Flash v3 component issues
December 6, 2007
After having worked on a project with Flash’s CS3 component set I guess one could say that they’re much better than their predecessor (after all they’re based on ActionScript 3 now). Some useful components are missing but that’s not too bad as you could create your own based on the v3 core, use Yahoo’s free additions to the v3 set (Astra) or consider using flex if you do a lot of component related work.
Nevertheless there are some problems I’ve encountered while working with some of the existing v3 components (please correct me if I’ve missed something):
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Visit the permanent link to “Flash v3 component issues”.
stage.invalidate() and Event.RENDER for UI elements
November 3, 2007
We’ve been doing lots of ui stuff lately using ActionScript 3 and the new methods available for redrawing. Unfortunately there’s a Flash Player Bug with Event.RENDER which you should keep in mind when using that approach. Before talking about the bug, here’s a quick introduction to general redrawing techniques (just in case you’re not already familiar with that topic. If you’re interested in the AS3 stuff and the Bug, just skip the next paragraphs…):
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Visit the permanent link to “stage.invalidate() and Event.RENDER for UI elements”.
Runtime font loading with AS3 / Flash CS3 (not Flex!)
June 22, 2007
If I never really got something in Flash it was font embedding and runtime font loading. The bad news is: We have ActionScript 3.0 now and Flash CS3 and I still haven’t completely understood it yet. The good news is: It works – somehow – if you keep in mind some things. After all articles about this topic I’ve read until now I have the feeling that nobody really understands what’s going on with fonts in different use cases. Trial and error…
As the headline suggests this article deals with font embedding in Flash CS3 and not in Flex. With Flex and mxmlc there’s the embed metatag where you can even define font character ranges which should be embedded. You don’t have this option if compile with the Flash IDE…
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Visit the permanent link to “Runtime font loading with AS3 / Flash CS3 (not Flex!)”.
Tip for using SWFAddress and GoogleAnalytics together
March 4, 2007
Just a quick tip to save you a few minutes if you plan to use SWFAddress (as far as I know currently the best browser-back-button solution for flash) and GoogleAnalytics (for tracking) in a flash project:
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Visit the permanent link to “Tip for using SWFAddress and GoogleAnalytics together”.
Flash Video Tip 3: Stopping a FLV from downloading
March 3, 2007
When you set the contentPath property of the FLVPlayback component in Flash 8 it immediately starts (progressively) downloading the flv. Normally this is the desired behaviour but sometimes you don’t want the flv to take up bandwidth because there are currently other loading processes. Some time ago I read an article at Flashcomguru on how to generate a thumbnail preview of a video and stop the download process. While this should work if you manually create your NetConnection/NetStream object, the technique described there (trying to load a non-existent flv) doesn’t seem to work with the FLVPlayback component.
Here’s another approach (code is just on frame 1 for this demo, should be put into a class though):
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Visit the permanent link to “Flash Video Tip 3: Stopping a FLV from downloading”.
Flash Video Tip 2: Syncing a FLV between two SWFs
February 28, 2007
Here’s the next flash video tip: It’s about how to synchronize a flv file between two separate swf files. First question is: Why would you want to do this? Honestly I can’t think of too many cases where you would do this but there’s one case where it can be appropriate (and coincidentally it has happened in one of our last projects ;):
Flipping book applications – you certainly know what I mean with flipping book applications (they seem to be quite popular with lots of companies): Online magazines where you can interactively turn pages by dragging the book corners to flip through the pages. Most of them consist of two separate swf files for the left and right page and it can be quite challenging to load / initialize / time things if you have much communication and interactivity going on between the two pages.
What options are there if you want to show a flv that runs synchronously on separate swfs (or in the special flipping book case: the left half of the flv runs on the left page and the right half on the right page)?
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Visit the permanent link to “Flash Video Tip 2: Syncing a FLV between two SWFs”.
Flash Video Tip 1: Calculating an optimal buffer size
February 27, 2007
Sorry for not posting much the last weeks/months… This article is the start of a few tips about flash video and deals with calculating the buffer size for a flv video.
If you want to display a flash video file you have primarily three options:
- Ignore the user’s bandwidth and just display the version you have encoded, use an estimated buffer size
- Display different versions of the same file (e.g. a low, medium or high version) depending on the user’s bandwidth, use an estimated buffer size or additionally calculate the optimal buffer size
- Display a reasonable encoded version and calculate an optimal buffer size depending on the user’s bandwidth
Visit the permanent link to “Flash Video Tip 1: Calculating an optimal buffer size”.
New WM Team website
December 5, 2006
The german Flash agency WM Team from Hannover have launched their brand new website on 1st December. One gets really impressed by the affinity for lovely small details on every single page. Make sure to watch the kick-ass intro where the guys from WM Team present their new claim »Showtime for your brand«. So do not skip the intro! ;)
Visit the permanent link to “New WM Team website”.
Scrybe – An awesome new Rich-Internet-Application
November 2, 2006
If you haven’t already read it on some other blog or web magazine:
There’s a new Killer-RIA which is called »Scrybe«. It’s a flash-based (at least I’ve read that it was done in Flash – but actually it doesn’t matter if it was done with AJAX or Flash) calendar-powerlists-thoughtpad application. They have a Youtube video on their site which shows the great user interface and workflow – this is what you can really call a »Web 2.0 application«.
Visit the permanent link to “Scrybe – An awesome new Rich-Internet-Application”.
Voodoo IO: Connecting flash to hardware devices
August 13, 2006
Finally we have time to blog about this (being officially on holiday since a week :). A few weeks ago we were invited by Wolfgang Spießl, a friend of mine and student of media informatics at LMU, to take an active part in a user study. Wolfgang and Nicolas Villar, main developer of Voodoo IO hardware devices, built a system to connect those devices to flash (the whole project is supervised by Hans Gellersen from Lancaster University and Albrecht Schmidt from LMU – yeah, lots of names and links ;).
So what exactely is Voodoo IO?
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Visit the permanent link to “Voodoo IO: Connecting flash to hardware devices”.