Flash

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. ...

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! ...

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. ...

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 ...

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…. ...

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. ...

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: ...

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. ...

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… ...

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(): ...