FlashApe

Ok, I’ve been searching forums and whatnot for the solution to this but haven’t come across an answer yet so I figured I’d post to see if anyone in blogland can help.

Basically, it seems that flash is distorting jpgs when they are loaded into a blank clip with loadMovie. Here’s an example. image has a 1px black border in it.

This is the actual image, everything’s fine:

This is how it looks after loading into flash:

Notice the black border on top and left is thicker and its disappeared from the bottom.

There is nothing messing with any properties( _width, _height, _xscale, _yscale) of the clip that is recieving the jpg, or any of its parent clips.

Has anyone come across this before?

yyyyYYYYEEEEEESSSSS!!!!!

After being teased for so long, an installer for the SEPY actionscript editor is available for OS X. You can grab the .dmg from SourceForge here.

Installation was a snap. Just double-click the SEPY.mpkg file from the .dmg and run the installer, and that’s it. I did actually have to restart my computer, because I ran SEPY immediately after installing and I got no menus in the menu bar (File, Edit, etc..). After the restart it was ok. I also do get an error dialog box saying that “-psn_0_2490369 does not exist”, but it doesn’t appear to be anything too serious, everything seems to be working fine afer an quick run-through.

Thank you so much to everyone who has been working on this. I’ve been hoping for this for a long time.

Im pretty much still getting my feet wet with mx04, so this has probbaly been blogged about before. I was creating a couple of text fields, username/password, for a login form, and trying to use onKillFocus to replace the text in a text field if the user left the text field blank.

The problem I was running into was that after you clicked off the text field, the focus would immediately be reset to the text field that you were trying to click out of. I was trying everything, even try to manually set a new focues using Selection.setFocus(), but it will still snap right back to the text field.

Turns out I had a component in my library that i was experimenting with early on and forgot about (i never really use mm’s components). mx04 components use a new class called FocusManager. From the help:

bq. You can use the Focus Manager to specify the order in which components receive focus when a user presses the Tab key to navigate in an application. You can also use the FocusManager class to set a button in your document that receives keyboard input when a user presses Enter (Windows) or Return (Macintosh).

That was throwing a monkey wrench into my whole onKillFocus for the text fields. I just removed the component fromt he library, and everythign was fine. also, you can manually turn off the focus manager with:

bc[as]. focusManager.enabled = false;

ah, @#$@#$!!!!!!!!!! I just had a nice big long blog entry about making my computer here at work more secure, and then IE crashed on me. Son of a…

Anyway, I dont want to rewrite, so here’s the gist of what I was saying:

Basically, after coming into work a few weeks ago and finding my PC was completely overrun by spyware, adware, homepage hijackers, and otehr assorted garbage, I decided to do something about it. I went and installed the following:

* Firefox - Sweet browser, anyone familiar with Safari on teh Mac will instantly be comfortable and familiar with this. Just go ahead and dump IE now. The first time you get a message telling you that firefox has prevented something from being installed on your computer you will never look back.

* Thunderbird - Another sweet pgrogram from Mozilla, and another program mac users will already be familiar with. The junk mail filter in this rocks, and its the same one OS X’s Mail program uses.

* Spyware Blaster - Prevents the installation of spyware, adware, and all that other crap. Adaware is great, but that only works agains garbage already installed on your system. Spyware blaster prevents it from getting there in the first place. Firefox does a good job of preventing the installation of all the garbage as well.

So, now not only is my web browsing experience much more pleasant, as an added bonus I get a much more mac-like experience on my PC (yeah!).

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Dark Tower 7 has been released. It’s the final book in the epic series by Stephen King, and it looks like he saved the best for last, with the book coming in at a whopping 850 pages.

This one picks up right where the cliffhanger of book six left off, with Jake and Father Callahan just about to enter the Dixie Pig in pursuit of Susanna/Mia, full well knowing that there is slim chance of them getting out alive. I’ve read the first chapter and here it goes form there defintely doesn’t disappoint.

It’s wierd….as I was saying to my friends (who are also huge Dark Tower fans), i am both excited and sad at the same time. I’ve only gotten into the whole DT world relatively recently, about 2 and a half years ago. Some people have been following the story since the 80s, and have been sitting through years of wait between the release of each new book in the series. In that time I have read not only the previous 6 dark tower novels but also a bunch of other King novels that are directly related to the Dark Tower (apparently, everythign King writes is either directly or indirectly related to the DT story). So much has changed in my life since I started reading it ( I can just imagine everyone else), it will be a sad joy to reach the culmination of the saga of Roland and his ka-tet. But as they say, the world has moved on.

I know a little CSS, but apprently not enough to figure out why my stylesheet isnt working in firefox/mozilla. If anyone knows what the problem is, or would like to take a look at my stylesheet, please drop me a line. It’s starting to drive me bonkers.

you know what, i’ll post the code in my stylesheet in the extended entry for all to see.

bc[css]. body {
margin:20px 20px 20px 20px;
background:#FF9900;
background-image: url(tribal_sun2.gif);
background-repeat: repeat;
}
A { color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none; }
A:link { color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none; }
A:visited { color: #CCCC33; text-decoration: none; }
A:active { color: #FFFF99; }
A:hover { color: #FFFF99; }

h1, h2, h3 {
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
}

#banner {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
width:63%;
color:#FFFFFF;
font-size:x-large;
font-weight:bold;
background:#FF9900;
padding-left:15px;
border-top:1px dotted #FFF;
border-bottom:1px dotted #FFF;
}

#banner a,
#banner a:link,
#banner a:visited,
#banner a:active,
#banner a:hover {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
font-size: x-large;
color: #FFFFFF;
text-decoration: none;
}

.description {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#FFF;
font-size:small;
font-weight:bold;
background:#FF9900;
text-transform:none;
letter-spacing: none;
}

#content {
float:left;
width:65%;
background:#CC6600;
margin-right:15px;
margin-bottom:20px;
}

#links {
background:#9B4E02;
color:#CCC;
margin-top:0px;
}

.blog {
padding-left:45px;
padding-top:45px;
padding-right:45px;
border-right:1px dotted #FF9900;
background-image: url(whiteDot2.gif);
background-repeat: repeat;
}

.blogbody {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#FFFF00;
font-size:small;
font-weight:normal;
background:#CC6600;
line-height:200%;
border-left:1px dotted #FF9900;
border-right:1px dotted #FF9900;
border-bottom:1px dotted #FF9900;
padding:10px;
}

.blogbody a,
.blogbody a:link,
.blogbody a:visited,
.blogbody a:active,
.blogbody a:hover {
font-weight: normal;
text-decoration: underline;
}

.title {
font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;
font-size: small;
color: #FFF;
text-transform: uppercase;
font-weight:bold;
}

#menu {
margin-bottom:10px;

font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;
font-size:small;
font-weight:bold;
}

.date {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
font-size: normal;
color: #FFFF00;
font-weight:bold;
text-transform:uppercase;
margin-top:10px;
border-bottom:1px dotted #FF9900;
}

.posted {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
font-size: x-small;
color: #CCC;
}

.calendar {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#FFF;
font-size:x-small;
font-weight:normal;
padding:5px;
background:#9B4E02;
}

.calendar a { color: #CCCC33; text-decoration: none; }
.calendar a:link { color: #CCCC33; text-decoration: none; }
.calendar a:visited { color: #CCCC33; text-decoration: none; }
.calendar a:active { color: #CCCC33; text-decoration: none; }
.calendar a:hover { color: #CCCC33; text-decoration: underline; }

.calendarhead {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#CC9933;
font-size:x-small;
font-weight:bold;
background:#9B4E02;
line-height:140%;
}

.side {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#CCC;
font-size:x-small;
font-weight:normal;
background:#9B4E02;
line-height:140%;
}

.sidetitle {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#CCC;
font-size:x-small;
font-weight:bold;
background:#9B4E02;
line-height:140%;
padding:2px;
margin-top:10px;
border-bottom:1px dotted #FFF;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing: .2em;
}

.syndicate {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
font-size:xx-small;
font-weight:bold;
line-height:140%;
color:#FFFF00
padding:2px;
margin-top:10px;
text-align:center;
background:#9B4E02;
}

.powered {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#CCC;
font-size:xx-small;
font-weight:bold;
border-top:1px dotted #FFF;
border-bottom:1px dotted #FFF;
line-height:140%;
text-transform:uppercase;
padding:2px;
margin-top:10px;
text-align:center;
letter-spacing: .2em
}

.comments-body {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#FFF;
font-size:small;
font-weight:normal;
background:#CC6600;
line-height:140%;
}

.comments-post {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#CCC;
font-size:x-small;
font-weight:normal;
background:#CC6600;
margin-bottom:25px;
border-top:1px dotted #FFF;
}

.comments-head {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
font-size: small;
color: #FFF;
font-weight:bold;
text-transform:uppercase;
border-bottom:1px dotted #FFF;
}

.trackback-body {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#CCC;
font-size:small;
font-weight:normal;
background:#333;
line-height:140%;
padding-top:15px;
}

.trackback-url {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#CCC;
font-size:small;
font-weight:normal;
background:#333;
line-height:140%;
padding:5px;
border:1px dashed #999;
}

.trackback-post {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#CCC;
font-size:x-small;
font-weight:normal;
background:#333;
margin-bottom:20px;
}

#banner-commentspop {
font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
color:#CC9933;
font-size:large;
font-weight:bold;
background:#FF9900;
padding-left:15px;
}

.linecomment { color: #ffcccc; }
.blockcomment { color: #FF8000; }
.prepro { color: #0000BB; }
.select {}
.quote { color: #000; }
.category1 { color: #fff; }
.category2 { color: #fff; }
.category3 { color: #fff; }

A coworker just loaned me the book Age of Spiritual Machines, which talks about the inevitiablity of computers passing humans in intelligence. I just read about the Turing Test, and then I ran into this link about a chatbot named ALICE winning a prestitgous event based on the Turing Test.

Here’s a racing game I made while at DNA for AMC Theaters to promote their Movie Nachos pack. Catch the falling nachos to earn points, avoid obstacles in the road or you’ll lose points.

casino game

Why?

While working on a project today, I was loading in some data via flash remoting from a remote server. thats fine, everythign works smoothly. Try to load in a jpg from the remote server, I get:

bq. *** Security Sandbox Violation ***
SecurityDomain ‘http://www.myserver.com/images/1.jpg’ tried to access incompatible context ‘file:///C|/wamp/www/website/myfile.swf’

Yeah baby!! Flash security restrictions in the authoring environment. God, I feel so secure.

The solution? Set allowDomain of the security object to the domain you want to load the swf/jpg from:

bc[as]. System.security.allowDomain(”http://www.myserver.com”);

Its a small little step, I know, but it’s one little step I’d like to not deal with while im developing, that I am just going to have to take time out and remove later.

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I dont know if this is an mx04 thing or if I’ve just completely missed this for years, while I was using Dreamweaver to embed a swf into an html page I came across the allowScriptAccess attribute of the object/embed tags. This paramters controls the outbound scripting for the flash player (i.e. FSCommand and getURL) and can be set to “always”, “never” or “sameDomain”. The first two are pretty self explanitory…”sameDomain” allows outbound scripting only if the flash application is from the same domain as the hosting html page.

While checking it out on the online docs came across a few other cool ones too:

* base - sets the base directlory or URL to use to resolve relative paths
* seamlessTabbing - lets the user tab out of the flash player onto the html content
* devicefont - use a device font for a static text field.

You can find the complete list of parameters here.