Saturday, September 29, 2007

My son enjoys spending time on Saturday mornings with Mom on the laptop on Sesame Street's website, doing all kinds of fun things with Elmo - and its all delivered in some rather well-done Flash. Whoever does the voice for Elmo must have spent weeks in a recording studio because this Flash has hours of unique audio. Thanks again Flash, you impact our lives in so many cool ways.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

When MIT students aren't busy getting thrown in jail for walking into an airport with a fake bomb around their neck, they sometimes do some pretty awesome stuff, like transforming John Harvard's statue into Master Chief.

Source. In recognition of the release of Halo 3, a highly anticipated video game by Microsoft and Bungie, MIT hackers adorned the John P. Harvard statue, in Harvard Yard, with a Spartan helmet. The back of the helmet, which is worn by the protagonist of the game, Master Chief, was labeled with “Master Chief in Training.” The statue was decorated with an assault rifle (bullet count of 2E), as well as a Beaver emblem on the right shoulder.

Monday, September 24, 2007

I'm enjoying a sublime evening of Satya Sai Baba Nag Champa slowly burning and drifting on an open window sill as Martin Barre is playing his acoustic guitar through a decidedly fine system. A wireless Apple keyboard is making time with TextMate (since I didn't want to fire up XP via Parallels and use FlashDevelop). Now I am on to using Moxie for some AS3 (its wonderful).



I am trying to put the whole Halo 3 out of mind at the moment. You see, I don't have a 360. We are trying to buy a new house and that just doesn't wash in light of everything else. :(



I wish I were as cool as \m/ to raise some fundage for a 360, but alas I am not. I just hope I can get things in order before it hits a bargain bin somewhere down the timeline. Although Halo 2 never hit a bargain bin because Halo rocks so hard. I'll fire up H2 tonight I guess and play some campaign on Legendary to make due. I need a new gamer tag when I renew Live!.

1.  
2. double kill
3. triple kill
4. overkill
5. killtacular
6. killtrocity
7. kilimanjaro
   
8. killtastrophy
9. killpocalypse
10. killionaire

In an attempt to make this blog appear to be more "mainstream" and large, I have in the past employed various kinds of automatic link generation popup services... ones that let you preview a link before commiting, ones that allow for wikipedia lookups on matching criteria, etc.

All in an effort to make this blog deeper in content offering.

Due to some local feedback in regards to this, I have removed the latest salvo of technology from this blog, and I am going to just keep things clean from here on out. This matters only to the 1,000 or so of you who decide to visit each day (and I thank you for that!) You come here to read and link out, not to wade through Web 2.0 debris.

My apologies, hope you like how it got a bit quieter around here visually and technically speaking. Welcome back better usability.

Friday, September 21, 2007

September 22nd: autumnal equinox, Frodo and Bilbo birthdays, and also the 70th anniversary of The Hobbit. Ent draughts for all!

I am a complete Papervision3D n00b right now, and I would love to have this kind of control over the camera and planes. Digitaria Interactive (People).


I have been trying to basically make this same kind of thing for the last two days and have been unsuccessful so far. I know I know almost none of the APIs at the moment which makes things hard, and I see examples that are pretty specific (I am looking for an overall general series of tutorials about this stuff but haven't found much yet). So its trial and error a bit for any of the more complex interactions at the moment.

Does anyone have any prototypes or examples of anything approaching this kind of interaction? Scattered planes, click to zoom up to (and expand space around)? The precise control is really quite nice. I know I can probably figure things out over time (and checking various examples and splicing ideas together, and studying the online docs in the hopes of discovering all the properties, etc.) -- but it would be cool to see a working example with code so I could relate things a little quicker (and know best practices for certain approaches).

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Okay cool, thanks to Mark Walters I now have AS3 syntax highlighting support here. I may play with the javascript file though and make some tweaks here and there.

package {
  
  import flash.display.TextField;
  import flash.text.TextFormat;
  import flash.display.Sprite;
  import flash.events.Event;
  import flash.events.EventType;
  
  public class TestTextPosition extends Sprite {

    var textfield1:TextField = new TextField();
    var textfield2:TextField = new TextField();
    var textformat1:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
    var textformat2:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
    var textformat3:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
    
    public function TestTextPosition () {
      textformat1.font = "Arial";
      textformat1.color = 0x0000ff;
      textformat1.size = 60;

      textformat2.font = "Arial";
      textformat2.color = 0x0000ff;
      textformat2.size = 20;

      textformat3.font = "Arial";
      textformat3.color = 0x000000;
      textformat3.size = 14;

      textfield1.width = 400;
      textfield1.height = 55;
      textfield1.multiline = true;
      textfield1.wordWrap = true;
      textfield1.type = "input";
      textfield1.text = "Roll your mouse over this text to see something neat.\n";
      textfield1.text += "Change the text to see that it is really dynamic.";
      addChild(textfield1);
      
      textfield2.x = 10;
      textfield2.y = 50;
      textfield2.width = 100;
      textfield2.height = 100;
      textfield2.selectable = false;
      textfield2.border = true;
      textfield2.background = true;
      textfield2.backgroundColor = 0xffffaa;
      textfield2.defaultTextFormat = textformat1;
      addChild(textfield2);
      
      this.addEventListener(EventType.ENTER_FRAME, enterFrameListener);
    }
     
    public function enterFrameListener(event:Event) {
      textfield1.setTextFormat(textformat3);
      var charIndex:int = textfield1.getCharIndexAtPoint(stage.mouseX,stage.mouseY);
      textfield1.setTextFormat(textformat2,charIndex,charIndex+1);
      textfield2.text = textfield1.text.charAt(charIndex);
    }
  }
}

We have all seen Flex applications, but until you've spent some quality time with Flex.org's Flex Showcase, you've been looking as lesser beasts. I was going to put some screeners up here for you to look at before you jump, but I didn't want to spoil it for you. Useful, elegant, the sweetest looking UI controls I have seen in a long time (Flex or straight Flash), and very robust.

Credits go to Teknision and Adobe, so there are some heavy horses behind this one, but its just so well done. You have options in browsing (including a tagcloud), can leave comments and vote on applications. What a great way to introduce some sticky community in there. There is a lot of attention to small details in this application, and it makes for a great experience.

I'll be subscribing to their RSS feed for sure. Well done!

What was it like to see

The face of your own stability

Suddenly look away

Leaving you with the dead and hopeless?



Eleven and she was gone.

Eleven is when we waved good-bye.

Eleven is standing still,

Waiting for me to free him

By coming home.



Moving me with a sound.

Opening me within a gesture.

Drawing me down and in,

Showing me where it all began,

Eleven.



It took so long to realize that

You hold the light that's been leading me back home.



Under a dead ohio sky,

Eleven has been and will be waiting,

Defending his light,

And wondering...

Where the hell have I been?

Sleeping, lost, and numb.

So glad that I have found you.

I am wide awake and heading home.



Hold your light,

Eleven.

Lead me through each gentle step by step

by inch by loaded memory.



I'll move to heal

As soon as pain allows so we can

Reunite and both move on together.



Hold your light,

Eleven. Lead me through each gentle step by step

By inch by loaded memory

'till one and one are one, eleven,

So glow, child, glow.



I'm heading back home.

This is a decent way for Microsoft to approach a Flash/Flex/AIR developer: send them a package with a retail boxed copy of Expression Studio, a bunch of stickers and a roll of 8 million Silverlight 1.1 API overview posters. Has anyone else in the Flash-o-sphere gotten one of these yet?

Now, I may not get to it right away, as I am having so much fun with AS3 and Flex and stuff at the moment (thinking about FlashLite too... seems like it might be cool enough to code in now), but this was a good move on Microsoft's part I must admit. From what I have seen online, I am not impressed.

However, having the tools sitting here I am much more likely to take notice and fire it up. Giving the tools away might mean more Silverlight content on the web for people to experience. Thats a good thing, even if I am firmly planted in the Flash camp.

I realize I'll have to create my own UI elements from scratch, etc. but if Lee Brimelow is playing with it, I should probably dabble in it too. C# doesn't look very daunting at all once you've taken a swim in the waters of AS3.

Have you tried out Buzzword yet? You can sign up for a preview and start messing around with it right away. There are only a few nits that I have with it right now (not remembering tabs from line to line).



For instance I tab in and when we need to drop text to the next line it forgets about the tab above and flushes left, and pasting text defaults to 12 & not the text size beside the insertion point).



This tool could be used like SubEthaEdit where you could share documents and write code, leave comments, etc. Maybe - its a bit of a stretch because its not really built for that yet. Things that I like right off the bat:

1. You can share documents, and assign rights to those you invite.
2. You can leave comments in the documents, this would be cool for design-time code reviews.
3. Buzzword contains a pretty robust Undo/Redo engine.
4. Buzzword uses a pretty sweet scrollbar - whereby you can scroll traditionally or simply click to jump to a page via a page button that is visible in the scrollbar itself. Thats a pretty sweet component, makes perfect sense, and is quite nice to use.
   

Sharing is cool, but why not add a chat to the side? That way those looking at the same document can collaborate (since one can't edit until the other saves, etc.)

Papervision3D took home the award for the 3D category last night at Flashforward Boston. Congratulations -- its some amazing code and its a lot of fun to use.

The online documentation is very good and has helped me quite a bit. Thanks for taking the time to get that in order.

I just updated my local SVN checkout which brought lots of nice new branches.

I was using the Phunky branch & was playing with .pitch and .yaw, and saw this visual bug though (scrolling textfield in the animating plane leaves trails of its rolled state):


The .pitch is on an enterFrame & the .yaw is on a timer. Perhaps this is a known issue

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

I am interested in the "Adobe Presents Colin Moock's ActionScript 3.0: From the Ground Up Tour" - but the closest its coming to Boston right now is NYC. Thats not very far, but it would be AWESOME to have one held in the Adobe Newton office. So please, think about it.

http://www.adobeas3tour.com/

11 days to go until MAX 2007 North America. I'm sure a large amount of focus will be on Adobe's AIR technology, which has roots in Central.

Does anyone remember Central?

I was digging around through some dusty files and found my Central application that was created for Macromedia for the 2003 MAX conference.

All that I can presently do is launch the badge, as Central can no longer be installed (I wish I could though just for posterity). I remember the tabAccordion component fondly -- even though it received a lot of ire from many developer/designers at the time. I went to see what Adobe had to say about Central (I never checked before):

"We appreciate your interest in Macromedia Central. However, Adobe has decided not to continue to develop, sell, or market Central as a desktop client for rich applications.

Adobe is committed to enabling developers to build and deploy desktop applications that leverage web technologies and their existing skills. To achieve this objective, we are applying the lessons learned and feedback we received to a new project called Adobe® Integrated Runtime (AIR), formerly code-named Apollo. Adobe AIR™ incorporates technologies such as PDF, Flash, and HTML—and the insight gained from Central—into a new desktop client designed from the ground up."

You guys were on the right track with Central, but the branding issues and applications living in the same container as other applications was holding you back. You did the right thing going to Apollo and now AIR. Kudos. Central was fun to develop for way back then, and AIR is a ton of fun to develop for now (AS3/MXML/etc)... way more than Central was.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Microsoft has launched a preview website for their Office 2008 offering. Besides the main navigation being full of undefined values for labels, I noticed one glaring omission on their part. Its delivered as a Flash website. Not Silverlight. I noticed a long time ago that Halo3.com is delivered in Flash too. How many people hit that site? Probably a lion's share, and what an opportunity wasted to get people to install the Silverlight bits on their hardware. And now another high-profile site using Flash as its front-end delivery medium.

Their dogfood must be pretty funky for Microsoft not to be eating it. Perhaps no one knows how to properly cook it yet. Or there are not enough cooks to get a main course prepared. Could it be that this is an example of how Flash is the "microwave" of interactive deployment and Silverlight is the crockpot?

A follow up to my previous post:
I believe that if Adobe would like to create a marketing & communication envelope for their imaging technology applications, they shouldn't hang it on the world's best known single image editing application: Photoshop.

When you see the text "Photoshop", you know its an image editing application. Singular. To hang other applications under that umbrella, I think you will probably introduce consumer and user confusion.

So I thought about another approach: Adobe Imaging or perhaps Adobe Visual Suite. The suite would work pretty well falling within the already established Create Suite moniker. Perhaps. But I don't think the thing really needs a logo (bug) but perhaps just logotype -- which seems to me to be more elegant and clean.

Now, I didn't spend much time at all working on this, and their might be better approaches, but I think even this would be a bit better. Some may disagree and thats perfectly fine with me, but I know the comments so far on John's post are overwhelmingly negative (and not negative for the sake of being grumpy).

I just released the old AS2 Elastic Cord Playback source (old source but I just found where I had placed it). Some were asking about this, so now you can download it and play around with it. I didn't clean the code up, but it should be okay.

Its basically the Dembicki elastic cord class with some enhancements to make things look a bit more realistic. I haven't really seen anyone do much with the concept yet - but it would make for sweet UML diagram UI. You can find the Preview and the download at resources.ericd.net.

Monday, September 17, 2007

John Nack from Adobe has blogged about a new direction for the Photoshop logo. I don't get it. I do understand how Photoshop doesn't equal a single application anymore, but a collection of related technologies falling under an imaging paradigm. But what is with this logo?

Looking at what we have here in the logo, I see an iChat icon reversed, signaling some kind of chat application. Or it could be a thought bubble... but thought bubbles don't have pointed directions. It could be stylized E.T. head, with the hole representing a large eye. Or it could simply be a stylized "P".

See What's Possible. Decent tagline, but how does that logo represent anything in regards to it?



We have been introduced to the Periodic Table styled CS3 icons (which I have grown to appreciate), but how will this play within that already established family? I went to Brand Center @ Adobe, but I don't have qualified access, but I did see the icon sheet John posted and right now, I just don't get it.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Hats off to Lee Brimelow for posting great FLV tutorials to gotoAndLearn. Lee has a really great presentation style (as I learned watching some of the onAIR tour presentations live online), so its no wonder why Adobe hired him away from Frog. Lee's style is well-suited for discussing complicated stuff (I just watched the Papervision3D flv).

I needed to obtain an FLV player for OS X (could have gone the AIR route or just code up my own)... but I snagged Wimpy FLV Player... its good at what it does -- play FLVs.


A quick note: Wimpy has examples online of materials created by the Ringling College of Art & Design (in Sarasota). I have actually been at the school & its pretty amazing. Its also just a 15 minute hardtop down drive from my parents house. Well done.

Today the Steelers won their 500th game, the most of any AFC team. They have 10 sacks in their first two games, and Ben looks a lot better this time this year than last. Those throwback uniforms looked groovy too, ugly, but groovy -- being their 75th season. Sorry Ben (Duda) -- hope that you had a really good time at Heinz Field. Must have been a glorious day weather-wise.

This is coming from a die-hard Steelers fan: Cleveland (and Derek Anderson) - what a game you're playing today. I can't watch it but is there any defense being played? Palmer and Anderson both have 5 touchdowns passing so far... Browns up 48-38 right now. Holy cow. Lots of time to go in that game, but I am impressed with you today. Nice way to come back after a loss last week.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

I plan on getting some video of this, but my 19 month old son is playing around on an older G4 at the moment (its his basically), driving the mouse, clicking on app icons in the dock, and he kinda gets it. I ask him to open "the guitar" and he goes to the dock and launches Garageband.

He then moves the window around. He just got to the login account screen, saw my picture on the screen and screamed, "Da-da!" So cool.

Off to see what else he does now.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Whipped up quickly (the baseline for the characters do not currently line up properly). But its Friday and I am about to jet home for the weekend.

This is a little more polished, serious & less "fun" than the current swx typeface/logo (& it wouldn't pair very nicely with that yellow cartoon egg monster), which means if Aral lands in Boston and sees this, he probably won't like it.

But I had some fun making it anyway. Welcome to Boston Aral.

Today during lunch I jumped onto 495-South for about 25 minutes to check out an installation that I created co-created running in the wild. A combination of SWF, Python, XML socket server, mySQL, a fat dBase & a bunch of hardware (keyboard, various switches & buttons). And there she was, running perfectly... awaiting some pleasant personal interaction. She entices you to come forward with some elegant animation. And a pulsing red hardware button beneath her.

Searches, 3D metdata, flipping, video, matching, prediction, and tracking. A system to restart in case of any crash (which gets logged), and more. It was pretty cool to see it running and feeling well.

It was a nice way to spend Friday's lunch time.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

A buddy sent me a new and improved (and timely) logo for the New England Patriots. Not too bad. Everyone with Pats gear will need to repurchase & replace, a good marketing move. Heh.


We have no idea whats going to happen, and some of it does seem overblown, unless others come out of the woodwork with material evidence.

And it sounds like there might be more evidence beyond the camera work, or as Billy likes to say, "the videotaping procedure." Such as radio transmission oddities & other teams with similar complaints.

With all that communicated, I just want my Stillers to kick some butt this weekend.

I placed a Gordian Knot in front of me, but I don't currently have a sword at the ready nor the time to properly wield it.

What am I getting on about? I started coding up a large AS3 project, and got the base application class all set, along with some helper classes.

And then I started looking at the other moving parts I would have to integrate... several other somewhat smaller applications (AS2) that would get bundled in. No problem, I can re-write them, even if it will just be AS3 on the timeline of some of them.

I opened a few of the includes and classes and I muttered...

"Well, f___ me. What I have here is a fugly Gordian Knot."

Several of the AS2 apps are pretty big & involved, and re-writing was looking to be a bit of a nightmare. Almost all of the code would need to be changed. If my base application was AS2 as well, I could just save a TON of development time. Unfortunately, I found myself needing to head down this path. I am not strong enough in AS3-world yet to be able to quickly rewrite thousands of lines of code in an effort to speed rendering times, enjoy the updated event system, etc.

I love the strict(er) compiler and that would help me a lot along the way, but it would be like rebuilding a room in my house using Popsicle sticks. Shiny, pretty and efficient Popsicle sticks :)

So its a lot quicker to make my main application classes AS2 than to rewrite a bulk of other code to fit the main application. I am disappointed. Has anyone else come to this decision themselves? Since FP9 penetration is very high, its going to be all AS3 from now on, but for this transitional stuff I think many of us are going to have to stick with the old standby AVM1.

Update:

I saw this image online and decided once this thing is buttoned up using AS2, I am just going to flip the AS3 switch on all of it so I can rest easier at night. I mean, how many of us can't sleep late at night because we are figuring out a bug in our head, or want to refactor something we did a while back, etc.

It gnaws at you like some rabid, nocturnal Smeagol. I know that it is going to be a lot of extra work (that won't be implemented beyond the established AS2 version), but at least I'll learn a lot by doing it. And sleep sounder. And get my AS3 swordarm in better shape.

"Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty... For tonight, we dine in hell!"

IFBIN: (n) a tool where one could browse source code for various Flash and Flex examples, available as a subscription service. In case you have no idea what it is(was).


I was looking for some hockey gear and came across one of my older Macs in the basement, collecting dust. I found a few power cables and fired her up and noticed in the dock I have IFBIN. I haven't even thought about that in ages, is it still active at all? It was pretty cool and would be PERFECT for an AIR application now. I forget what the original was written in - I think there is some Python in it.

The URL is still active (link), and I downloaded the Mac client & fired it up. http://localhost:5505/flash/. There she is. I see Flash 8 (8ball) called out in the list (the good ole days), AS1! and AS2. No AS3. Not much Flex in this (on the Flex side of IFBIN).

Looks like this may have been gathering lots of dust. Copyright is 2005. Any idea of this might have life breathed into it again at some point? We don't have DevNet subscriptions anymore (how many even remember those? I have a drawer full of every single CD Macromedia released).

Here is a post Ted Patrick made about IFBIN 2.0 being written in Apollo [December 27, 2006]. Ah Central... I found a few copies of my Macromedia Central Developer Postcard (given out at MAX), #1 of series 1. I think there only ever was one series. My card has the MAX Conference Guide application on it (Site of the Day award).

Its nice to see Central has evolved into AIR thats for sure. Well done ;) I digress. Wondering if IFBIN has been shelved (lots of work to run that I am sure) or if we might see it come back again.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

A term I came up with today. Someone posts an article, it gets aggregated, then they decide to delete the article. Lots of 404s. The poster "blucked" the article.

UPDATE: MORON ALERT!!!

I had a simple typo & that was causing all of this. Seemed silly that the below would have been true. Sorry. A true noob moment here.


I am plugging along just fine with AS3 so far & loving a lot of it. This discovery phase is pretty fun, stumbling to find AS2-like matches and utilizing a lot of new stuff is proving to be pretty exciting. A great way to learn instead of simply reading something somewhere or copy&paste. Anyway, I am loading assets into my main document class, and came across something interesting that I saw some coverage about online, but what I read didn't quite match with what I was experiencing.

TypeError: Error #1010: A term is undefined and has no properties. at net.ericd.app::Application/::onClipLoaded()

Hmmm. Kind of helpful, but I'd like it to be a little more verbose here. So I checked what was happening. I created three movieclips ahead of time and loaded content (SWFs) into them. These are then assigned to variables I can easily reference later, for calling methods, etc. However, if the clip is not on the displayList & you attempt to access anything within it/modify it, you get this error. What I was doing was making sure that the content loaded but was not yet displayed (not on displayList); I wanted contents within a clip resized & positioned correctly before adding to the displayList. Trying to access movieclips within the container that wasn't on the displayList barfed for me.

I would like to have the contents in that container set up ahead of time, so then I can just add it to the displayList and have it work... but I can't. might a solution be to addChild for it, set things up how I'd like & then remove it right away? That seems pretty hackish to me... or I can just set the things up AFTER I eventually add it to the displayList.

What is the best approach for something like this?

My summer reading is long over and now I am into my pre-Fall reading, however my current essential reading is on my desk to me left, ready for quick inspection. These books are by far my favorites at the moment. I like livedocs, but if ever an AS3 Reference Dictionary becomes available (even if I have to buy it in volumes), that will sit beside these babies.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Today I was banging my head up against the notion of loading multiple things and using a single COMPLETE event to serve them all. My head was banging against getting the actual instance of who was being loaded into for the event. I didn't see this covered anywhere online or in the documentation, but I imagine that TONS of AS3 developers would prefer this approach (opposed to setting up multiple COMPLETE events for different loaders).

I was checking event.target (which gives you the LoaderInfo object, but I wanted to get the actual Loader object & the .name I assigned it). In this way I could assign variables to the content of the clips I was loading into easily. It took a while and another pair of eyes (thanks Andrew O.), and we imported the LoaderInfo object, did a little casting, and using the .name property, are able to easily reference loaded stuff (say code/elements in SWFs) in a document class. This is the basic code showing whats going on.


In two different SWFs that get loaded into the AS3 document class are simple variables (just to test that the document class can get in there): var iam:String = "viewX.swf";. Each SWF has their own file name populating the variable. Now for the important bits in the document class (typing this by hand as an example... the indention is probably off):

package net.ericd.base
{
  import flash.display.DisplayObject;
  import flash.display.MovieClip;
  import flash.display.Sprite;
  import flash.events.*
  import flash.display.Stage;
  import flash.net.URLLoader;
  import flash.net.URLRequest;

  import flash.display.Loader;
  import flash.display.LoaderInfo;
 
  public class Application extends Sprite
  { 
    private var FOO:Object;
    private var BAR:Object;
  
    private function loadViewElements():void
    {
      var loader1:Loader = new Loader();
      var loader2:Loader = new Loader();
   
     loader1.name = "foo";
     loader2.name = "bar";
   
     var mc1_URL:URLRequest = new URLRequest( "views/view.swf" );
     var mc2_URL:URLRequest = new URLRequest( "views/view2.swf" );
   
     loader1.load( mc1_URL );
     loader2.load( mc2_URL );

     loader1.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener( 
        Event.COMPLETE, onClipLoaded );
     loader2.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener( 
        Event.COMPLETE, onClipLoaded );

     var foo_holder:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
     foo_holder.addChild( loader1 );
     addChild( foo_holder );
   
     var bar_holder:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
     bar_holder.addChild( loader2 );
     addChild( bar_holder );
   }
  
   private function onClipLoaded( event:Event ):void
   {
    // Need to get Loader from LoaderInfo!!
    trace( event.target ); //[object LoaderInfo]
    var loaderInfo:LoaderInfo = event.target as LoaderInfo;
    
    // Important code below:
    trace( loaderInfo.loader ); // [object Loader]
    var myName:String = loaderInfo.loader.name;
   
    // Now we can do this:
    if( myName == "foo" )
    {
     // We can reference the cont
     FOO = event.target.content;
     trace( FOO.iam ); // view.swf

    } else if( myName == "bar" )
    {
     BAR = event.target.content;
     trace( BAR.iam ); // view2.swf
    }
   }
  }
}

For me, this is going to save me TONS of time and coding to have a single COMPLETE function work for me in this kind of context. I was looking for something a little more like MovieClipLoader but we don't have that in AS3 which is perfectly fine with me. Just a different hurdles to navigate here.

I thought some might benefit from seeing this because I didn't see an example of it online. Perhaps this is super-common knowledge for those already traversing the waters of AS3, but it wasn't for me. It was time well spent though. Hope someone can learn from this to make their lives easier too.

In my main AS3 document class, I am loading a SWF into a MovieClip, and then later would like to access vars, methods, etc. within it from my main class. As a test in my SWF that gets loaded in I have a simple variable: var foo:String = "iam"; -- now to access that I found this out (works):

private function loadViewElements():void
{
  var module1Loader:Loader = new Loader();
  module1Loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener( 
     Event.COMPLETE, completeEvent );
  module1Loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener( 
     IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, ioError );
   
  // Create and load the Views
  NUMBERPAD = new MovieClip();
  addChild( NUMBERPAD );
  NUMBERPAD.addChild( module1Loader );
  var moduleURL:URLRequest = new URLRequest( "views/view.swf" );
  module1Loader.load( moduleURL );
}

private function completeEvent( event:Event ):void
{
  var foo:Object = NUMBERPAD.getChildAt(0);
  trace( foo.numChildren ); // 1
  trace( foo.getChildAt(0).iam ); // iam
}

This works just fine, but wondering if I should set up private variables to hold those objects for easy access later on in my document class above the constructor and in the complete event, like so:

private var NUMBERPAD_CONTENTS:Object;
// within compete event below:
NUMBERPAD_CONTENTS = foo.getChildAt(0);
trace( NUMBERPAD_CONTENTS.iam ); // iam

Just to make things clearer and much easier to access. Or is there a much more simple way of approaching this?

Update:

trace( event.target.content.iam );

Well, that out to do it ;) BUT, how can I get the name of the mc that the loader is inside... so I can use a generic loader and assign vars to certain things?

Monday, September 10, 2007

We shall never forget.

Visitors to the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., participate in a remembrance at sunset on the eve of the sixth anniversary of United Flight 93 crashing here on Sept. 11, 2001.

I've been playing around a bit with SlideRocket (online presentation tool) and honestly its very easy to use, easy to deploy, has great transiitons, and uses Flash (Flex it looks like). AIR is going to supply offline capabilities, etc. You can check it out by visiting their blog. They are going to be at Max Chicago.

I am curious if anyone has seen an AS3 class or knows how to go about having AS3 talk to a serial port (like Zinc). Is this possible without a Zinc-like wrapper?

AS3 gives us the MOUSE_LEAVE event when listened for, and its really quite handy and something we have been clamoring for as developers for a long while. However, it does not respond if you perform a mouse press & drag outside the stage (until the mouse comes back up). So it would seem like the event is really a MOUSE_UP when the mouse it outside the bounds of the stage. You can take care of your UI stuff at that point, but I wish we could get this even regardless of whether the mouse was down or not.

import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.ui.Mouse;

stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, mouseMoveHandler);
stage.addEventListener(Event.MOUSE_LEAVE, mouseLeaveHandler);

function mouseMoveHandler(event:MouseEvent):void{
   Mouse.hide();
   cursor.visible = true;
   cursor.x = stage.mouseX;
   cursor.y = stage.mouseY;
}

function mouseLeaveHandler(event:Event):void{
   Mouse.show();
   cursor.visible = false;
}

I have been hunting down and trying out various AS3 tween engines (because no one should ever be tweening on their own anymore or using the timeline unless you are an animator) and I believe that TweenLite is by far the best I've found. Wanna add filter tweening? Grab this. Lots of fun, very compact, easy to use, efficient. Love it.

import gs.TweenLite;
import gs.TweenFilterLite;
import fl.motion.easing.Elastic;'

TweenLite.to( who, 2, {x:316, y:55, alpha:0.4, mcColor:0xff0000} );
TweenLite.to( who, 1, {x:stage.stageWidth/2, y:stage.stageHeight/2, ease:Elastic.easeOut, delay:2, overwrite:false} );
TweenFilterLite.to( who, 1, {type:"Blur", blurX:10, blurY:10, quality:2, overwrite:false, delay:3} )

Friday, September 7, 2007

Tonight on demand (free): Victory. "As allied POWs prepare for a soccer game against the German National Team to be played in Nazi-occupied Paris, the French Resistance and British officers are making plans for the team's escape." (July 30, 1981).

Okay, I love the whole greatest generation thing. WWII holds sheer magic for me. I love soccer, Pele, and the majesty of the game. I love catchy classical music scores. I love the fact that drawing a tie meant victory and led to escape against the nasty Nazis.

I love the 80s. I love the fact that one of the screenwriters is Yabo Yablonksy. Max von Sydow. Michael Caine (as Colby - Westham United... up the irons!). English accents. Prisoner's clothing as neat and tidy as could be expected on the outside. Stallone turning from turd to a world-class keeper (haha).

Its simple fun. The scene where they break the proper keeper's arm between the slats of the bed was brutal. Where the crowd chants "victory" (back and forth across the pitch) in French-speak sends shivers up my arms every time. Anyway, his is going to play in the background as I Flex 3 things this evening.

Great turnout! Apologies for the quality of the photos... I took them with my cellphone. I took a bunch with an iPhone and tried to set up my .Mac email and Gmail accounts on it to send them to myself, but for whatever reason the verification of the accounts didn't work. I wonder if the display models stop that. The default .Mac account on the iPhones was set up wrong & couldn't send email. Poop.



The Natick Collection opening had a big marching band playing down the hall from the Apple Store... I didn't have to look far to find the Apple Store because of all the applause and cheering before the doors opened.

The layout of the store is very nice, much better organized than the others I have been to. Oh -- and they were selling iPhones as if they were almost free. While I was playing around on one, at least five were sold right next to me. Swipe a card through the reader & people were done, not having to visit the registers in the back. A few employees were walking around with boxes just so they didn't have to go to the back to get iPhones to sell. It was nuts. I'll bet within the hour they sell thirty (30) of them. I am not exaggerating here at all.

T-shirts in the white boxes with the silver sticker seal on them per usual. The crowd was indeed mostly older as kids are in school. I'll bet the store some mad business this weekend. Overall the mall expansion is extremely nice and they laid down hardwood flooring on the whole top level. The Natick Mall just got swankified.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

I'm dying for a cs4 photoshop extended, but check this out!



Delivering the keynote speech at Photoshop World 2007 in Las Vegas, John Loiacono, senior vice president of the Creative Solutions Business Unit at Adobe, gave a sneak peek at Adobe Photoshop Express an online version of Photoshop akin to Adobe Premiere Express, which is a lightweight Flash-based Web application. Adobe Photoshop Express is not yet publicly available. The company also announced a Photoshop CS3/CS3 Extended and Photoshop Lightroom purchase offer where Adobe will offer savings of up to $150 when Adobe Photoshop CS3 or Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended is purchased with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Finally, Adobe unveiled the Photoshop logo, which represents the family of Photoshop products, which will appear at a future date on all Photoshop-related marketing.

Today I enjoyed the peace and sanity with the occassional "now how do I do this in as3?" moments thrown in to get the heart racing a little quicker. I was back and forth between FlashDevelop 3 beta 3 and FlexBuilder 3 ("Moxie"). AS3 with some MXML thrown into the salad for some fine lettuce mashing.

I am building out an AIR application where I am basically learning AIR as I build. I can't wait until AIR is out of beta and into a release so I can go out and purchase a proper Reference Book on all the sweet APIs. A cookbook would indeed be nice as well. Anyway, the whole framework is a joy and does so much heavy lifting that its quite a lot of fun, even when perplexed over something that seems like it will be easy but as of yet the code has been undiscovered by me at that moment. Strange sentence there.

I haven't been coding much AS3 until now, with the penetration numbers out and looking so shiny, I thought it best to start diving in on a much more regular basis. Its so difficult to go back and code things in AS2 now (except for AS3 components... I haven't really tried that yet, is there a very concise guide available anywhere in regards to this yet? Or I imagine a book must be in the works -- I'll buy it).

I've had Moxie crap out on me a little... namely in the application XML file for AIR... when playing with the rootContent node, I'd set the application to no chrome, test it, then set it back to standard, and it seems like Moxie was caching the value... it simply wouldn't see the change in the XML I just made. Odd that. Discovering lots of little things to place in the application MXML declaration to hide the status, hide Flex controls, etc. Fun this. A fine day indeed.

I have found that using swapChildrenAt( indx1:int, indx2:int ) is a bit buggy and have heard that instead one should employ removeChildAt( indx1:int ) followed by a addChildAt( index2:int ). Is this true and something that you use instead of the swap? I've seen some examples of how swapping is kind of buggy.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

My wildest dreams are coming true. Sorry for this long post, but I'm excited. The best concert I have ever seen (besides the past Iron Maiden (A Matter Of Life And Death) was the World Slavery Tour. Best stage, best lighting, best songs, best performance, best energy, best theme (ancient Egypt), best Eddies (2!), etc. The scale was immense and overpowering. And now we get to go back and experience it and more. I pray its a 3-hour set. I wanna be tired as hell when its done. Please come somewhere near Boston... but I will travel of course :)





Here is a cut and paste of the Press Release:

IRON MAIDEN announce their most ambitious and extraordinary touring plans ever -- and are very pleased to announce that this will include Australia for the first time in 15 years!





The 'SOMEWHERE BACK IN TIME' World Tour 2008 will be in three sections, starting in February and March 2008 with the first leg encompassing major concerts in 20 selected cities on five continents in seven weeks including India, Japan, North America, Central and South America, and, of course, Australia, opening in Perth on Feb 4 and continuing through Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane:





SOMEWHERE BACK IN TIME, AUSTRALIA 2008

February :-
Monday 4th, Burswood Dome, Perth
Wednesday 6th, Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
Saturday 9th, Acer Arena, Sydney
Tuesday 12th, Entertainment Centre, Brisbane





The tour then continues with more concerts in North America in late May and June before finishing with a third leg in July and August encompassing major stadiums and festivals all over Europe. During the tour the band is expected to play to well over one and a half million fans and travel close to 100,000 miles.





In an historic first, Iron Maiden, their 60-strong crew and support staff and over 12 tons of equipment will be travelling around the world en masse for the first leg of the tour in a specially commissioned and converted Astraeus Boeing 757 decorated with Maiden and Eddie designs! Vocalist Bruce Dickinson, who is a qualified Airline Captain flying for Astraeus Airlines, will pilot the plane on its epic mission, flying over 50,000 miles.





Comments Bruce Dickinson, "We had the idea last year of converting a jumbo jet into effectively what would be a flying 113 ton 'splitter bus' for touring and we have been working seriously on it ever since. It's pretty complex but in the end we were able, with a lot of help from Astraeus Airlines, to overcome all the technicalities of customising the plane for our purposes. We are taking out the back 10 rows of seats to fit in a customised cargo hold that we can use again in the future if this jaunt works. This is in addition to all the standard storage holds. By taking band, personnel and equipment in one form of transport it makes all the touring so much easier and overcomes the logistical difficulty of people and equipment going in different planes. We can even work out exactly how big our carbon footprint is and take care of that responsibility! We will be packing as much of the show into the plane as we possibly can for this first leg and intend to give the fans something very special to remember. And it allows me to combine 2 of my greatest passions, music and flying!!





To tie in with forthcoming 2008 releases on DVD of the classic 'LIVE AFTER DEATH' and 'MAIDEN ENGLAND' concert videos (more details coming soon) this tour, aptly entitled 'SOMEWHERE BACK IN TIME', will revisit the band's history by focusing almost entirely on the 80's in both choice of songs played and the stage set, which will be based around the legendary Egyptian Production of the 1984-85 'Powerslave Tour'. This will arguably be the most elaborate and spectacular show the band have ever presented, and will include some key elements of their Somewhere In Time tour of 1986/7, such as the Cyborg Eddie.





Steve Harris comments; "On the last tour we opened the show by playing our new album 'A Matter of Life and Death' in its 80 minute entirety. We thought we needed the challenge and it proved the right thing to do. However, it can be hard on the fans playing so much new material and we really appreciated the superb support they gave us. So now l guess it's payback time. It's tremendous to be able to use the profile of the DVDs to do what is effectively an 80's show. It will be enormous fun and by changing the approach to the songs we play tour by tour it keeps it fresh and interesting for both the band and the fans alike. l think 'Powerslave' was an incredible show with the Egyptian theme and look forward to seeing it all again myself. We have been planning this for a few years and hoping to take it to Australia -- so we are all delighted that it has now worked out. I would also like to say that we are all are very grateful to our loyal fans in Oz who have kept the Maiden flag flying all these years and we are sorry to have disappointed you for so long. Thanks and see you there"





Rod Smallwood, Iron Maiden's Manager, further commented; "Following Bruce's various hints from on stage this last year about our plans for 2008 ("We are taking some time off to build some pyramids!"), fans have been pestering me for details of the tour and especially asking which songs from that era will be played. That may be as easy as a run in the hills but we will keep our aces close to our chest on this issue. I know it would only take a couple of minutes but at this stage of planning, I'd have to be clairvoyant to know what they will do. I'm sure though it will be no revelation for you that we intend to make up for those wasted years by visiting a large number of hallowed metal venues around the world. Historically 'Powerslave' was an incredibly important album for the band and it would be madness if we didn't give the fans a taste of the full on Iron Maiden show from that time. With our jumbo there really is no rime nor reason why the band cannot now visit fans almost everywhere as many have been real troopers to have waited this long. Heaven only knows what the band will choose but if l could and did tell you now l would have to shoot you! You'll all have to be patient and see. But it will be spectacular. No fear!!"





Historically, this will be Maiden's fourth Australian Tour having first toured in 1982 when 'The Number of the Beast' was Australia's number one album, then again in 1985 with the original 'Powerslave' show and most recently in 1992 with 'Fear of the Dark'. However a great deal has happened with the band since then, especially in recent years when ticket sales have continued to explode around the world as the band's loyal fan base continues to flourish. As Maiden have never had airplay or much video channel exposure anywhere in the world their popularity spread mainly by word of mouth on the back of a legacy of many great albums and an awesome live reputation With the ever increasing power of the internet the Maiden legend has fired the imagination of new young fans around the planet, and, although their audience spans two generations, it is now predominantly a young one, inspired by the massive legacy and influence of this unique band (and, of course, Eddie).





To allow Iron Maiden fans in Australia to get right up close to the band,the fan club are organising advance booking of tickets for members and running a special draw for them whereby 60 winners and friend at each show will be given first access to the venue and be first to the stage barrier. Full details will be on www.ironmaiden.com.





Tickets go on sale to the public 9am Thursday 27th September, but members of the Iron Maiden fan club get exclusive first access to purchase tickets from 12 noon Thursday 20th September through to 12 noon Monday 24th September. More details soon!

The images to the left are taken from the large iPod Touch Guided Tour video, and the compression in that thing is quite lousy, so I wish there was more detail, but it represents a point about Apple UI designers and engineers.

They sweat every small detail. When you preview a track using the Wifi Store, the track number flips over (like a tile), and the reverse side has this finger target (with stop icon), and the preload of the song displays as increasing dashes along the inside curve of that circular area. When that completes, the 30 second timer starts, growing in size radially as the track plays.

Apple could have merely bolded the text for the selection, and used a traditional counter or a thing progress bar somewhere, but they went the extra 5 miles. That kind of attention to detail and craftsmanship is everywhere and is a big part of why the devices are so successful.

Its the user experience, its a ton of small things done well that add up to greater things done well that offer a pleasing and uniquely simple experience. Interfaces like this always take a lot longer to produce. Kudos again to the Apple UI designers & engineers who push the envelope... even if they hear the crack of whips over their heads from time to time. "Can do" attitude certainly goes a very, very long way.

Stuff like that is inspiring.

FlashDevelop 3 beta 3 comes with auto complete turned on by default (ASCompletion plugin: "Disable Always Complete: false") and its a wonderful feature for sure... coming along like Visual Studio. However its a bit aggressive at the current time. Coding up a loop, adding event arguments to methods arduous, and your own class import statements difficult. The autocomplete wasn't exactly Einstein when it came to what and how it provided its completion. However this is going to be fixed (Philippe checked in changes to SVN) and posted that they will release a patch or dev build soon. Excellent. For now I have it turned off. Keep your eyes out for a new drop soon.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

twitter: scottjanousek: @eric_dolecki: Apple Store - Natick ... http://tinyurl.com/239ts7


So what is the big deal? Well, the Natick Mall (now the Natick Collection) is less than 4 miles from our house. A brand new Bose store & some other nice shops are opening up in the expansion, but I had NO idea Apple was opening a store there. I've checked the logos on the wall a few times in the Natick Mall and never once did I see the Apple logo. Since Boston has about eight thousand Apple stores, I figured the next would be the flagship store downtown. And thats it. Well... opening September 7, I'll be a few minutes away from an Apple store (before I had to go SouthShore, Chestnut Hill, or Burlington). I don't know the timing of the grand opening, but wow. KICK ASS.

I just spent some time with pauliusuza on Yahoo! IM & we devised a way of calling a global method with arguments instead of just calling it. Very handy. He should be blogging about this, and I'll update this post in an hour or so with modifications. Keep an eye out for his blog.

Uza's updated blog post. This tool just became much more usable (for me at least), thanks Paulius.