Recently a lot of buzz about PrimalScript. A while back, it was about SE|PY, before that, SciteFlash.
Personally, I would love to stay in the IDE full time for editing. Particularly in MX. It always just seemed clunky to put an #include line on a frame and switch back and forth between two programs. Of course, there was Flush to run the movie in Flash, which helped. But having an editor which was “as good as” the Flash IDE editor was not good enough. There had to be at least one killer feature to make it worth it for me to jump out of the IDE. For me, that killer feature was code folding. I fell in love with SciteFlash.
Then, along came MX 2004. In one sense, having classes implemented as external .as files made the idea of using an external editor much more palatable. But two drawbacks: One is that Flush doesn’t seem to like to run 2004. The other is that my favorite editor, SciteFlash does not support AS2. Add to that the project panel in 2004, which allows you to test the main fla while editing an .as file. I made a donation to help push SciteFlash into 2004, and I look forward to the new version. But in the meantime, I had to shelve it.
Then, along came SE|PY. AS2 support and code folding. I figured out how to use a simple JSFL file to make a test movie shortcut. It also has some other cool features that SciteFlash didn’t. It’s still under active development, and is free!
Then, along came PrimalScript 3.1. This has lots of high-end features, but lacks the one killer feature I love SciteFlash and SE|PY for. A lot of people love this editor. I’m not sold yet, but I’m forcing myself to use it for a week or so to see what the excitement is about. But knowing that 3.1 is a public beta, and the “real” version costs something like $179, unless I have an epiphany, I don’t think I’ll be making the switch. Maybe I’m missing something big. I’d love to hear what people consider the killer features of PrimalScript has over something like SE|PY. Or, if there’s another contender in the market, I’d like to hear about it.
So, I’m not a formally trained programmer. I started using BASIC on my Commodore Amiga back in the 80’s, and repeatedly bashed my head into C/C++ throughout the 90’s til I found Flash. I’ve gotten pretty damn good at making Flash do what I want it to do via code, and have progressed from hobbyist, through experienced user, author, freelancer/contractor, and a few months ago became “Senior Media Developer” at a Boston design firm.
I generally don’t have a problem making Flash do what people want it to do. In fact, I’ve gotten pretty good at making it do things beyond what people expected. So everyone is pretty happy, including me.
But now I find myself in the position of developing some pretty large scale projects. Gone are the days when simply making a cool effect is good enough. Now I have to make sure that a few thousand lines of code all works together, and is clear and well documented, so I can find something a month or several later. I’m still the sole “Flash guy” here, but eventually I’ll have to make sure others can understand my code as well. And then there is versioning – prototype, alpha, beta, gold, version 2, etc.
In short, I’ve got to get myself organazized.
AS2.0 classes and components are a big help. I think I need to get more info on design patterns and versioning techniques and general development organization practices.
Any input, links, books, resources, etc. would be great, not only for me, but anyone else who may find themselves in a similar situation.
In this installment, we will add some menu items and give them some functionality. This can actually get pretty cool, as you will soon see.
The ContextMenu object contains an array called “customItems”. These are your custom menu items.
Each new menu item is an instance of ContextMenuItem. The basic constructor for this is: new ContextMenuItem(caption, callBack);
The basic sequence is to create your menu items and push them onto the array. You can do this in one step, like so:
**
myMenu.customItems.push(new ContextMenuItem(“Info”, getInfo));
**
There are so many new features in Flash MX 2004 that I haven’t even gotten around to looking at some of them. I knew there was a way to play with the “right-click menu” in there, but just recently started digging into it. Since I haven’t seen much about it, I figured I’d write up what I found, so people will realize how easy it is to customize this element.
Read more...Ed Burton kicks up the SODA engine a new notch.
https://www.soda.co.uk/moovl/index.htm?poketheblob.xml
Check out all the examples. I am speechless.
Read more...I check into the Processing website on a regular basis. The Exhibition section has a regularly updated section of amazing visual experiments.
Here’s just a sampling of what’s there now:
https://www.vas-animatum.net/index.php?w=3
https://www.coolbubble.com/programs/index.htm
https://jimfl.tensegrity.net/p5/IFS/
https://www.ghostagency.net/processing/bio_1a/index.html
There’s been a lot of posts about command line Flash compilers lately. Just wanted to share a quick and dirty solution I developed, using… DOS batch files!
Here is the batch file:
@echo off echo // > tempPublish.jsfl :start echo %1 echo filename = "file:///%1"; >> tempPublish.jsfl echo fl.openDocument(filename); >> tempPublish.jsfl echo curr_doc = fl.getDocumentDOM(); >> tempPublish.jsfl echo curr_doc.publish(); >> tempPublish.jsfl echo curr_doc.close(false); >> tempPublish.jsfl shift if "%1" == "" goto end goto start :end echo fl.quit(true); >> tempPublish.jsfl start "C:/Program Files/Macromedia/Flash MX 2004/Flash.exe" tempPublish.jsfl
just save that in a text file as “flashpublish.bat” or whatever, and use like so:
Read more...Just uploaded a new version of the Slider Component. I’ve been having a lot of fun with this and learning a lot about the v2 component architecture. New features are adjustable handle size, tab-focus management, keyboard control using up/down, pageUp/Down, shift-up/Down for varying degrees of accuracy. Also added an integral value label whose position can be set to top or bottom and any level of precision.
The next problem I’m trying to solve is to give the component keyboard focus when it is clicked on with the mouse. If you tab to it, you can control it with the keyboard, but not if you click on it. I tried using the UIComponent methods, “pressFocus” and “releaseFocus” to no avail. Anybody who knows anything about that, feel free to speak up.
After that, we’ll see what we can do with styles.
I swore I would not do any “me too” posts here, but a new book by Colin Moock is just too cool to pass up. I heard a date of February-March 2004 as release. You can be sure I’ll be pre-ordering as soon as it’s on line.
Read more...I’ve been using SciteFlash for a while, and recently started using SE|PY with it’s AS2.0 support. The main thing I love about these editors is code folding. I really miss that in the Actions Panel/Script Editor in MX 2004. One big problem is that the flush tool which automatically allows you to test your movie in Flash from within these editors. Apparently it doesn’t work with MX 2004. Here is a very easy workaround that will duplicate this function for 2004. It allows you to use any editor, even notepad if you’re into it, and test the movie with a hotkey.
Read more...