Such fun those little differences in the Flash Player!

I'm wondering what agency built this one...

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5499785/now-womens-mags-are-doing-augmented-reality

De MonsterDebugger is an open source debugger for Adobe Flash, Flex and AIR. De MonsterDebugger is made in Flex and AIR by design studio De Monsters.

One of the nicest features in my opinion is the live editing of properties, very handy when fiddling to position elements correctly.

Links:

• Homepage: http://www.demonsterdebugger.com/
• Download: http://www.demonsterdebugger.com/download

PS: No need to download FFmpeg, it comes packaged with WinFF.

The background of a Flash movie can be set to transparent. This allows the background color or image of the HTML page that contains the Flash movie to show through and allows the layering of Flash content with DHTML content.

Very useful when your Flash is on a layer in HTML that could be covered by something else when you're scrolling the page.

Wmode not set:

Wmode not set

Wmode set to "transparent":

wmode set to transparent

Source: Adobe TechNote

PS: Never mind the awesome (ahem) colours, this was just a quick test.

Flex IRC Client aims to be a Flex / Flash based IRC Client. Currently most browser-based chat solutions are either proprietary or applets. Flex IRC Client wants to bring the power of IRC to the majority of the Internet-users without requiring a download or an install.

I know this client is still under development, but it could really do with a window showing some progress when connecting to a server. Also, a proxy of sorts would be nice since I get a lot of Security Errors when trying to connect to a server: "SecurityErrorEvent type="securityError" bubbles=false cancelable=false eventPhase=2 text="Error #2048: Security sandbox violation: http://ansuz.nl/toys/irc/FlexIRCClient.swf cannot load data from irc.efnet.nl:6667."", probably due to no cross-domain policies being set on the IRC servers. Connecting works when running this locally

Links

• Project page: http://code.google.com/p/flexircclient/
• Demo: http://ansuz.nl/toys/irc/
• Server: irc.servercentral.net
• Port: 6667
• Channel: #flexnet

Welcome the robots, just click the link using FF and say hello to the robots

A game and physics engine for Flash including:

• Rigid Body Dynamics
• Scene management
• Line of sight
• User Input
• Scrolling
• AI

Project home: http://code.google.com/p/glaze/
Example: http://home.planet.nl/~borst595/glaze.html
Blog: http://yaa-blog.blogspot.com/

Gaia
A framework package as a Flash component. Handy for designers, but it kinda made me shrug... Though reading through the docs a couple of interesting features showed through, like the generation of the navigation through the context menu.
Link: http://www.gaiaflashframework.com/index.php

Cairngorm
Used this framework / micro architecture a lot already. Nice Event-Command pairs as well as delegates for calling all (web)services.
Link: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/cairngorm/Cairngorm

PureMVC
I've been working with a PureMVC project lately and looked at it before, quite similar in some ways to Cairngorm, just different names.
A nice resource for pureMVC: http://puremvc.tv/
Link: http://puremvc.org/

Swiz

Swiz is a framework for Adobe Flex that aims to bring complete simplicity to RIA development. Swiz provides Inversion of Control, event handing, and simple life cycle for asynchronous remote methods.

Link: http://code.google.com/p/swizframework/

Dawn

Dawn is a lightweight framework for ActionScript inspired by Google Guice. In addition to Dependency Injection, it provides type safe notifications and helps you to build apps which are loosely coupled, easily unit tested, and less error-prone.

Link: http://wiki.github.com/sammyt/dawn

Mate

Mate is a tag-based, event-driven Flex framework.

Mate framework has been created to make it easy to handle the events your Flex application creates. Mate allows you to define who is handling those events, whether data needs to be retrieved from the server, or other events need to be triggered.

In addition, Mate provides a mechanism for dependency injection to make it easy for the different parts of your application to get the data and objects they need.

Link: http://mate.asfusion.com/

I think I'm going to give Dawn a try soon enough, of all the above it looks the most interesting to me.

Link: http://pmd.sourceforge.net/howtomakearuleset.html

Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (English: Encyclopedia, or a systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts, and crafts) was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements and revisions in 1772, 1777 and 1780 and numerous foreign editions and later derivatives.

Have a look at http://diderot.alembert.free.fr/ for loads of nice and old images, like the one above.

AuthType Basic
AuthName "Anybody"
AuthUserFile /path/to/some/autfile

Require valid-user

Allow from All
Satisfy Any

I'm actually not sure if I need all of the above or if I can just get away with "Allow from All" and "Satisfy Any".

So basically by adding "Allow from All" you say anybody is allowed to access this directory. The "Satisfy Any" makes sure that you can access it either when you have already entered the password or when you don't have a password.

A nice way to circumvent .htaccess directory protection.

Also makes me want to build something like that!

Links

• Dragon Age Journeys
• Daniel Stracwick (developer of DAJ)
• Biclops Games (Daniel's company)

Ever been annoyed by Project Managers telling you that a bug you fixed is still in the latest release you did and after some investigation find out that they forgot to clear their cache? Well, fear not! An AS3 Version Injection script is here!
I've created a simple AS3 class called Version that will add a time stamp to the context menu. All you need to do is instantiate the Version class once and pass it a reference to you Document Class. On top of the AS I've written a little Ant script that will take a template of the Version class, insert the current date and time and write out the Version class. This way you can just make it part of your Ant build and don't need to worry about manually updating the version number. Also, now you'll have a way of quickly identifying what version somebody is looking at.

Flex PMD

This is great for auditing your own code as well as other people's code. I've written a small Ant task that can be ran as part of a build that will run your project through Flex PMD and create a PMD file for you. The PMD file will have a time stamp suffix so you don't overwrite your old file and you can compare issues. To use this Ant script make sure you've downloaded PMD for Ant.

TDSI

Another piece of very useful technology. Up to 20% performance increase just by passing your SWF through it. I downloaded the Apparat source (where TDSI is part of) from Google Code and compiled it. Built another little Ant script to use TDSI with Ant. Just specify the input and the output file and you're done!

Bringing it all together

All the above Ant scripts are saved in a separate file. This way I can import whatever piece I want in my build script, example:

TIP: Place the import after you have defined your properties in the build script, this way the imported scripts can use the properties set in the build script.

Links

• AS3 Version Injection - AS files
• AS3 Version Injection - Ant
• Flex PMD Ant Script
• TDSI Ant Script
• Example Ant Build Script using the scripts above

FlexPMD is a tool that helps to improve code quality by auditing any AS3/Flex source directory and detecting common bad practices

Would be interesting to start using this.

Gotcha:
The PMD Violations Viewer only accepts files that are named "pmd.xml", all other files will not be recognized. I run an Ant task to rename the generated pmd.xml to pmd_[insert timestamp here].xml. When I tried uploading the renamed file the PMD Violations Viewer wouldn't accept it.

Links:

• Blog post from Ted Patrick
• Flex PMD Home
• Flex PMD ruleset creator
• Flex PMD violations viewer
• Flex PMD downloads
• How to invoke Flex PMD

Links:

• (Flash) Applications for the iPhone
• Developer FAQ
• Developing for the Apple iPhone using Flash
• Sign up for the CS5 Beta

Joa Ebert (from hobnox) talked about one of the geekiest subject known to man : Compiler optimization. Good to know some people care about those  things. This is how you can get cooler stuff on the screen. It have the potential to made our work run 10 times faster.
http://code.google.com/p/apparat/
http://blog.joa-ebert.com/2009/08/05/turbodieselsportinjection/

Some good optimization techniques from Grant skinner too: http://gskinner.com/talks/quick/

Contrast’s presentation about breaking design convention:
http://www.contrast.ie/blog/
Some good arguments here. Especially about the end of portal pages and brand over sale (yes we don’t need a massive logo on every single page).

Live feed visualization by Trevor Boyle during the elevator pitch:
http://blog.trevorboyle.com/wp-content/uploads/twittersphere/Twittersphere-Visualizer.html

What can be done with sound from various presenters:
http://www.hobnox.com/index.1056.en.html
http://www.frogdesign.com/
Ruben's tube + propane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpovwbPGEoo
http://blog.drwoohoo.com/
designmind.frogdesign.com
www.openframeworks.cc

We saw some really cool live drawing session from James Jarvis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZHBSBG7RSs
http://www.amostoys.com
James Patterson: www.presstube.com

And Art made with flash:
http://www.joshuadavis.com/
http://hype.joshuadavis.com/

As well, Joel Baumann from Tomato introduced us to some early century artists who being playing with generative art way before flash came about. And shown us us some of his work, some of it still remain really cool like the TV-Asahi indent - sound generated logo !

Stacey Mulcahy, talked about how devs and creatives can work together
better: www.bitchwhocodes.com
Some good technologies that can facilitate that:
- SVN: http://versionsapp.com/
- Version Cue: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/versioncue/
- Catalyst: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/ (Though I don't believe in it too much...)

Learn OOP in Flash: www.lostactionscriptweekend.com
And Automate publishing of .fla files: www.deleteaso.com
Koen de Weggheleire: www.newmovieclip.com

Union multiuser Flash platform: www.tryunion.com
- documentation + tutorials: www.unionplatform.com
- cool example: http://clockmaker.jp/blog-en/2009/08/union/
Multi user experience cheap and easy

MegaPhone, using mobile phones as controllers for billboards:
www.playmegaphone.com

23-09-2009 9.00 Koen de Wieggheleire - Play with Vectors
Koen did a very in depth talk about the Vector class in AS3.

The Vector class is a dence array which means that it can't have any gaps, so something like the below would throw an error:

You can you an array as a 'data provider' to populate a Vector:

Using the Vector class will give you a performance boost of about 40 to 60%.
Unfortunately you can't directly bind to a Vector in Flex, you can however write a wrapper class and bind to that.

How to use in 3D

The Matrix3D class is somewhat complex to understand, but the image below should clarify it a bit

You can use myDisplayObject.transform.matrix3D to retrieve a DO's Matrix3D or assign a new matrix3D to it. There are also build in methods to user rather than creating a new Matrix3D all the time, see http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AS3LCR/Flash_10.0/flash/geom/Matrix3D.html

Nice thing I only found out now about matrixes: You can skew objects with it! Rock on!!! \m/

How to use with 2D

Pretty much the entire graphics API in Flash relies on Vectors. The drawPath() method below (which is pretty much the core of drawing vector shapes) takes two Vectors (the Vector data type) as arguments.

• the commands argument is a Vector containing GraphicPathCommands
• the data argument is a Vector containing x and y pairs that determine the path to draw.

The new Illustrator can export to FXG and you can actually import this FXG data on the fly in Flash, parse it and draw the exact same.

Some notes on UVT (texture) mapping:

• U matches up with the x location
• V matches up with the y location
• T determines the focal length

The right value for T can be calculated with the following formula: T = focalLength / (focalLength + z)

Useful links:

• Koen's site: www.newmovieclip.com
• The presentation online: http://newmovieclip.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/play-with-vectors-in-flash-cs4-presentation-online/
• Files from the presentation, including FXG parser: https://share.acrobat.com/adc/adc.do?docid=e352dd84-1b09-472b-9ecd-5089c51019dc

Code-behind encourages developers to build applications with separation of presentation and content in mind. In theory, this would allow a web designer, for example, to focus on the design markup with less potential for disturbing the programming code that drives it.

There is a good article by Aral Balkan at the Adobe Devnet on using the code-behind method with Flex.

Links:

• Wikipedia on asp.net code-behind
• Building components by using code behind at Adobe Devnet