Well at least it doesn’t allow me to tune my guitar using a microphone (as I was hoping the new features added to the Sound class might).
I’m currently away from my lovely Takamine acoustic guitar with built in tuner, and have a fairly dodgy classical to play with at the moment. As I don’t have my standalone guitar tuner either I started looking for applications for my phone that would allow me to tune the guitar. I found a few, but none seemed to actually do anything after installation, so I started wondering whether Flash 8, 9 or 10 might be able to do the job. I did find a reasonable flash tuner, but this didn’t make use of the microphone (like both my proper guitar tuners do). I then investigated the new Flash 10 player features only to be disappointed when I read the following (taken from kaourantin.net):
Unfortunately some features did not make it into Flash Player 10: Extracting audio data from a microphone and extracting audio from a NetStream object. We are aware that both features are highly desirable, but for various reasons it was not possible to make this happen in this release.
Adobe’s missed a good opportunity to integrate some very powerful audio capabilities into the Flash player… but I’m sure there’s a good reason for it… right?
So it’s back to tuning the good ‘ol fashion way I suppose!
I’ve been a bit busy over the last few months. Here’s what I’ve been up to…
I’ve moved to the UK
I’ve travelled home again for a family reunion
I’ve read a good portion of Moock’s Essential ActionScript 3.0
I’ve drunk more Guinness than I care to (or can) remember in Ireland
I’ve sold a car
I’ve worked on my first AS3 site
I’ve used the Gaia Flash Framework
The last point is obviously what I’d like to delve in to a bit more.
For those of you that aren’t aware (like myself about 3 months ago) what the Gaia Flash Framework is, you can find out more at Steven Sacks comprehensive website - http://www.gaiaflashframework.com. I only stumbled upon the Framework as a result of someone else (can’t remember who it was now, but thanks!) posting about it on their blog.
In essence it’s a Framework that takes a lot of the leg work out of creating page based Flash sites. By Page based I mean sites that have a fairly standard navigation hierarchy. It can be used for more complex projects, though I found I struggled against the Framework more than it helped me some of the time.
The project I decided to use it on was for the SBS Australia Documentary website - mY Generation
The main issues I came up against in using the Framework for this site were the following:
- I couldn’t have two pages loaded on the screen from separate branches at the same time. So If I wanted a video from one section to remain visible on screen while the user navigated to the “TELL A FRIEND” section I couldn’t do this due to the way pages have to unload if there not part of the parent page node
- Using the transition engine, although powerful, quickly became very convoluted and confusing when testing the preloading of pages and assets. Though I suspect I found this as the Framework wasn’t quite suited to this type of project
- The file size of the entire project was larger than I would’ve preferred as each page had to have it’s own swf associated with it. This meant not easily being able to share assets like fonts amongst pages. This was partially addressed in later versions of the Framework, so I will have to see if I can utilise this functionality next time around.
- Later on in the project new releases of the Framework became available that significantly changed the implementation of some of the Frameworks features. This made it very difficult for me to upgrade and get the benefit of the bug fixes that were made
On the up side, it’s author Steven Sacks mustn’t spend a great deal of time sleeping as he seems to hold down a full time job whilst at the same time rapidly releasing new versions of the Framework and responding with very lengthy and informative posts on the forum. The documentation is also very good, though there were a few things missing which threw me for a loop (though most users probably wouldn’t have experienced the same issues as I was pushing the boundary’s of what the Framework was capable of). The documentation also gets updated very frequently with issues that users are experiencing in the forums.
I didn’t get to use the SEO capabilities of the Framework, but am finishing up my “new” (it’s been 2 years in the making) website now and am contemplating porting it all across to Gaia just for this 1 feature.
So check out the Framework, check out the SBS site, and let us know if you’ve had any experience with Gaia.
Just wanted to exclaim to the world (well the handful of people that happen to read this post anyway ;-) that FlashDevelop is freaking unbelievable!
After using the Flash CS3 IDE to edit code, FlashDevelop is pure bliss! I did try it a few Beta versions back, but never for an AS2 project that was half way through. The speed with which I can code in FlashDevelop Vs. the Flash IDE is increased 3 fold. I know Vista and CS3 and my rather old hardware (yes I’ve got 2Gb of memory) are causing some of the issues I experience when editing .as files in Flash, but FlashDevelop isn’t affected by these same issues.
I just want to say thanks to Philippe for the work he’s put into this program.
Here’s hoping Adobe pull their finger out and put a usable text editor into the next version of Flash. Until then, FlashDevelop is my new best friend.
Did a little comparison today of the AS2 components versus the AS3 components. Here’s what I found:
| Component |
AS3 |
AS2 |
| Button |
14Kb |
26Kb |
| Checkbox |
15Kb |
27Kb |
| ColorPicker |
19Kb |
NA |
| ComboBox |
35Kb |
55Kb |
| DataGrid |
41Kb |
59Kb |
| Label |
14Kb |
22Kb |
| List |
29Kb |
47Kb |
| NumericStepper |
18Kb |
28Kb |
| ProgressBar |
16Kb |
26Kb |
| RadioButton |
16Kb |
29Kb |
| ScrollPane |
21Kb |
38Kb |
| Slider |
17Kb |
NA |
| TextArea |
21Kb |
39Kb |
| TextInput |
15Kb |
25Kb |
| TileList |
33Kb |
NA |
| UILoader |
15Kb |
26Kb (mx.controls.Loader) |
| UIScrollBar |
18Kb |
34Kb |
I also note that there is no AS3 component equivalents for the AS2 Accordian, Alert, DateChooser, DateField, Menu, MenuBar, Tree and Window components. What is the plan for these rather useful missing components? Or are they seen as being Flex related so are no longer released with the Flash IDE? Can someone shed some light on how we can get access to these missing components?
I’m not sure why this particular feature wasn’t given a bit more airplay, but this little tidbit from the new Introducing Adobe Flash CS3 Professional article got me slightly excited:
Code editor enhancements include Script Assist mode for ActionScript 3.0 and the same compiler as Flex Builder.
The same compiler as Flex Builder…? As in the one that’s about 10 times quicker than the compiler in Flash 8?! I’m hoping that the Flex compiler in Flash CS3 works as quickly on AS3.0 as it does on AS2.0 as I’ll probably be writing that for a while yet. Would love a comment from someone more in the know than me on this.
I’ve just been watching the tours for a few of the new CS3 products and am wondering if anyone can shed some light on what components are included in Flash CS3?
The list I have (and this is only taken from the product tour video) is:
Button
CheckBox
ColorPicker*
ComboBox
DataGrid
Label
List
NumericStepper
ProgressBar
RadioButton
ScrollPane
Slider*
TextArea
TextInput
TileList*
UILoader
UIScrollBar
(* new for CS3 as far as I can tell)
Continue reading ‘New Flash CS3 Components’
Seems the latest stats for December 2006 have just been published here
It’s interesting to see what a difference Russia, India and Taiwan have made to the December 2006 Flash 9 stats. In all other Flash versions for December 2006, the emerging markets lag behind the rest of the world for Flash installs. However, Flash 9 seems to be installed more regularly in the emerging markets that it is in the established markets. I’m sure there’s some whiz bang statistical terms I could be using here - but hopefully this conclusion will suffice: Indian’s love Flash 9. It’s great to see the emerging markets really getting on board with the installation of new technology, makes my life as a flash developer just that bit easier. Continue reading ‘Latest Flash Penetration stats’
Firstly, let me wish all and sundry out there a very happy New Year! Hope you’ve got your resolutions down on paper, and have made a start on achieving them :-)
I blogged earlier about the Flash auto-update not being enabled by the boffins at Adobe. Well it seems that it is now operational! On Christmas day, upon booting up my laptop, there was the little auto update icon in the taskbar! Shame there wasn’t a little festive theme accompanying the icon, but it was a nice Chrissy present from Adobe none the less.
I've finally gotten around to changing the name of my Macromedia bookmark to Adobe along with the URL it points to from macromedia.com to adobe.com
So, it's official - Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia is finally complete ;-)
[and now for something completely different…]
I've been mucking about with bezier curves for a clients project, and the movie below illustrates how easy it is to get carried away with programmatic animation. Careful when turning the blur on, it really chews up the CPU!
If anyones got ideas on how to ease the bezier tween , I’m all ears!
Just a quickie to say that my IE version of Flash 8 hasn't auto updated itself yet. I'm guessing it's something to do with the me installing and uninstalling that plugin so many times (using Flash plugin switcher) that it doesn't really know whether it's coming or going anymore. Though I'm sure there's an even better technical reason out there for this behaviour (or lack of it). If anyone can shed any light on why IE's stuck on version 8, I would be interested to hear. I updated Firefox manually to the version 9 player.
