Posts

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). ...

Hot on the heels of my last post (it’s been a busy month so my lack of posts is showing!) I’d like to announce I’ll be presenting at the first Flash on the Beach, I believe this is the first UK exclusive Flash event in 6 years, and it’s high time so thanks to John Davey for organising it. Flash on the Beach runs from Dec 4,5 & 6th and takes place of course in what seems to be the place to be right now, Brighton! I’ve actually never been to Brighton but it definitely has its fair share of great Flash devs so what better place. My topic is yet to be confirmed but you can be sure the words mobile and Flash are in there! ...

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. ...

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: ...

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! ...

Do you regularly back up your computer files, code etc? I used to do the usual, which involved sporadically dumping what I thought was important to DVD once a month maybe. Thankfully I’ve only encountered a real problem where I lost work that I hadn’t backed up just once, SVN came to the rescue in this case, but I vowed never to lose work again because of poor backup procedures. So a couple of months back I put together an external HD, from a 200gig internal 3.5″ drive and a USB 2.0 fan assisted cradle from eBay. This seemed to be to be not only a low cost approach but also hot-swappable when it comes to backing up the backups onto more than 1 drive. So with the hardware sorted I shopped around for a software backup solution to replace my not-so-great xcopy batch file. ...

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. ...

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!

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… ...

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). ...