I effectively gave up Flash when I came to Public and it's now a whole year since I did any significant Flash work. In this short time AS3 has really come of age, there are tonnes of serious libraries, from fractals to physics, and PaperVision 3D seems almost omnipresent. The prospect of going back to the ActionScript freelance circuit after a year on the wagon would be quite daunting. (more…)
I am pretty new to Flash Media Server, but on my current project I have been charged with setting it up. Today, I ran into a thoroughly unpleasant problem, possibly a bug, which I thought I would share.
The mini project I picked as my first dip into AS3 was a short example that I had been planning for this blog, so here it is in AS3, instead of AS2 as I had originally planned.
The South Park Chin balls Flash app required that the user drag and zoom a loaded photo. Anyone who's ever done this will know that you can't just scale the picture around it's registration point when you zoom. Why? because the centre point changes as you pan the image around. So the requirement in a nutshell is – to be able to scale a MovieClip around an arbitrary centre.
Sure, you could take the Russian doll approach with multiple clips inside clips, but that just ain't cool! I thought I'd share the way I did it as it's pretty concise. (more…)
Much later than planned I finally got around to checking out AS3.
I was quick to upgrade to AS2 when it came out in Flash MX 2004, and never looked back, so why so late? Well, as usual, because I'm busy. Busy on a PHP project at that, so I haven't really had the chance. Plus, if I do have to write some AS on the job it's too big a risk to start learning something new. Pressures demand that I get on with it as I know how. That's why this Facebook application has it's main Flash app (Chin Balls) written in AS2. Also, I view the upgrading of a programming language as a one-way process. I didn't upgrade to PHP5 until I was confident I would never have to write PHP4 again. And with AS3 this is an even bigger deal. (more…)
The designer/developer boundary has always been a little blurry when it comes to Flash. Flash has been celebrated for this since 1999, and has established a pretty unique position. But with each release of Flash those who sit on the fence feel an increasing pressure to choose a camp and stay in it. Some do, some don't and some just carry on doing things as they always did, but one thing's for sure; that the drive toward Flash being a more robust, more powerful, more serious platform is not showing any signs of slowing down. AS3 is another leap forward. In fact a much bigger leap than AS2 was. (more…)
Over the previous three weeks I was working with my old pals at Greenroom Digital, who were producing a Facebook application for their client Paramount Pictures. The app's release coincided with Paramount's release of South Park Season 6 on DVD. You won't be surprised to see that the application is crude and puerile, and you may [as I do] reluctantly find it pretty amusing in places.
You can see the South Park Down and Dirty application in action here. This link is my public Down and Dirty profile and does not require you to add the app, although you can add it here in the usual fashion.
Pick up Campaign or some such publication and no doubt you'll be able to read all about the strategy, the creative, the design, even the metrics. Less likely you'll read about the technical execution, which is where I come in…