Archive for the ‘Development’ Category

Using Repeaters in ViewStacks

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Its very rarely I use Repeaters. I always thought of them as a way to get a list of items on the screen, yet they would always create all the items, therefore not being as optimized as a List that only creates just enough renderers, and re-uses them.

Recently on a job I required the children of a ViewStack to be driven by a dataProvider. The ViewStack required the same number of children as the number of items in the dataProvider. Each child should use its corresponding item in the dataprovdier to render its content, set via the data property.

I knew this could be handled with ActionScript, but ideally wanted a component that took care of it internally. To achieve this I built something called a DataStack, that had a dataProvider property. This worked fine but a couple of days later when building a custom container for tiling items I realized I’d been wasting my time, and a Repeater inside a ViewStack would have done the job I wanted.

What a donkey I am sometimes!

For good measure in the this example I added one of the new Efflex effects.

Influxis call for Beta Testers

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Influxis have recently overhauled their website and are currently looking for beta testers for the following:

New Member Wizard 3.0: 4 beta accounts available
TV2.0: 3 beta accounts available
MASSIVA3D MMOG 0.1: 3 beta accounts available

Those interested in becoming beta testers send your resume to beta AT influxis.com. Available accounts are issued based on the experience and interest of the applicant requesting account.

FrameLabelMovieClip & UIFrameLabelMovieClip

Monday, April 13th, 2009

FrameLabelMovieClip and UIFlameLabelMovieClip (Flex), dispatch FrameLabelEvent’s when their playhead encounters a frame label. The FrameLabelEvent contains the FrameLabel object containing the name and frame number of the frame label.

Examples

FrameLabelMovieClipExampleLoadSWF – an example of loading an SWF with our library class and creating an instance of a FrameLabelMovieClip exported from the library.
UIFrameLabelMovieClipExampleSWC – an example of using a SWC in a Flex project that contains a UIFrameLabelMovieClip.

The classes themselves can be downloaded from our Google code library.

Classes

ws.tink.display.FrameLabelMovieClip
ws.tink.events.FrameLabelEvent
ws.tink.flex.flash.UIFrameLabelMovieClip

To enable ease in the Flash IDE I’ve also knocked up an extension that installs 2 utility commands for creating FrameLabelMovieClip’s and UIFrameLabelMovieClip’s. The extension also includes 2 class library components that contain the classes required by FrameLabelMovieClip (FrameLabelMovieClipBase) and UIFrameLabelMovieClip (TinkFlexComponentBase).

Commands

1. Convert Symbol to FrameLabelMovieClip
Creates FrameLabelMovieClip’s for use with Flash IDE and ActionScript 3.0 Projects, out of all the selected MovieClip’s in the library. The command also adds the FrameLabelMovieClipBase component to the library that contains the nessessary classes to compile a SWF or SWC.

2. Convert Symbol to Flex UIFrameLabelMovieClip
Creates UIFrameLabelMovieClip’s for use with the Flex framework out of all the selected MovieClip’s in the library. The command also adds the TinkFlexComponentBase component to the library that conatins the necessary classes to compile a SWF or SWC.

Components

1. FrameLabelMovieClipBase
Contains the necessary classes to use a FrameLabelMovieClip as a base class for a library symbol.

2. TinkFlexComponentBase
Contains the necessary classes to use a UIFrameLabelMovieClip as a base class for a library symbol.

MXI

FrameLabelMovieClip Creator

Versions

Saturday, September 6th, 2008

For those on OS X who haven’t found Versions yet, its a great Subversion client for Mac.

At the moment the product is still in beta, each installation coming with a time limitation (usually replaced for free with another beta). Once released you’ll be able to buy Versions, unfortunately there’s no really info on what sort of price we can expect.

If you looking for a great GUI for Subversion for Mac, Versions is definitely worth downloading.