Fnk is an academic project. As such, there is a certain schedule and some tasks I have to conform to, and this includes writing a proposal paper where I outline what I want to do with Fnk, and how. The whole first semester of this year is dedicated to the writing of this proposal.

Last Friday (May 16) was the due date for this paper. It was a whole lot of work – and, worst of all, time I had to be away from actually working on developing Fnk itself – but I was able to finish the text and deliver it in time. I’ve added its content as an HTML link and as a PDF download to the About page, but it’s all in Brazilian Portuguese for now (I’ll translate it sometime in the future). I will also have to hold a small presentation on the project in two weeks from now, but for all purposes, this first stage is pretty much done.

More importantly, though: once this stage is complete, the remaining one is writing the final paper – which is only due later this year, when the project itself will be finished. This means I can dedicate all my academic time for the rest of this year in actually developing Fnk and having it work. Maybe I’m just too much of a hands-on kind of guy, but writing about what I’d do and how instead of actually doing it was killing me.

Anyway, one of the things I’ve done this weekend to get back in track is porting the existing Flash 9 project to a proper Flash 10 project, as it’s been all the rage for the past few days. Turns out this is a bit more complicated than it sounds, since there’s some features you can’t use yet – in short, existing editors won’t understand the new goodies used by Flash 10. You can compile to it, but editing it is another can of worms entirely.

I finally have some a function Flash 10 version of the project, and it’s working better than ever, even if I can’t make use of everything I want yet (like typed Arrays!) without having my editors puke on my face because of the syntax (more on the integrated development environment I use in the future – it’s not Flash itself). However, in the near future, some small tidbits – like being able to load files locally via the new FileReference – will make a hell of a difference in terms of project capabilities.

Also due to this, it’ll be sometime until I finally update the existing (very alpha) online version of Fnk, because I’ll want to do so with a more stable version. The current online version is already pretty out-of-date – it’s using build 485, while the newest one I have is 791 – but it’s because I’ve removed a few features (like moving nodes around) and I won’t update the online version until they’re working again, something which require me finishing the new selection features. Still, it’s looking – and running – better than ever. I can’t wait until I’m actually able to create some graphics (and sound!) there.