Category Archives: ActionScript

Flash Player 10 3D: Beware of Nested 3D Transforms

Working on my Flash on the Beach presentation. Slightly sidetracked into fixing up some code in a game toolbox I’m creating. Doing 3D transitions. The thing is, that applying any 3D transform turns an object into a 3D object, where … Continue reading

Posted in ActionScript, Flash | 7 Comments

Flash, what is it good for?

There seems to have been a lot of Flash bashing, both within the community and without, in the last few weeks. In terms of the external criticism, I refrained from a knee jerk reaction: “Flash sucks? Well, YOU suck!” and … Continue reading

Posted in ActionScript, Flash, Silverlight | 61 Comments

MinimalComp of the week: FPSMeter

Simple one but useful. [as3]new FPSMeter(this, 10, 10);[/as3] gives you a numeric readout of the current calculated frames per second. Demo time: [kml_flashembed publishmethod=”static” fversion=”10.0.0″ movie=”http://www.bit-101.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/FPSDemo.swf” width=”400″ height=”400″ targetclass=”flashmovie”] [/kml_flashembed] Here’s the code for that demo: [as3]package { import com.bit101.components.*; … Continue reading

Posted in ActionScript, Components, Flash | 6 Comments

Hack of the Day: using 3D on text in lieu of embedding fonts.

You make a text field, give it a text format, and put some text in it. All is good, until you start doing something to that text field. There are at least two specific problems you’ll run into: 1. Rotate … Continue reading

Posted in ActionScript, Flash | 19 Comments

Frameworks vs. Toolkits

Today on Twitter, Robert Penner posted a couple of really interesting links… http://theshyam.com/2009/08/is-inheritance-overrated-needed-even/ and http://code.google.com/p/noop/wiki/ProposalForComposition This got me in a researchy mood about inheritance vs. composition, and I dug up this great series of interviews with Erich Gamma (one of … Continue reading

Posted in ActionScript, Flash, Objective C | 29 Comments

MinimalComps advanced Color Chooser

Well, we have the first major contribution by someone other than myself. Rashid Ghassempouri decided to revamp the color chooser to allow for a color panel popup so you can choose a color with the mouse. Actually, he added all … Continue reading

Posted in ActionScript, Components, Flash | 15 Comments

Making Things Move in London

My good friend, Tink, has been bugging me for close to a year to come to London and do a training workshop for the London Flash Platform User Group. I finally gave in since I’ll be in the neighborhood next … Continue reading

Posted in ActionScript, Conferences, Flash | 1 Comment

Matrix3D bug? or me confused?

I assume the latter… Anyway, trying to wrap my head around AS3’s Matrix3d class. In particular, the pointAt method. This supposedly, “Rotates the display object so that it faces a specified position.” Here’s the class I’m using for testing: [as]package … Continue reading

Posted in ActionScript, Flash | 7 Comments

MinimalComps now in wonderfl

I just noticed that my Minimal Components have been added to wonderfl. http://wonderfl.net/blog/2009/08/added-some-libraries-and-checkmate-vol2-started.html If you’re not familiar with wonderfl, it’s a site that allows you to type ActionScript into the page and compiles and runs it right there. You can … Continue reading

Posted in ActionScript, Components, Flash | 8 Comments

MinimalDesigner 0.04

Now with full class generation. 🙂 Even generates empty event handlers if you specify an event. I actually went through and refactored all those nasty long conditionals into strategies. That worked nicely. Now when i release the code, you won’t … Continue reading

Posted in ActionScript, Components, Flash | 8 Comments