Flash in its essence began as a tool for creating vector animations on the
web. The Flash Player was designed specifically as a lightweight animation
viewer to display those moving vector objects which are in their simplest
form, mathematical equations that describe complex shapes made up of points,
lines, curves and fills. However, nowadays developers and designers are using
Flash to do a lot more than just animation, today we see Flash being used for
everything from interactive banner ads to games and large applications with
complex user interfaces. We are now pushing Flash to its limits and our frame
rates are starting to suffer as we continue to develop content that is more
application centric.
The Flash Player has had obvious performance limitations for some time now:;
the vector renderer inside the player generally coughs and splutters when it
attempts to pla... (more)
I've been playing around with the Tree Component in great depth and have
found a few discrepancies which I feel are major pit holes. After a lot of
searching, it was also clear that many other developers have come across the
same issues. My main gripe: the tree component's support for horizontal
scrolling is not very useful. I expected it to work like the ScrollPane's
horizontal scrollbar, but it doesn't.
Horizontal Scrolling: The Problem
Now I have a little application that allows you to add and remove nodes to a
tree, whooppee. Ok, so what happens if the user adds enough levels ... (more)
Part 1 of this article (Vol. 1, issue 3) covered a general introduction to
the Extensibility Layer and discussed the fundamental DOM and the
relationship between different parts of a Flash document and their associated
objects. It introduced the History panel and showed you how to build your own
Flash panels. In this installment we take an in-depth look at XML2UI and
Flash dialog boxes.
Dialog Boxes - XUL
Some of the Timeline Effects that come pre-installed with Flash MX 2004 allow
the user to modify numerous settings to change the outcome of the effect.
This is achieved using a... (more)
This extension adds a new FileSystem object to the JSAPI which contains 23
new JSFL functions that allow you to modify/access the local FileSystem in
your JSFL scripts. You can for example write to the registry using JSFL,
execute external applications and so on…
Documentation is provided for each of the new functions in the Help Panel.
As of Macromedia Flash MX 2004 7.2 a new FLfile object is added to the JSAPI.
It provides some, but not all of the functionality found in this extension.
(more…)
... (more)
Tip #1: Neat Fix - onLoad Bug
I have heard so many people moan on the many community forums and mailing
lists about the onLoad event handler not working with loadMovie and although
I have already posted a fix for the problem
(www.actionscripts.org/forums/showthread.php3?threadid=13830), I found this
very small and functional fix that does the same thing, a while ago on the
Flashcoders Mailing List: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/htdig/
flashcoders/2002-October/049415.html and so if you see the question, forward
people to http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/apache2-default/.
Tip #... (more)
Guy Watson (aka FlashGuru) has been a well-recognized figure in the Flash community for around four years, supporting the community with tutorials and source files, moderating the large Flash community forums, and running his own Flash resource Web site - FlashGuru's MX 101. Guy was one of the two developers that created the award-winning zoom interface for Relevare and now works for Endemol UK, the creative force behind reality television, producing programs such as Big Brother and The Salon. Guy now spends most of his time developing Flash games and applications for high-profile clients such as Channel 5 Television, Ladbrookes, and UK Style.
David Lucas
Cathy Lopez
Shaul Efraim
Terence Martin Breslin
Cory Marchand
David Hughes
James Carlini
John Iffert
Dan Stolts
Joe Zeto
