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.
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. ...
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. ...
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”.
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. ...
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. ...
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. ...
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. ...
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 :). ...
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. ...