November 17th, 2009
Huge thanks to both Eamonn Faherty and Richard Lord for their excellent presentations last month. As usual you can find the videos, presentations and source files in the presentations section.
First up this month creator of Paperworld3D, Trevor Burton with a session on the open source streaming server Red5 and up after him James Alliban who recently talked at Adobe Max, presenting a session of augemneted reality in Flash.
London Flash Platform User Group 26th November 2009 (26/11/2009)
Sponsored by friends of ED.
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Posted in Events | 2 Comments »
November 13th, 2009
A couple of weeks ago I made a post about using Repeaters in ViewStacks and I mentioned in the post I’d put together a class called DataStack that worked in the same way as a ViewStack but was driven by a dataProvider.
I then realized that using a Repeater inside a ViewStack would achieve the same result, but one thing I didn’t mention is that the DataStack re-uses its children like itemRenderers.
This means that if you only add one child to a DataStack, but supply a dataProvider with 1000 items, it will only create the one child and re-use it, unlike the Repeater and ViewStack combination which would create 1000 instances of the same child.
In addition recently I added a little more code so that you can add more than a single child to the DataStack and it will cycle through through them as you change the selectedIndex. So if you supply 2 different children and a dataProvider of 1000 items, it will reuse each child 500 times, the child at index 0 for all the data at the even indices, and the child at index 1 for all the data at the odd indices.
Due to the fact that DataStack isn’t a ViewStack (i.e. it extends Container not ViewStack), it won’t work with the Efflex viewStackEffects, and therefore I created a dataStack effect for Efflex and an example that extends it.
DataStack Example (right click for source).
The source for DataStack can be downloaded from our Google Code repository.
Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Flex 3.0 | 6 Comments »
October 28th, 2009
Recently the subject of tinting skins created for Flex has cropped up a couple of times.
Here’s a little class I threw together that enables this from Flash. Instead of extending UIMovieClip you can extend UITintedMovieClip. This new class will look for a style set on your Application class named skin-tint.
In Flash you then create all your skins in greyscale and the class then uses ColorTransform to tint itself.
UITintedMovieClipExample (right click for source).
This class only handles tinting of one color, but its feasible if the skin creator used MovieClips inside the skins with a defined naming convention, different tints could be applied to different instances.
I’ve also added the class to our Google Code repository.
Posted in Flex 3.0 | No Comments »
October 15th, 2009
Many thanks to Mark Anders who hung around after Flash on the Beach last month to come down to LFPUG and present some of the stuff Adobe are working on. As usual you can find his video in the presentations section.
This month we are concentrating on design patterns and frameworks and I believe we have 2 great talks lined up. First up Eamonn Faherty doing a session on ‘Practical Design Patterns for ActionScript 3.0′ and following him Richard Lord is back (its been a while since we’ve seen him) with a session on ‘Application Frameworks: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly’.
London Flash Platform User Group 29th October 2009 (29/10/2009)
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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.
Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Development, Flex 3.0 | 3 Comments »
September 10th, 2009
Huge thanks to both, Conrad Winchester and Keita Kuroki for their great presentations last moth. Both presentations, source, video etc can be found in the presentations section.
This month, straight after Flash on the Beach, we have an Adobe special. Mark Anders, Senior Principal Scientist at Adobe, will be coming down the LFPUG for an open discussion. Missed something at Flash on the Beach? Come and ask Mark.
Adobe Special – 24th September 2009 (24/09/2009)
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September 9th, 2009
James Deakin, Associate Technical Director at Dare tells me they’re looking for development people, particularly of the ActionScript variety. Interested?
You’d get to work for some brilliant clients like Sony, Sony Ericsson, BMW and Vodafone and do some cutting edge work. It’s a fairly open brief as far as I understand. They want talent (obviously) but also people who are innovative and creative. Check out their work.
Dare’s a great place to work too. The people are nice. The work is always full of interesting challenges and there’s free beer on Fridays, breakfast in the morning and a bunch of other benefits. If you think you’re up to it, drop James an email with your CV james.deakinATdaredigital.com and make sure you copy in Lucy Cadman, Dare’s Recruitment Co-ordinator lucy.cadmanATdaredigital.com.
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August 26th, 2009
Recently I was using Adobe’s AutoComplete component and a problem cropped up, it applies a filter to the original dataProvider assigned to it.
This was a problem because I was using the AutoComplete to give the user some sort of code completion on a list of classes, and I had multiple instances of this AutoComplete component in my application. When the user used an AutoComplete component, the original collection used as the dataProvider was filtered which meant that any previously selected items in other AutoComplete instances had a good chance of being removed from the list.
You can see this in the example by selected ‘United Kingdom’ in the first AutoComplete component, then typing the letter ‘A’ in the second, and you’ll see that the first component no longer retains its selectedItem, as it is no longer in its dataProvider.
CollectionClone can be used to duplicate a collection before assigning it as a dataProvider, leaving the original dataProvider unfiltered, and only filtering the clone. It will keep an eye on the original collection for any changes, and make sure that they are all reflected in the cloned collection.
CollectionClone Example
The source for CollectionClone and be downloaded from our Google Code repository
Posted in Flex 3.0 | 14 Comments »
August 17th, 2009
As usual my thanks go out to our 2 presenters last month, Matthew Press and Gilles Guillemin. Both presentations, source, video etc can be found in the presentations section.
This month, first up we have Conrad Winchester with a session on FlexUnit4 & Hudson. Following him with be Keita Kuroki with a session on creating dynamic sound in Flash Player 10.
Also worth mentioning that we still have some places left to our 2 day training with the legendary Keith Peters in September, more info here.
On a side note if your wondering why it’s been quiet here of late, it’s mainly because any spare time I get I’ve been putting into Efflex.
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July 27th, 2009
Firsty huge thanks to Rob Bateman, and Jens C. Brynildsen (who came all the way over from Norway), for their presentations last month centered around Away3D. You can find the videos in the presentations category.
This month, first up good friend and soon to be dad, Matthew Press doing a session of UML for ActionScript 3.0, and following him with be Gilles Guillemin with a session on the Flex Framework Mate. Full descriptions and links etc below.
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