FlashGuru Blog

At the next installment of the regular gathering also known as the London Macromedia User Group, Branden Hall and Samuel Wan (now permanently joined at the hip:D) will be broadcasting a session on Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX, live from the United States, not using a video phone, or Net Meeting, yup, you guessed it, using Flashcomm for the video and sound broadcast. So if you in the area, get your self down there. On a sidenote, my drinking buddy mentioned yesterday, Aral Balkan, will also be doing a session on Flash Remoting and Cold Fusion MX, that is one to look forward to!

This is old news, but for those of you that didnt know, Mike Chambers, John Dowell, Jeremy Allaire, Matt Brown, Branden Hall, Sean Corfield and Vernon Viehe are all posting regular updates live from the Macromedia Devcon 2002 Conference. All of the Macromedians are using a system created by Jeremy Allaire, to post live video and sound as a blog entry using Flash Communcation Server MX and Macromedia Coldfusion MX also known as a Video Blog, a complete list of all the Macromedian Blog Entries from the conference can be found here.

Arul Kumaran an indian Flasher has sprinkled some new life dust on his blog, it presently seems to be updated often enough and contains some very interesting reading and points of view from a person located at the other side of the world. Give it a click!

Burak Kalayci the maker of Actionscript Viewer has found a bug that occurs in the final compiled bytecode of a .swf file, although this bug will occur very rarely, he wanted to make people aware of it and so has published two example .fla files and documentation for people to see it for themselves and decide if they should worry or not.

Aral Balkan one of my Flash buddies and part time drinking partners in London has re-designed his flashblog and renamed it onRelease. His site currently appears to be updated alot more regularly, so give it a visit and see what you think!

Jason Perry has a nice little collection of useful tutorials/articles about Flash, you might want to check them out.

Nik Khilnani has released the source code for an actionscript system called NKConnect PHP Connector, that allows you to invoke a remote methods on a PHP class/library located on a website. In simple words, it lets you call a method on a PHP library/class located on your website from within Flash as if the library/class was defined within Flash itself. Macromedia dont have a Flash Remoting for PHP system as of yet, so this will do the trick just nicely for the PHP/Flash developers amongst us, i for one have been waiting for something like this.

Macromedia have released a beta version of a new player(6.0.60.48) that thus far is getting everybody in the community very excited. The new player contains bug fixes galore and new features that will make your jaw drop. To name but a few, we have better Mozilla browser support, a linux release of this player, #strict pragma to force better ECMA-262 compliance, Increased ActionScript performance(faster code execution), Greater control over accessibility features via ActionScript, Windowless mode for Netscape 7.0, Customizable HTTP headers for XML and LoadVars objects and Dependent Runtime Shared Libraries. Download the new player and put yourself in with a chance of winning a prize by reporting any bugs you stumble upon.

Macromedia have released the specification for the Flash 6 file format. Soon we should expect to see alot of 3rd party software vendors, integrating Flash 6 support into their applications!

Paul Splitzer has put together a nifty class that plots Bezier curves with actionscript. The Bezier Plotter Class was the result of trying to animate a movie clip along a u shaped path with actionscript. The Bezier Plotter Class will plot points along a bezier path based on four points. If you are not familiar with bezier curves hop on Google and search for ‘bezier’. There is plenty of stuff out there to get you started.

Most browsers do not allow for the Flash plugin to be turned on and off. Instead, you’re asked to delete the plugin. jTFlashManager gives you the capability to turn Flash on and off for all of your browsers. This makes it perfect if you want to take control over what you see on the web. The number of Flash ads on the web is rising, slowing the Internet down for you. With jTFlashManager, you’ll never see another Flash ad. Browse with Flash turned off, and turn it on only for animations you wish to see. Download this free little java application here.

Peter Hall put together a summary of the methods, properties and events, provided by FUIComponentClass, as Macromedia havent documented the class and now Jesse Warden has kindly made a little exstension that will add this documentation to your reference panel. Nice one:)

Ric Ewing the author of the Actionscript Drawing API Enhancements i reported on sometime ago, has posted a new article on the desdev center that shows examples of each of the new methods. Check it out!

Today, the flashcoders mailing list has been discussing a few new methods that somebody has unearthed in the System object. The methods are System.product(), System.Launch(), System.Download(), System.IsInstalled() and System.IsRunning(). For more information on these undocumented methods and what they can be used for, checkout the thread as it unfolds.

Fluid has created a tween playground to demonstrate a lightweight but powerful Flash animation framework. By adding a few functions directly to Movieclip.prototype, any Flash developer or designer can easily define time-based animations using ActionScript, and apply it to any Movieclip’s properties (position, rotation, transparency, etc). This allows for increased precision, faster development, and lightning-fast animations freed from specific frame rates.

Three of my favourite Flash Related Blogs, seem to be dead, or atleast in a coma, Flashblog, JDB Cyberspace and SWFNews are dormant. SWFNews just shows me a blank page, and the other two havent been updated for ages. Maybe the webmasters are just busy or something, but its a huge shame!

A new updated version of Flash Studio Pro has been released. The latest build is 100% compatible with swf’s created with Macromedia Flash 4, 5 and MX and features over 80 new fscommands which allow your swf files to be packaged into extremeley powerful little exectuables. Get your copy today!

I read the remaining pages of Branden Hall and Samuel Wan’s, new Object Oriented Programming with Actionscript book, during my train journey from Cambridge to Sheffield, all 402 pages of it! I love reading, i love the book too, although i was expecting more from the Component Chapters. I highly recommend the reading of Branden’s chapters, his introductions made me giggle out loud once or twice! Some things mentioned in the book, i personally dont agree with, OOP Wise, other than that, everything is spot on. Oh, and the website is yet to contain some of the content which the book says it should include. Save your pocketmoney, wash a few cars, do some freelance or whatever, just get some cash out of your pockets and buy it!