FlashGuru Blog

This Monday, Codeweavers released a version of their new CrossOver Office product. CrossOver Office allows you to install your favorite Windows productivity applications in Linux, without needing a Microsoft Operating System license. CrossOver includes an easy to use, single click interface, which makes installing a Windows application simple and fast. Once installed, your application will integrate directly with your Gnome or KDE environment. Just click and run your application, exactly as you would in Windows, but with the full freedom of Linux. CrossOver Office is capable of running a range of Windows software one of which is Macromedia Flash MX. Chris Hill spent a day working with Flash MX on linux and shares with us his impressions, tips and issues.

I found out yesterday that i will also be speaking in San Fransisco in March at the FlashForward2004 conference. Ive been a fare few times to this great event, and now i look forward to facing the crowd as opposed to being apart of it! I will be holding a session about Extending Flash MX 2004.

Tony a member of the Flashkit forums, has put together a collection of excellent tutorials that talk about various aspects of tile based games. Worth a read for those Flash Games Developers amongst us. On his site you will also find some tile based games that Tony has made.

Endemol UK are seeking 1 Flash Developer and 2 Flash Designers on a contract basis - �150 a day. The Flash Developer will be using Flash MX Actionscript to develop numerous online gambling games(lots of xml parsing and backend communication) alongside myself and the Flash Designers will be using Flash and if necessary Freehand/Illustrator to develop the vector graphics for the games. If your interested/available send your resume to me.

Ive got myself an MXDU style face, checkout my charicature over on my speaker profile page. It has been confirmed that i will be speaking about Extending Flash MX 2004. And while we are on the topic of MXDU, pre-registration is now available, space is limited so register early and get yourself a discount. Presently $650.00 australian dollars. There is a great line-up this year and Sydney is a beautiful city.

Martijn de Visser found out from the mothership, that _targetInstanceName does exist in Component Architecture Version 2, its just implemented a little differently.

A colleague of mine, pointed this out to me today and it is a rather serious bug with the Lasso Tool. Select the Lasso Tool from the Tool Pallette in either Flash MX or Flash MX 2004.

Then in the options panel at the bottom of the Tool Pallette, select Polygon Mode.

Now click a few times around the screen to add to your selection outline, then press and hold the space bar and move your mouse which will move the stage around. All of this thus far is expected behaviour. Now let go of the space bar and this is where it starts to go wrong, the cursor isnt changed back to the Lasso and now when you click around the stage the lines and start points are all messed up. To get out of this bug, you will have to right click twice.

In the days of Flash 4 we had Helen Triolo who now runs Actionscript Toolbox collating a kind of online Flash FAQ which collected various Flash related questions and answers, from the various forums and newsgroups of those days. It continued into the release of Flash 5, but sadly stopped.

Fortuneatley for us, we can now search the Flashcoders mailing list, one of the largest collections of flash and actionscript related knowledge on the internet. And now Claus Wahlers has created a Flash RIA which will also search the archives for us, conveniently named Chattysearch!.

Ive just released a new Flash MX 2004 Command; Delete Empty Keyframes, that helps me when i am modifying flash files that have been developed by somebody else. This command along with another that i will be releasing shortly; Delete Empty Layers/Folders makes any flash movie alot tidier, by removing any redundant keyframes that have been put there by a designer or developer and never used. A tidy/organised flash movie is easier to work with. This Command knows the difference between a redundant keyframe and a keyframe that is a label/comment, or just there to hold some actionscript, or a keyframe that contains a sound or a keyframe that is there to stop displaying something from the previous keyframe.

It has been confirmed that yours truly, will be delivering a presentation at Macromedia DevCon Asia Pacific in Sydney, early next year; 24th-25th February 2004. Im hoping to be speaking about Extending Flash MX 2004, but i may also be talking about User Interface Design, Navigation Systems or Movie Optimization (Speed/Size) depending upon what Geoff decides will suit the general theme of the conference. Ill let you know when i know more.

See you there!

Here are three useful Flash Extensions for you to use, created by Jinni. The first one allows you to drag and resize the stage of the authoring panel, the second one adds the ability to draw a spiral directly on the stage and the third one adds the ability to draw cylinders on the stage.

Stated clearly in the Flash MX 2004 Documentation, it should be possible to place the cursor inside of any statement containing curly braces {} and then to press (Control + ‘) to select/highlight all the code contained within those curly braces.

However on Windows machines this doesnt appear to work, that is because the keyboard shortcuts have been mapped wrong, it does work but you have to use (Control + ~). This editing feature works fine on a Macintosh (Command + ‘). So either the documentation needs updating or the keyboard shortcuts need re-mapping. It’s very useful all the same especially when it comes to three for loops inside a function etc….

You think its an ordinary plain and simple, aesthetically pleasing html website, until of course you move your mouse! This has to be the best implementation of the parabola effect. Love the colours too. Checkout Neave, great stuff!

Today, i decided to be nosey and have a gander through the code in the startPage.swf. To my suprise, there is alot of JSFL code included in that .swf, most of which happens, to be undocumented. When i say undocumented (i know there is no ‘official’ documentation at present) i mean, it isnt contained with the ActionsPanel - FlashJavascript.xml file or any other documentation i have seen. These methods/properties are actually rather useful, and there is a whole bunch of them. You can find a complete list of the hidden features, unearthed thus far, here. The search continues….

Note: Some of them can be found by simply iterating over the ‘fl’ application object with for…in but others are actually hidden, which means, there must be a Flash Javascript API equivalent of ASSetPropFlags.

[Edit] Theres more here.