Flash on richardleggett.com

Implementing SpellCheck (Squiggly) with the Text Layout Framework (TLF)

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:39:48 +0000

I’ve just posted over in the Text Layout forums how I went about implementing Squiggly with “pure” Text Layout Framework… so that’s not using TLF/FTETextField or the Spark components.

This is really just an overview which should give plenty to help you figure out the steps. I can’t paste the exact code because it’s embedded in a client project, but I do refer to some of the TLF functions throughout that you have to make use of, if anyone can suggest improvements, please drop them in the comments.

Flash/Flex Builder <-> Flash Professional Asset Workflows

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:19:54 +0000

This post discusses the various workflows for producing SWFs with the standalone compiler that use graphical assets and animations created in Flash Professional (“Flash Pro”). At time of writing the latest version of Flash Pro is CS4, with CS5 briefly out in beta for a short while. Specifically we look at the methods that involve exporting SWCs and using the [Embed] metatag within class files.

Recently I posted a bug report regarding the [Embed] metatag, which led me to write this post in order to find out whether people are happy with their current workflows and how well others receive projects when it comes to handovers and maintenance.

Creating Drupal Sites with Flash or Flex: Update

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:27:37 +0000

It appears a new Views module has been released which is causing a couple of problems with the Drupal/Flash stuff, so I’ve updated the post to describe the necessary steps. Hopefully the Adobe DevNet article will also be updated soon with these changes.

You can read the updated post here.

Creating Drupal Sites with Flash or Flex

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:26:51 +0000

I’m pleased to see that an article I wrote for Adobe DevNet has just gone live. “Creating Drupal Sites for Flash or Flex” describes the benefits of using a CMS for your Flash or Flex sites, how to set everything up, getting Flash talking to Drupal, and also covers the various modules available to power your site.

Drupal is probably the most popular open source CMS out there, it has an enormous user community, and the best thing of all is probably the fact that you don’t have to write any PHP or SQL to take advantage of this as a result! (Unless of course you want to, Drupal is fully extensible).

Compiling FFMPEG Statically on OS X (and Windows)

Tue, 19 May 2009 18:19:15 +0000

I was up extremely late last night figuring this out, so I made some rough notes as I went along. Hopefully they’ll save someone a small nightmare.

Disclaimer: I haven’t written C code since I was in my teens, and apart from some Objective-C from the comfort of XCode, I haven’t really done a whole lot of GCC compiling on any system, so this may not be the best way to do any of this.

Flash on the Beach 2009 Tickets Now on Sale

Mon, 18 May 2009 11:29:44 +0000

The schedule has just gone up, new speakers have been added, and tickets are now on sale. You’ll want to get your tickets as soon as possible because the sooner you get them, the cheaper they are, and they’ll be going fast.

There are options for companies that wish to send several different employees over the course of the three days (see Flexi-pass option), as well as student tickets and single day tickets.

Silverlight 3 Beta Release and Adobe

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:07:31 +0000

Yesterday, to much excitement, Microsoft released Silverlight 3 beta, and gave a run-down on the new features at the MIX09 conference. It has been a very long time since I first looked at Silverlight (here’s my post on a pre 1.0 early build I got to use over in Redmond), and I’ve used both Silverlight and WPF since (which will eventually be two in the same IMHO), one app for the BBC was demo’d at the MIX07 keynote, so I’m fairly familiar with the offering and how it compares.

Flex 3/4 Font Embedding: CFF-DefineFont4 vs DefineFont3

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:17:17 +0000

There are now two types of font embedding available to both Flash (CS4) and Flex 3 and 4. These are DefineFont3 (classic), and DefineFont4 (supporting CFF and the new text engine.)

In Flash, Flex 2 and 3 you’d traditionally embed fonts for use in the TextField class, whether that’s a vanilla TextField, or a component that uses the TextField class and has been set to use embedded fonts. This is DefineFont3 embedding. The steps are usually:

Bullet Points and Text Alignment in the Text Layout Framework

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:30:52 +0000

I don’t have enough time right now to go into too much detail so I’m afraid this post will just consist of pointers and no real code samples, but I wanted to say that bullet points, although technically un-supported in the Text Layout Framework right now (in terms of <li> tags), are possible. Text alignment is already supported, and you can build a pretty solid text editor that uses these, as well as all the kinds of formatting you’d expect from colour to font weight.

Text Layout Framework Follow Up PureMVC Solution

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:00:23 +0000

In my previous post I posed the problem of using the new Text Layout Framework in an application where you already have an Undo stack/mechanism, for example in PureMVC with the Undo utility (CommandHistoryProxy).

The challenge arises because the TLF already has an UndoManager, so the solution must hook into that. Added to that, in an application you’re likely to need to serialize your TextFlow to disk/server, which means de-serializing it, which means you’re storing your data outside of the TextFlow instance and needing to keep this store up to date as the user interacts with the TextFlow via the EditManager provided by the TLF.

Text Layout Framework Follow Up and Request

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:17:41 +0000

UPDATE: I’ve posted a solution to this PureMVC + Text Layout Framework integration here (this applies not just to PureMVC, but anywhere you want to use your own “undo” stack in an MVC application).

I’m having a bit of a tricky time with integrating the TLF into an application which already has an “undo” system. The TLF has itself an UndoManager, but more on that later…

The public demo’s are all quite concise, showing the functionality of the TLF in a small amount of code, but I wonder if it’s possible for someone at Adobe to take a look at how people might be using the Text Layout Framework when they have implemented their own application-wide Undo stack which I believe is quite common for RIAs now.

Introduction to the Text Layout Framework

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:32:54 +0000

I’ve been using the TLF for the last day, and it’s really a major leap forward from the limitations of the TextField class introduced in Flash 6. TextField still has its uses, it’s most likely more processor friendly (unconfirmed). But if you’re in need of some of TLF’s advanced features like bi-di text (or complex script like TCY elements), support for flowing text between multiple columns and containers, better handling of in-line images, advanced styling of things like ligatures, superscript, and tracking, then TLF is for you.

The View-Model-ViewModel Pattern

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:51:22 +0000

Yes, another pattern, but I’ve just come across a great post on the M-V-VM pattern and it’s a good one to share. I was introduced to the V-M-VM pattern just under a year ago by an outstanding .NET dev when we worked together on an RFID/database powered WPF application (pics), and I have to admit it worked *really* well, I was utterly convinced by this concept with regards to WPF developement. (Link to article at the end of this post.)

CSS and AS3: Careful with Whitespace

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:18:11 +0000

Small bug here, it looks like the built in StyleSheet CSS parser in Flash doesn’t use a trim() or a more complex regular expression when parsing a CSS string/file. If you’re a whitespace fan this can lead to your style properties, such as “fontFamily”, actually being indexed in the style object as “fontFamily ” (notice the space at the end).

This doesn’t affect the regular dot notation access (style.fontFamily). But it can cause problems if you’re iterating through the style object.

Cliff Hall on PureMVC – Video

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:22:31 +0000

I’ve got a stack of posts scribbled over some paper that I’ve been meaning to blog about for months now regarding the MVP pattern (and ViewModels). But more on that later, because what is core to MVP is of course MVC, that most misunderstood of “patterns”…

Well this one is for new-guns and MVC vets alike, Cliff Hall presents on MVC as it is applied in PureMVC, perhaps one of the most refreshing frameworks to come to light in the Flash realm, and it is spreading to many other languages, ports include Python and even JavaScript/JQuery in the works.

Genetic Algorithm Evolves Better Car Using Flash

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:57:21 +0000

Caught this over at BoingBoing, it’s a nice Flash-based simulation that runs through rapidly evolving a vehicle design, using a physics engine to test the thing out over some terrain (not sure whether it’s home-rolled or one of the big ones).

Quote from BoingBoing article, from Matthew the author:

“This is a GA I wrote to design a little car for a specific terrain. It runs in real-time in Flash. The fitness function is the distance travelled before the red circles hit the ground, or time runs out. The degrees of freedom are the size and initial positions of the four circles, and length, spring constant and damping of the eight springs. The graph shows the ‘mean’ and ‘best’ fitness.”

Flash Player Settings: Flash and Silverlight Comparison

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:52:26 +0000

One of the little pet peeves I seem to share with other Flashers is the frankenstein-like html/flash settings manager pages that you have to access via Adobe’s site. This is the thing you see when you right click a Flash movie and choose “Settings” -> “Advanced”. It allows you to trust certain locations on your hard drive, delete “Flash cookies” (LSOs) , auto-check for player updates and other tasks.

The thing is this thing really looks and feels old now (it’s an FP6 file and it shows), it seems strange I have to be online and visit a site to delete files the Flash Player creates on my hard drive… if it’s a chore for a Flash dev, what’s the chance someone else can use it, particularly if people are storing sensitive info in there (bad devs!). I just got pinged a link to a Silverlight site and as I had to update to 2.0.something so I thought I’d check out the new settings panel (below, click to view full size):

getDefinitionByName() Fails in SWFs Loaded Into Another SWF (Solution)

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:51:47 +0000

Just a quick note for future reference. When you are using getDefinitionByName(“ClassName”) inside a SWF that is being loaded into another SWF, it might not find the symbol from its own library (see ApplicationDomain and LoaderContext for why).

The solution is to get a reference from the ApplicationDomain of the SWF being loaded using the getDefinition() method. So the code:

var mySymbol:Class = getDefinitionByName("MySymbol");

becomes…

var mySymbol:Class = loaderInfo.applicationDomain.getDefinition("MySymbol");

Hopefully that resolves any issue you had with getDefinitionByName(). Of course you’d use a similar mechanism to work the other way around, and get at classes inside a loaded SWF. In this case it would be loader.contentLoaderInfo.applicationDomain.getClass()… however this depends on what ApplicationDomain you’ve loaded your child SWF into (see LoaderContext class).

ActionScript and ECMAScript 3.1/4 – Inter-op is the Key

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:50:49 +0000

Like many other Flash devs I’ve been following the discussions surrounding the ECMAScript 4 decisions and the Harmony project quite closely. There are a few bloggers out there that appear to be stating that ActionScript will become divorced from the standards. To be honest only Adobe can decide that, but either way, that’s only half the story. In particular, it does not mean that ActionScript will not be able to inter-op, and that’s key…

Meta4orce – Papervision Site for the BBC

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:38:33 +0000

I just caught this site via the blog of Iain Lobb (head of interactive at Bloc Media) who commented on my last post. It’s an incredibly slick site developed using the Great White branch of Papervision3D. The site is (for) a TV and online cartoon series, providing a nice cross media experience.

The main things that stood out for me were the production quality of the games and the audio which is very high quality and just as importantly, very well integrated.

JavaFX.com is DHTML Heaven

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:38:41 +0000

I just visited the (new?) JavaFX site in order to keep up to date on how the new kid to the Flash/Silverlight/”Rich” block was doing, and I was presented with an interesting site indeed. Make sure to click some of the “Resource” links on the right to get the full experience.

The whole thing is built in HTML and JavaScript, with the odd Quicktime player for good measure. Unfortunately the site creeks along at 100% CPU with jerky transitions, ugly styling and flickering madness as the browser can’t figure out what to render, with Quicktime movie’s and HTML Divs strobing in and out of existence as you drag panels around. So far not a great impression given.

Flash on the Beach Conference Passes.. on eBay

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:01:49 +0000

What a great idea from Flash on the Beach, there are now 5 three day conference passes are up for grabs on eBay, the starting price just Ã‚£1. It will be interesting to see how much these end up going for. Whoever wins, I’ll see you there!

Ticket 1
Ticket 2
Ticket 3
Ticket 4
Ticket 5

3D Zoo Site Raises the Bar

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:29:45 +0000

I just received a link to The Eco Zoo site and quite honestly this is a step above what we might normally expect from a web site. Using Papervision a custom 3D engine in a slick fashion, switching between 3D environments, the tree/world and the pop-up book specifically, the site explores some exotic creatures.

There’s a lot of attention to detail throughout, from the butterflies fluttering around the tree and the simulated cloth to the leaves at the top blowing away and the pop-up book pages which you can rotate around and discover the artist has even taken the time to draw the reverse of the characters in the scene.

Nonoba – Free Flash Multi-User Server, API, Hosting and $20,000 Competition

Thu, 22 May 2008 21:05:10 +0000

I’ve just received an email from Nonoba with information on their new multi-user offering, which includes an AS2 and AS3 API, but what I find particularly interesting is that they also include free hosting and execution of your game logic.

The aim appears to be to lower the barrier to entry for anyone wishing to create a multi-user game. These can include turn-based, or real-time games. They currently have some demos up on the site, and these include Nonoba Racer, Fridge Magnets, Multiplayer Asteroids and DrawPad.

Images Invert Colours When Using a Loader In Flash Player 9

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:38:20 +0000

Quick warning regarding loading images using the Loader class in Flash Player 9…

Image files that are saved with a CMYK profile will appear with inverted colours, this includes JPEGs. It might sound a random thing to encounter but it can happen if you are allowing users to upload images. So it’s probably best to re-save the images on the server using an RGB profile and also check for things like a high DPI, which is likely to also be the case with CMYK images that have been designed for print originally.

HD Video Silverlight Firefox Extension, Requires Flash?

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:46:30 +0000

Quote:

“Move Media Player and Microsoft’s Silverlight To Create The Most Flexible, High Quality Streaming Video Platform”

Here’s a strange one. Move Networks is offering a HD video player “powered by Silverlight” that comes in the form of a Firefox extension. Once installed you are redirected to a page that shows a HD video, but a look at the source shows the video player header and controls/progress bar are all made in Flash, it just overlays a block, streaming in a QMX file (doesn’t open in Windows Media Player when renamed asx).

Flash on the iPhone, an Alternative to Bringing Flash to Safari?

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:02:47 +0000

There are a few posts out there relating to Shantanu’s disclosure of a standalone Flash Player being developed for the iPhone using the newly released SDK, but of course that doesn’t answer the question as to whether people will be able to browse the web and view Flash content in-line, given that Flash makes up a huge chunk of the web, and also provides the revenue for a great many sites through advertisements (fallback GIFs are not what advertisers are paying so much money for).

Caution with HTTP 201/20x Responses and Custom Request Headers (Flash Player 9)

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:41:23 +0000

Ran into a couple of issues today with Flash Player 9. I’m communicating with a server which uses REST-based services and is very “standards compliant”. So when PUTting* to the server, it was responding with a HTTP 201 code (that’s a “created” response) and a 204 status code for a DELETE*. The Flash IDE was choking on this and generating an IOError, unable to read the stream. (*as a sidenote Flash Player doesn’t support the PUT or DELETE verbs right now, so we were using POST instead, and using a request header (“X-HttpVerbOverride”) to specify the correct verb.)

Enabling Access to Timeline Items in AS3 after gotoAndStop()

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:17:27 +0000

So there’s a problem with using gotoAndStop() in AS3 classes, as soon as you call it, you temporarily lose access to items on stage (on the timeline) whether they are defined as member variables, or using getChildByName(). This is different from AS2, items on stage were immediately accessible.

Why use the timeline at all? For one you might have a simple button using named keyframes as button states, or when dealing with assets created by designers that include animations with portions that require localisation of text. So like before you use gotoAndStop() or gotoAndPlay() to manage which “state” your MovieClip is in, but when you go to access anything on stage, it is null, even if it was on the previous keyframe. Here’s a snippet from a typical AS3 class:

Does Flash Lite Have a Future?

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:24:36 +0000

A popular thread on the Flash Lite mailing list right now is entitled: “Does Flashlite have a future with mobile devices?“. This is very alarming, but a very just question with all things considered…

In 2005 I started writing Foundation Flash for Mobile Devices (Friends of ED). This came about very soon after Flash Lite 1.1 was released, and writing continued right up until the release of Flash Lite 2.1 (we made sure we waited to include it). Before I give my thoughts on Flash Lite and its future, I should probably explain that in the last year I’ve pretty much taken a back seat in the Flash Lite community, and there are many reasons for that. The reality is my attention span is very short and I’ve been too busy keeping up developing prototypes and commercial sites and applications with every new technology, including Flex 2, Papervision3D, Silverlight, WPF and AIR. There are other reasons, but more on that later.

My Thoughts on Adobe Thermo

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:51:37 +0000

I’ve just read some pretty valid concerns over at EverythingFlex with regards to Thermo, announced yesterday at MAX. I thought I’d post my response on here…

At first I was also a little scared by this [tool]. But if you look at how it is at present, as Tink mentions there, you have to export layers out of Photoshop (which is a skill in itself unless your designer is ultra neat and doesn’t have a thousand layers with adjustments and masks). This means you are expecting your developers to be extremely savvy with Photoshop, luckily a lot of Flashers are, but that’s not always the case, particularly with Flex devs.

Base64 Encoding in Flash (using MIME)

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:31:49 +0000

Base64 encoding is a very useful technique that allows for the sending of binary data, such as an image file, over the wire using plain-text. This means it can be embedded in XML (plain, SOAP or XML-RPC), it also means the binary data can be stored very easily in a database. It works by reading in data in packs of 6 bits, and turning each one of those into a character in a simple 64 character alphabet. This input data can be text, but it can also be binary data stored in a ByteArray; perhaps the contents of a file, or an MP3 your Flash application has constructed in memory.

Flash 9 (only) XML Class Gotcha

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:09:26 +0000

Possible gotcha with the XML class, but I’d like to get this confirmed if anyone has a second to try this out.

It seems that the XML class is converting " to its literal ASCII representation (i.e. the quote mark “) when converting a String into a new XML object. I’m sending this data over XML-RPC and I cannot have quotes being sent as plain-text, they need to be XML/HTML encoded.

Another ExternalInterface Bug – Affects ASP.NET Sites in IE6/7

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 03:59:51 +0000

There appears to be a bug with ExternalInterface when your Flash movie is inside a FORM tag, which is what ASP.NET does by default.

You will get a “null has no properties” type error because the JavaScript that ExternalInterface generates at runtime is unable to reference the Flash movie.

It appears to be due to IE not putting the form in the same place as other browsers’ DOMs (specifically the window object).

Runtime Shared Assets and Load Order

Wed, 23 May 2007 04:55:59 +0000

This affects projects that make use of FLAs and runtime shared assets, commonly sharing things like fonts or components amongst several SWFs to prevent embedding them several times in the various files that might make up a project.

The first thing to note is the “Load Order” in the settings panel in Flash. It defaults to “bottom up”, and this means it streams in the contents of the bottom-most layer first, before loading and executing code that lives on any layers above it.

Possibly the Most Impressive RIA Yet (Screencast)

Sat, 19 May 2007 05:57:21 +0000

I’ve posted about Buzzword before, the upcoming online (/offline with Apollo?) word processor. To me Buzzword really illustrates why I continue to back Flash and Flex over AJAX. I don’t care what people use if it’s a good experience, but the limitations are definitely becoming more and more apparent, and perhaps in 2007 we will begin to see the Flash apps just accelerating away from the current kings of the RIA scene, not just in demos and prototypes, but in the real world. The great thing about this game is that you don’t have to compete by spreading FUD, you can just build users by building better experiences, they (/we) are a fickle bunch!

Updated: Flash, Flex, Silverlight… and now JavaFX

Tue, 08 May 2007 03:27:30 +0000

Fantastic, something else to learn 😉 Sun bloggers have been dropping hints to look toward the JavaOne conference in and around all of the Silverlight posts that have clogged up the aggregators the last week or so, and it appears the announcement for their new AJAX/RIA alternative comes in the form of “JavaFX”.

JavaFX makes use of a new scripting language and utilises the Swing APIs for UI. This probably comes as no suprise, I have drummed on to my poor colleagues the last year how AJAX’s days are numbered in terms of the popularity it currently enjoys, it simply cannot keep up because HTML and JS were never intended to build this “new” breed of online app, too much reliance on the browser itself naturally brings with it serious yet fully justified limitations. We’re reaching the top of that particular bell-curve now. For an example of this you just need to compare Google Docs (Google being the absolute cream of the crop in AJAX scene, yes I know they use GWT), with early pre-alpha screens of Buzzword. The potential benefits of using the Flash Player are limitless in terms of real-time document editing (binary data transfer over XML refreshes, bitmap editing, video embedding, animation creation etc). Microsoft, Sun and Adobe of course are all providing better tools to craft future of the web.

Data Exchange Efficiency (AJAX, JSON, E4X, Flex Remoting/AMF)

Tue, 01 May 2007 17:47:23 +0000

I just got sent a very interesting link to a Flex app from James Ward that runs tests on a variety of different data exchange formats. The tests include results for:

1. Server processing time
2. Data transmission time
3. Parsing time and…
4. Rendering time

Of course no real suprises that Flex/Flash Remoting performs the best in all cases (the Dojo example appears to transfer quicker, but it is actually only dealing with 500 rows instead of 5000 in the Flex tests, maybe because it is sadly let down by the incredibly long render time), “classic” AJAX performs fairly badly, with JSON and Dojo falling somewhere in between.

Mmm Flash Physics Experiment – Acrobots

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 02:05:06 +0000

Just got sent this by a colleague, great fun and well executed, reminds me somewhat of LocoRoco….

http://www.acrobots.net/

Bedale Group – Summary

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 13:58:40 +0000

Yesterday saw the first meeting of the Bedale group, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank James for organising it, and for the wine, there were a great deal of top quality bottles had over the course of the night along with some excellent cheese.

I’d recommend anyone using Adobe products in an organisation to come along, many topics were discussed. From LiveCycle to Apollo to Flex, we covered a lot of ground regarding the products in terms of positioning, functionality, and in particular relationships with Adobe and the ISV outreach and support programme. It was interesting for me personally to talk to the guys from Arch Consulting who specialise in SAP R/3 and LiveCycle. In particular it was great to get a better picture on how Adobe fits in with the enterprise, I feel fortunate that I can pick up a beta and pretty much start using it in production, however at the other end of the spectrum there is a huge amount of proof needed before making leaps into new technologies.

Inaugural Meeting of the Bedale Group

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 09:27:59 +0000

Tuesday the 20th of March sees the first meeting of the Bedale Group set up by James Governor of RedMonk:

The Bedale Group is…

“An unassociation for the UK Adobe ecosystem. If you’re a software or services company that specialises in Adobe platforms I would be very interested to hear from you. The idea is to create an occasional forum to drink wine and discuss what Adobe needs to do to sustain and improve its engagement with the local corporate developer community.”

PaperVision3D Tron Lightcycles – Sneaky Screenshot

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 14:19:13 +0000

So I’m on day 2 of a project I’m un-imaginatively calling “PaperTron”, my first foray into making a game with PV3D, and I thought I’d post up a little screenshot of what we have so far:

I hope this shouldn’t take too long, but considering it’s taken well over 2 weeks to make myself spend the time I have, it could take a while ultimately ;). Either way, it’s a lot of fun, and PaperVision 3D makes it pretty easy, let’s face it, if you’ve ever done any 3D in Flash before, it’s not easy, so anything that helps you do just the fun stuff is great in my books.

Gfx Benchmarking: Flash/Flex vs. WPF vs. WPF/E vs DHTML

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 07:56:06 +0000

I’m afraid to say I got different [relative] results to those published on the site (the Flex cache as bitmap version was by far the highest FPS on my machine), but I’d have to dig into the source to see how these have been put together…

Link to the examples

Link to the results and discussion.

Some personal notes. I tend to think a Flash only (non-Flex framework) example would be a better option to a Flex app. Also the Flex example uses a Timer, he probably should try making use of the ENTER_FRAME event to see what results that gets. Also worth trying the fullscreen-then-back trick the Papervision3D guys are using to get a perf boost. Any other tests out there? Something like this would be interesting 😉

Update: Flash 9 Experiment – Fireworks Alpha Mask + Webcam

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 03:36:38 +0000

I’ve just fixed my last Flash 9 experiment, I hadn’t built it in such a way as to not error if you don’t have a webcam installed at all. Also I developed this on an intel mac, and it runs smoothly at 60FPS, with over 200 firework particles at once, for some reason my pretty good PC is only running at around 5-10FPS with only 25 particles, but this may just be the PC here so please feel free to try it out.

Flash 9 Experiment – Fireworks Alpha Mask + Webcam

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 16:37:11 +0000

I went to see Alias’ presentation at LFPUG the other night, and it made me keen to get back to some experimenting in Flash, in particular with Flash Player 9. You may have seen my last example which used Flash 8 alpha video as a mask. This kind of extends that, in that we are using an alpha mask again, this time we have some fireworks. Before the SWF, here’s a screenshot:

New Techniques with Flash Video – Paint Filled Car

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 15:10:22 +0000

I’ve been thinking about video quite a bit recently. One thing that really bugs me is how people tend to treat video as this thing that sits in a box and plays from start to finish. When Flash 8 introduced alpha in video it opened up a whole new range of techniques, and I’ve just spent a little bit of time roughing out a simple (and rather crude) example:

This example is seemingly simple, but there are quite a few steps involved which I will explain below. What happens here is that you can click a colour, and the car’s surface will fill with that colour as it rotates, as if paint were splashing into its existing finish.

Papervision3D – Preliminary Tests

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 15:37:39 +0000

What can I say? I’m blown away by Papervision3D. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve used Sandy (enter via UK/Europe), and although it wasn’t me who tried it personally I can see it is a fantastically full featured engine. However, for me, I wanna see enough polys for a full on game, and that’s the sort of speed you can expect with PV3D as it grows.

So here are some pretty basic initial tests I made to see just how fast it is. These examples are NOT optimized, nor are the models really. The Delorean car for example has over 800 polys.

My First Flash Wii Game – Balloons

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 15:45:22 +0000

Well today I had a play at making a Flash game for the Wii using some rudimentary gesture recognition for the wand style of input. You can see a sneak peek of how the gesture recognition works here:

http://richardleggett.co.uk/wii/gestureRecogDemo.html

So Aral and Mario together have un-earthed some real gems the last couple of days, I think there could be a lot of fun to be had making some Wii games. It’s like Flash Lite, even simple games are much more fun when put on another type of device, and with the “wand” style input, it’s even more fun.

FLV’d – Competition from Friends of ED

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:52:02 +0000

Friends of ED is holding a competition where you could grab the top prize of an Apple Mac Book, 3 FoED books, Camtasia and SnagIT software and a copy of gProject (from gskinner.com). There are also runners up prizes so it’s worth having some fun here.

You just need to produce something cool that uses some of the provided assets, it looks pretty open to interpretation, just stick to the rules of coming under 2.5 minutes and 10mb.

Reflecting on WPF/E

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 22:39:02 +0000

Introduction:

I’m going to keep this very factual. I’ve been developing Flash for the last 6 years and intend to carry on doing so, as a result I’ve learned to accept a lot of criticism and be open to review all things new, in effect I’m opening by saying I have not been “bought” as you will no doubt see in this article I aim to give an entirely balanced perspective, the politics interest me not, just the tech. With that in mind, I’ve been able to get very deep into WPF/E for the last week or so, I’ve always enjoyed dipping into a brand new tech and getting fully engrossed in it, so it was a nice experience to be given the opportunity (thanks). You may find me making a lot of comparisons to Flash, this is only natural for obvious reasons.

Hey Ma, I’m on BBC Radio ;)

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:52:31 +0000

It’s been a week since I was at Flash on the Beach but whilst I was there Rami Tzabar from the BBC (Digital Planet on Radio 4) asked me a few questions about Flash Lite just after my presentation. You can listen online and download the podcast at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4849402.stm

Direct link to mp3

Skip to 20 mins 30 seconds for the piece on 10 years of Flash (and Flash on the Beach). The show talks about the evolution of Flash and its expansion into various forms of media. There’s also an insightful discussion from Geoff Stearns on the abuse of Flash. 10 years, wow.

Flash on the Beach Slides and Source

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 17:53:55 +0000

Finally got round to uploading my slides, source and the source for the FOTB Flash Lite Pocket Guide, so my apologies for the delay… I had to take a flight straight from Brighton to Seattle on the last day of the conference and it’s been pretty busy since I arrived. I also want to take this chance to thank John, as many others have. It was a fantastic conference and extremely slick, I hope he invites me back next time. Without further ado, here are the zips!

Casting Fails – Flash 8 – Follow Up

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 09:04:38 +0000

A while ago I posted about casting failing if you cast the result of attachMovie() but only in certain cases.

I had the same thing happen today, so I opened it up in FLASM, and I think I can see what is happening:

push 'sp'
getVariable
trace
push 'sb', 0.0, 'getNextHighestDepth'
callFunction
push 'sb', 'com'
getVariable
push 'domain'
getMember
push 'controls'
getMember
push 'ScrollBar'
getMember
push 'LINKAGE'
getMember
push 3, 'attachMovie'
callFunction
push 1, 'com'
getVariable
push 'domain'
getMember
push 'controls'
getMember
push 'ScrollBar'
callMethod
varEquals

As you can see here, it seems instead of performing a cast operation (and “cast” is a keyword you do see in the FLASM output), it actually tries to perform a conversion (as you see with Array or Boolean), treating com.domain.controls.ScrollPane as a function, and applying it to the result from the attachMovie() operation. This results in the undefined/null value we are experiencing because in itself, this function has no return value unless used with the new keyword as a constructor.

Flash on the Beach ’06 Wishlist

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 06:42:20 +0000

Well I’ve seen Tink’s and Peter’s wishlists, so I think it’s time I put up my own, and this was really tricky, too many sessions I’m going to have to sacrifice.

Day 1:

11:00 Craig Swann – ..and now for something completely different..

13:30 Branden Hall – Explorations with ActionScript 3

15:00 Aral Balkan – Memo to the CEO

16:30 Erik Natzke – Keep Interest(ed)

Day 2:

9:30 Brendan Dawes – Contains one scene of sheep skinning

WPF from a Flash Dev’s Perspective

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 07:51:43 +0000

Aral just had an interesting post on XAML, the markup language used for presentation and layout in Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). He touches upon a fact that it is sometimes quite a shock to see some real abominations when it comes to some of the XAML out there on the web. But there’s more to it than meets the eye when digging deeper. I’d like to post my reply on here also, and make it clear, I am not evangelising for either side in this post, but I find it fascinating comparing these two technologies which are making modern creative development very satisfying….

Tutorial: Building Version Numbers into SWFs using ANT and SVN

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 03:05:01 +0000

A colleague suggested it would be useful to build in version numbers into SWFs so that you could simply right click and see just what version you were looking at. Think in terms of QA or a client on the phone. With continuous integration it is useful to be able to say “hey just right click… so it says r12345?”. The r12345 here would refer to the revision number in Subversion. This makes bug tracking say using Trac much more integrated.

LFPUG: Visual Interfaces for the Human Brain and Flex 2 for Flashers

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:53:11 +0000

Next Wednesday (25th Oct ’06) my colleague Rob Bateman and buddy Tink will be hosting another LFPUG (London Flash Platform Usergroup). They will be speaking on Visual Interfaces for the Human Brain and Flex 2 for Flash Developers respectively. Tasty stuff. Last time was a lot of fun even though I had to rush off after my preso, but the venue was really nice so hopefully see you there. Remember to sign up to make sure you get in:

HD Fullscreen Flash Video – Demanding More

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:23:21 +0000

So I saw the full-screen video examples the other week using the new Flash 9 update, but the example at the end of this post really pricked my attention.

I went out and got a HD TV a couple of months ago because I figured it was time to make “the leap”. As yet I don’t think I’ve made any sort of decent use out of that particular feature apart from watching some Lost s3 over the wifi via a ye olde xbox-1 with media center (convergence is beautiful). Now I’m a firm believer that this whole Blu-Ray, HD-DVD thing is a flash in the pan; a very temporary stop-gap. The last time I bought a physical CD was probably 5 years ago. The last time I bought a DVD, probably a couple of weeks. Why? Because until now only Apple and two companies in the U.S. only have offered full movie downloads in any sort of reasonable, legal manner.

Using Flash in Installations – Nike Festival of Air

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 15:40:43 +0000

A couple of weeks ago we launched several installations in Nike Town, Oxford St., London as part of Nike’s Festival of Air, along with the accompanying website. It all kicked off with a fantastic launch party and there was a lot to see and do, I got to meet someone I consider an inspiration in UK hip hop and grime, Dizzy Rascal, and a good time was had all round. But down to the technology…

MovieClip Casting Fails with attachMovie()? Flash 8

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 04:50:58 +0000

I seem to be getting casting failing (returning null) when I have a class that extends a class that extends MovieClip. Here’s an example…

MyWidget extends SimpleButton
SimpleButton extends View
View extends MovieClip

That’s the inheritance chain, SimpleButton and View are some base classes I have written for use in various projects and are not part of the v2 components. Here’s what happens when I try to cast an attachMovie():

Simple BitmapData.getPixels() / ByteArray Example

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 04:54:29 +0000

I found the Flex 2 docs didn’t really contain an example of using the pixel data getPixels() puts into a ByteArray. I wanted to take the pixels in that ByteArray and have them explode or move around in a controlled fashion not obtainable with a simple Convolution Matrix or DisplacementMap.

I’m not going to go through all of that, but just a quick example of getting data back out of a ByteArray and displaying it again as a copy. Normally copyPixels() would be the better option for this specific task, but this as I say gives the opportunity to move the pixels around indepentently in 3D for example.

Y Design Awards launched in UK

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 07:57:43 +0000

The aim of the Y design awards is to recognise leading creative talent demonstrated through the use of digital technology. This year the awards are focussed on the recognition of great design with the use of Flash technology – in celebration of Flash’s 10 year anniversary. The competition is aimed specifically at the Uk design/agency community and already there is great interest from some the likes of Saatchi and Tribal DDB. The grand prize, which is a people choice award voted for online, is a trip for the lead designer to the next international Flash conference.

Thanks for the Cake!

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 04:09:30 +0000

What an awesome suprise when I got to work. For any Little Britain fans out there… “I looove the cake” 😉 Thanks to Robin and to Adobe!

Only problem is it’s too nice to eat.

ActionScript – a Prototype vs. Class based language

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 04:31:53 +0000

I was just asked by a friend, “if code on the timeline in Flash 8 is no different from AS1 because it isn’t inside a class file [therefore not type-checked or anything else that typically differentiates AS2 from AS1], what is AS3 code on the timeline in Flash 9?”.

I didn’t have a simple answer. That code will still be runtime checked etc, it certainly isn’t AS1 or AS2. The reason we can’t define what it is exactly is probably due to the nature of the language.

London Flash Platform Usergroup Meeting July

Sat, 22 Jul 2006 05:48:07 +0000

Come and join us this time at my place of work for the July London Flash Platform Usergroup (LFPUG) meeting for some really great presentations, and of course free beer and pizza. Covered this month:

Development Techniques for Localizing Flash (19:00 – 20:00) – Dave Williamson

There is no avoiding it. More and more projects require some level of localisation. Clients want their micro site deployed across Europe, banners to support the whole of EMEA, and global intranet applications that take in the whole of the planet. Not only that they want them built to the same timelines as their HTML emails. Find out the easiest tricks to make those hellish localisation issues…… not so hellish.

Catch Up and Site Launch – NikeRunning.com

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:15:09 +0000

Time to catch up. I’ve been at AKQA for a little while now and I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly so far and I really feel a strong commitment to the team. My first project went live the other day, www.nikerunning.com, even though it’s aimed at runners (of course!) I hope you enjoy it even if you are not. My favourite sections are the shoe selector and technology section. I’m no photographer, but after this I’ve started to appreciate good photos; you can hit the home button to get 3 different scenes for the home page, I wish I’d gone on shoot for the coastal one!

Zinc 2.5 Now Supports Flex 2 / AS3 / FP9

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 07:49:28 +0000

Well, I’ve been using Zinc for quite some time now so I know it pretty well and I’m very keen to give the new version a test run and see that any old bugs have been quashed forever, so here’s a thank you to MDM for the free copy. 🙂

Zinc 2.5 now supports Flash 9 (which includes AS3 and Flex 2 apps), I’m yet to look into how this is implemented, but with 2.5 we saw the commands becoming synchronous, which was a big relief from the asynchronous commands we had in all the swf wrappers a little while back. Also bundled for the first time is an SWC, this should also mean intrinsics for all of the classes (previously intrinsics were downloadable seperately and were a lone effort by one of the team in the forum), this should ultimately keep FDT/Flex Builder 2 happy.

ExternalInterface bug (Firefox)

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 03:52:01 +0000

Just a quick warning to people using ExternalInterface. When you are calling Javascript functions that open new windows your Flash movie will lose all mouse interaction (no rollovers etc) and the button you pressed to open the popup will stick on its “over” state. This is only in Firefox, (and possibly only when the popup contains a Flash movie, tbc).

Other than that ExternalInterface has been performing superbly, it greatly simplifies the communication between Flash and Javascript and works very well with unFocus HistoryKeeper (for back/forward button nav in browser).

Presenting at FlashForward

Sat, 01 Jul 2006 02:11:42 +0000

I’m very pleased to announce I’ll be presenting at Flash Forward Austin in September. I’ve only been across the Atlantic once to visit Chicago, so I cannot wait to check out Austin especially with the City Limits festival straight after the conference. I will be presenting on my favourite topic, Flash Lite (2). Hopefully you’ve already clicked the link above to check out the lineup, all I can say is that I’m going to enjoy going to the other presentations as much as giving mine 🙂 and the conference runs from the 16th to the 18th.

PSP Flash Game of the Week

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 13:32:47 +0000

This is cool, Hayden Porter on the Flash Lite Yahoo Group just posted the following link to a blog that is reviewing Flash games for PSP on a weekly basis. PSP Homebrew has been seriously hampered by the last few updates, with no real mod-chip out there yet, it’s been the case that homebrew is for the hardcore (even I upgraded so I could play the latest games). Either way, Flash for PSP fills some of that void with free games to download:

First London Flash Platform User Group Meeting

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 07:31:00 +0000

Tink has just posted the details on the first meeting of the London Flash Platform User Group. This is a group in addition (and not a replacement for) to the LMMUG, focussing on Flash Platform technologies exclusively, including Flash, Flex, Apollo, Flash Lite and more!

Topics will include Flash Media Server, with FlashCommGuru Stefan Richter, and Ruby On Rails for the Flex Developer, with Stuart Eccles. Both of which are fantastic topics to start with and I’m sure of interest to you as a Flash Developer!

Adobe Live Tonight

Wed, 24 May 2006 02:17:35 +0000

Just a quick shout out to those of you going to Adobe Live tonight at Olympia 2 in London. I’ll be there, somewhere about the London MMUG stand most likely so please do say hi. Our creative development director Andy Hood will be on the panel on “The future of the Internet as an Applications Platform” along with Aral, Ben Watson and Andrew Shorten (Adobe), Bola Rotibi (Ovum) and James Govenor (Redmonk). Hopefully the web-site is still accepting registrations for the event.

First Week at AKQA London

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 04:11:10 +0000

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank some people, and let anyone interested know what I’m up to (so I don’t have to keep explaining on the phone) :). So thanks to both Tink and Peter whome I’ve spent the last year working with, suffice to say they are great guys and it’s been good to work with people that are just bloomin’ good at what they do.

So I accepted a senior creative developer role at AKQA and I’ve just completed my first week (well 4 day week). I can say hand on heart I couldn’t have had a better time, straight into work and the people there are great too and have lots of fun. So here’s to the next year and whatever it may bring. My plan is not to go sub-radar with this blog, so there will still be plenty of Flash news and Flash Lite examples coming this way of course!

London MMUG April 20th

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 16:07:08 +0000

Don’t forget that there is yet another great MMUG lined up for this month, 20th April:

Session: Developing Flash 8 Components (Mike Jones)

Components are part and parcel of RIA development on the Flash Platform, not only do they give you consistency of look and feel but they also allow for the rapid creation of data driven applications. However, what do you do if you need to alter / extend a component, or further still want to actually create new ones? If the answer is ‘I don’t know’ come along and find out how…

Creating Stricter Singletons and Abstracts in AS3 [fixed]

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 09:54:28 +0000

So we know that ActionScript 3.0 at present doesn’t allow for private constructors in order to conform to ECMA standards, which in turn means that when we write our Singletons we aren’t really getting the real deal.

Tink and I experimented with a little idea last night that might help with this. Very simple code as follows:

package ...
{
class SomeSingleton
{
 private static var instance:SomeBusinessDelegate;
 private static var instantiatingSingleton:Boolean = false;

 public SomeSingleton()
 {
  if( !instantiatingSingleton )
  {
    throw new Error( "SomeSingletonis a Singleton and must be accessed through the getInstance() static method" );
  }
 }

 public static function getInstance() : SomeSingleton
 {
  if( !instance)
  {
   instantiatingSingleton = true;
   instance = new SomeSingleton();
   instantiatingSingleton = false;
  }

   return instance;
  }
 }
}

So this gives us one extra layer of security when it comes to someone accidentally instantiating an instance of our Singleton. On a different note, I’d like to see “throws” added to ECMA too so that the programmer is forced to catch these errors or at least expects them without digging through the code (if at all available).

London MMUG Flash Lite App Download

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 03:03:23 +0000

Last night’s London MMUG went very well, I’m sure any photo’s/video’s will make it online shortly. Congratulations to Niqui Merret who won the prize of Adobe Production Studio. For those of you that weren’t there, the winner was randomly selected and called from my mobile phone with a very simple little Flash Lite 1.1 app at the end of the night.

Even though this little app was never destined to be seen (god it’s ugly) I thought I’d upload it for anyone starting out in Flash Lite, and for those that would like to see how you can emulate arrays or call phone numbers. There’s not much in there at all, so it should be fairly self explanitory.

PSP Update to Include Official Flash Player

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 02:27:47 +0000

Just reading the latest Sony news following the press conference in Tokyo. It mentions a major firmware upgrade this spring including support for GPS, Camera and VoIP modules/addons, and… Flash in the web browser!

Read the article here.

Flash Lite 2.0 Inline TextField

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 11:58:17 +0000

Something I forgot to upload a while back.

This “component” allows the user to enter text with T9 (non-predictive) text input without having to use the cursor keys and select to give focus to the textfield, i.e. tapping the 2 key will cycle through “a”, “b”, “c”, “2” and wait a second for it to advance to the next character in the string. Simple concept that we now take for granted on phones, Macromedia created a Flash Lite 1.1 version which did the same thing although this one was a lot easier to make having to modify that for an FL1.1 app just recently (kudos for the major effort that must have been put in there)!

Flash Lite and Flex and Other Server Apps

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 09:20:50 +0000

First up, eagle eyed Scott has just caught a job vacancy on Monster for a “Senior Product Manager, Flex Mobile Development at Adobe”. Well there’s been some suspicion regarding this matter since Flash Lite 1.1 came out, I asked Mike Chambers this when he came over for the 8-Ball London MMUG special in Sep with a very understandable no comment, but now it looks like the final piece of the puzzle is fitting into place.

Motorola and Flash Lite – News from 3GSM

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 03:05:30 +0000

Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to 3GSM, but I’ve just been informed that the chief integrator of Motorola has said that we will see Flash Lite on their phones such as the Rokr within 3 months! Motorola were the last of the major manufacturers to cave, but now we have the whole set 🙂

Series 60 news – As we know the new Series 6 v3 SDK contains the Flash Lite player as a standalone and web plug-in. It looks like the greatly anticipated N91 (4gig, wifi, I want one) will have it installed, as well as the lovely looking E-Series business phones, the E60 is my personal favourite.

London MMUG – Tink and Aral on the Alphas

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 10:39:24 +0000

This month’s LMMUG will see Tink and Aral give an introduction to ActionScript 3, and an introduction to Flex 2. So if you’ve downloaded the alphas or not and want to get up to speed drop on by on the 19th.

See you there.

Flash Lite Device Cap’s Table On Its Way?

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 22:15:46 +0000

Just a note to Flash Lite devs out there to head over to the Adobe Flash Lite forum to provide feedback to Laura who is working on an application to provide developers with device information for Flash Lite capable handsets.

A while ago a few of us set about creating a table of which devices were supported and how they performed, created through developers’ testing out a SWF on their handsets. Something more official from Adobe would be great and I’m looking forward to it.

Flash Lite 2 Player Officially Available (quick start tip at end)

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:16:11 +0000

First of all Bill Perry has just confirmed that the Flash Lite 2 player is now available from the Adobe Store. Not wanting to re-iterate what he has said you can read the full post on his blog.

Secondly, you may be thinking it’s a little strange to release a player without a way of developing content for it. Well there are a couple of things you can do; the first is to wait just a little while until the IDE update, docs and samples are released in January on Labs. But if you really can’t wait to get coding, remember that the Flash Lite 2 player is based on the Flash 7 player and can therefore read SWF7 bytecode, so those itching to get AS2 on their phones can get publishing some Flash 7 files and you can immediately start playing with your existing library of classes on your handsets. But that does of course mean that there is no gaurentee that all SWF7 bytecodes/functions/objects are supported, and it also means you won’t have access to any possible Flash Lite 2 specific objects and functionality until January, but it’s a nice way to get into mobile dev over the holidays.

Unable to install Flash Lite on newer Nokias? Instructions here.

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 14:12:35 +0000

Just had an email from a friend regarding the Nokia N70 and Flash Lite. Great phone, but there is something that had me googling for a few minutes. That is installing certain un-signed apps onto the phone. Newer series 60 phones do not allow this by default, that includes the Flash Lite 1.1 player. You receive the following message: “installation security error”.

To cut a long story short simply go to ‘Tools > Manager > Options > Settings’ and turn Software installation’ > “On”.

Spark 2005 Slides and Files

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 18:17:00 +0000

I’ve uploaded my presentation and accompanying files to:

http://richardleggett.co.uk/downloads/presentations/spark/spark2005presentation.zip

I’ve made sure all of the server calls now point to localhost, so for the SUSHI multi-user example you’ll have to do some configuring on your server, and enable HTTP Tunneling (see the included snippet from httpd.conf for how to do this).

What can I say, Spark was incredible. I won’t even try to list the great flashers I met and would like to shout out to, but you know who you are and it was very nice meeting you all.

Speaking at Spark – Watch Live

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 13:00:37 +0000

I’ll be speaking on creating content for Flash Lite (games, applications, multi-user) on Thursday in the Cinema, de Balie. If you are attending the event, please download the mobile guide for speaker bios, detailed schedule for the three days, and to create and attend dynamic meets.

FabChannel will also be live streaming a lot of the event, kicking off with Kevin Lynch’s keynote at 19:00 (GMT+1). Head on over to http://spark.fabchannel.com to view it.

ActionScript and SVN (Syntax error line 1)

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 15:20:20 +0000

Just a quick note for people experiencing this same problem in frustration. After updating files using Subversion you might encounter an error like this in the Flash IDE:

<em>**Error** C:some_foldertrunksrcascomdomainprojectSomeClass.as: Line 1: Syntax error.
     import com.domain.AnyClassHere;
Total ActionScript Errors: 1 	 Reported Errors: 1</em>

This isn’t the same problem as you can encounter when working with AS files over a network (where deleting ASO files and adjusting your clock will fix it), this is caused by Subversion changing the encoding of the file. To fix it I usually open the file in Notepad2, and choose File > Encoding > UTF8. (Note: Do not pick UTF8 with Signature.) You can of course pick ANSI, too.

Macromedia Aquires Mobile Innovation

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 11:46:53 +0000

Another aquisition for the books. I think this snippet sums it up:

Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Mobile Innovation, a leading user interface (UI) designer, developer, and integrator for mobile devices. With extensive relationships throughout the mobile industry and an impressive track record of innovation, Mobile Innovation has deep expertise in the world of mobile UI design and implementation

You can read the full press release here.

ITV offers Flash Lite client

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:59:47 +0000

Big thanks to David Mannl for pointing this out just now.

I’ve just signed up for the new ITV Mobizines service (see flash demo here). When you text “MOBILE” to 63330, you receive a link to download the client (if your phone is up to it, mine is an old 7610 and it worked no problems). The client will install the standalone Flash Lite player along with the main application and a skinned media player (just the 2 icons on the main menu, the media player is invoked by the client). When the client is installed via Symbian installer you should see the unmistakeable vector UI and bitmap fonts of Flash Lite 1.1 being used to offer a TV Guide, weather, news and entertainment with the option to download more “Mobizines”, or mobile magazines – similar to the channels concept pushed elsewhere. Prime candidate for a FlashCast server hey :).

[Flash 8] Text to/from Bitmap “Encryption”

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 11:56:41 +0000

From the “why bother?” department, I’ve created a little app that converts between ASCII text and BitmapData.

Here is a sample .bmp file that I took a screenshot of and imported into my FLA’s library.

Now it may look like a miniature Magic Eye, but it does actually have a message hidden in it. To read the message you need the salt which is used in the conversion of ASCII to hex colours, and of course this little Flash 8 app.

Flash Lite AI Character – Retch, a Chat-eBot

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 17:31:39 +0000

A few weeks ago I started speaking to one David Williams who was interested in taking his artifical intelligence “chat-eBots”, which are sold as virtual hosts for sites, and putting them on mobile phones in an altered form. We discussed a few technologies and a few ideas but unfortunately I had to dip out of the project due to commitments. Anyway, David has gone ahead and produced the entire thing in Flash Lite, and you can demo the first of these eBots, “Retch”, on the companion site, as well as purchase a copy for your handset.

AS2 Documentation Generation and UML for Free – Eclipse Friendly

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 15:30:27 +0000

My buddy Johan has posted a tutorial on setting up Doxygen with Eclipse. I’m posting it here as it was pretty late when he posted, for US and most of Europe. It’s very easy to set up, and the docs it produces are fully featured.

You even get things like “this method is re-implemented in SubclassA, ..B etc”, with links of course. You can use a few documentation styles, personally I favour JavaDoc, so it’s picking up everything correctly, including {@code MyClass} etc. My favourite feature is the little inheritance diagrams at the top of the doc pages. See a screenshot below for an example of this. Overall, A++.

Seriously well made Flash Lite app – “theTube”

Sun, 18 Sep 2005 16:11:22 +0000

This is one of the best made Flash Lite apps I’ve seen to date, and also one I’m going to use very often.

“The Tube” allows you to navigate (with easing tweens) the London Underground map, search for a station in a rolodex fashion (this is one of my favourite features), and view individual lines. The application is very well polished, the animation is clean and one final nice addition was a little history of the Underground.

Charles (proxy/throttle tool), now reads AMF data

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 22:16:11 +0000

It seems Charles now has some excellent Flash features. Just got this from Darren over at flashgroup.net.

The exciting new features in this release are:

Firefox proxy settings auto configuration!
Improved display of POST and GET form data.
Improved display of SWF movies (shows some basic stats.)
Improved display of AMF (Flash Remoting), now parses and shows the
structure of the AMF message.
Many other improvements listed on the website.

Of course the main reason for using it is to simulate modem speeds when viewing your sites on localhost. Utterly essential unless you are happy to configure a mod for Apache or similar.

Mobile Features in Flash 8 – Presentation on the 15th

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:43:21 +0000

Just a quick note to say I’ll be presenting some of the brand new mobile features packed into the Flash 8 IDE at the London MMUG on the 15th of September.

I plan on showing several things including the emulator, the excellent docs, and also some things you may not associate with Flash Lite programming now enabled by the new IDE. If you have any requests, please post below.

Of course there’s a whole evening planned with talks from Mike Downey, Ian Turner, Aral Balkan and Guy Watson, so there’s definitely something for everyone. I hope to see you there!

SUSHI MultiUser Server for Flash, Flash Lite, J2SE & J2ME

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 15:02:05 +0000

There aren’t a lack of mutli-user servers out there that work with Flash, but this one has some great features:

Supports Flash MX AS1.0 & 2.0, FlashLite, J2SE, J2ME.
Extend the SUSHI server with Java or Actionscript.
SUSHI supports socket and HTTP connections (HTTP tunneling.)
SUSHI provides a web based, graphical administration.
Free 30 user license edition.
Hosting.

What really caught my eye of course is that they have included a Flash Lite API, it uses a polling solution to keep the connection open, but it appears very flexible and neat.

MXNA Flash Lite App

Thu, 23 Jun 2005 02:02:38 +0000

Ok, so this is my first attempt at using the new MXNA Flash Lite services. I must say, apart from the initial problem with the feed, now fixed thanks for Christian and Mike, it all went very smoothly.

You can run the app in the regular Flash player here (remember the key mappings, PageUp and PageDown are your phones softkeys).

You can download it for your phone here (including source code!)

Finally, here’s a quick screenshot:

BlueSkyNorth SWF2SIS (Flash Lite)

Tue, 31 May 2005 13:16:31 +0000

Hot off the press, BlueskyNorth have just announced SWF2SIS is now officially released.

“In short, SWF2SIS provides a way to package your application .swf file with any extra files (sfws, txt files etc.) and attach an icon which will appear on the handset’s menu, then save it all in a single installer file.”

Very good news for Flash Lite developers, and at $40(Ã‚£20), a great deal for those without the time or knowledge to mess around creating multiple config files that compile into another intermediary file and so on, when using the Symbian SDK. This is a new alternative to the packaging service offered by Silk Mobile, but this appears to be a standalone app / wizard.

“The Wild” – Prototype Flash Mobile Pet

Mon, 09 May 2005 17:54:43 +0000

I spent the last week working on something I wanted to try in Flash Lite. The result is a prototype for a virtual pet that will run on any Flash Lite enabled mobile phone.

I’ve created a very quick (and pretty rubbish) mini-site where you can download the app, play an online emulated version and find out how to care for your creature. I still need to tweak the logic so that it is actually fun and addictive to play, but still, this is just a test app.

Flash Lite Device Capabilities Database

Fri, 18 Mar 2005 12:24:39 +0000

It’s pretty essential that we understand which devices/handsets support which Flash Lite features. So following this discussion, I created a Flash app to collect and display the data. Onur Tekin and myself also set about adapting capabilities.swf (comes with the FL CDK) to automatically send the data from your handset and have it recorded. (Thanks for kick starting that Onur I would have been too lazy without the push.)

Flash Lite TV Guide: 8 Hours and 9k

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 15:27:18 +0000

I set myself a little challenge yesterday, I wanted to see just how quick it was to develop in Flash Lite, that being a major selling point. My chosen project was a (greatly simplified) version of Jermain Andersons TV Guide application. I’m not sure exactly how he put his together, but I can talk about how I went about it. I’ve also provided all source code and a demo at the end.

Flash Mobile Community

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 15:26:58 +0000

I guess this is as good a time as any to announce the Flash Mobile Community site. The original aim was to allow developers to share SWF’s for testing on a variety of devices, but it now aggregates relevant news feeds, members can publish their own blogs and discuss anything Flashy. All made possible with Drupal (which I am seriously impressed with).

Flash Mobile Community can be found at: www.flashmobileforum.org

NaturalGUI for AS (Java ed.)

Mon, 24 Jan 2005 20:46:35 +0000

For those using Natural Docs, after the barrage of related posts on MXNA, FullAsAGoog and today’s great news. I’ve just finished a quick GUI in Java for those on Mac/Linux (using MTASC! ;)) and Windows of course. I haven’t got a Mac machine so if anyone cares to try it, please let me know how it goes!

More info and download/source here.

AMFPHP still kicking!

Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:56:24 +0000

Thankyou… thankyou… Patrick for your efforts and Alessandro for pointing this out!

http://www.sephiroth.it/blog/2004_12_10_weekly.html#110267803977774175

p.s. Looking at the CVS, Mr Mineault has also added Service Browser functionality (from the IDE?).

Flash Level 9876

Thu, 09 Dec 2004 00:44:16 +0000

Oh dear 🙁 This one really can mess up a game or application if you are publishing for Flash 6 player (or 7 in depending on coding restrictions), or at least have you stumped for a few minutes…..

Your mx.transitions.Tween’s can simply stop responding, or even better, your sprites dissappear (depending on the order the following occurs).
Here’s an illustrated problem:

This can occur in a purely AS2 (class based app), but I’m going to simplify it for now and put in some timeline based code. If you are using the Tween class to perform some animation, for example, I have a “ball_mc” on stage. I use the following on the timeline:

Using Yamago Upload Component in Flash Player 7

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 01:32:45 +0000

For anyone wishing to use the Yamago File upload component in a Flash 7 movie, it requires a little bit of tweaking. I wrote about how to do this in this FlashCoders thread:

http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?1:sss:123252

Update:

Ok so Chattyfig password protected the archives, which is completely understandable, so I’m pasting my replies here:

…case sensitivity in MX2004 strikes again
🙂

Just change the Object.registerClass from:

Object.registerClass(“idYamzbrowser”, Yamzbrowser);
to
Object.registerClass(“idYamzBrowser”, Yamzbrowser);

and…

Ok I dug into it a little, and found a few things to get it started…

Component/sub-movieclips initialization in AS2

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 01:26:44 +0000

Here’s a thing. You attach some MovieClip to the stage and try to style or set a components properties that resides within it, only to find your efforts are ignored. Imagine you have a library symbol containing a button, and with the following AS2 class bound to it:

import mx.controls.*;

class App extends MovieClip
{
  var a_button:Button;

  public function App()
  {
    a_button.enabled = false;  // ignored
  }
}

The reason the setting of .enabled is ignored, according to EAS2 is that Flash works from the outside in, so a child movie can see it’s parent upon creation, but not the other way around. Now this doesn’t apply to intrinsic properties, such as _rotation or _alpha, just properties and methods you have attached to a MovieClip sub-class/component through a class.