Flash archive at initApp

Archive for the 'Flash' Category

Apr

Web Expo 2.0 thoughts: Getting my hands Meshy and is Curling a game that will really take off?

By admin 0 Comments

Categories: Adobe AIR, RIA, Flex, Flash, Development and Adobe

I was busy last week and unable to make it to most of the show, but I did use my free expo pass on thursday morning to see the Keynotes, a mesh demo, and take a pass through the expo hall. Overall it was worth it. At the very least I now have a new t-shirt for every day of the month.

During the brief visit I sat in on a Mesh Demo. If you don’t know what Mesh is, its something between FolderShare, Groove, and .Mac with web services (if you dont’ understand what these things are then go here (mesh.com) for a better explanation. It has been awhile since Microsoft released something that made me feel itchy. You know the way you felt itchy when the iPhone first came out. That I got to have that itch. An itch that must be scratched.

In the beginning of the demo I was apprehensive. Would you be able to show me an open platform that could back up Meshs ability to run on anything? Or would you show me another FolderShare (which i love) that runs on windows and runs on mac if you don’t mind that its powerpc and hasn’t been updated in years. In the end I found myself pleased with Ori Amigas presentation of how the service level architecture works. In the presentation Microsoft had a list of other technologies that they would work with the community on getting libraries built for. One on the list was Flash, which immediately made me go hmm… After the show I asked Ori if when I got home I would find a crossdomain.xml file on the API server. To this he responded by saying it was something they were working out the details on. So no, but yes, I think. He also said that they are only allowing a limited amount of 3rd party developers in at the moment. In the demo Ori showed syncing between a Mac, Vista, Online desktop and to put it simply I liked it. After getting home, I signed up for Mesh and when going to add my mac as a device it just said “coming soon”. That being the case, I’m going to be on hold with this technology for a bit. Overall, I’m pleasently pleased with the potential (you know i’m happy when alliteration just comes out) and am looking forward to using Mesh. I even went over to the Microsoft booth and thanked them for giving me something to be excited about. They seemed slightly caught off guard by my complements and they tried to give me more shirts. I settled for just seeing genuine smiles all around. (they didn’t know that i already had 2 of those shirts :))

Next up: Curl

Curl Nitro is an emerging RIA technology that is trying to position itself as a competitor for AIR and Silverlight. I already feel like I’ve spent too much time on Curl for the moment so i’m just going to give you a link to a blog entry by Gary Gibert about Adobe vs Curl. It contains pretty much what you would expect including the required AIR vs Curl employee flame war in the comments. So here you go.

View Gary Gilbert Article

The comment I left at the end of the article:

Wow thats a lot of talking. I just wanted to chime in to say that i also wandered over to the Curl booth during 2.0 and spoke with Richard. First Richard is a nice guy, he’s a nice guy who happens to be a small fish in an ever growing pond (soon to be ocean).

Admittedly i have not read all of the comments here. Frankly i’d rather spend this beautiful day playing frisbee at the park. But I do feel like just stating basically what I told Richard after he gave me a product demo with the “performance” spiel.

If you’re going to make these performance comparisons then you should make two applications. One AIR and one CURL that do the same thing and show off performance in various scenarios (data load, 3d, etc…). Then provide the source code for both applications.

An after thought I had about it is make an awesome application that uses curl. Showing me a demo of a spinning DNA strand will get you no where when courting flash/flex developers. Its hot but I want something more substantial if we’re going to be in it for more than a one night stand.

Adobe and the dev community is constantly showing me hot and substantial AIR/Flex applications. To me the idea of taking on Silverlight and AIR head on like in your curl.com home page airplane animation analogy (btw done using flash) is comical in a very sad way. You know Ha Ha sad, not Ha Ha funny.

So pony up some applications done in CURL people want to use. Not because its CURL but because they’re cool and useful applications. And show some clear differences on why CURL is better because it fulfills some needs AIR developers have but are not getting. Then maybe we’ll consider putting it on our ever growing tool belts.

On the plus side I did mention that Adobe always buys the beer and they offered to take me out for one after the show. I wasn’t able to take them up on it but its a good first step in any developer relationship.

Off to the park. -s

Feb

Posting a Note/Link to Pownce with ActionScript and the New Pownce v2.0 API

By admin 2 Comments

Categories: Pownce, API, Adobe AIR, Flex, Flash and Actionscript 3

So this morning Pownce finally released a true API that allows us to use the full functionality of Pownce. A while back I posted information on how to do this in a reverse engineered method, but now we can do it without the feeling that we might be doing something bad (although that can be fun sometimes to can’t it).

The code sample below shows how to Authenticate to the service using HTTP Basic Authentication and posts a note/link.

Steps to take
1. Get a pownce account if you don’t have one.
2. Register to get an application key.
3. Use the following code. Change “app_key” to your application key. Change “login” and “password” to user you want to post with.

Private Paste Link to Code

import mx.utils.Base64Encoder;
 
private const APP_KEY:String = "<app_key>";
 
public function initApp():void{
	sendNote(
		"Example of note in the new API.",
		"http://pownce.com/initapp",
		"<login>",
		"<password>"
		);
}
public function sendNote(note:String, link:String, login:String, password:String):void{
	var urlLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
	var urlRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest();
	var urlVariables:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
 
	var authHeader:URLRequestHeader = new URLRequestHeader("Authorization", "Basic " + base64Encode(login + ":" + password));
 
	urlVariables.note_to = "public";
	urlVariables.url = link;
	urlVariables.note_body = note;
 
	urlRequest.requestHeaders.push(authHeader);
	urlRequest.url = "http://api.pownce.com/2.0/send/link.xml?&app_key=" + APP_KEY;
	urlRequest.data = urlVariables;
	urlRequest.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
 
	urlLoader.addEventListener(HTTPStatusEvent.HTTP_STATUS, onHTTPStatus);
	urlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onComplete);
 
	urlLoader.load(urlRequest);
}
private function onHTTPStatus(event:HTTPStatusEvent):void{
	trace(event);
}
private function onComplete(event:Event):void{
	trace(event);
}
private static function base64Encode(data:String) : String
{
    var encoder:Base64Encoder = new Base64Encoder();
	var bytes:ByteArray = new ByteArray();
	bytes.writeUTFBytes(data);
 
    encoder.encodeBytes(bytes);
    return encoder.flush();
}

If you want to hear more of my occasionally relevant information then add me to your friends in pownce: http://pownce.com/InitApp/

Note: I did this example using Flex and used mx.utils.Base64Encoder. If you’re not using Flex you’ll need to use an alternate package for your Base64 encoding.

Mar

Your Flex app into Apollo in 5 minutes

By initapp 2 Comments

Categories: Flex, Flash, Development and Adobe

In his keynote Kevin Lynch said it would take 5 minutes to get your flex app into Apollo. He wasn’t kidding. I had my cairngorm based flex app into apollo in under 5 minutes.. great job flex/apollo team. Way to come through and I was told to give a special thanks to Mike Chambers for tonights events…. This really is as cool as i thought it would be.. See my app in apollo below Click image to enlarge.

Mar

Is the Apollo team run by the kid that lived next door that never let me play his video games?

By initapp 5 Comments

Categories: Flex, Flash, Development and Adobe

So I’m off to ApolloCamp tonight and I’m hearing a lot of “maybe” we’ll let people get Apollo and it got me thinking. When I was a kid I lived next door to a kid named Barry. Barry had an intellivision. He would always call me to come over and check out his video games with the enticement of “maybe” he would let me play. So I would go over and get all excited about playing and inevitably end up just watching him play for hours. Lets just say I found it slightly Frustrating.

For the last year now I’ve been hearing about Apollo, watching other people make applications with Apollo(mxna, http://video.onflex.org/, Flex 360), and what i want to know is, when is it going to be my turn? If you see someone having a temper tantrum tonight at ApolloCamp then you know you’ve found me. On the other side of it, its been a long time since I’ve been this excited about a new technology (like a kid again) and for that I’m thankful. Without the flex team/flex community keeping me filled with cool new things almost daily, I think the anticipation of Apollo would have driven me crazy a long time ago.

See you all tonight!

-Steve

Also, thanks to my Mom for getting me an Apple IIc which made me forget all about Barry and his Intellivision. Your the Best Mom.

Jan

The new phone books are here! The new phone books are here! Added to MXNA, What it takes..

By initapp 2 Comments

Categories: Life in general, Flex, Flash and Development

So my blog has been added to the MXNA aggregator. Does that make my blog special? I like to think so. I like to think that there is a huge series of tests that must be performed before they add your blog. Its a high standard of criteria that has to be met. I imagine them to be something along the lines of the following:1. Is it funny? Is it “Ha Ha” funny or is it “Ha Ha” sad.2. Is it explosive? What happens when you add mentos and diet coke to it?3. Is the content original or should the blog just redirect people to Ted Patricks blog?Just some random possiblities.Does anyone know what this criteria really is?I’m somebody now! -s

Jan

ActionScript Example: Creating a Static Function

By initapp 1 Comment

Categories: Flash, Development, Adobe and Actionscript 3

So a developer I work with was going to use an include file and a prototype for a string altering method he wanted to use throughout his application. The only thing that came to mind was the Mr. Horses catch phrase from Ren & Stimpy.

“No sir I don’t like it”.

I offered the possibility that he might create a utilites class in our namespace with a static function to accomplish his goal. To that he asked “Can you give me an example of how to make a static function”. Well here it is:

First we have our class:

class com.imart.utilities.StringHelper{

function StringHelper(){

}
public static function returnString(passValue:String):String{
return “Here you go:” + passValue;
}
}

Then we can call the method:

import com.imart.utilities.*

example_txt.text = StringHelper.returnString(”Steve”);

Download the example project

Dec

New Revolutionary product released! Behold! “Microsoft Flash”

By initapp 8 Comments

Categories: WPF/e, Microsoft, Flex, Flash and Development

How do they come up with all these great ideas? lets list a few of the more recent ones.

Microsoft Flash (Just released in beta)
Microsoft iPod (Its a christmas hit)
Microsoft Google Search (Who doesn’t search with this?)
Microsoft Google Maps
Microsoft iTunes Store (Plays for sure?)
Microsoft Playstation

For those of you who don’t know what WPF/e (Microsoft Flash) is, its Microsofts cross platform (OSx, XP/Vista) browser plugin that allows a portion of the WPF(Windows Presentation Foundation) to be used to make Flash like applications. (Vector graphics, 2d animations, audio, video, etc…)

So now everyone seems to be getting getting a bit worked up about WPF/e. When I first heard about this release, I started off with some grunting and snarling, followed by being kind of moody for a few hours. I have at this time managed to calm myself down enough to put together some initial pros and cons going into this thing.

Pros & Cons of WPF

Pros
1. Competition can be healthy. (Maybe we’ll get Apollo and I cant stop dreaming about it in my Xmas stocking)
2. You can use the standard MS Languages C#, VB.Net, etc…
3. Media playback works with DRM content.

Cons
1. Microsoft once again extends itself too far. Seriously, whats next? The Microsoft Toilet, the Microsoft Refrigerator? Just because its a successful product doesn’t mean you have to copy it throw an X on it and mass produce it. Imagine for a moment the xToilet, I imagine it to be an even better version of those sensor auto flushing toilets at the airport that flush every time you reach back to do a wipe. Its like a toilet and a water slide all in one! PEOPLE! It worked perfectly well when it was just a toilet with a handle. It just didn’t need the “X” treatment.

2. Next week I’m going to walk into work into a new Project and some one will inevitably say “Why don’t we use WPF/e instead of Flash”. Because of this I’m going to have to learn this technology even if its far off from prime time (can they even get it through a demo without a crash?). Also, did you see how slow apps start up?

3. What will happen now that the Microsoft iPod doesn’t use PlaysForSure? Just plain Scary.

Anyway, I’m done with my temper tantrim. Guess its time to get out the Microsoft Blender and see what I can make with this thing. Who knows maybe it’ll turn out to make Microsoft Margaritas. Mmmmm… Margaritas

-s

Dec

Start Windows Apps from your OSX Doc (Parallels 3036)

By initapp 1 Comment

Categories: Parallels, OSx, Flash and Development

So if you’re like me and love your Intel Mac but still use Windows in Parallels for Flash Alpha 9, Microsoft .Net Studio, etc.. then your probably already running the new Parallels build with “Coherence”. Well the one downside (don’t get me wrong it puts steam in my stride on a daily basis) is that you still have to open apps from the Windows Taskbar. Well, here is a simple solution for Launching windows apps from your OSX Doc.

Steps (Yes its not that simple)

1. OSX -> Go to “System Preferences” and open “Universal Access”. Click on the Keyboard tab and check “Enable access for assitive devices.

2. Open Parallels in “Coherence” mode. Go to the “Properties” for the application you want run in Windows. (right click in properties on the shortcut in the menu). Setup a “Shortcut Key” for the application you want to run. So for Flash 9 you may setup Control-Shift-f

3. Open your AppleScript Editor (Applications/Applescript) and paste in the following code:

tell application “Parallels Desktop”
activate
tell application “System Events”
– Shortcut in windows setup for Control-Shift-f
– Change for each application and resave
keystroke “f” using {control down, shift down}
end tell
end tell
4. Save the script as an “Application Bundle” in a folder.

5. Create all the scripts for apps you need in the same folder. Copy the folder to your OSX Doc.

6. Thats it. Yeah its a hack, but it’ll work until they build it into

Other Things:

Parallels 3036