While I was vaguely aware of the Adobe Exchange, I hadn’t really checked it out until a recent purchaser of our Spelling Plus Library mentioned that he had been unable to find our component on it. While the Exchange is still in beta, and has some rough edges, it’s looking pretty good overall. I was able to submit SPL, and have it moderated and listed in under 48 hours.

I think one of the major weaknesses of the Flash platform is the lack of a strong component and source code ecosystem. The Exchange provides one of the key elements needed to grow this ecosystem: Providing a central location for finding and rating third party components.

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I was stoked to get my copy of Mass Effect for XBox 360. Not just because this is one of the most beautiful looking games for the platform (the graphics are stunning), with a really rich plot, and great gameplay, but also because gskinner.com contributed to it, and it’s not every day you get to see your company name in the credits for a blockbuster video game.

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After having my creative mojo refueled at Flash on the Beach, I’ve started playing around with some of my old experiments again. One of my favourite older experiments is my vein logic – it’s just such a beautiful example of recursion, and can be applied to so many things (like veins, vines, trees, more trees, and lightning) – so I decided I would rewrite and rearchitect it for ActionScript 3.

I barely managed to lay the groundwork for the new architecture before I got sidetracked by the file I was using to test it, and wound up building what I will affectionately call the Flaming Hairball.

You can check it out below.

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Grass swaying in the wind, clouds drifting by. This experiment is meant to look like you are cycling alongside an endless tranquil beach on a perfect day.

I’m not quite sure about the cycling motion / bounce, but I’m happy with the wind in the grass, and the clouds for the most part.

Based on the grass engine I built for my “50 Reasons AS3 Kicks Ass” session slides.

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That’s right… spinning, flaming 3D logos (there’s potential for a joke about openly gay break dancers in there somewhere, I’m sure)! Courtesy of PaperVision3D, my Fire Effects class, and John Grden.

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One of the things I put a lot of work into for Spelling Plus Library was architecting it in a very modular, extendable fashion. The main reason for this was to allow developers to use it in the way that makes most sense for their projects. For example, Buzzword only uses the SpellingDictionary class, which handles all of the spell checking and spelling suggestion logic, and the WordListLoader, but manages the user interface themselves.

A secondary benefit is that many of the classes are very useful on their own. The best example of this is the TextHighlighter class that forms the core of the SPL SpellingHighlighter. It is a very powerful class for finding and highlighting words in a text field in real time.

It includes a ton of features, including support for manual selections, multi-line highlights, smart targeting, autoupdating on change and scroll, interactive highlights, and more. It will be gaining even more functionality in the upcoming 1.1 release of SPL.

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I finally got the time to finish off my fire effect Flash CS3 component, which makes it easy to add flames and other cool effects to objects on stage. I am also releasing the AS3 source code that powers it, which is one of the most requested piece of source code I’ve had.

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