Posts Tagged ‘flash’
Droplet: Quick Drop.io Desktop AIR App
I’m proud to announce the beta release of my first Drop.io desktop AIR application called Droplet. Read more »
How to Load External Images in Actionscript 3.0
Using the flash.display.Loader class in AS3, you can load in external image files to display in flash. The loader class supports loading in JPG, SWF, PNG, or GIF file types. The Loader class sounds more like a loading manager that watches load progress, rather than a display object. Fact is, the Loader is treated as a DisplayObject, so when it’s ready you just add it to the stage. Pretty simple, so let’s get started!
Actionscript 3 Webcam Configure
Setting up a webcam in Flash has always been pretty simple. I feel there are two cases in flash that you would use the webcam in a project: Streaming video for video chat or using it as a tool to take a photo. These two cases have completely different purposes and thus you want your camera setup properly for each.
GTween improved squencing support
As some of you may know, Grant Skinner has been working on his own tweening library called GTween. The project is still in beta stages with a promise to be delivered public in the next couple weeks.
gskinner.com: gBlog: Preview: GTween beta 5, Now With More Sequencing.
What is a Flash Developer!?
Lee Brimlow has yet another great writeup, but this time it isn’t another great video tutorial. Instead he finally spelled out his opinion on what makes a Flash Developer, or a Flash Designer and the difference between Flash and Flex.
PhizzPop Minneapolis | Team space150
So a few guys from work and myself were asked to compete in the Microsoft PhizzPop challenge this week. I had heard of the competition a few months back, but I had thought it was more of a student challenge. After being able to rearrange my work schedule for 3 days of Silverlight training, I was off to the MN Microsoft campus! Read more »
Drop.io AS3 Library
UPDATE: I have posted what there is for files on Google Code. The code currently is considered as-is.
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!
The New Drop.io API: Drop.io Desktop Manager
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
Papervision Reality
Wow, the guys over at Digital Pictures Interactive have pushed the limits of Flash and Papervision to produce an application that reads your webcam image and renders a Papervision model (in this case a Monster) in real time. The application looks for a printed symbol and judges it’s proximity and perspective from comparing it’s edges. I would have been fine with just finding the object within the camera and drawing the model, but these guys take it steps further and actually change it’s scale and pitch depending on how the paper is positioned.
Very well done! Read on to check out the video demo
Flash CS4 Classic Tweens Cause Constant Crashing! UPDATE
UPDATE: It doesn’t seem to just be the classic tweens. Any type of tween (Classic, Motion, or Shape) that I create causes flash to crash after working with it for a couple of minutes. I’m seeing the crash happen when I’m trying to move frames around on the timeline.
It’s 11:30am and I’ve already had my new copy of Flash CS4 crash on me 5 times. Each crash has been related to a classic tween in some sort of way. Either moving the frames around, or even just creating the tween causes flash to crash.
So far there doesn’t seem to be a method that works besides not using classic tweens.
Anyone else having this problem? Maybe it’s just my system? I’m running XP 64-bit.
False 3D in Flash: Displacement Maps
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!
Even Better Flash AS3 FPS Stats
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 ]
Tinic Uro answers flash player performance questions
Tinic Uro (Adobe Flash Player Engineer) has yet another great writeup in relation to performance and flash player. His latest article answers a lot of questions and comments Ajax-heavy developers are making against flash. Understandably Tinic defends his software, I guess I didn’t expect him to agree with those stating flash is a CPU hog.
Decide for yourself. Personally, I’m going to trust an Adobe Software Engineer instead of the typcial company Javascript guy that always tries to shit on flash. There is a time and place for both.
swfAddress 2.1 Bug: Special Characters cause infinite loop
I was working with the flash deep linking tool swfAddress and came across a ridiculous bug. Apparently the new v2.1 doesn’t support certain special characters. I’m not sure of which exactly, but I know for sure you can’t use a : (colon). Trying to set the deep link URL to a string that contains a colon will cause the javascript to go into an infinite loop and eventually crash the server it is hosted on unless you navigate away from the page quickly.
Reverting back to v2.0 helped the problem. Apparently v2.3 will have a fix for this bug.
WeatherVision3D
CornFlex has coming up with a neat way to incorporate Papervision and the new GoogleMaps api. It is a little primitive, but has a lot of potential. This would be a really cool screen saver.