creacog

The documentation is correct, so i have no excuse, but I didn’t initially read much beyond the signature of the constructor…

public function BitmapData(width:int, height:int, transparent:Boolean = true, fillColor:uint = 0xFFFFFFFF)

I needed a transparent bitmap. Reading the default “transparent:Boolean = true”, I assumed by simply supplying width and height, a transparent bitmap is what I would get. Not so! I got a white rectangle. The reason being, that the default fill colour is 100% white. (The first pair of FFs representing the alpha in ARGB).

At first it would seem slightly unintuitive for the second default to conflict with the first, until one realises that the ‘transparent’ flag is there to indicate whether the object will support transparency or not. Not to state that it should be initially created transparent. Supporting transparency increases data size from 24 bits per pixel to 32 bits per pixel.

So what i should have done :

bmd = new BitmapData( width, height, true, 0 );

… at the London Flash Platform User Group… tomorrow (29 Jan 2009).

Really handy! … ActionScript 3, Air and Flex documentaion distributed as an application on iPhone and iPodTouch - by Mike Chambers.

Downloaded it, had a play, simple and effective. A ‘back’ button would be nice though in future versions

(Update: 28/10/2008 here)

Having been chastised for using these ‘unknown acronyms’ in my comment on jd’s weblog, I thought it worth writing a brief entry describing what these acronyms stand for and how they may be of interest for those purchasing or upgrading Adobe software.

• AOO : Adobe Open Options

• TLP : Transaction Licensing Program

Essentially this is all to do with volume licensing as an alternative to purchasing products through the Adobe store or other 3rd party suppliers. Volume licensing sounds like it is aimed at large organisations purchasing site-license. However the Transaction Licensing Programme facilitates as little as a single product license. The way the scheme works is to provide a transaction discount should you purchase multiple products in a single transaction based upon a point value for each product. TLP purchases may be made through 3rd party suppliers, but also through Adobe directly as in my case. There is no published price list so you need to request a quote.

The key point of interest to me was the Upgrade Plan which allows licenses to be purchased over 24 month subscriptions. Essentially this means I effectively have already paid to cover my CS4 upgrade. This is the point I was trying to make on jd’s weblog. He acknowledges that trial versions of CS3 products not being available until mid November is a ‘Pain point’ and he provides some explanation including the phrase “The big shipping versions get released first.”. Well I’m a AOO TLP upgrade licensee who’s just been told I may have to wait until the ‘end of November’ for it to physically ship to me. If it is painful for ‘users’ who haven’t paid for the software yet, imagine the pain for those who have paid for the software, but may have to wait until the end of November.

So while the Upgrade Plan offers some value, fulfilment seems less than ideal especially given this Key benefit documented on the Adobe site: “Get timely notifications of new upgrades, so you can stay on top of new product releases.”.

This is now my latest bug-bear. For Adobe to see how the customer experience could be improved in this regard, they need only look back to the now discontinued Macromedia DEVNET Pro subscription, where serial numbers and downloadable installers were immediately available to subscribers from day one of a new product shipping.

If this was fixed, I could now be blogging about cool new stuff in CS4 rather than  fuming over this and wondering if I would actually be better-off purchasing through conventional means.

UPDATE : 28/10/2008

Received my Adobe License Fulfilment email on 26th. Logged in and was able to request media for the upgrades, but at the time couldn’t see serial numbers or any way of downloading. However just checked again today, and the serials are there and I now have downloads in progress - and at a good bit-rate. So I’m feeling a lot happier now than when this post was originally published. While the process has not been entirely seamless, this time is far better than my previous experience with CS3 where I had to wait for physical media.

Really haven’t spent enough time ‘finenessing’ Flex based UIs recently, so especially looking forward to a something of a fast-track on Flex Effects in Tink’s presentation.

Always good to hear how others work with their clients too in the “ActionScript in Commercial Environment”session.

Full details: London Flash Platform User Group 25th Sept 2008

I’ve just been trying to delete a node and all its descendants from an XML object selected on the value of an attribute. Having read the “ECMAScript for XML (E4X) Specification” (PDF) as linked to from the Flex documentation I expected to be able to write the following…

delete theXMLObject..*.(@id=="theIDtoDelete");

however the above code will generate the following Flash Player runtime error…

TypeError: Error #1119: Delete operator is not supported with operand of type XMLList

The solution is simple if not obvious. The above code should be rewritten to ensure a single node is returned rather than a list…

delete theXMLObject..*.(@id=="theIDtoDelete")[0];

Distilled from this actionscript.org thread.

The authors of SWFObject and UFO have been working hard on a new version released yesterday as SWFObject 2.0. The project is now on googlecode. Geoff’s announcement is here.

As stated in my earlier posts I consider use of SWFObject to be best practice for embedding SWFs in web pages.

The dark bit of sky in this blog’s header contains a simple SWF generated from pure AS3 that uses the Twitter API to collect and display my history of twitter messages. Unfortunately there is now a cross-domain policy file preventing any SWF other than those hosted actually from the twitter.com domain from accessing the feed. Apparently due to a security issue. The current suggested work-around is for me to write a proxy php script to sit on my own server to relay the feed request. Which I might do if I can be arsed, but I’m feeling grumpy today so I’m more likely to abandon Twitter all together - not that I ever over used it.

Twitter development talk on google groups has a thread that reveals some of the thinking going into solving the issue.

A busy few weeks starting tonight:

1. [Thurs 21-Feb-2008] LFPUG - Thermo Special presentation from Adobe
2. [Mon 25-Feb-2008] Adobe sponsored Pokercoder Tournament II  - you need to be a professional user of Adobe products to join in
3. [Thurs 28-Feb-2008] LFPUG - presentations on ‘Successful Flash Games’ and ‘Practical Particle Effects with Flint’
4. [Wed 5th March] FLUG - Beer, presentations and chat about Flex

Again it looks like a couple of really interesting subjects on 31 Jan:

• PureMVC
• The 3rd Way: Handling 3D on the Web

More information is on the LFPUG site

I looked at using PureMVC previously for a simple tennis game, but left it aside in favour of building MVCish classes independent of any ‘framework’. I look forward to seeing if this decision saved or cost me time.

I haven’t got around to the obligatory 3D stuff yet. Personally I’ve always found it a bit of a red-herring, and one where the cost:benefit often falls short. So I’ll be particularly interested in seeing examples of good use.