For those of you who don’t know this yet, if you’re migrating from AS2.0 to AS3.0 or if you’re constantly using AS3.0 to develop your projects, this is a very handy ActionScript 3.0 Migration PDF reference. It clearly shows the difference between AS2.0 and AS3.0 and tells you what to import when using certain objects, it also tells you what objects has been removed in AS3.0. Certainly good to have it with you when developing AS3.0 projects or if you’re starting to learn AS3.0. There are also other cheatsheets for other platforms like AIR and Papervision which can be found here.

benhomie :: Mar.25.2008 :: actionscript 3, good-to-know, intermediate :: No Comments »

minidxer kindly collected all physics engines available.

Shang :: Mar.24.2008 :: actionscript 3, advanced, link, list :: No Comments »

There are some security restrictions. The full article can be found in Adobe’s website. Two restrictions are very important:

1. “Users cannot enter text in text input fields while in full-screen mode. All keyboard input and key-related ActionScript is disabled while in full-screen mode, with the exception of the keyboard shortcuts that take the viewer out of full-screen mode. ”

   This restriction keeps most website/application away from fullscreen mode. Almost all websites and applications need keyboard interaction. Bringing the user out of fullscreen mode to fill up a form is not user-friendly.

   It was stated in Square Factor’s blog that the reason for disabling input is to avoid phishing activities. “…attacker could mimic the look of the operating system / browser to force user to enter sensitive data, such as passwords or serial numbers.”

2. “The ActionScript that initiates full-screen mode can be called only in response to a mouse click or keypress. If it is called in other situations, it will be ignored (in ActionScript 2.0) or throw an exception (in ActionScript 3.0).”

Shang :: Mar.23.2008 :: actionscript 3, beginner, good-to-know :: 1 Comment »

The success of a website is evaluated by its traffic. Important data like pageviews and visitors are collected using web tracking technologies. The simplest form would be the old school visitor counter. There are many commercial web tracking services for big websites and there are also free services such as “Google Analytics(GA)“. It’s simple yet extremely powerful.

GA is a javascript based solution. Using GA in HTML is very simple. Paste in the scripts and the site is tracked instantly. To track a Flash based website is not hard either.
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Shang :: Mar.19.2008 :: good-to-know, intermediate :: 5 Comments »

Papervision3D brought 2D Flash into a 3D world. It’s exciting and there are lots of cool websites and applications developed with PV3D. But nothing is perfect in the world. It also has some limitations:

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Shang :: Mar.17.2008 :: advanced, good-to-know, papvervision :: 1 Comment »

I created this scrollbar some time back. I did not use it in a actual project yet but I think it should be useful for those who are doing websites in AS3. It is customizable with Tweener effects selection. It scrolls mainly movieclips, so as long as you convert your text or images to movieclips, you can scroll them. Here is the scrollbar source.

kinsung :: Mar.17.2008 :: actionscript 3, intermediate :: 2 Comments »

Flash CS4 will be able to export *and* import a new source format called XFL. An XFL file is a .zip file that contains the source material for a Flash document. Within the .zip file resides an XML file describing the structure of the document and a folder with the document’s assets (graphics, sounds, etc). - From Colin Moock

Shang :: Mar.13.2008 :: adobe, news :: 3 Comments »

On Lee Brimelow’s blog he has created a few handy flash extensions to make coding in AS3 easier. I suggest getting the code Snippets panel extension and the Event Generator extension.

With the Event Generator just select an item on stage and select what you want to do with it in the panel. Click copy to clipboard and then open the actions panel and paste the code there.

Ed :: Mar.12.2008 :: actionscript 3, extensions :: No Comments »

This may not be new news per say. But in my opinion should be quite useful. There is this new flash framework known as Gaia that seems to be useful in speeding up the flash production process. By using the framework, you can get a simple flash project up in a flash. If you find it troublesome to change your workflow, the least you can do with it is to create a prototype in a very short time to present to your client. In conlcusion, this framework is worth a try.

http://www.gaiaflashframework.com/

kinsung :: Mar.11.2008 :: good-to-know :: No Comments »

There’s no more “_global” in ActionScript 3. I wrote this class to bring it back. Here’s an example of exchanging values between two .swf files. example.swf assigns value into “_global” and external.swf watches it. The source file is here.

There are other solutions. AS3 Global Object is a powerful package that goes beyond “_global”. Jonathan Greene’s solution is very neat and easy, too. The basic of all solutions is to use static variables and functions. Using static variables and functions is the easiest method to communicate between classes and movie clips. I’ll explain that in future posts. Meanwhile, this entry in help manual helps to understand what “static” means.

Shang :: Mar.10.2008 :: actionscript 3, intermediate :: 7 Comments »