27
Jan
2008

losing access to Gemini

Slightly off-topic for this site, but I am constantly amazed by the UK Government’s ability to waste money within it’s own operations and withdraw comparatively small amounts from really useful projects thus crippling them and the benefits about to be reaped from the investments so-far made. The UK’s funding cut is about to exclude us from the multinational Gemini project as reported on the bbc news site. This I think is particularly short-sighted (excuse the pun) and it feels like the rug being pulled from under us. Particularly after projects such as Galaxy Zoo have done such a good job of increasing awareness and participation in this science.

If you are UK based and wish to stand against this decision, there is a Downing Street petition you can sign. There is more information and more actions you can take on the save astronomy site.

Save Astronomy

The Gemini UK office home page.

Posted by creacog in Science, 0 comments
24
Jan
2008

bitten by the beta 3 DragManager Bug

I’ve just found myself caught out by this bug (SDK-13983) in Beta 3 (released December 2007), and the quite substantial change in behaviour.

My application which is only a prototype – but quite heavy, was essentially built from Oct 2006 through to April 2007 and  worked happily in Apollo and in all AIR and Flex 3 releases since, until Beta 3, when the DragManagers of AIR and FLEX implementations diverged. The API remains pretty much the same, but the behaviour is quite different (documented here), and while my existing code compiles, it generates run-time error “ArgumentError: Error #2004: One of the parameters is invalid.” if the user dare drag my UI components, rendering it useless.

That it has been accepted as a bug and a fix/workaround created, and that that is visible in the public bug system is a good thing. It removes a lot of potential worry. That the fix is not available to the public (AFAIK we’ve had our last public beta before the final release) isn’t great for me as I am now in a catch 22.

  • The fix isn’t available to me until the final version is released.
  • I can’t continue to use my application compiled against Beta 2 as the install process for AIR currently demands Beta 3 of AIR
  • Beta 3 AIR  demands Flex Beta 3 SDK.

It’s late, so this is going on hold until morning, at which point I need to assess the impact and time required to make the changes to adopt the AIR drag-and-drop manager, or hold on until I can force the switch to the Flex drag-and drop manager when the final release is available. Or beg Adobe for access to a build later than 191577.

Posted by creacog in Adobe, Flex, Flex 3, 1 comment
21
Jan
2008

more capacity for this week’s FLUG

This week it is a biggie with contributions from Adobe’s Serge Jespers and James Ward presenting Flex 3 AIR and Vega.

The event had reached capacity but with a new venue organised and more capacity, if you couldn’t sign-up over the last couple of weeks, you now have another opportunity.

Flex London User Group (FLUG) 

Posted by creacog in Adobe, Flex, User Groups, 0 comments
04
Jan
2008

LFPUG off to a flying start to 2008

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.

Posted by creacog in 3d, ActionScript, Adobe, Flash Platform, User Groups, 0 comments
14
Dec
2007

Flex Builder 3 beta 3 – install gripe

So, the installation instructions quite clearly warn not to install this version over a previous beta. But then they include instructions how to “When using Flex Builder 3 Beta 3 with a workspace from a previous beta, please clean and reinitialize the workspace.”.

Unfortunately for me this didn’t work. I’d fully uninstalled the previous beta. But when attempting to re-use the existing workspace even with the ‘clean’ steps undertaken, the result was a broken installation of the builder. It couldn’t find any of the SDKs.

Uninstalling, getting rid of the old workspace and reinstalling then worked. Just leaving the job of manually setting up the projects again. This might be due to my configuration – I don’t keep project source files in the workspace – it only contains paths to the respective project folders on my system.

On a more positive note, the whole thing feels a bit more spritely.

Update: Actually, it is less of an issue to import projects than I first thought. In my first attempt I set my project folder and left the Project location at the default. This replicated the project files into the workspace folder. Not what I wanted. The solution, if slightly counter-intuitive, is to set the import from and the project location folder paths to be exactly the same path. This correctly makes Flex aware of the project , while leaving the files where they should be.

Flex project import

After the import – a quick clean then we are off!

Posted by creacog in Flex, 0 comments
13
Dec
2007

Three is the magic number at Adobe

Just as I’m about to head into hibernation for a week or so without computers or any connectivity, Adobe go and release all these goodies. Something to look forward to on my return…

  • AMF3 Specification
  • Blaze DS – Free LGPL Remoting and Messaging for Java (ok not three, but free!)
  • Flex 3 Beta3
  • AIR Beta 3

A good start-point to read more (a brief paragraph on each) is Ted’s OnFlex blog, and of course the Adobe labs site.

Posted by creacog in Adobe, AIR, Flex, Flex 3, 0 comments
02
Dec
2007

strange stage-size problem, but only in ie6

I’ve just been working on an small piece of pure ActionScript3. Essentially the migrating from the large horrible Twitter Widget that I had in the right column, to the text-only representation now overlayed on the header image above.

I use SWFObject to embed the SWF in the page. I set the dimensions of the SWF to 780×45. Within the main function of the SWF I prevent the stage from scaling and set it to align top left. I then use the stage.stageWidth and stage.stageHeight properties to draw a semitransparent background within which to position a TextField then trot-off to get the Twitter feed.

All is well on Safari and Firefox. But when I test on Internet Explorer 6, strange things happen. The first time a page loads, it displays ok. But reload the page, or navigate to another within the blog where the SWF is loaded from cache, and the layout is quite messed up. Testing showed that this is because the stage’s stageHeight and stageWidth are returning value 0 in this circumstance. Further testing shows that although the stage’s initial size is 0x0, it does get resized at some point.

The solution I’ve implemented is to listen for and handle resize events. Mildly frustrating as I didn’t plan on dealing with resize. The only reason my application is structured like this is to allow the SWF to adapt to the dimensions set via SWFObject. Not to allow the SWF fluid resizing through it’s life.

Simply moving the positioning code to the resize handler solved the ie6 problem, but for the other browsers that render at the correct size from the off, no resize event fires. So from our main function we have to put a manual call in to the resize handler (with null as the argument), and then only modify positioning if the stage dimensions are something other than 0x0.

Posted by creacog in ActionScript, CS3, 3 comments
06
Nov
2007

creative-cognition builds a flash game

The makers of StarCraft need have no fear, but I finally got around to implementing my first Flash based game. A simple retro tennis style game, built as a brand building exercise and integrated by my client into a Facebook application.

CVL-Tennis thumbnail

This was a fun project to work on and programme. To initially build a pure AS3 application, and to later integrate that with Flash CS3 when the real graphics were ready.

It was also an exercise in use of MVC. Since we did not use PureMVC nor any other other framework, using this pattern loaded the initial development with some seemingly onerous complexity. However the time invested later paid off in allowing easy adaptation of that game engine to the various graphics and controllers tried through testing.

Some links:

Posted by creacog in ActionScript, Adobe, CS3, Flash Platform, Flex, Projects, Work, 0 comments
02
Nov
2007

thanks to Adobe and Sean McSharry for tonight’s poker

I’d never played poker before, and thoroughly enjoyed it, while it lasted. There where 8 tables of 9 players. I was on Table 8. Eight believed to be a lucky number by the Chinese. The first 3 knocked out of the tournament were all on my table – including me! 🙁

loser tee shirt

So now the proud owner of a rare (1 of 5) “Poker Tournament I : Loser” tee shirt. But a really fun night just glad it wasn’t real money. Roll on the next one.

Posted by creacog in Adobe, 1 comment

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