Psyked*

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Flash Player 10 (Astro) Prereleased!

Posted by James - 15/05/08 at 09:05:21 am

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

Flash Player 10 is out on prerelease. Why not go and give it a whirl?

Edit: Serge Jespers says it better than I.

FIVe3D - A different approach to 3D Flash

Posted by James - 15/05/08 at 08:05:20 am

FIVe3D is unlike other 3D engines ( such as Papervision or Alternitva3D ) in it’s approach.  We’re not talking shape primatives here, we’re talking extending the basic flash elements ( Sprites, Text, MovieClips ) to include Z-properties.  Looking at the demos, it’s not what you’d expect from ‘Flash 3D’, because we’re expecting another Papervision clone.  But no, the approach that Mathieu has taken when developing this is much different - and actually makes much more sense for a lot of situations.

Plus, it’s fun.  I’m a sucker for fun demos.

Continue reading FIVe3D - A different approach to 3D Flash…

Inline Javascript and the defer attribute

Posted by James - 11/05/08 at 09:05:32 am

We use javascript to load our Flash elements into Webpages - it just makes life so much easier. There’s many ways you can go about it, but one is to use inline Javascript to handle function calls to your document.write(); or innerHTML(); functions. Naturally, these functions scrape through our HTML and do their business, targeting and replacing elements with the embed/object code for our Flash movies.

You might call us slackers, or you might base it on our faulty understanding of the defer attribute (and this site will confirm it), but we thought that adding the defer attribute to our inline code thus;

<script type="text/javascript" defer>

    addFlash('flashdiv');

</script>

Would mean that the inline script wouldn’t be executed until the whole page is loaded. So you could effectively add the code anywhere in the page - say, the header - and it didn’t matter. Well, what works in Internet Explorer doesn’t always work in Firefox (et al.).

Continue reading Inline Javascript and the defer attribute…

Essential ActionScript 3 Classes #1

Posted by James - 09/05/08 at 09:05:48 am

BiteArray.org has a little collection of several ActionScript 3 Classes that would feel right at home in your core libraries.  There’s a JPEG encoder, PDF generator, Zip file generator and even a class for gesture recognition, and many more besides.  It’s worth a look.

Red Interactive

Posted by James - 07/05/08 at 11:05:48 pm

Red Interactive have got a really cool full browser flash site going on at their (really geeky domain) ff0000.com. It’s a showcase of what flash really can allow you to do to a traditional website, for better or worse.

Continue reading Red Interactive…

Alternativa3D - More 3D goodness from the Flash Player

Posted by James - 03/05/08 at 09:05:42 am

3D Flash engines seem to be popping up everywhere at the moment.  [Although I wouldn't call that a bad thing] - Each one tends to take a different approach, do a different demo to distinguish themselves.  Take this for example, a very impressive looking offering from Alternativa3D;

Continue reading Alternativa3D - More 3D goodness from the Flash Player…

Open Screen madness?

Posted by James - 02/05/08 at 12:05:57 am

Madness in a good way, of course. Like all those people who queue outside stores before the sales? That’s the good kind of madness. That’s the madness I mean. (And I couldn’t think of a more interesting Post title, and apparently, provocative Post titles are good for readership)

Adobe are at it again, it seems. You may remember that the flex sdk went open-source just over a year ago, and now the swf and flv formats themselves are going open source. Here is the press-release, and here’s the official site for the “Open Screen Project”.

So, what is the Open Screen Project, and why do we care?

Continue reading Open Screen madness?…