising the text.
@Ralf Check version 1.7.2 which I just posted to Mozilla 5min ago.
@julien There used to be a way but Adobe removed it and it’s stuck at that single location. sorry.

Player Version MAC 10,2,153,1 (Unknown Type)

Message appears both in Firefox 3 and 4. I have been ignoring looking into it for FF3.

For FF4 Fire Bug 1.7.0 Flash Bug 1.7.

The player is tested shows it is a Flash debug player 10.2.152.1.

Any clues why FlashBug does not detect it?

Would it not be better to provide an option to configure in case the auto configure seems to leave you without a recourse expect to post here?

THe text displayed there is purely FYI. It doesn’t rely on that detection to function. Up until 10.1 you couldn’t right click and immediately see the version of Flash you had. If the traces are showing up, that’s all that matters. I’d try to trouble shoot it but i don’t have access to a Mac anymore. =/

Thanks for the attention

I use http://flashbuilder.eu/flash-player-version.html to check the flash version. It reports if you have debugger.

I suspect it has to do with the access level at work and Flashbug might need Admin rights so the mm.cfg is created. I installed on home mac and I saw a popup about that file being created for the first time.

So I requested work IT to try to install with Admin access to see if that does it.

Forgot to mention that the trace statements do not show up.

Such a great tool – when everything is working!

I run Windows 7 64-bit with all the latest versions of the software involved.
Why can’t I see any texts in the Preferences window (only “flashbug.pref…)? – It’s difficult when you don’t know what the settings mean. And when I click the “OK” button nothing happens.

The logging seems to be working intermittently. About every third time I power up it just refuses to show any log messages, and I can’t find any common factor.

@Tommy
Could you please post a bug here: http://code.google.com/p/flashbug/issues/list ? Also please be specific on what version of Firefox, Firebug, Flashbug, Flash Player you’re using and any dev related addons you might have installed. I’m running the same setup and it works fine, so something might be interferring with yours. I’ll look into this as soon as you can get me some details. Thanks!

[...] Click Here to Download Flashbug 1.7.3 for Linux Operating System [...]

Excellent work !

But a tool to filter the traces (with regular expressions) would be very useful for big projects.

Please don’t log bugs in the comments section. Post all bugs here http://code.google.com/p/flashbug/issues/list

As for your issue, do you have flashfirebug installed? Becuase that breaks Flashbug.

Don’t you have plan to make for Chrome?
This plug-in is really AWESOME!! but I want to use on Chrome~ ^^

No not really, Chrome can’t really support Flashbug yet. Firefox has such a better API for extensions than Chrome. Maybe once Chrome improves I’ll merge it over.

Hey can you put out a firefox 5 compatible version soon?

I’m working on it. The next version has a big update coming to it, but inorder to get it quickly working on v5 i might do just a interim release to get you up and running.

hi I’ve a strange problem with Flashbug extension, all FlashBug panel buttons have “undefined” labels and nothing happens when i click any of them (logs are being displayed). I’ve FlashBug 1.8 and installed FlashBug 1.7.4. Reinstalling Flashbug gave no effect. What can be the problem?

Flashbug 1.7.4 is not compatible with Firebug 1.8. They completely overhauled how plugins work with it. You’ll have ot revert to 1.7 or stop using Flashbug for now, sorry. I won’t have an update for 1.8 for a while.

I tried your beta 1.8:
- ok: menu has correct names (vs to “not defined” in 1.7)
- ok: traces works (in previous version also works)
- not ok: buttons in menu doesn’t works: e.g. clear doesn’t work

btw.: thx for this great plugin

This “undefined” buttons are so annoying… if there is only some alternative way to clear all traces output, like right mouse click + some option, anything.

@Milan I’m sorry for the issues with Firebug 1.8, I’m currently speaking with their developers on how I could go about updating my plugin. They changed so much and documented so little. I’m afraid a fix for that won’t be coming quickly. If you really want, you can downgrade to Firebug 1.7 to continue using Flashbug.

@Alex As mentioned at the top of this page, Flashbug 1.7/1.8 are not compatible with Firebug 1.8. But if you find any bugs with Flashbug 1.8 while using Firebug 1.7, i’d appreciate knowing that. Thanks for the report though.

Hi Grabriel,
the Firefox addon page at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/14465 says the latest version of Flashbug is 1.7.4. When will 1.8 be available? Same thing if I go through the Firefox menu Tools>Add-ons and look for Flashbug.

Compliments for the great work by the way!

It’s been submitted, just waiting for mozillla to review it before it shows up. Hopefully it’ll be up soon.

Hi Gabriel,

I now see it is available at the bottom of the page at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/14465, under ‘Version Information’ > ‘View all versions’. Can I just install that version?

I honestly didn’t realize it displayed that version, i thought they had to be reviewed first. Yes you can install it from there, i just don’t know if that will affect any auto-updating from Mozilla.

Finding that with Flashbug 1.8 & Firebug 1.8.1 I am unable to clear the Flash Console window. Not sure why this might be the case. Any thoughts?

Many thanks for all your hard work on this product. It has been a great aid to many as3 coders’ development work.

If you could open up a bug on http://code.google.com/p/flashbug/issues so I can track this issue with you I’d appreciate it.

Hi,
This is a great extension. But it doesn’t work on firefox 6. Would you please update the extension?
Thanks.

If you read the Flashbug page you’ll see that 1.8 does support Firefox 6. I’m currently waiting for Mozilla to approve the addon before you’ll see it for updating. Please be patient a bit longer, it’s out of my hands at this point.

Its really sad that Mozilla is taking so much time in aproving this add on :(
Now I am forced to uninstall FF6 and continue using FF5 :( just because it supports Flashbug :)

I totally agree. I’m currently 38 of 225 and i submitted it back on the 16th….

@ Vikky : You can install the “add-on-compatibility-reporter” https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/ After installing, incompatible extensions can be enabled to test whether they still work with the new version of Firefox. Works fine for me.

Hi, and thanks for this great extension.
I donnate to you because you deserve it.
Thanks for making the world simple and intuitive.

Just wonder if you will merge this to Google Chrome…
If Chrome had any plugin for trace Flash and see objects in place it would be my debugger :)
Cya

Sadly Chrome extensions aren’t as powerful as Firefox’s. I don’t have access to the file system to be able to create Flashbug in Chrome. So until they add that API (and Firebug gets ported over =p ) then Flashbug will remain Firefox only. Sorry!

Thanks for the quick response. Glad to ear from you.
Continue the great job.

the FIREFOX addons site doenstn’ have 1.8 for download. PLEASE make it work!

I understand that it doesn’t right now. it’s currently in the review process if you took a peek at the comments. I’m doing everything i can to speed that along but i have no control of when they’ll post the new version. It HAS to be reviewed, by a real person, before they post things on THEIR website.

is there any other way to make it available?

You can get it here for the time being: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashbug/versions/ until it is fully reviewed.

i installed firefox 6.0.1 , firebug 1.8.1 and flashbug 1.8.0 with flash player for web debug , but some trouble are happeded .

it shows the security sandbox error in file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Encrinite/Application%20Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/nm7reqqg.Default%20User/extensions/flashbug%40coursevector.com/chrome/content/flashbug/profiler.swf , its ExternalInterface function cannot access cross domain url , ex:http://static.ak.facebook.com/common/referer_frame.php , http://www.ruten.com.tw/..and so on.

what’s happen and help me please !!
tks

That error is from the inspector SWf I built. It’s not an error on your part, I’ll need to make some adjustments so those errors go away, sorry for the inconvenience.

Hi,
I have FF 6.0.2, Firebug 1.8 and flashbug 1.8.1. When in the Flash console, if I try to enable warnings, it just doesn’t happen. I make the change in the preferences panel (tick the tick box) but if I go back to that panel again, it’s unticked. Oh and I’m on Windows 7. This seems to work fine on FF5 machines.

We also noticed on Macs running FF6, the preferences panel hasn’t a dismiss button and also displaying warnings doesn’t work.

Thanks!
Jerry

Please post bugs here: http://code.google.com/p/flashbug/issues/list

Will there be a compatibility update for Firebug 1.9? Now Flashbug isn’t visible in the Firebug panel.

Hello!
Where are version for firefox 8.0?
Thanks.

Flashbug for FF8 just got approved a few days ago. The update should already be available, the delay is really in getting it approved by mozilla.

does not work on ff 9

can’t really get it to work on FF9. No Flash Console tab.