Here are a couple of simple but very useful code snippets that you may find handy. They are part of the library of utility functions that support FlashOS2 – I was reminded of them as I needed them for a project I’m currently working on. Apologies in advance for the page stretching all over the place.
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FLAws: Forms
Need I say any more? j/k 😉
Quick disclaimer: There’s a good chance I’m wrong about some of how this all works, so please feel free to correct me, I do not want to spread incorrect information or FUD.
Forms in Flash are a little like the apple in the garden of Eden – tempting and nice to look at, but all hell breaks loose when you try to eat ’em. It doesn’t help that the whole time this little snake called Macromedia is whispering in your ear, telling you to take a big bite.
Adding Forms to Flash was a great idea – it provides a nice, structured development environment for state based applications, it makes implementing MVC clean and simple, and it makes the technology far more accessible to programmers familiar with environments like Visual Basic.
Unfortunately, the implementation is – hmm, how to put this politely – substantially sub-par.
Gadget inspector.
Christmas is around the corner, and its time to start looking up some killer swag. Last year I got a crap load of household stuff (I bought a loft 2 years ago, and everyone thinks I still need tea kettles and towels, blech), so my loving girlfriend decided that this year I should get some fun stuff. Here’s some of the toys she found waiting in cyber space (and don’t worry, there’s no hidden referral links) (or adult content, for that matter) :)…
The Internet is sh!t
Via gijs nijholt
I don’t usually link to people’s opinion pieces, but I thought this post on why the Internet is shit was a good read, and the last paragraph reflected a feeling that plagues me.
When I first got into web design (a whopping 9 years ago), everything was new, everyone was excited, and I was kept in a constant state of awe as the modern “rich” internet emerged from the primordial soup of HTML 1.0. Maybe I’m just getting old and jaded, but lately that awe has receeded – I rarely see web work anymore that really excites me. There have been a few pieces that really caught my attention as good examples of what can be done (really, what should be done), but nothing that makes me really feel that the pea-brained dinosaurs of the present-day web will be replaced with smarter, more adaptable successors.
I’m left in a constant state of anticipation – I feel like something has to happen, some new concept has to begin defining what the web is going to be 5 years from now. This serves to define much of my professional life, I’m fortunate in that I can usually pick and choose the clients I work with, and I typically do so on the basis of how progressive or interesting the project (or the client) is. It also drives me to tackle monolithic projects with little hope of recompense, just to prove to myself and the community that things can (and should) move forwards (see: FlashOS, FlashOS2, gModeler, etc).
I think the most exciting thing I’ve seen recently is the involvement of talented writers, with a firm understanding of the medium, in the development of websites. A good writer goes beyond copy-writing to help define the narrative of a site, establish a repoire with the user, effectively (and engagingly) communicate the core messages of the site, and work with the designer to develop the user experience.
Now don’t get me wrong – I love my job, and I think the Flash community is phenomenal, I’m just left wondering if there isn’t more that we could do to evolve this medium to the benefit of our clients before the meteor (longhorn?) hits.
PS. If you’ve built a Flash intro in the past 3 months, without discussing with your client why its a waste of their money and what their alternatives are, kindly raise your hand and exit the blog – you’re holding us all back, mate.
[EDIT:] Wow, I really must be getting old and cranky… too many complaining posts in the last few days… must… post… something… positive. 🙂
FLAws: FP7 drops click events
To begin the FLAws series, I’d like to shine some light on what looks to be a major Flash Player 7 bug. This issue has had Beau and I ripping our hair out for the past few weeks, as we have sought workarounds for it.
Description
In short, Flash Player 7 will sporadically fail to register Release events under high strain situations. This causes huge problems, as users must click buttons and components multiple times before they will register the click – talk about a usability nightmare.
Read on for a more in-depth description, and the workarounds that we found.
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FLAws: Prologue
Recently, I have been working on a number of interesting projects that have allowed me to really test FlashMX 2004 as an application development platform. While I am very happy with the workflow improvements in the new version, I have also encountered a number of fairly large flaws that can make developing applications in F04 a migraine-inducing experience. Because of this, I have decided to start a new series of posts called “FLAws” (oh how witty), which will outline these issues as I encounter them.
My intent is not to just bitch about these problems. It is to raise these problems in Macromedia’s collective consciousness, and to help others avoid the same headaches by providing suggestions and work-arounds. I also welcome input from the community – if I get something wrong, you have a work-around to share, or you have discovered a problem I haven’t mentioned (please research it thoroughly first), please drop a note in the comments.
I suppose the first of the FLAws was really the EULA issues, which are still outstanding, but I think I’ve covered those well enough (at least for now). I will be making my first official FLAws post later today with a description of a Flash Player 7 bug that has caused us a lot of grief, and some workarounds.
Blog Spam Update
I don’t know if everyone has seen a huge decrease in blog spam, or if my simple blog spam counter-measures have just paid off, but it’s way down for me. In fact, I haven’t received a single piece of blog spam in over a week now.
Besides the technical changes I made, I’ve also been deleting spam within minutes of it being posted, which hopefully helps to deter manual spammers over the long run, as they realize what a waste of their time it is.
Kermit Compromised!
It’s tough to be green… especially when Cloe the Clown is giving it to you from behind. Sure, it’s immature, but my girlfriend and I almost fell out of our chairs laughing when I stumbled onto these photos of a lecherous, smiling doll sodomizing poor kermit at the NYC thanksgiving parade (I think he’s drunk, look at his face in the first picture).
Read on for the photos…