After yesterday’s post about www.flashextensibility.com, I was forced to confront the site itself and how out of date it was. I did manage to fix up the forum anyway.
It was originally my intention for the site to be a repository of Flash Commands, Tools, WindowSWFs, Behaviors, etc., where people could submit their extensions for others to download, or simply go to get new extensions for themselves, to use or learn from. I just haven’t had the time to keep up with it.
So, this morning, I asked my coworker, Todd Anderson, if he’d like to help out. He’s been working extensively with JSFL and every time I walk by his desk he seems to have the book Extending Flash open. He has agreed to jump in and get the site up to date. He’ll mainly be moderating the forum and updating the file repository. If you have any extensions you’d like to see listed there, send them to him: toddanders comcast.net, along with your name, web site, email address, file description, etc. If you want to have the file hosted from your site, that’s fine to, just send a link and we’ll post that instead.
Well, I seem to be on a forum fixing kick.
Back in business: BIT-101 Forums.
A recent post by J.D. alerted me to the fact that the forums at www.flashextensibility.com were down. Actually, Flashguru, owner of the Extend Flash mailing list had alerted me of this a few days back, but I didn’t get around to fixing it. Anyway, they are now fixed and available to you if you want to post some questions or share some ideas.
Read more...I needed a slider component that I could give away. Tougher problem than you might think. The ones I used on a day to day basis I made myself, but are now part of a commercial set of components that I am not at liberty to hand out free. But in my experiments on BIT-101, I often want to include a slider to allow users to fool around with stuff. And those experiments are open source, meaning that if I include a component, it’s up for grabs.
Well, it wasn’t too much of a problem. I’ve made so many damn components by now, that they come pretty easy. I even made and offered up a few other slider components. But I’m not sure where they are, and I felt I could do better now anyway. So, I sat down and made this one in just over an hour. Basic Slider Component
Like the name says, it’s pretty basic. No frills. Vertical only. I’m including the swc, fla and class file. Merry Christmas.
Someone was recently trying to hook into some low level events such as onRollOver or onRollOut on my components. The problem was that those events were not broadcast for all components. If you just said myButton.onRollOver = …, that’s going to wipe out the existing functionality that swaps the image on a mouse over. Actually, the same thing will happen in UIComponents. Say you want to implement a tool tip on a mouse over of a Macromedia button. You’d want to activate it with an onRollOver, but that would wipe out the beautiful green highlight that it does on a roll over.
If you are using Macromedia’s comps, you can hook into mx.events.LowLevelEvents somehow. I’m not too sure how that works, as it doesn’t appear to be documented anywhere. It might even work with other components or clips, but I’m not sure since it uses UIObjectDispatcher. It also appears to hook into every possible event, rather than just the one or two you want. I didn’t have time to analyze the class to figure out how to use it. so I made my own basic function for hooking into events of any component or movie clip instance. Here it is:
I’ve been using Windows since verstion 3.0 and I’m sure I’ve used just about every free gadget, dock, launcher, desktop enhancer, etc. out there over the years. I even bought the whole Stardock / Desktop X / Object Desktop / WindowBlinds / etc. Suite.
Generally, using those apps goes something like…
A while back though, I got wind of Desktop Sidebar. I’ve had it installed for several months now. It’s a keeper. Why?
Read more...A month or so ago, I bought my wife a laptop. She is going back to school to get a nursing degree, and wanted a laptop for studying, writing, etc. She searched around and chose a Toshiba M35X-S149. It’s a fairly low-end model, well under $1000 after rebates, but has a nice wide 15.4 screen, comfortable keyboard, built in wireless, CDR and DVD player, all the bells and whistles. Actually, it was supposed to be “ours”, but she’d be the main one using it, and her birthday was coming up, and…
The problem was, I fell in love with it. It was such a pleasure to use. I’d never had my own laptop before. I knew I was eventually going to want one for Flash in the Can in April, and other travel situations, but I kept saying, “I’d really like to have a laptop, but I’d never actually use it.”
End of December, I got paid by a client, figured I could use the tax deduction for 2004, since I was going to buy one by spring anyway. I went out and got the exact same model.
That thing about “never actually using it”… bah! I’m using it more than my desktop now. I’ve extracted myself from my desk and have set up shop on the sofa. I even convinced my coworker, Sam Robbins (a die hard Mac user) to get the same model. This machine rocks. If your only pc is a laptop, you’d probably want a higher end model, but as a second pc, occasional travel device, or sofa office setup, you can’t beat it for the price.
Rumors of BIT’s death have been greatly exaggerated… www.bit-101.com
Read more...The FiTC 2005 site is up: FiTC 2005
That’s a damn long list of awesome speakers. I’m proud to be among them. Yes, I’m officially a speaker. Looking forward to meeting lots of old friends, and making some new ones. See you there.
OK, I have GoF. I have EAS2. I have J2EE Core Patterns, I have several others. I’ve downloaded, printed out and read more pattern tutorials than I care to think about. Sure, I kind of got it. But I didn’t really GET it. I don’t USE patterns when I’m creating a new project, though some might end up in there as if by accident. Mostly I sit down to read this stuff and wake up with design patterns pasted to my cheek with my own spit.
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