How to locate the cause for a consistent plugin crash

[Gaius Coffey]

Hi,

I have an animated display panel for navigating around, zooming in and out, to explore a displayed document for customization. The code is robust and mature and works consistently...

Until now.

The change has been to allow a bigger display panel - full screen dimensions - that's it. Now what happens is an unpredictable wipe-out of the entire plugin. EG: Browser in IE displays a big "!", in FireFox I see a sad face...

I have seen something similar where entirely correct code would wipe out the browser unless some 3D animation code was throttled (fewer clips, updated less frequently), so I suspect there will be a workaround here to cut back on the amount of work the plugin is doing. The crash appears to happen in response to an animation to rescale / zoom the content and my best guess is that there is some display parameter that goes above a certain (very large) number, but I can't work out _which_ display parameter I need to constrain. I was able to _partially_ alleviate the problem by preventing zoom above an arbitrarily chosen threshold, but I am still seeing crashes.

So...

Please can somebody direct me to any plugin logging or diagnostic information that will help me to work out a bit more?

Thanks,
G

[moccamaximum]

You provide way to less information to give you any useful advice. You are speaking about "the plugin", do you refer to the Flash Player itself or a Plugin that you yourself programmed? You bring up 3D Animation, does thaht refer to your own project or is it just a misleading example?

[Gaius Coffey]

Hi Moccamaximum,

1. By "plugin" I mean the Flash plugin itself. EG: The downloadable Flash plugin downloaded and installed from www.flash.com

2. The 3D crash is unrelated, but it is a similar phenomenon - total wipe-out of Flash in the browser without warning

3. I have subsequently found reference to a memory leak caused with certain changes on masking - I have throttled my "displayObject.mask =" calls to see if that fixes the problem... I'll report back.

Nonetheless, the question remains open;

How do I diagnose the cause of a crash where valid ActionScript code takes out the entire Flash plugin?

Thanks,

Gaius

[moccamaximum]

Getting started with Adobe Scout | Adobe Developer Connection

[Gaius Coffey]

Thanks, moccamaximum, I should have mentioned this is a Flex project so cannot be compiled using ASC2.0.

Also, although Scout looks interesting, it seems to be more about memory load and performance rather than about plugin crash or behaviour.

The issue is not related to memory load (which remains pretty low and hasn't changed in any case) but an actual wipe-out of the plugin - all plugin functioning ceases, flash is removed from browser display.

G

[Gaius Coffey]

I've found an AIR app to allow me to use Scout with my Flex app.

It's got some nice profiling features, still not sure how to debug my issue, though.

G

[moccamaximum]

Maybe try the Flex Forum?

Flex

[Gaius Coffey]

Thanks, but it does appear to be at a plugin level and _not_ at a Flex level.

The line that appears to be the problem is setting DisplayObject.mask and not some Flex variant of same.

G