Flash Platform

option up and down

Kicking myself for not finding these sooner so, posting in line with the current trend of highlighting little Flex time-savers. Two ActionScript editor short-cuts (and probably apply to any Eclipse code editor?)…

1. Select some code in the ActionScript editor and press Option-Up or Option-Down, and the selected block of code gets moved accordingly. Or just place the cursor on a line if you only wish to move a single line. Saves a load of messing with Cut-Paste.

2. Need to duplicate a line? Place the cursor at the start of the line and press either CMD-Option-Up or CMD-Option-Down, and the current line (or selection if you have one) gets duped above or below the cursor respectively.

With either of the above, if you make a selection, you don’t need to be character accurate. The movement is applied either to the line touched by the cursor, or the lines touched by the selection. i.e. If you select part of a line, the whole of that line is included in the selection to be moved.

Posted by creacog in ActionScript, Eclipse, Flex, Flex 2, Flex 3, 1 comment

flex, mac, external browser

Ted Patrick has been quite prolific of late at publishing little productivity hints and tips. I think this one from a couple of weeks ago is worth echoing and noting the workaround for the problem it raises on a Mac.

We are setting up Builder to launch the help pages into an external browser. The key advantage of which being that the code samples can then be copy/pasted. On a Mac there is a recognised bug in eclipse that if you choose Firefox as the external browser, and it is NOT your normal system default browser. Basically Eclipse attempts to launch a second instance of Firefox which will generate the “Only one copy of Firefox can be open at a time” dialogue…

Firefox close dialogue

So to get around this, you have two options.

Option 1, if you have Firefox as your default browser for the entire system, simply choose “Default system Web browser” in the Eclipse preferences panel.

Option 2, if you want to keep something else set as your system default browser e.g. Safari, but would use Firefox for displaying Flex Builder help, you need to either edit or create a new external browser entry using a command structure as per comment 5 on the eclipse bug sheet. Essentially the following settings work…

  • Location: /usr/bin/open
  • Parameters: -a firefox %URL%

Flex Builder > General > Web Browser >Edit external browser

Posted by creacog in Bug, Eclipse, Flex, Flex 2, Flex 3, Mac OS, 1 comment

flash, flex and vice versa

I have a small AS3 project where I need to keep the SWF quite small. I really want to use the Flex Builder environment to do the coding, and ultimately produce a target or targets suitable for inclusion both in Flash and/or Flex projects.

Two very helpful posts of the last couple of days with respect to setting up a suitable environment:

Posted by creacog in Adobe, CS3, Flash Platform, Flex 2, Flex 3, 1 comment

flash ‘n hardware

Looking forward to this month’s LFPUG meet-up on the 26th July and seeing what can be done with a Wiimote and a Make Controller Kit. Full details on the site.

Posted by creacog in Flash Platform, User Groups, 3 comments

essential actionscript 3 published today?

I don’t have my hands on it yet. I do have it on pre-order. Although at time of writing, Amazon is still showing it as ‘not yet published’, today is the official publish date. If it’s predecessors are anything to go by, this really will be the one book any ActionScript programmer should always have to hand. For more information and samples, check the author’s blog.

Update: Must be in high demand! Going to have to wait until at least 11th July 2007 for my copy.

Update (14 July 2007): my new “Estimated arrival date: 25/07/07 – 30/07/07” from Amazon.

Posted by creacog in ActionScript, Adobe, CS3, Flash Platform, Flex, Flex 2, Flex 3, 0 comments

tile or repeat an image into a flex application background II

Back in November 2006, I made a step-by-step post of how to locate, copy and adapt the ApplicationBackground class from the Flex SDK, in order to tile an image across that background.

This is simply an update to that post, this time with source-code and the addition a sample of a tile image within a Canvas. You are free to take and re-use this code as you see fit.

The following examples use a programmatic skin approach, and rely on the image being embedded at compile time. This is a quick and dirty method. For more information on programmatic skins, please refer to Aral Balkin’s Quick-Start on the Adobe site.

You can get your hands on the source with a right-click (control-click on a Mac) on the following examples.

Application tile background

In this sample we have created our own ApplicationBackground class and and applied it within the Application tag. You can change the repeat policy by uncommenting the appropriate line within uk.co.creacog.skins.ApplicationBackground . Choose this link if you wish to view example 1 in a new window.

You need JavaScript and Flash plug-in 9 to view this sample.

Canvas tile background

The key thing to be aware of is that the component background is actually controled by the a decorator class primarily designed to control the component border. So in this example we are applying our uk.co.creacog.skins.CanvasBackground to the borderSkin of the Canvas component. I added a slider to control the corner radius to demonstrate that we can have both rounded corners and a tile background. Note: that the borderStyle of the the Canvas need to be set to “solid” in order for the borderSkin to be invoked. In addition the onus is upon us as the programmer of the skin to respond to the cornerRadius values. In this case by calling drawRoundRectComplex.

Should we need a drop-shadow, again the onus is upon us to implement it within our custom skin. I did not take the example that far. The information you need to do so is in Aral’s article.

Again, choose this link if you wish to view example 2 in a new window.

You need JavaScript and Flash plug-in 9 to view this sample.

Other ways

Other authors have documented approaches with variations which might suit you better. You may find the following useful…

If you know of better ways, please do add links to the comments.

I haven’t got my hands on the Flex 3 beta yet. I have my finger’s crossed that these approaches might become obsolete with the new framework?

Posted by creacog in ActionScript, Adobe, Flex, Flex 2, 7 comments

good stuff coming in the form of Flex 3

It was pretty good to see some of the new stuff coming in Flex 3 during the developer day this week at Adobe Live London. We were a tough audience and didn’t give much of a WOW feedback – sorry! Largely I think because much of the new stuff demonstrated I think we might have claimed a right to expect – such as re-factoring support and improved work-flow with the rest of CS3.

Not covered on the day, but would have got a WOW from me is ‘Framework caching’, described by Ted on Flex today.

To me this was not expected, however I tend to think it has been a long-time coming and is one of the most significant improvements within Flash Platform in a long time. I came to Flash very late (MX2004) and primarily worked with components. (I came to Flex even later – V2.) It always struck me as a little odd that Adobe/Macromedia placed such great emphasis on keeping the plugin download small which then had the knock-on of vast quatities of band-width wasted as the same component code is transmitted time after time and where you least desire it -hitting the load time of your SWF. However now being able to cache the framework now means only the code specific to the application need be transmitted. Much more net-friendly. I can’t wait!

Posted by creacog in ActionScript, Adobe, Flex, Flex 3, 0 comments

initial gripes with new Flash CS3 ui

I know – I’m turning into Victor Meldrew. I can’t seem to help it. Should Adobe sort out the current licensing and pricing nightmare I’m going through, I’m sure I will become more chilled.

While others have been hung up on the new icons, personally I have no issue with them. They remind me of Rowntrees Tooty Frooties – which is not a bad thing! My issues (admittedly minor) are with some of the work on the new user interface.

I can appreciate the general investment in improving the UI. However I find some of the additions odd, and on my system some seem poorly implemented?

1. Introduction of Windows style controls on the Mac.

Most of the palettes introduce a collapse control (-) and close control (x) in the top right-hand corner. Mac convention is for the close control to be top left control and in both cases I think aqua controls and positioning would have been better – more consistent with other (non Adobe) applications.

I also find it strange that most palettes introduce this new arrangement, but other ‘windows’ retain the standard Mac behaviour (e.g. document windows and the control window). Mixing it up in this way just feels odd.

DebugController

2. Palette drag

When dragging a palette, it will go semi-transparent. Potentially useful – being able to see what will be covered up before dropping the palette into position. This is also part of the softening of the UI and should enrich the user experience. But on my system, when the mouse is released, the palette disappears briefly before being re-drawn opaque. This ‘flicker’ when a palette is released is plain ugly and detracts hugely from the user-experience. Until it is fixed I would have rather not bother with semi-transparent efforts.

I guess this might be an issue with my system being quite old? (Mac G4 Dual 1GHz Mirror).

3. Welcome panel links to the Adobe site are not working as intended

I think this is just an issue of the Adobe site not having been updated to service the links. You’ll find that from the Flash Welcome window, clicking on either “Getting started ››” or “New features ››” simply dumps the user at the flash product page. The problem seems to be server-side. The pages which flash attempts to take you to, simply re-direct back to the product page.

We fare slightly better with “Resources ››”. However most of the content on that page is written for FlashMX 2004 or Flash 8. I think by now there should be some CS3 articles on there.

Hopefully that’s the end of today’s grumpiness. Although I just read the SaveAs Gotcha written up by Aral. 🙁

Posted by creacog in Adobe, CS3, Flash Platform, Mac OS, 2 comments

worth a view…

Video of Christian Cantrell demonstrating an Amazon S3 (which I didn’t know existed) library and client application in Apollo using the soon to exist Apollo Beta.

Not sure what he’s been drinking (cup of pink stuff) but even with the empties, his desk is far tidier than mine.

Posted by creacog in Apollo, Flex, 0 comments