Archive for the ‘Flash Platform’ Category

Robotlegs has been gaining a lot of ground over the last few months within the Flash community, and so I thought it was about time I gave it a shot. This post includes some of the resources I found really useful when getting started with the framework.
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I couldn’t resist sharing one of my recent experiments with the HYPE framework (it also uses the MinimalComps component set). The example makes use of the ObjectPool, ColorPool and ShapeLayout classes. It’s really cool that you can put stuff like this together in just a few hours. I will be adding the source to GitHub soon, which should hopefully make it more interesting!

Update: The source code is now available.
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Today I found out (the hard way) that there are several issues that can occur when trying to upload files using the FileReference class on MACs.

FileReference.type always returns null

It’s often that case that you want to restrict the file type the user can upload, or perform different processes depending on the type of file uploaded. However the type property of a FileReference object always returns null on MACs; to work around this you must get the file extension manually. To do this you can use the following code (it’s good practice to always convert the file extension to lower case before working with it).
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Tutorial Overview

This tutorial will build upon the Introduction to using the StatefulToolkit example; it will add the ability to utilize the Clipboard in our example. The example will use the ClipboardUtil, which is a utility class included in the toolkit that allows the user to copy and paste objects using the clipboard. The example application will build upon the last one; it will allow the user to position four circles, to save and load the state of the circles (i.e. where the circles are positioned) and to copy and paste the circles. The example can be seen here and source files are available.

Preparation

Before you being implementing this tutorial make sure you have the latest version of the StatefulToolkit SWC, and that you’re project is set to target Flash Player 10 (if you want to target FP9, simple replace the Vector with an array in the circle container) . This tutorial also uses Keith Peter’s Minimal Comps component set to create the buttons in the application so you may want to grab the SWC for that too, but you can use your own buttons if you prefer. Both SWC files are included in the available flex project.
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Branden Hall and Joshua Davis have collaborated on a new framework called HYPE. Their aim with HYPE is to help bring back the playfulness that once defined the Flash community.

Getting Started

The HYPE framework lowers the barrier for people to begin playing with Flash by offering a lot of functionality out-of-the-box. It’s really easy to get started with HYPE, just download the framework from the homepage. They’ve even put together a nice set of installation and setup instructions, which shows you everything from how to install the files to adding basic functionality. Branden has also posted a Halloween themed tutorial screencast that shows how to use some of the core functionality of HYPE.

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OK, so it’s a little late but I thought it was worth sharing my experience of Flash on the Beach this year.

We all know about Flash CS5, codenamed ‘Viper’, and it’s many new features so I won’t bang on about that. Although I am looking forward to having custom code hinting, and the ability to publish to multiple devices (inc. the iPhone). Instead, I thought I’d list the sessions I attended and my thoughts on them.

iPhone Application Development for Flash Developers

On the Sunday I was able to attend the iPhone workshop with Julian Dolce, which was really good! Julian covered the basics of Objective-C, including displaying external images, playing sounds and using the UI Kit. It hasn’t made me want to shell out for a Mac and begin a career as an iPhone developer, but it was a brilliant insight into how it all works, and I left feeling confident that I could build iPhone applications (if I wanted to).

Adobe Keynote

Although Adobe had MAX coming up, it was nice that they gave FOTB attendees some sneak peaks at CS5. In the keynote Richard Galvan talked about Flash Player penetration figures, the future of Flash on Mobiles, upcoming features in Adobe AIR and showed sneak peaks of CS5. The announcement that interested me the most was the ability to deploy Actionscript 3 Flash applications to Mobiles using Flash Player 10.1; I think it’ll be awesome to use the same codebase to deploy to multiple devices (and it’ll be great to completely eradicate the need for AS2!).
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