Archive for November, 2008

21
Nov

Flash on the U.S. Beach

By Rich 0 Comments
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Categories: General

I have been meaning to write about this for a while, but Flash on the Beach, the best Flash conference to date, is finally coming to the United States.

For some of us yanks, part of the charm of Flash on the Beach may be it’s Brighton, UK location, and we won’t lose that any time soon. There will still be a UK event a year from now. For others in our neck of the woods, traveling to England may not be affordable or may be a harder sell (psychologically) for employers, family, etc.–especially with the weakness of the economy.

Now, everyone can take advantage of these former liabilities by joining John Davey and his amazing crew in sunny Miami. Americans get home-field advantage, and everyone else gets to buy a few more rounds on the U.S. dollar.

There has never been a better time to commit to a Flash conference, for several reasons. Flash CS4 and Flash Player 10 are finally out, and bring with them a slew of new features and additional ActionScript classes to take advantage of. A lot of new projects are hitting, or soon to be hitting labs.adobe.com, such as Flex 4 (brewing nicely), Flash Catalyst (formerly Thermo), AIR 1.5, PixelBender, Cocomo, Alchemy (rock!), and much more.

Most importantly, perhaps, the big impact this economy is having on the job market means that being up to date, and networking with colleagues, peers, and even possible employers, has never been more important.

Those are some of the practical reasons you should go to Flash on the Beach. Some may argue that a better reason is that it’s so much damn fun. Everyone from the conference host and brain trust, John Davey, all the way across the board to the volunteer Lifeguards, work really hard to make this an intimate, fun event. John puts a limit on how large the event can be, he works really hard on carefully picking speakers and shaping topics, and he plans nighttime events that are purely social so everyone can connect. I don’t mean parties (of which there are nightly affairs) I mean “Inspired Sessions” where creative folk talk about their process and everyone gathers in one big theater to imbibe and enjoy.

Back to the capacity again, this idea has come up in discussion that John may impose a limit that he guards a little too aggressively. The past two years, Flash on the Beach has sold out well before it was scheduled to begin. That’s positively awesome for those that get tickets early because you can really meet the folks you’ve learned from and read about, connect with friends, and focus on content. Unfortunately, it also means that a lot of folks are left out every year. I got a lot of emails asking if I could get people into my AS3 workshop this year–something I had little to no influence over, I’m afraid.

So, if you’re thinking of going, be sure to act sooner, rather than later. Early-bird tickets are already on sale.

Here is a list of the speakers that have been announced so far (with more on the way). FotB usually gathers the best speakers from around the globe, and this event seems to be carrying that tradition forward.

  • Mark Anders
  • Carlo Blatz
  • Lee Brimelow
  • Rob Chiu
  • Brendan Dawes
  • Carla Diana
  • Julian Dolce
  • Joa Ebert
  • Chuck Freedman
  • Richard Galvan
  • Hoss Gifford
  • GMUNK Bradley Grosh
  • Branden Hall
  • Ralph Hauwert
  • Robert Hodgin
  • Elliott Hugh
  • Mike Jones
  • Mario Klingemann
  • Koen De Weggheleire
  • Lisa Larson-Kelley
  • Seb Lee-Delisle
  • Andre Michelle
  • Stacey Mulcahy
  • Chris Orwig
  • Robert Reinhardt
  • Rich Shupe
  • Grant Skinner
  • Geoff Stearns
  • Craig Swann
  • Jer Thorp
  • Carlos Ulloa
  • Dr. Woohoo!
You can even win a 3-day pass, if you have a blog or web site. Just display a linked event badge (see the badge on this page), let Flash on the Beach folks know about it, and you'll be entered into a drawing to win admission! Check out the info on the FotB site for more: Win a 3-day pass! 

(I wonder if we’re eligible to win?)

I hope to see you there!

13
Nov

Flash CS4 still uses AS3

By Rich 0 Comments
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Categories: General

I guess this is answer questions week. I seem to be writing a series of posts (more coming) written to address questions from multiple emails or conference appearances. This has to do with AS4/ECMA 4. If you frequent any of the blogs, forums, lists, or other sources for current Flash info, this post will not contain any new information. However, if you’re new to AS3 and have come to this site by way of our book, you will probably be reassured to know that Flash CS4 still uses ActionScript 3.

Flash CS4 does introduce some new classes and ActionScript features, but these are consistent with minor language updates that accompany most new authoring tool versions. Here’s a short round up of links that Mike Chambers put together and the new CS4/AS3 docs.

ActionScript 3.0 will likely remain the primary scripting language of the Flash Platform for at least another 18 months, if not longer. (This is assumed because Adobe tends to release product upgrades approximately every 18 months). Furthermore, if the next version of Flash (or another Flash Platform app, such as Flex) introduces ActionScript 4, it will likely be an expansion of AS3. That is, AS3 is probably the last major language rewrite for quite some time, so now is a great time to invest in learning ActionScript 3.

On a loosely related note (and, again, nothing new for the community-aware), the recent rejection of the ECMA 4 proposal will likely have little impact on ActionScript. Here’s a bit more on the subject, also from Mr. Chambers.

11
Nov

Passing Arguments with Events

By Rich 6 Comments
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Categories: Ch03: Properties, Methods, Events

One of the questions about ActionScript 3 that I am most often asked is how to send arguments to a listener function along with an event. Recently, a reader named Jim asked just such a question.

To provide some background for this question, you could send argument data to a standard function like this?

function showMsg(msg:String):void {
    trace(msg);
}
showMsg("Claire");

However, in an event listener, only one argument is allowed in the listener function: the argument responsible for receiving the event data. Using a standard mouse click listener as an example…

stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, showMsg, false, 0, true);
function showMsg(evt:MouseEvent):void {
    trace("hello");
}

…the kind of question asked is, can you do something like this:

stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, showMsg, "hello",
                       false, 0, true);
function showMsg(evt:MouseEvent, msg:String):void {
    trace(msg);
}

The answer is, not out of the box. The existing AS3 events do not provide for this capability. However, to answer Jim’s question, the best way to pass arguments with an event is to create your own event class by extending AS3’s Event class.

Continue reading ‘Passing Arguments with Events’