A couple of weeks ago, Haxe 3.1.0 was released. Well, Haxe 3.1.1 bugfix release has been made available for download. Three new features have made there way into this release, with the more notable being you can now embed unicode values into your strings. var unicode = "\u4DF1"; will return [unicode inline skip-lb]. Checkout the changelog for the full details.
But, in a recent git commit Haxe got even damn faster!
Daniel Glazman, a W3C CSS co-chairman has just discovered "Haxe and HXCPP and [is] totally blown away". He says "this is what I have been dreaming of and I am going to use it immediately".
I expect that Flambe recently adding support for Firefox OS helped get his attention. Not only his attention but Mozilla's attention, as they have written the article Flambe Provides support for FireFox OS, which provides an in depth introduction to Haxe and Flambe, also how to build a game to run on Firefox OS and further details into Flambe specifics.
But it wasn't just Flambe that recently added Firefox OS support, OpenFL has also added support in 1.3.0. In the OpenFL teams article Flash and HTML5, Unicorns Exist!, they announce a brand new HTML5 backend based around pixi.js, which is a "super fast 2D rendering engine that uses WebGL which falls back to canvas".
In the testing they have exceeded pixi.js performance by 40% on some systems thanks to Haxe's dead code elimination, with the BunnyMark sample only weighing in at 22kb gzipped. They have compiled Nicolas Cannasse's Ludum Dare winning game Evolution using the new HTML5 backend.
But the OpenFL team haven't stopped there, they have teamed up with SunGame Corp to bring stereoscopic 3D to developers to quickly support glasses free 3D devices.
But if your haven't used OpenFL yet, or have only just discovered the Haxe ecosystem, then take a look at the article Getting started with Haxe, Lime and OpenFL by Premith who takes you through a quick overview, installation, the range of IDEs and writing your first Haxe program.
Or maybe you've heard of HaxeFlixel and want a tutorial, maybe a video tutorial, here, have this video tutorial recorded by Christopher Bulter. Also check out part 2 and part 3.
Or maybe you want some proof of what HaxeFlixel can be used for? Theres the showcase with a great selection, but the most recent example would be Laza Knitez!! deployed to OUYA, where you are "4 ultra noble warriorz from the techofuture".
Lars Doucet has written the article Flash is Dead, Long Live OpenFL! in which he talks about the bad taste left by Adobe and how any proprietary program/language should be avoided, that the future is only in open source technology with only one clear options, OpenFL. Lars has done a great job explaining the different layers available and the difference between the Haxe language targets and the OpenFL platform targets.
Lars has also done a great job in the last couple of days spreading the article across all the Flash forums and received great feedback from the Flash community.
Raphael Harmel has posted to the Haxe mailing list that two round tables are being organised for WWX2014 with the subjects being "Native platforms" and the "Haxion plan, the future".
Hugh Sanderson posted to the thread the question of why not have Lime and OpenFL simply use NME 5.0.0 for the native components, and replace the lime command line tools with NME and gives his answer to the question of "why don't [you] abandon NME and move [the development] to Lime and OpenFL".
The thread is a great read, especially for those dependant on OpenFL, for those who started as an original NME user or anyone whos just a long time Haxe developer. You get the opinions from Motion-Twin developers to indie developers, with the Haxe Foundation deciding to "step in".
Dan Korostelev has written the article On my Haxe Coding Style. The only part I can't get out of the habit of doing to explicitly typing public or private. And I try to avoid skipping braces.
HaxePunk 2.5.2 has been released! Checkout the changelog.
Haxe UI has released a brand new default theme, inspired by feathers, the AS3 UI components library, which you can view in the new showcase. You can also try building your own UI. Such a great website.
Max has released externs for Howler.js, a cross browser HTML5 audio library.
Michal Romecki has written the article FBuilder: A tool to help work with multiple targets. Instead of working with multiple language or platform targets, it seems it helps you work with multiple command line tools cross-platform. Hopefully Michal will write more about it.
And to finish up, Clément Charmet has released another full stack Haxe/Node.js powered site Danette Duels.
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