Flade: Flash dynamics engine. Open Source!

Sounds cool no? And it is!
I was looking around the net to find some sort of physics solution for a little experiment i am working on.
In this experiment i want a convincing collision detection / resolving on two "rounded rectangles".
Anyway, eventually i ran into Flade. After playing the demo's for a hour :) i downloaded the engine.
And i looked at the examples.
And i was realllly impressed with the work.



But i don't understand it! I do but i don't. The examples that come with the zip file he offers for download, are quite complex.
Big problem is lack of documentation. Something which the Author (Alec Cove) seems to be aware of.
The project is Open Source and needs interested qualified people to help this along, with documentation and examples... especially simple examples for simple souls like me.

Go ahead and at least look at the examples! Brilliant!

Why i do what i do and want to keep doing it

I came across this blog posting from Ivan Todorov:

Article: Macrodobe 8, Microsoft, the future of development, and why Flash programmers have higher IQ

It is a long article, but it describes precisely how i feel where the Web is going and the role of flash in that.
(according to Ivan, i would be a "Experience Developer" :)

In any case, i think i will bring this article to every job interview from now on!

Flash 8 Filters

I was playing around a little with filters in Flash, started with a simple light-grey square with rounded corners and ended up with this (see image)


I only used the standard filters like Dropshadow, Glow and Bevel.
I based all the colors on a fixed color-scheme, which means i can now easily deconstruct it and redo it in ActionScript... and then i can change the colors, sizes... etc on the run.

Just felt like mentioning this, because i like this way of working with flash.... make something visual then get ideas of how to implement them.
Usually too many ideas :)

back to the Store/Site builder

Since a lot of people are waiting for me to get a workable version of the site builder and i am sort of finished with my last project (www.dylanfrancis.nl) it's time to get back to the builder.

So what is it going to be?

It will be a webcenter, for managing all kinds of things that the power and features of your server can provide. That includes a site or store. But also email (especially lists), bookmarks, managing media (mp3/avi/...)
But my first goal now is to handle the "your site part"
I realize that for a lot of people "your server" sound creepy. Like you have to know Linux or webservers...
The main idea behind the whole thing is simplicity and that applies also for installation, use, etc.
Installation will be : "copy some files to your server" ... and that'll be all!

I am still trying to get my head around all aspects of this project, and to make a kind of roadmap.

A workable version will be available from January.

If you're interested in this and/or feel like participating in this, drop me a line...

grtz!
asji

the loss of my mousewheel in Flash

One of few things that i dislike about a full flash site is the fact that i loose my mousewheel functionality as soon as the flash movie has focus (clicked on)
Today i made a little thingy that passes the scrollwheel functionality to the browser, using javascript.

Here's the code:

function _InitMouseWheel(){
mouseListener = new Object();
mouseListener.onMouseWheel = function(delta)
{
getURL("javascript:window.scrollBy(0,"+-(delta*30)+");");
}
Mouse.addListener(mouseListener);
}

then somewhere in your code add :

_InitMouseWheel();

You only have to call it once (because of the listener...)

enjoy!

Flash and the Back button

In my quest to remove as much of the "flash deveations" from webstandards, i made a brandnew backbutton handler.
I did this before with the flash version of www.adje.nl (now offline), but now improved on it.
You can see it in action at : Martin's site

I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know if it doesn't work with your browser...

I am now trying to get deeplinking to work in combination with this. Not easy but i'm getting there...

TextField, CSS

Today i was working on improving my latest Flash 8 site. My goal was to incorporate a CSS style sheet for all the loaded text on the site.
I quickly ran into some problems.

The data is loaded from xml files. And some of these xml files had the cdata tag to preserve html formatting (f.i. using external links), but others didn't.
To make sure my text got the correct formatting i added a declaration to my css file :

body{ color: #333333; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 12px; display: inline;}

and added a little piece in my actionscript :

pod_string="<"+"body"+"/>"+pod_string+"<"+"body"+"/>";

Now all not-html formatted text get's it's style from the body-tag. (all the extra plusses is for displaying here)

Then i had to solve another problem.
It seemed to me that i was looking at Flash 7 text... no advanced anti-aliasing.
These lines take care of that :

txt_container.antiAliasType = "advanced"; txt_container.embedFonts = true; txt_container.gridFitType = "subpixel";

where txt_container is a new TextField...
Do this BEFORE assigning the stylesheet to the TextField!

Pretty cool no? Gives me a lot more freedom to externally format my text...

XPath in Flash 8

This has been posted a lot already, but i felt my blog wouldn't be complete without mentioning it.
If you start with XML in Flash, you'll quickly get annoyed by traversing xml trees by going through it's childnodes... at least that's how i felt.
Thank the maker for including an easier way... XPath from within Flash!
Easier, more intuitive and causing less problems in your code...

Have a look at this great page for more ...

Here is the official Macromedia documentation (PDF)

embarassing moments at the doctor's office

embarassing moments at the doctor's office

Nothing to do with what i'm writing here, but still very funny :))

first Flash 8 site

After two weeks of silence on my blog, finally some news...
I made my first full site with flash 8!
this is the url : http://www.dylanfrancis.nl

Still some thingys to do, but it was finished enough to put online.

I was pretty much given "carte blanche" with this one, and i really enjoyed it!