EVOLVE

For someone like me who is not very handy with Ant build files, the command line, ASDoc, and other crap of that nature, getting a nice HTML documentation together for your AS3 class files is a pain in the ass. I know running an Ant build would be much smoother for this kind of thing but I’ve tried doing it and it just doesn’t work for me. A directory that exists is said to not exist and it all just goes to shit from there. Then, magically, ZenDoc saves the day! Read more »

I’ve been using BitmapData lately more and more (I know, I’m very late to the party) and something that I was curious in was how to clear it before I can draw to it again so that the previous frame’s contents are not in it. Particularly, I was wondering how I can very simply and quickly erase everything inside of what I just draw into a BitmapData object. I did some quick Google work and found the answer to be VERY simple. Read more »

I’m currently working on a project where the designer LOVES to use stroked text. As you probably know by now, there is no text stroking in Flash unless you bring the asset in already stroked from another program or you break the text apart and add a stroke to the broken up shapes. There is, however, a little trick you can do to keep your text editable and add a stroke in Flash. Read more »

I’ve recently decided to take the plunge and start playing around a bit with Papervision3D. I’ve seen too many cool things coming out of that camp and I wanted to get my hands down and dirty and experimenting with the possibilities to move my work forward. I use Eclipse/FDT3 on a Mac so getting up and running with PV3D was relatively simple. Read more »

There are some things that I want to write about on this blog that I feel like I can’t do as of yet because some of them are geared more towards Eclipse/FDT3 users or at least the way I use those tools. That being said, I figured I should give a rundown of how I install Eclipse and FDT3 and how I set up my environment. FDT comes with a hefty price tag, that’s for sure, but it’s well worth it if you are serious about Flash development. If you just want to try it out, there is a 30-day trial so you can use that for now. Read more »

If you’ve downloaded my Image Slider, you may have looked at the Main.as file and noticed that I was using a utility class to convert the loaded string values for things that are actually booleans from the XML. I was originally loading them and I couldn’t figure out why when I traced out what was supposed to be a Boolean value set to “true” it was tracing out as “false”. The reason is that when you load the String “true” into Flash, “true” is not a Boolean but a String, so when you test for it it returns “false”. I knew it was a scoping issue but Tom Stanley explained to me why this was happening. Here is a quick rundown of how to do this. Read more »

A comment in the post about the fl.* package .swc written by Dimitriy outlined that the package was missing the fl.video package in it. I did a quick test and it indeed was missing (not sure how I missed that before) so I went ahead and did a quick search for the video package and found that Aron Philipp had a proper version of the package. You can now grab his version from the same link that my old version was at or get it directly at his blog.

Thanks Aron, hope you don’t mind me posting it up here.

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After reading an article on SEO and Flex by Ted Patrick and another by Josh Tynjala, I recalled my foray into doing this on a recent Flash project at work. I figured that I should share this with everyone because I know a huge knock on Flash is that it isn’t SEO friendly. Remember, I’m no SEO expert (and I don’t think anyone out there really is), but these things should definitely help out in your Flash projects. Read more »

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Many times people think that you lose tracking ability in your projects if you use Flash. Of course you can set up multiple SWFs and host them on separate HTML pages on your site, but why bother? You can use Google Analytics to track your button clicks and report to you what buttons users clicked on your site to get to what sections of the SWF file. Read more »

To get up and running with AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) you don’t really have to do very much. Adobe has provided an installer to update Flash CS3 to be able to make AIR applications directly in the Flash IDE. All you’ve got to do is go download it here. Make sure that before you install this update, you have the Adobe AIR runtime installed which allows you to run AIR applications on your computer (kind of like the Flash Player). Grab that first here.

So what does this update do? Basically, as stated before, it allows you to create/publish AIR applications in the Flash IDE. You will notice on your start page for Flash CS3 that you now have an option, under the Create New column, to select Flash File (Adobe AIR). This automatically sets the publish settings to publish to AIR. Once you do this, a little popup box will show that you are Authoring for AIR with Flash CS3 in which you can just click OK. If you now look in your Commands dropdown you will see two new options: AIR - Application and Installer Settings and AIR - Create AIR File. The first option allows you to set the properties of your AIR movie anywhere from naming it to the window style you want to use to which files to include in the package. You will also have to create a Digital signature file for your project or you will get an ugly AIRI file when you publish which is pretty much useless.

To create the signature, just click Set, then click Create and put in your information for the fields. This information, as far as I know, is pretty meaningless but fill it out however you’d like. Make sure to set a password and save the file. When you click OK, you will be taken back to the previous prompt and you’ll have to put in the password you set when you created the certificate. Then click OK and you’re all done.

The second command brings up a certificate creation prompt in which you should just have to enter your password and be all set. Keep in mind that you can actually package the AIR file in the first command we discussed so you may never actually have to use the second one.

Lastly, if you want to see your output traces, make sure you are using Debug > Debug Movie. If you don’t, your traces will never get called and you won’t see what is going on with your application.

That is all you should need to get up and running with AIR in Flash CS3. There is more and more AIR resources becoming available on the net and a bunch of books coming out in 2008 on the topic to help us all out.