According to its project page on OSFlash, Xray (previously known as The Admin Tool) by Blitz Labs, is “a snapshot viewer of the current state of your Flash application without impacting the performance or the file size of your application. Xray’s true nature is to look into the very guts of the Flash application and disolve the 2d myth you see on screen to a 3D tangible entity you can truly crawl through.”

Doesn’t sound too interesting? You can just use the debugger or trace output to troubleshoot? You’re a fool! This app is the be-all-end-all of debugging tools.

Just install the extension, drag the Xray component into your app, publish, run the Xray app, and be astounded. To say that it simply adds functionality over the Flash debugger would be a slap in the face to the Blitz team.

Once connected to the app you can dynamically modify objects, including sounds and video. Want to see what a drop shadow filter would look like on that save button? Switch to the filters tab and apply it! Want to execute AS while the app is running? Switch to the Trace/Execute tab and execute it! Want to know which on screen object is the one appearing as menuButton_btn in your treeview? Roll over the entry and it will be highlighted by a yellow border on screen! I’ve used Xray for less than a day now but I’m hooked.

The one issue I had while trying to get it up and running, perhaps due to my own stupidity, is that the app was trying to connect to the wrong swf when I ran it (I had several FF tabs open at the time). Once I closed FF and IE and opened my app alone, I was on my way. Other than that hurdle, which took me some time to get over, every other piece of functionality seems to be covered by helpful and detailed videos available in the help section.

My write-up here does not do it justice. If you do any ASing at all, do yourself a favor and set aside an hour to take a look at this tool.

-rG

1. Right-click on the “My Computer” icon on the Windows XP desktop and select Properties to open the “System Properties” dialog
2. Click the Advanced tab
3. Click the Environment Variables button
4. Add the following environment variables to the User Variables (not the System ones)
   – HOMEDRIVE with a value of “C:” (no quotes)
   – HOMEPATH with a value of “%USERPROFILE%” (again no quotes)
5. Navigate to the C:\Documents and Settings\[i]username[/i] folder and create a new text file named “mm.cfg”
6. Open the text file and add the following:
   ErrorReportingEnable=1
   TraceOutputFileEnable=1
   TraceOutputFileName=C:\flashlog.txt
7. Download and install the Flash program debug player from Adobe.
8. Install the version of your choice (ActiveX for IE / Netscape-compatible for FF)
9. Open a web page with a SWF in it. If there is now a “Debugger” option in the context-menu, you have the Debug player installed. if not, try again, or try the uninstaller as mentioned above.
10. Open Flash and make a new FLA with the following AS in the Actions panel:
    trace(“I am alive”); // or some other goofy test thing
11. Publish your movie and open the HTML page
12. Open Windows Explorer and look in the root of C:\ – there should be a flashlog.txt file (if not, check all the settings above and perhaps log-out and log back in, or reboot and try it again)
13. Open the flashlog.txt file and you should see your trace output.

-rG