Chances are you've heard of the term or read some tutorials on how to use these diagrams to help with documenting your thought process when building a slick Flash project. I basically only wanted to share a little gem I've recently discovered but ended up writing propaganda. I digress.

I'm currently working on a project of which the source will be distributed across the globe. So I want my code to be nice and tidy and send over some HTML docs to show off. Only problem is it's a Flex project and I've been out of touch with Flex for a while. As I don't use Flex Builder, getting ASDoc to work ended up on the things-I-will-sort-out-later-pile. For this project however, it was a requirement. So no easy way out.

After a great Max in Milano, I was inspired to start playing around with Pixel Bender. Granted, I wasn't going to create a raytracer and for someone who still struggles to understand the ColorMatrixFilter I thought the outcome of this tinker is pretty useful.

I read this post from DevGirl about AlivePDF, an AS3 API to save Flash content to PDF. The examples showed how to use a server-side script or using AIR. Hmmm...  this could be a nice little introduction into the world of FP10 me thinks. I haven't spend any time looking into the FP10 features but thought this could be fairly quick and easy to do... and it was!

A lot of people have blogged about this and there have been a few attempts at libraries which solves the problem. Some have gained status and some have gracefully failed silently. It's only recently that I encountered the need to use this method and frankly I prefer browser scrollbars as most users do in my opinion. I feel they are more responsive and have better performance. But damn it ain't easy getting this to work properly and at one point I wondered if it is actually worth the trouble.

It should be quite evident by now that I am a huge fan of Eclipse and FDT for Flash development. I thought it might be cool to drop the guys at FDT an email and get an update of where things are  in the world of Powerflashers!

Maybe I was born under a rock or sum'in, but I ain't heard of SOS Max before today. And boy do I have a smile on my face. How did I ever survive without it? FlashTracer is cool but I don't always want to run the browser to view my traces. It's an additional step I deem unnecessary at times. But to have an ever almighty little taskbar application running faster than the Duracel bunny at your finger tips... Phew! Now that is what I call "game".

It's not everyday I get to play around with API's but recently the opportunity arose from an insoluble grave. Get Flint kickin' it stated. Too much?

Omniture is one of the leading analytic vendors out there. Chances are that if you're an Actionscripter you will come across implementing Omniture tracking on one of your projects. I briefly overviewed various tracking in a previous post but thought it might be useful to cover this vendor in-depth. Usually this level of tracking implementation are done on medium to larger flash projects or where the project is part of an online campaign. Smaller sites often don't require this level of tracking and a straight forward implementation of Google Analytics should suffice.

Omniture like many others use Javascript to make requests to a server, passing key-value pairs, to record user activity. Omniture also has a Flash component called ActionSource for more advanced tracking. This post will focus on the ActionSource component and the Omniture setup in general. If you require more information on the Javascript implementation, please read my previous post.

This article should provide you with all the ammo you need when using the Embed meta tag. It is a vital part of AS3 and should greatly enhance the structure of your projects. Hopefully this article will show the benefits of structuring your projects in this way.

Error: No class registered for interface 'mx.resources::IResourceManager'. If you have experienced this before, you are in for a bumpy ride. There are loads of these errors floating about when using the flex sdk to compile your project with. The reasons are vast and different but basically boils down to dependencies. Classes within the flex framework depend on a heap of other classes, that is why it is known as an Application framework.

This is something we all experience on a daily basis, we want to use some piece of code written for a previous project, and quite often we find ourselves spending way more time to make the code standalone that we would have like to. Very similarly, I want to use the RPC package for various reasons but without using the whole Flex Application framework.

So where does ResourceManager fit in and why is there no class registered for interface IResourceManager?

Andre Michelle is making some noise. After playing with PopForge, I have nothing but total amazement of what this guy does, there is no reason not to support him in his quest to get Adobe to fix some serious Sound API problems.

Probably the first critical update issued from Adobe about possibly vulnerabilities in the Flash player. The December issues listed can be found here. April sees a new Flash Player update to resolve some cross-site scripting problems in the current v115 Flash Player.

I had the opportunity to mess about with some new AS3 libraries a few days ago. After doing this basic experiment I figure that a bold statement is in order. I reckon what BitmapData did for Flash 8, the ByteArray will make up for Flash 9. Ok so myabe not so bold and a little bit late but ByteArray is defintely powerful.

It's not like Flash has the best form reputation on the web. I am constantly finding myself trying to argue the case for use of Flash forms as I find it better to integrate in some of the sites I build. However, I have absolutely no grounds to stand on when it comes to usability/accessibility. What is up with Flash form elements? Why are they not behaving as they should. Even Flex for that matter - the scrollbars are slower than your average browser scrollbar. Really when will this be sorted?

I filed this bug this morning and thought it deserves a post as it took me quite a while to figure out how to do this. Now I know you won't necessarily be migrating for Flex 2 SDK to Flex 3 but you might and if you do please read on.

Here is the official bug. In a nutshell the problem is when you compile a project using the FDT Application features for AS3 projects with the Flex 2 SDK. I then migrated to the Flex 3 Beta SDK and the project was still compiling using the Flex 2 SDK. WTF?

This post is aimed at beginner Actionscripters. It covers all the basics of setting up Eclipse and FDT environment to develop some kick-ass websites in a more structured Object Orientated approach. From managing workspaces to connecting with repositories, this document should be all-inclusive for any new Actionscripter who wants to start doing some serious Flash projects. If I missed something please feel free to comment or send it to me so I can update this post.

You can download this post in PDF format here »

The concept is simple. Improve workflow between designers and developers. Ever since I can remember, everyone always talked about improving this relationship. Get designers to do more towards project setup than they normally would be accustomed to, without having them type a single line of code. The reasoning behind this is simple because it is not always possible to technically implement the design. The only alternative is to manage expectations or at least that was until now.

It is important to know what kind of tracking exists as you might just be in a tight spot one day being asked to implement tracking of some sorts. While this isn't rocket science - going back and forth between your company, the tracking vendor and the client can quickly snowball hours into days.

I stumbled upon this gem in the Flex API about the intensity of the setStyle() method on processing. I only recently had the need to use it and was quite shocked at how slow this actually was. Granted I used it on a Datagrid which is probably not the best idea but I'm a bit of a if-it's there-then-use-it-kinda-guy.

Joan Lafferty blogged about the upcoming changes in Moxie for setting component and sub-component styles. Very insightful article. It immediately made me ask the question. How does this impact the setStyle() method. Presumably the "StyleProxy" should alleviate this problem as you have more control over what style is set to what component, regardless of the hieracrhy.

See the warning in the Flex api here »