I was lucky enough to recently acquire a beta version of the Tweensy library from Shane McCartney over at Lost In Actionscript. I’ve taken my first crack at using the engine and I have to say I’m very excited to see what is still in store for this promising library. Currently I use Tweener for all my projects. It is quick, painless and very simple to use. It doesn’t support filters and uses mainly static methods. Tweensy on the other hand has support for many different types of effects that all developers yearn for (BitmapLayer is my favorite). Tweensy is broken down in easier to manage pieces that help keep the file size down. Be sure to check back often for more demos as I expand my knowledge of this great new piece of work. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention…Tweensy has support to “yo yo” a tween!

View The Demo

So as I mentioned in this post, I have been working on an AS3 library for interfacing with the new Drop.io API. Since my announcement, I’ve been getting some great support from both developers and the Drop.io team. It has been a while and I wanted to let you know I’m still working on the library. I’ve got some free time coming up soon, so I hope to use that time to get something ready for a beta stage.

Keep checking back for more updates! My goal is to have it complete by the end of the year.

So I mentioned in my last post about the new Drop.io API and how easy it is to use. Well, since then I’ve been playing around with the API in flash and accidentally started an AS3 Flash library for the API. Hopefully I’ll have enough time soon to complete it so other Flash developers can use it to create their own Drop.io apps. The image above is one of the first tests I was working on that started all this.

I will be posting updates on the library, so be sure to check back. If anyone has already started working on an AS3 library, feel free to post a comment. Any help or support I can get is appreciated!

UPDATE: This application has been altered. The finished product is called Droplet and be viewed HERE

Over a year ago I had the pleasure of working on the team that created Drop.io. I had built the original Flash uploaders. Since then, the Drop.io team has been hard at work and just last week released a new version of the site with a TON of great new features. My absolute favorite is the new Drop.io API. Getting a FREE key is simple and very quick (possibly faster than getting a FREE drop)! With only an hour into it, I’ve already managed to move, delete, and add assets quickly and painlessly. I can’t wait to get some more time into this and build out a drop manager in Adobe AIR.

Keep checking back for more status updates, I hope to have the Drop.io Desktop Manager available soon!

Until then, check out some of my other AIR apps…
Super Duper Desktop FLV Player
The File Furnace

We recently had one of our interns slave over getting a Displacement Map Filter project off the ground and displaying a flat image in faux 3D. After long hours of slavery, his hard work paid off and we recieved this great tutorial that blows most out of the water. Great work Joel, now get me a damn cup of coffee!

lab.joelGillman.com › False 3D in Flash: Displacement Maps

I had written a post a while back about using the Handy FPS box. Recently I was sorting through some code and remembered I had found a prettier more informative as3 fps stats box. This one is from Mr. Doob, you can download it from his Google Code Repo.

Example Code:

import Stats;
addChild(new Stats());

[ via ricardocabello ]

OneMotion.com has put together a neat experiment using flash and 3D (Papervision?). The demo is basically just a spider crawling around following your mouse in 3D perspective. There is a crontrol panel to alter different characteristics of the spider (Body Scale, Speed, Leg Reach, Height, etc…).

Great Job, creepy, but cool!

Play With Spider – Flash 3D – OneMotion.com.

I had a hard time finding a simple intro to using the NativeMenu, so here is some code for a basic Hello World NativeMenu demo.

import flash.display.*;
import flash.desktop.*;

stage.nativeWindow.menu = new NativeMenu();

var menuItem:NativeMenuItem = new NativeMenuItem("Hello!");

var subMenu:NativeMenu = new NativeMenu();
var btn1:NativeMenuItem = new NativeMenuItem("World");
btn1.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, itemClicked);
subMenu.addItem(btn1);
menuItem.submenu = subMenu;

stage.nativeWindow.menu.addItem(menuItem);

function itemClicked(e) {
   trace("You Selected: ", e.target);
}

Source

There is a possible upcoming project that may involve video with perspective. I have been using Papervision for a couple of other projects and figured I would put together a demo to see how well it handles. Enjoy