Not sure if you’ve seen this or not on the Gaia forums, but it’s an Air app that helps with creating the initial structure of the site - http://www.gaiaflashframework.com/index.php/topic,1235.0.html It’s not as feature rich as SOMAUI, but it definitely helps to get the job done.

The Framework isn’t perfect for every Flash site, but it does lend itself to a structured way of building a complete Flash site. Plus you get the superb support that Steven Sacks offers on his forums, along with the rest of the growing Gaia community to help out when things go slightly pear.

So what are your thoughts now on AS3/GAIA etc? Are you using the GAIA framework for much of your work or have you developed your own framework?

Cheers
Ryan

Is there anyway I can Just add a page node in site.XML to a simple swf & do not compile whole thing. Will it work?

I think as a proof of concept I will take my existing and still under development AS2 website and give it the good ‘ol Gaia treatment. I’ll be sure to post what I find either here, and or on the Gaia forums.

Thanks again Steven, you’re commitment to the Framework and to those having issues is un-freaking-believable :-)

It has a robust asset management system.
It has complete integration with SWFAddress through one method (goto).
It has an event based system that you can tap into for custom behavior.
It has a built-in multi-preloader with events, and you can have two different preloaders (one for pages one for assets) and they can be overridden at run-time as many times as you like.

There are a lot of great things in Gaia besides the transition engine. If you think it’s worth the effort to code your own sites that don’t have page transition methodology but have the above functionality, that’s cool.

I use Gaia on any site that has multiple states and needs deeplinking, even if it’s only one page (like Purus) because Gaia just makes it easy to do that stuff. I don’t use Gaia generally on single page sites with out multiple states unless I’m doing a lot of asset management, or I’ll rip out the assets package and use it separately from Gaia (which is actually pretty easy to do).

The initial things I mentioned in this post aren’t part of what I perceive to be the standard way Gaia is setup. Yes it can be made to operate in any way you can think of (just about) but you end up having to jump through more hoops some times than you would if you just coded it by hand. So I’m trying to illustrate what Gaia is good for, and perhaps what it’s not so good for.

The ApplicationDomain took me about 14 hours to get sorted, so when you released version 2.2.3 and it instantly fixed the issue I was having (yes I was already using domain=current in the site.xml) I was very hesitant to upgrade from that point on. That’s one of many issues I experienced, and you’re right I didn’t post them all in the forum as I simply didn’t have enough time. I’ll endeavour to go back over my notes and post some more on the Gaia forums in the forth coming days and weeks.

Using assets as pages is possible - but it kinda defeats the purpose of using the framework somewhat? It can be done, but at first glance (especially for someone new to both AS3 and Gaia) it looks like more work than just writing something from scratch that will do what you want. These aren’t criticisms of the Framework (you’ve done and continue to do a phenomenal job with it) but simply a heads up for those that don’t know much about it and happen to stumble upon this post.

As for Mr Hargrove’s comments, at what stage did this deteriorate into a pissing contest…? Last time I checked this is my blog, and if I choose to illuminate passers by to my trials and tribulations using a certain framework I bloody well will. I really can’t understand why you’ve got so up in arms about what I’ve posted.

Good day indeed (these sign offs are all very British, which for an Aussie is kinda amusing ;-)