We finally scraped together enough time in our busy production schedule to polish off Panel Pack 1 for release. PP1 is a set of 4 custom panels to help streamline your Flash workflow. These panels are handy for both designers and developers, and while not all of them may be useful to you, we’ve priced them so that (hopefully) any one of them is worth the price of the pack.

Just like gProject, these were built for our own internal use, then polished up to sell. We’re not looking to make money off of them, but we are hoping to recoup a portion of the development costs.

We’ll blog about each panel in more depth over the next few days, but here’s a quick overview of what’s included with the pack:

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To kick off my session at FitC2006, I modified my Blazing Blazes demo to work off the bass level of a loaded music track using the new computeSpectrum feature in ActionScript 3. You can see it in action by clicking the screenshot below (Flash player 9 required). Note that while the demo is small (3kb), the music file is big, so it’ll take a while to load.

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The Blaze (Flash 9 codename) logo with some AS3 BitmapData fire fun. (2kb – Flash Player 9 required)

UPDATE: Check out the new version that reacts to a loaded music track.

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I’m really excited to finally be able to talk about the fact that we are working on the v3 components for Blaze (Flash 9) together with Metaliq and Adobe.

At the FlashForward Austin keynote, Mike Downey showed a number of new features in Blaze (Flash 9) including enhanced PSD (PhotoShop) import (yay!), new timeline tweening to actionscript functionality (looks super cool!), and the new component set built entirely in ActionScript 3. That means that I can now tell people what I’ve been so busy working on, and why I’m not blogging much or releasing new experiments on gallery incomplet. [Moved to incomplet.gskinner.com]

I can’t talk about specific details yet, but I can say that we are applying everything we learned about developing fast, light components from mCOM/GLIC to this new set (don’t worry mCOM owners, the v3 documentation will be a LOT better than mCOM’s initial offerings). I can also tell you that these new components will be much easier to skin visually, without touching code.

We’re having a blast coding these components, and are really enjoying working in ActionScript 3. There’s still some really frustrating moments, but overall I love the new language – switching back to AS2 is getting more painful by the day. Working with Metaliq and Adobe has been awesome – everyone is really dedicated to the project, and I’m confident that together we’ll deliver the best component set for Flash yet.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post some more specific info soon. In the meantime, I’d love to hear what you’re hoping to see in the new component set.

This is an interactive simulator I built to demonstrate how the Garbage Collector operates in Flash Player 9. It allows you to diagram objects and references, then see how reference counting, and mark and sweep routines would play out for your scenario.

It’s pretty easy to use. The object tool (round rect) let’s you click on the stage to add a new object, or click and drag an existing object to create a new object referenced from it. Objects display their reference count in real time. The two reference tools (lines) let you create strong and weak references by dragging from one object to another – the arrow indicates the direction of the reference. The selection tool lets you move/select existing objects and select references. I believe the buttons at the bottom are self explanatory, though it’s worth pointing out that Mark and Sweep are separate buttons. You can use the 1-4 keys to select tools, and the delete key to delete selected items.

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I’ve just posted my session notes and source code for my talk on Resource Management in AS3 at FlashForward Austin. You can access them (along with all my other session notes) at gskinner.com/talks. It’s worth taking a look, even if you’ve read my previous articles as it includes simulations, interactive systems, and additional information.

I had a great time in Austin. The city seems to be a lot of fun – lots of good bars and barbecue. FlashForward seems to get better every time, and it was a nice change doing a purely technical talk. As always, it was wonderful meeting up with friends from the community, and meeting new Flash folk.

I should be finishing off the resource management series of articles in the next little while with the fourth installment on solutions and strategies.