Archive | February, 2008

Trouble migrating to Actionscript 3?

by on 27th February, 2008 in ActionScript

Well, a quick Google would find you a plethora of pages, giving you pretty much exactly the same thing – that is, AS2 to AS3 migration guides. A list of function name / class hierachy changes only goes so far, however – nothing seems to deal with the bigger problem – just how much AS3 has changed from the previous iterations.

If it was just as simple as changing function names it’d be easy, but there’s a whole new set of methods for doing things, and often you don’t know what you’re even looking for to help you. Ever heard of getDefinitionByName? Nope, me neither – but it turned out to be the function I was looking for yesterday.

Anyway, by far the best introduction to ActionScript 3 (not just the function name changes) is one I found from Senocular, Getting Started with ActionScript 3 (for Flash).

CSS Selection Styles?

by on 24th February, 2008 in CSS

Did you know you could customize the selection colours of html pages with CSS?  I didn’t – until now.  Turns out, there’s a CSS3 pseudo-element called ::selection.  Naturally, this isn’t yet a technique supported by browsers like Internet Explorer, but it is supported in [albeit with different syntax] by Firefox and Safari.  Interesting, eh?  Check an article on CSS Selection Styles from Quirksmode, and have a look at some of the creative effects you can get with it here.

Adobe on AIR comes to London…

by on 23rd February, 2008 in Air

Well, I know this is a bit behind the official announcement, but the Adobe on AIR tour (that went across the US a little while ago) is soon to begin it’s European leg, stopping in 12 European cities.  I’m signed up for it, and should be attending the one in London, on the 9th April.

See the official site here.

adobecom.jpg

I’ve never been to something like this before, so it should be fun.

Work in progress…

by on 10th February, 2008 in Flash

I decided to give my old uni project an overhaul, and to that effect I’ve been putting in a few hours work to convert the old project to Actionscript 2, and take advantage of the newer features of Flash. Aside from incorporating or replacing elements of the original code with classes, I’ve also made a few improvements on the visuals, and stripped out the player interaction in order to concentrate more on what interests me most – the AI ‘simulation’.

Give me a few more [weeks worth of] evenings and I think I’ll have a far more exciting display, but for the meantime; Read More…

I found one of my old uni projects…

by on 5th February, 2008 in Flash

uniproject.jpg

Submitted on 02/12/2005, this is pretty much my first attempt at full-on Actionscript programming. When the project started, I was having to look up things like ‘functions’ on Google to see what all those forums were talking about. This was definately my biggest step into the murky waters of flash programming, and one I’m pleased I took. 1189 lines of Actionscript later, and I had my (considerably adjusted from the inital spec) prototype. Read More…