aron / philipp development blog

We recently finished a pretty untypical project. The client wanted to have a portfolio site, where the “cases”-pages were so different, that they did not fit in any cms or xml structure. And since the client has their own flash developer (well, more of a designer type…) they wanted to be able to maintain the FLA files themselves.

So we built the basic structure in an index.swf. The “cases” FLAs had a document class which inherited from a super class. So what if something in the superclass changes? Yes, you have to open every FLA and export it all over again.

For this case we wrote a little JSFL script with a XUL user interface. Interestingly this feature exists since Flash MX 2004 without much notice.

Read on ›

hi there, long time no see … but we are very busy working on some interesting projects and writing the second edition of our “workshops for flash” book.
the latter is also the reason why we are using flash cs4 more than we usually would … and especially the cs4-built-in-actionscript-editor … *phew* what a mess that is. no real auto-completion, no auto-import and the flash-help keeps opening my browser with the online flashhelp :( really annoying.
but there are some ways around this behavior.

offline browser solution:
http://www.jonnymac.com/blog/2008/12/09/offline-as3-language-reference-no-air-application-necessary/

air app:
http://labs.bigspaceship.com/2008/12/09/air-app-as3-language-reference/

great stuff :)
cheers

Recently we had the problem to change the embed setting of tons of textfields instances inside of at least a gazillion MovieClips. We got the FLA-file from a designer (we maybe haven’t briefed enough… :) ) and wanted to use them in a lib swc for a AS3-only project. So we started to change them “by foot”, internship work, damn it!

Finally we came up with the idea to write a jsfl script which does the job.

There you go: Change Textfield Embed Settings.jsfl
As zip: ChangeTextfieldEmbedSettings.zip

Copy the file inside the command folder here:

Mac: /[user]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash CS3/en/Configuration/

Windows: \Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Flash CS3\language\Configuration\

How to use:

Create a dummy TextField on the timeline and set it to the embed setting you want to apply to all TextField instances of all MovieClip timelines inside the library. Make sure that this TextField has the same font name as the TextFields you want to apply the setting to. Select this TextField and run the script by clicking “Change TextField Embed Setting” inside the Command menu of Flash.

The script now opens every MovieClip of the library and searches for TextField instances. If found and the font matched with the previously created dummy TextField, the new embed setting will be copied.

Note: The script only works with MovieClip library items and TextField of the type “dynamic” or “input”. Only the embed settings of the dummy TextField will be applied, all other properties will be ignored.

Keith Peters started hosting the great 25 lines contest (again) – a contest where you can do anything you want only it has to fit into 25 lines of ActionScript 3 code.

I’m really curious what people will contribute. There are some nice prizes up for grabs … go, check’em out.

And now we only have to come up with an idea of our own … mmmm.

Cheers, phil

UPDATE: There is a official buglist now. Please read this post.

We are working with FDT since version 1.5 and think that it is by far the best ActionScript tool out there; we tried FlashDevelop, Sepi and all the others. Most of the people we work with are using FDT and most of them are pretty pleased, though some of them are a bit shocked when they see the price tag…

However we have the feeling that since the release of FDT 3.0 Enterprise the development stocked somehow. In our daily work we found a lot of small and big bugs, more or less annoying. Some of them are so obvious and we are wondering why they don’t get fixed. The Bug section of their forum is sadly not usable for “real bugs” since its full of posts like “Help me, my FTD is not working”.

So we decided to publish our own unofficial buglist. Of course, we sent them to the FDT team too and when a bug is fixed we’ll update the list asap.

Read on ›

Hi there… we’ve been busy these past couple of days so there wasn’t much time for new posts – sorry. But here is a little update.
While developing a flash website (AS3 & SWFObject2.0) that heavily depended on opening URLs in a new browser window we came across the popup blocker problem that the use of navigateToURL causes. When trying to open a new window firefox’/IE’s popup blocker will block the window and display its warning. After googling for some time we came across some neat workarounds:

Read on ›

We were at the “AS3 – From the ground up tour” in Munich yesterday and it was really fun. Although most of the topics were for beginners it was amazing just listening to him talking about these things. And Colin Moock can definitely talk … and so he did … for about 9 hours. Everything you need to know about OOP.

Because we just flew through all the slides he had prepared, in the end, he had some time left for talking about new features in ECMAScript 4. That was some crazy stuff. But good to hear this from someone who knows what he is talking about and can easily make things accessible for everyone else.

So, thanks Colin – we had a great time !

Cheers

PS: Watch out for Colin driving 250km/h on the Autobahn chewing some Bavarian “Weißwürschte” (sausages).

After struggling for some weeks now, I finally found a good implementation of the MouseEvent.MOUSE_WHEEL event for my Mac. Pixelbreaker – who already had a great AS2 MouseWheel script – just posted the new AS3 version. Read more about it on the pixelbreaker-blog.

Have fun …

I just read an article about the upcoming release of Apple’s iPhone SDK – it said that the SDK is also including Flash support … fingers crossed.

That’s what we were all waiting for … there are going to be some amazing new Flash applications on the iPhone.

Cheers

Hi … while building the fullscreen-videoplayer I came across the problem, that I was using an old SWC for the fl-package within Eclipse. With the recent Flash Player 9 Update 3 release, Adobe added some real nice features to the FLVPlayback component (e.g. the enterFullScreenDisplayState() method).

To get access to the fl-package within your Eclipse/FDT3-project you have to include another linked SWC (besides the playerglobal.swc). I just created a SWC using the newest fl.video classes. So if you are using FDT3 and are in need of these classes – just grab them: Download the FL_PACKAGE.swc.

cheers