Rich Rodecker’s blog on flash, flex, actionscript, javascript, and php, with a dash of randomness
Archive for April, 2007
Actionscriptclasses.com issues
Apr 23rd
Just my luck. I happened to have ALL of my domains registered with registerfly.com. I never had a problem with them until actionscriptclasses.com expired, and I went to renew it. After getting absolutely no response from them, i went to go transfer my domains over to godaddy, and that’s where I found out about registerfly being involved in a huge registrar scandal, which apparently is just a huge gay lover’s spat, with some fraud thrown in for good measure.
Long story short, since i had whois protection enabled on the domain, at the moment it’s almost impossible for me to get the domain transferred over to godaddy. So, if anyone happens to need anything from there just let me know. I might just use another domain name in the meantime, but I actually don’t have time to mess with it right now.
Flash CS3 Photoshop import
Apr 22nd
Outstanding. One of the things I’ve always hated most in the flash workflow is importing assets from a psd into flash. Flash CS3′s new psd import is friggin sweet. I’ve used PSD2FLA in the past, but this goes way beyond that (or at least, the last version of psd2fla that I used). This is the type of integration I hoped for with ‘the big acquisition’.
You can go layer-by-layer and choose options for each one (or choose not to import the layer at all). For text layers, you can opt to import the layer as editable text, vector outlines or a bitmap image:
For bitmap layers, you can choose to import a flattened bitmap of the layer, or import the layer as a bitmap image with editable layer styles…awesome. I didn’t test every layer style, but from what I did test, everything seemed dead on upon import:
In both cases, whether importing a text or bitmap layer, a simple checkbox click will convert the imported layer to a movieclip, and you can give the instance name right there on the import screen:
A few other nice options for psd import are checkboxes for setting the stage to the same stage as the psd being imported, and placing the import layers at their original positions. You can also choose to merge layers before importing as well.
***UPDATE: was reading up on psd import in the flash help, some interesting notes about it:
- Flash can import the following photoshop blend modes, and maintain their editability: Normal, Darken, Multiply, Lighten, Screen, Hard Light, Difference, and Overlay.
If you use a blend mode that Flash does not support, you can rasterize the layer to maintain its visual appearance, or remove the blend mode from the layer.- Image and Fill layers are always rasterized when imported into Flash.
- When importing objects containing transparent areas as flattened bitmaps, any objects on the layers behind the transparent portion of the object will be visible through the transparent areaâ€â€assuming the objects behind the object containing transparency are also being imported. To prevent this, import only the transparent object as a flattened bitmap.
To import multiple layers and maintain transparency without having any visible remnants of the layers behind the transparency, import the PSD file using the Bitmap Image With Editable Layer Styles option. This will encapsulate the imported objects as a movie clip, and use the movie clip’s transparency. This is particularly useful if you need to animate the different layers in Flash.
AS 3 components first look
Apr 19th
ok, i just looked at one component, and realized how different everything is. I just wanted to see the component set, and as it was pointed out to me, the component set is smaller. No Alert Box, Window, Date chooser and a few others. The awesome part was dragging a Button component to the stage…then double clicking to edit. All the skins you need are laid out for you in a column right there for you to edit. I haven’t even checked the other components yet, but if this is any indication, components in flash are going to be for the masses again.
Finally…docked interface on the mac for flash
Apr 18th
i’ve dreamed of this day. The only thing i like about windows compared to a mac is that you can maximize the app you’re working in, and the dock all the windows together to create one uniform window. Now with flash cs 3 you can pull it off on osx too:
I’m liking the new interface so far too. It’s not that there’s a ton of changes, but it just feels a lot nicer, which wa always my main gripe with flash on os x (it always felt so blocky). I like how they have a separate window now for ‘compiler errors’ instead of jamming them in the output window.
Flex 2/Actionscript 3 posters
Apr 18th
Awesome, got even more good stuff today. Thanks to the guys over at flex.org for the Flex 2 and Actionscript 3 API posters, they’re great! and friggin gigantic!
aw yeahhh
Apr 18th
in one of the coolest moves I’ve seen in a while, the guys I am contracting for right now bought me a new top of the line macbook pro, since my last laptop was severly showing it’s age (trying to compile their app was taking 5 minutes). First thing i did, before i even set up my email accounts, was to go download and install Flash CS 3. Looks awesome so far, I’ll write back with more soon.
Flash File Upload and Session Cookies
Apr 4th
Ran into this issue the other day, so I wanted to post this in case anyone else ran across it.
Normally, flash will send cookie data along with calls to the server using load vars, xml, etc. The one exception I seem to have found is with FileReference.upload(), which doesnt send them at all. I was sending the file to a java backend, and we found the solution to be to append the session cookie to the url, using a special syntax:
http://www.mysite.com/myPage.do;jsessionid=mySessionID?var1=value1&var2=value2
Notice that the ‘;jsessionid=’ part must be sandwiched between the file name and the query string in order to work properly (and not simply appended as a variable to the query string).
