Author / Grant Skinner

Grant Skinner

The "g" in gskinner. Also the "skinner".

@gskinner

by Grant Skinner

Added some anti-spam logic

Well, I finally got pissed off enough about having to delete at least 15 spam comments a day to get off my duff and do something about it.

I have implemented two solutions, one that is preventative, and one that is a clean up tool for after spam is posted.

The first change I made was to rename my comments script, and then remove ALL direct links to it. I accomplished this by:

  1. Removing the links from my index and date-based archives, linking instead to the comments section of the individual posts.

  2. Obsfucating the comment script’s url in the comment posting form using javascript. Now, when a user hits the submit button, the script url is assembled and assigned by javascript. It’s a simple bit of code that should prevent most bots from posting comments.

Unfortunately, there are also spammers freaky enough to post spam manually, and there’s not really anything I can do to stop them. What I can do though, is make deleting their comments easier to save myself some clicks, and some time. To this end, I followed step 6 of this great post on preventing blog spam at Yoz Grahame’s Cheerleader blog. Now, when I receive an email notice that someone has posted a new comment to my blog, I also receive a direct link that lets me delete their comment with only 2 clicks. Based on some of the feedback on Yoz’s post, I also moved the delete link above the comment text in the email notice, to fix an issue with spammers leaving open html tags to obscure the link.

I hope this all works – it didn’t require a huge investment of time, and I expect it will save me a lot of frustration. I’ll post my results after a couple of weeks.

Please let me know if you encounter any issues with using the comments, beyond needing to have javascript enabled in order to post. Thanks.

I also got sick of people typing search terms in my subscription form at the top left, so I added a bit of javascript to validate the email before posting.

by Grant Skinner

Dominatrix Girl Guides

Does your mother know you click on links with titles like “Dominatrix Girl Guides”? Sicko. 🙂

Just some unintentional porn my girlfriend dug up while looking through her old Girl Guide stuff for costume materials. At first glance, it looks like a pretty interesting handbook…

Man, I can’t wait to see my search engine referral logs for this post. 😛

by Grant Skinner

Third party components? Not legally.

Gregg Wygonik raised another really good point regarding Macromedia’s wonderful EULA for F04. It basically prohibits distributing third party SWCs (compiled components) built on Macromedia’s framework.

In order to build proper SWCs, you have to use Macromedia sample code (this includes all of the component base classes such as UIObject), which is then compiled into the SWC. However, Macromedia’s EULA specifically disallows you to distribute any “product or application designed for website development” that uses their sample code. Seems to me, any third party Flash component fits that description dead on.

Oh, and you can’t call it a “Flash component” if it uses Macromedia’s component code, either. That would be using “Macromedia trademarks to market your application”, which is also prohibited.

Looks like the only real answer here (unless MM revises the EULA, or gives each of us specific written permission to distribute) is writing a new framework, that isn’t bound by this restrictive licensing agreement. Or, we could just go back to distributing movie clips – then we wouldn’t have to include MM’s sample code. Macromedia wonders why the adoption rate for F04 is so low? Could it be, in small part, because of the derth of code for F04 being shared by the community, and some hesitation as to what this new EULA means to building client projects.

Does anyone at Macromedia know if there’s been any progress on this topic?

by Grant Skinner

Function scope in temporary vars

I just smacked into an interesting phenomenon with function scope in temporary variables, that appears to be new in F04.

When you call a function that has been assigned to a temporary variable in F04 (a variable declared with var in an execution block), it’s scope is, well… uh, it appears to be non-existant… it has it’s own little scope, in some distant galaxy, far, far away. While this sort of makes sense, it wasn’t what I was expecting.

This occurs in FLAs published to AS1 and AS2 in F04, but does not seem to occur in FMX. It would be interesting to know what exactly has changed, and why.
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by Grant Skinner

Cry for help (the auto-updating kind)

When is Macromedia going to get around to releasing a fix for the bugs with the documentation auto-update feature, or at the very least release a standalone installer for the new docs? I still can’t get the latest documentation – this is what happens for me:

1) I hit the “Update” button in the help panel, and choose “Yes” from the resultant dialog.

2) Flash displays a dialog saying it is “Downloading file 1 of 7”, it gets to about 2%, then flashes up 2 or 3 other dialogs titled “Downloading help content”, and one titled “Downloading file __ of 7” (usually 5 or 7).

The whole process takes about 2 seconds, and when it completes, surprise – the content isn’t installed.

I was hoping this was just an isolated issue with my old powerbook, but I have exactly the same problem with my new powerbook with a clean installation of OSX and Flash MX 2004 Pro. I even tried jacking in the ethernet cable in case it was just a problem with wireless connections – no go. I’ve heard of similar problems from a others as well. Anyone have any ideas?

I wonder if I can just have another Flash developer who’s updating works send me their full documentation for the time being. Most likely that’s in violation of the End User License Agreement, but I’m getting desperate.

Please Macromedia, working with your new framework is problematic enough without restrictive EULAs and no updated documentation!!

PS. Sorry for all the griping lately. I promise I’ll have some more real content soon.

by Grant Skinner

Mailinator: Temporary email

I just ran into this very useful (and free) service online: http://www.mailinator.com/ offers you a way to deal with annoying forums and software downloads that require you to provide an email address, then email you your log-in information. Most people have a hotmail account for this purpose, but Mailinator is cleaner, and smarter.

Just sign up for the forum (or whatever) with any mailinator.com email address (ex. joebob@mailinator.com), then go to http://www.mailinator.com/ , and sign in with the name you chose (ex. joebob). Mailinator will receive the email for you and hold on to it for a few hours so that you can get the log in info and get your download, or scan the forum for the support info you need. It’s completely unsecure, so be careful what you use it for, but it certainly can come in handy.

by Grant Skinner

EULA work-around & more issues.

Sorry for harping on this, but I think it’s important. I just finished re-reading the EULA again, and ran into a possible work-around to the issue of distributing code (maybe), and a host of other potential problems.

All of the problems I’ve found so far are in section 2.f in the F04 EULA, specifically where it describes the terms under which you may distribute Sample Application Code. Admittedly, I’m not a lawyer, but this is how it reads to me:

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