January 3rd, 2008 § Comments Off on AIR Monster Attack updated to latest beta § permalink
No new features: just rebuilt and repackaged to run on AIR beta 3. Note that the newest AIR beta properly displays animated GIFs, which makes this silly app look much better :)
I did have to make a change from the original version, to conform to the new AIR HTML security model. My original code used setInterval, with a string to execute as the first parameter. This is a no-no in the new security model (since the executable string is the equivalent of an eval). I could have put the whole thing into an iframe in a non-application sandbox, but instead I used the AIR-native Timer class, which did the trick.
Download the updated Monster Attack! (requires Adobe AIR beta 3)
November 9th, 2007 § 2 comments § permalink
I haven’t delved into this in detail (so it could simply be an error on my part), but I had a function that returns a string. The string is long and complex, so my return statement looked something like this:
return 'string stuff' + ' more string stuff ' + someVariable + 'string stuff' + ' more string stuff' + ' more string stuff' /* ... about 20 lines of this ... */ + ' more string stuff'; |
The resulting function always returned undefined instead of the string.
Baffled, I changed the code to look like this:
var result:String = 'string stuff' + ' more string stuff ' + someVariable + 'string stuff' + ' more string stuff' + ' more string stuff' /* ... about 20 lines of this ... */ + ' more string stuff'; return result; |
…and that worked as expected. Huh.
September 26th, 2007 § 4 comments § permalink
Well that was easy!
I made a quick AIR version of my monster attack “application”. The copy of AIR for JavaScript Developers Pocket Guide that they gave us at the on AIR Tour Bus event was very helpful (along with the demos that they actually presented at the event).
All I had to do was create the application descriptor XML file and add a bit of AIR code (in JavaScript) to maximize the window and make it “always on top” (or alwaysInFront in the AIR API), and voilร : monster attacking your desktop!
It’s not quite finished though. The biggest problem is that the current beta of the AIR runtime does not display animated GIFs correctly (it just displays the first frame), so the fires do not look right (this is a known bug and should be fixed by the 1.0 release of AIR). I may change the code to do the animations myself. Besides that, I have not created any application icons yet, and has only been tested on Windows, on a single machine :P No idea how well it runs on the Mac. UPDATE: After fixing the mime type for AIR files, it now downloads on Safari on my Mac and runs correctly. On top of that, the animated GIFs run properly on Mac OS X!
If you run this, be warned that it eats a lot of CPU time, which is not a surprise; after all, it’s a full-screen transparent window!
I’m pretty excited about the possibilities of JavaScript/HTML AIR apps that leverage the Flex libraries in JavaScript. Plus I think it might be a great way to learn the new Flex/Flash/AS3 APIs without having to learn MXML at the same time (especially since I don’t have Flash CS3 yet).
If you have the AIR runtime installed (available here), then give this a try.
September 26th, 2007 § Comments Off on Verlet § permalink
I’m pretty happy with how the Verlet integration engine I’ve been building is turning out. I’m using it for the next virtual pet animal I’m working on. It’s somewhat cleaner and much more extensible than the system I hacked together for my monkey. When combined with my wide-curve-drawing routines, you can create some interesting-looking stuff (IMHO :) ). Once my new pet is done you’ll be able to see it. I might upload a simple demo before then, though…
I’m considering releasing it under an open source licence of some sort… not that it’s that amazing or awesome, but it could be useful or interesting to others.
September 26th, 2007 § Comments Off on Not liveblogging the Adobe AIR Tour § permalink
I’m here at the Toronto stop of the Adobe AIR Tour. So far it’s been pretty keen with cool demos, including stuff like applying Flash filters (e.g. blur, bevel, etc) to HTML elements. Nice.
I still haven’t done anything in Flex or AS3 yet, but being able to use HTML/CSS/JavaScript with full access to AS3 libraries seems pretty powerful, with a much lower learning curve than jumping straight into full Flex.
Right now Akamai just announced the release of an AS3 Media Player Framework…
Oh yeah, I’m not liveblogging :P
September 25th, 2007 § Comments Off on Short note: Bézier curves § permalink
In my current project, I am drawing Bézier curves in code rather than using MovieClip.curveTo(), thanks to the bug I wrote about back in May. Since I’m doing it in code myself, I thought I might as well use cubic Béziers (four control points) rather than Flash’s quadratic curves (only three control points). Plus, for the application in question, cubics just seemed to make more sense.
I found this helpful article, “Derivation of Incremental Forward-Difference Algorithm for Cubic Bezier Curves using the Taylor Series Expansion for Polynomial Approximation”. That title is quite a mouthful, but the upshot is it shows how to use only additions while drawing the curve, instead of a bunch of multiplications, for faster drawing time.
August 20th, 2007 § 1 comment § permalink
Just a quick note right now because I’m running out the door, but I have found a site that has stolen some of my code. It looks like they decompiled some of my SWFs, changed the graphics, and rebuilt them as their own.
I’m not going to link to their site because I don’t want to give them any traffic. Not sure what the best route to take here is.
UPDATE: I downloaded one of the obviously offending SWF files and decompiled it. Yep, that’s my code all right, with the same class names and all.
What’s the next step? The whois data for the domain is “Whoisguard protected”.
UPDATE 2: There’s a Facebook application that lets you embed those pets into your profile, although I don’t know if the creator of the app is the owner of that website. I have contacted the Facebook app’s developer for more information.
August 15th, 2007 § 2 comments § permalink
I’m experiencing a strange problem: when running an Adobe AIR app, the Flash debug player trace() log stops updating!
The details: I’ve followed the steps in this article so that I can read the output of trace() while running Flash movies in the browser. I use cygwin and the tail command to view the log updating in real time (I’m running Windows XP SP2 Home).
Now, I’ve noticed that whenever a new instance of the Flash player loads, it clears the flashlog.txt file. The tail command reports this as “tail: flashlog.txt: file truncated“. This happens when, say, I reload a Flash movie in IE and then in Firefox. But in both cases, logging of trace() continues after the file is cleared.
However, whenever I launch an AIR app (for example, the excellent tweetr or kuler apps), not only does the log file truncate (as I would expect), but the flashlog.txt file stops updating, no matter what trace() commands execute in my browser movies. The file stays at zero length for as long as the AIR app is running. When I quit the AIR app, trace() commands resume logging to flashlog.txt.
It’s quite odd. Note that I am not the author of these (or any) AIR apps, so I do not know if those apps are using trace() at all. Perhaps it’s just a case of AIR locking flashlog.txt and not letting go until the app(s) are closed?
The upshot is that I have to close any AIR apps before following any trace() logs. A small inconvenience, but it took me a while to figure out :P
July 28th, 2007 § 2 comments § permalink
I was excited to see SWFFix announce the release of a public alpha. I had begun to fear that the project was moribund. SWFFix is from the developers of SWFObject, UFO and the Flash player detection kit, joining forces to create what one hopes will be the best Flash-embedding method yet.
I haven’t tried it yet, but based on reading the documentation, it seems they’ve come up with a clever approach, one that’s different than both SWFObject and UFO (although you can also use it in a SWFObject/UFO-like manner if you want to).
Instead of using JavaScript to write the Flash object or embed tags, you instead use regular W3C-compliant markup to add the Flash content to your page. Then the SWFFix JavaScript library steps in and fixes the issues that can arise on different browsers and platforms. For example, it fixes Internet Explorer’s “click-to-activate” mechanism. It can also optionally adds enhancements like ExpressInstall.
I think it’s a great approach. If JavaScript is disabled, for example, the Flash content will still play (unlike what happens with SWFObject and UFO). I will have to try it out soon.
