My SimpleOscilloscope component described in an earlier post has now been updated to include a few filters controllable through setting styles. Of course like any other Flex component, it can have additional filtering applied in the normal way. I just felt like including these : alphaDecay, redMultiplier, greenMultiplier, blueMultiplier, blurX, blurY, scrollX, scrollY.
As ever, the project is on google code, and the test bed is here.
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 );
In the majority of my projects to-date, I am the sole developer on the project team. I was feeling the need to get into writing Flex components to a level that they could be distributed. Essentially making sure I use meta tags correctly and adding appropriate asdoc comments allowing other Flex developers to easily include the component as they would any other from the Flex SDK.
So, ccglib is an MIT license OpenSource project hosted on google code through which i plan to release a number of components. The first component released is SimpleOscilloscope, which plots the currently playing sound-wave. Designed to be easily sized, coloured and positioned through application of styles.
Finally got around to adding a case-study to my corporate site including a screen-cast of some of the features of my longest running project, a Flex/AIR application for communicating football moves and plays. Essentially a digital, animated version of a football tactic board.
More details and the screen-cast are on the creative-cognition case-study page.
Blowing my own trumpet for a moment… last week I sat and passed as Adobe® Certified Expert in Flex with AIR. Which I hope will help make my case with prospective clients.
… 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 🙂
An emerging pet hate of mine: AIR applications that do-away with the system chrome, only to then re-implement parts of it, but ignoring host-system conventions. Note this isn’t anything to do with AIR itself, more to do with designers and/or developers not entirely considering user-experience across all platforms.
The example above taken from Tour de Flex.
Personally for this app I see no reason not to have used the host system’s chrome. Doing so would have entirely avoided this issue. But to re-implement fundamental controls such as those pictured using positioning and icons based on only one operating system in an app which is cross-platform undermines the user-experience for users of other systems. In the example, a Windows arrangement and appearance is used which feels wrong on a Macintosh system, where the arrangement should be reversed and in the left rather than the right corner of the window. That it is Adobe setting this presedent in a number of their AIR applications is disapointing. I hope it is a convention other AIR developers will not follow. I certainly wont.
Will probably yield scary looking error:
Process terminated without establishing connection to debugger.
Command:
“/Applications/Adobe Flex Builder 3/sdks/3.2.0/bin/adl” -runtime “/Applications/Adobe Flex Builder 3/sdks/3.2.0/runtimes/air/mac” /PathToProject/bin-debug/Project-app.xml /PathToProject/bin-debug
Output from command:
error while loading initial content
So, basically by setting the project to compile against the SDK 3.2 you are implicitly changing the version of AIR you are building against from earlier versions to 1.5. To fix you need to open file :
/PathToProject/Project-app.xml
and change the namespace to “http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/1.5”
This has already been logged as a bug (FB-15687) in the bugbase against Gumbo, by the release of which, hopefully it will be intercepted to present a more meaningful message.
New Tour De Flex application looking like a very cool and a very useful resource. More information…
Basically it’s a Flex Component explorer as an AIR application and Eclipse plugin.
Just thinking I’d have preferred that the System Chrome was used in the AIR app to provide the min/max/close buttons rather than those alien windows style icons on the wrong side of the window. Mac user me! 😉