Sunday, September 13, 2009 at 18:48:00
In Flash 10 display objects can be transformed in the 3D space. That’s very nice, but due to the implementation the appearence of an objects can become a little bit different (blurry) after transforming it in 3D (changing its z, rotationX/Y/Z property, etc.), even if the object is reverted exactly in the same position as it was before the 3D transformation. Actually when an object is transformed in 3D space Flash takes a bitmap snapshot of its content and this bitmap is what transformed and displayed in real. In order to raise the bitmap’s quality a smoothing is applied to it, and this smoothing causes the difference and the blur. It is noticable especially on textfields.
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Filed under Actionscript, Flash | 2 comments »
Sunday, June 7, 2009 at 18:14:43
Recently somebody asked about creating multi-column text flow in ActionScript 2. I have suggested ActionScript 3 since it offers relatively simple solution, but after few minutes of thinking also figured out a solution for ActionScript 2. I know that AS2 is quite obsolete now and I personally don’t use it, only when it is unescapable, but probably there are still many people using it on daily basis for different reasons (legacy projects, target player version limitations, etc.), so even an AS2 solution may be useful.
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Filed under Actionscript, Flash | 4 comments »
Monday, May 19, 2008 at 21:28:35
In this post I collected some useful resources related to Flash 10, which I found up to now. I’m going to keep this list up to date and extend it as I obtain more interesting links.
Targeting Flash Player 10 beta and development tools
1. Targeting Flash Player 10 Beta with Flex SDK 3.0.x
2. Flex 3 SDK Downloads – The latest Flex SDK, which is capable of compiling Flash 10 targeted movies. Also includes a stand-alone debug player (version 10)
3. Flash Player 10 support in FlashDevelop
4. How to get started with creating content for Flash Player 10 (video tutorial)
3D, the new Drawing API, GPU acceleration
1. Senocular: Flash Player 10 Drawing API
2. Tinic Uro: What does GPU acceleration mean?
3. How to take ordinary display objects into the third dimension in Astro (video tutorial)
4. Mike Melanson: Flash Uses The GPU
Creating dynamic sounds
1. Tinic Uro: Adobe is making some noise. Part 1
2. Tinic Uro: Adobe is making some noise. Part 2
3. Tinic Uro: Adobe is making some noise. Part 3
4. Keith Peters: Astro dynamic sound!
5. How to dynamically create sounds using the new features in Astro (video tutorial)
6. Leo Bergman: Random thoughts on Vectors and samplesCallbackData
Advanced text rendering
1. New text engine
Loading and saving files without server (FileReference)
1. Load and save files using FileReference
2. How to read and write local files using the new methods of the FileReference class (video tutorial)
Streaming, peer-to-peer audio and video
1. Peer to peer, Speex and UDP now in Flash Player 1
2. Justin Everett-Church: RTMFP in Flash Player 10 beta
3. Justin Everett-Church: Peer to Peer (P2P) in Flash Player 10 beta
Other topics
1. Leo Bergman: Random thoughts on Vectors and samplesCallbackData
Documentation
1. Flash Player 10 (Astro) API (new additions only)
2. Flash Player 10 Language Reference (official Adobe documentation)
Filed under Actionscript, Flash, Flex | 2 comments »
Friday, May 16, 2008 at 10:01:08
Since there is no public documentation for the new Flash Player 10 API I have created a small Flex application which makes easier to discover the properties and methods of the new classes. I also extracted the list of classes defined in the Flash 10’s playerglobal.swc (it is accessible in the latest build of Flex SDK) and placed into the class browser. So, now you can pick a class name from this list or enter a class name of your choice, click on the Describe button and see the result.
The class browser is on-line here.
Maybe I will post the results of my (and other’s) discoveries later with examples 
Some keywords till then (beyond the features mentioned on Adobe’s site):
- run-time sound generation
- accessing local files through FileReference without uploading to a server
- new Vector class with generics
- etc.
[Update]
Some people reported that the class browser doesn’t worksand the version detection script prevents it from running (claiming a new player installation). I don’t know what does cause the problem, yet, but I provide here a direct link to the SWF itself until I solve the issue:
http://tengerstudio.com/public/flash10/class_browser/ClassBrowser.swf
[Update 2]
I made a minor addition, and the class browser now displays also the class’ constructor among the methods.
Filed under Actionscript, Flash, Flex | 11 comments »
Friday, May 16, 2008 at 00:13:42
Adobe released the beta version of the next Flash Player 10 (codename Astro). Further details, downloads, examples and videos are here:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/
The development tools are not published yet, but you can configure Flex SDK to compile to Flash Player 10. Here is the how to.
If somebody is not familiar with Flex, it is possible to use Flash CS3 for the same purpose by utilizing some minor hacks. Just follow these steps:
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Filed under Actionscript, Flash, Flex | No comments »