I came across a great article today written by Miguel Sousa about the benefits of OpenType (.otf) over TrueType (.ttf) fonts. I never put much thought into the difference between the two font extensions, although I have always leaned towards using OpenType fonts when available knowing that is a more recent format. Miguel goes into great detail on the differences. The main difference that struck me the most as a RIA developer was that OpenType fonts can be up to 50% smaller than TrueType fonts. When embedding fonts or loading external fonts into a multilingual Flash application this piece of knowledge could trim off a significant amount of load time. Read more about the differences here.
Fraser Crosbie: Calgary Web Developer
Specializing in rich internet applications. Located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Filed under Flash Development …
Playing Embedded Video In Reverse (Flash Player Bug)
On a recent project my team encountered a very annoying bug in ActionScript 3.0 when reversing the playback of an Embedded Video on the timeline.
When playing the video forwards everything ran smooth, the processor usage remained low and the memory consumption remained low as well. When playing the video backwards, using mc.gotoAndStop(frame), the processor usage shot way up and the memory consumption went over a GB and in some cases over 2 GB.
Continue reading
Mercedes-Benz USA Launches Website Redesign
Yesterday MBUSA.com launched their website redesign. The new site is a major face lift from the old version, which was beginning to look outdated in comparison to many of its competitors. Every single element of the site has been upgraded and built completely in Flash, improving the overall user experience throughout.
I worked on the initial stages of this redesign at Critical Mass over two years ago. My involvement at the time was building a working prototype of the site in Flash. Only a few vehicles could be selectable back then, but overall the site’s design has not changed too much. The Mercedes-Benz’ development team has done a great job of finishing it off.
Congratulations to everyone involved in creating this site.
A must-read for learning ActionScript 3.0
I just stumbled across a great article by Josh Tynjala on the Yahoo! Flash Developer Center. Josh writes about the new features of ActionScript 3.0, focusing on working with the Display List, changes to root and parent, and encapsulation. I’m sure this article has been around for some time, but if you are just getting into AS3 and have not yet seen this article, then I highly recommend you read it.
http://developer.yahoo.com/flash/articles/display-list.html
The Yahoo! Flash Developer Center also has some great open-source components available for download. I am playing around with the Charts and I am very impressed. These seem like a great and free alternative to FusionCharts, which at this time are not available for ActionScript 3.0.
Here are some examples of the Yahoo! ASTRA Charts:
http://developer.yahoo.com/flash/astra-flash/charts/examples.html
The Adobe CS3 launch is today!
Make sure you check out the launch of Adobe CS3 today at 3:30pm EST.
The new products include:
- Adobe InDesign CS3
- Adobe Photoshop CS3
- Adobe Illustrator CS3
- Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional
- Adobe Flash CS3 Professional
- Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
- Adobe Fireworks CS3
- Adobe Contribute CS3
- Adobe After Effects CS3
- Adobe Premiere Pro CS3
- Adobe Encore CS3
- Adobe Soundbooth CS3
The launch will be broadcasted here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/launchevent/webcast/
If you are interested, here are the new features of Flash CS3
http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/features/
Firefox with wmode ignores Key.isDown()
I am sure this is old news to many of you, but today was the first time I have run into this issue. I am working on a site for a client that has very high accessibility requirements. I originally built my project to be controlled using the mouse and was asked this morning to add the ability to navigate it using the arrow keys of the keyboard. It only took me a couple minutes to get this functionality working in Flash, but when I tested it using Firefox I was not getting any response from the keyboard. I tried it out in IE7 and everything worked like a charm. After a couple minutes of searching I came across this site and found my solution. Apparently Firefox always returns the Key.isDown() function as false if you have wmode=”transparent” or wmode=”opaque” in your html object and embed tags, but if you use Key.getCode() everything works perfect.
Here is a snippet of code showing the workaround to this issue:
Flex Style Explorer 2.0.1
While reading through MXNA today, I came across an article written by Peter Baird outlining new updates to the latest release of the Flex Style Explorer. This application is a huge time saver when creating CSS to control the look of your Flex applications.
Some of the new features include:
- Advanced Color Picker
- Export All CSS
- Support for StyleName Styles
- Text Formatting Styles
- Text-Entry for Slider Controls
- Inclusion on New Components
- Improved Navigation
- Indication of Components Edited
- Progressive Disclosure of Controls
- Improved Graphic Representation of Styles
- Improved Scrollbar management
To read more about the new Flex Style Explorer visit Adobe Consulting.
Try the online version.
Rolex.com Redesign Launched Today
I thought this day would never come. The soon to be award winning Rolex.com redesign has finally been launched.
Before leaving Critical Mass I spent around three months on the Rolex team helping out on the development side of this site. Although the site appears to be completly Flash to the common user, it supports deep linking and it is search engine friendly. If the user does not have Flash installed it degrades gracefully to an HTML version.
The design is incredible, featuring stunning photographs of scenery from around the world as well as many very gorgeous models, and of course plenty of beautiful watches that most of us will never be able to afford.
Congratulations to everyone involved in creating this site.
Flash Player 9 for Linux Released
“Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the availability of Adobe® Flash® Player 9 for Linux, the next-generation client runtime for engaging with Flash content and applications on Linux open source operating systems. Adobe Flash Player 9 delivers a consistent cross-platform experience and extends unprecedented performance and advanced features to the broadest set of developers and users to date. Additionally, Linux developers can create, test and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the Linux platform using the free Adobe Flex® 2 Software Developers Kit (SDK), Adobe Flash Player 9 and the free Flex Data Services 2 Express.”
Building a Basic Menu in ActionScript 3.0 Tutorial – Part 2 – XML
A few posts ago, I showed you how to build a basic menu using an Array of button names. Now, I will demonstrate how to build the same menu, but this time use the new XML class which is based on E4X. There are many benefits of using XML in your applications. The main reason being that it allows you to update your application instantly without having to open up Flash to republish it. XML also allows your application to be easily updated from a server side page that generates XML output. This opens up the possibility of using a CMS to modify your application, thus enabling your clients to make updates on their own. Almost every project I develop uses XML.
And now for the code: