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Loading ...Welcome to the companion website for Learning ActionScript 3.0 (O’Reilly). Ideally, you have found your way here after acquiring a copy of the book, and you are looking for further information about material referenced therein. If you’re new to this site, please continue reading. If you are a veteran to these pages, thanks for coming back, and have fun exploring.
Archive for the 'General' Category
The latest Flash Professional update, 11.0.1, does not modify the version number in the About box. This is because the update adds and alters support files but does not update the application binary.
It’s a natural habit to look at the version number for confirmation that the update was successful. Seeing 11.0.0.485 after an update may prompt you to try the process again even though it may not be necessary. Ideally, this will save you some time.
The easiest way to see that the update was applied is to look for iPad support in your Publish Settings. Check the menu File > Publish Settings: Flash “tab” > Player drop down to make sure it says iPhone OS. In addition, clicking the resulting Settings button will show iPad in the Device drop down menu in the middle of the settings dialog.
You can also check for a successful update without opening Flash by checking an AIR version number:
Windows:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash CS5\en_US\Configuration\External Libraries\Air2_0.dll
MAC:
/Applications/Adobe Flash CS5/Common/Configuration/External Libraries/Air2_0.bundle
The version number after the update should be 11.0.0.489. (Thanks to Nivesh Rajbhandari, for confirmation on the external file version.)
Here is a partial set of files from my Tips and Tricks session at this year’s fabulous Flashbelt conference. (The remainder of the material covered revolved around live demos or use of code by those a lot smarter and more talented than I. More information is in the archive.)
Thanks to Dave Schroeder and everyone at Flashbelt, as well as all the speakers and attendees, for another great conference. I saw less of the show this year due to other obligations, but still had a great time. Next year, it’s vacation time!
Update: To answer some of the questions coming in, Flash CS5 still uses AS3. ActionScript 3.0 is the core scripting language of the Flash Platform. Flash still supports AS1/2 as well as AS3, but Flash Builder 4, Flex Builder 3, the Flex SDK (command line compile) FDT, Flash Develop, AIR, and similar, all require AS3.
We’re trying to organize possible improvements to our book, Learning ActionScript 3.0 (O’Reilly) and we’re looking for opinions about which changes are needed.
We hope to have exchanges with readers that have specific suggestions about ways to simplify, clarify, or otherwise improve the text. Our current thinking is that comments aren’t the best way to get this kind of detail, especially when we expect reader opinions to differ.
So, we’re planning to create an advisory board of sorts. We’re thinking about asking which chapters readers have had questions about, or possibly assign chapters to folks who might look for problem areas. Then we’re considering creating an email group of some kind where we can ask everyone to contribute to a topic, and follow-up with specific emails.
If you’re interested in improving LAS3, please use the contact form to send us an email. Let us know how you’d like to help, and how to get in touch. Please be sure to use the “Advisory Board LAS3″ subject so your email will be routed correctly.
We really want to consider reader opinions and try to develop improvements along requested lines. We hope you can help!
Some of you may have seen these preliminary test images images on my flickr:
If your up for it …. i am working on collecting colors and words for use with this project … so watch the video (below) and go to the link (below) you will be able to make a contribution.
LEARN ABOUT THE TOOLS
video, (may not all make sense but the tool is shown which is the important part)
POPULATE THE DB
population tool add some colors
I have a smart filter that checks for people doing weird things like curses etc… so don’t bother trying to do that.
Additional info here, scroll down to see our presentation about the project
Over at LearningFlashCS4.com, I posted the files from my Flash on the Beach presentation on IK in Flash CS4 Pro. You can read about it here, and look for more posts on the subject in the future.
Back in late October of last year I started up a new website called ActionSnippet.com. I created the site because I really enjoy reading code - I often skip all the paragraphs in a blog post and just go straight for the code. A new code snippet is posted daily on ActionSnippet.com, usually with a brief description.
I would have linked to ActionSnippet.com sooner but I wasn't sure what direction the site would go in, so I wanted to give it some time to evolve before linking to it. After approximately 260 code snippet posts I can safely say there is much more useful/educational code on ActionSnippet.com than there is weird useless experimental code.
In this post I'd like to highlight a handful of useful snippets for everyday projects and I'll link to a few advanced graphical snippets. If you just want to dig right in, you can look at the all posts page which is just a list of every code snippet on the site.
As you read each of the following descriptions, consider opening Flash, pasting the code into timeline script and testing the swf.
FileReference.save()
ActionScript 3.0:
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var file:FileReference = new FileReference();
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stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClick, false, 0, true);
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function onClick(evt:MouseEvent):void {
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file.save("some text.\nsome more text", "actionsnippet.txt");
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}
This is one of my favorite features of Flash 10. We can save any kind of file to a user's computer using the FileReference.save() method. Its first argument is for the data to put in the file. This can be a String, ByteArray, or XML object. The second argument is the name of the file.
If you paste this code in your timeline all you need to do is click the stage and you'll get a dialogue asking where you would like to save the file "actionsnippet.txt".
I like to make my custom UI elements easy to skin. If we wanted to create a check box class that was easy to skin, one thing we could do is create an FLA based AS3 component. Unfortunately to do that takes advanced programming skills. If you're an intermediate programmer you might want to be able to create a skinnable UI element without all of the AS3 component architecture.
One way to achieve this is by creating a custom class that uses Library elements as assets. To increase flexibility (for swapping skins, for example), you can create each graphical element of your check box, store them in your Library, assign a linkage class name to each element, and then pass those linkage class names into your custom class.
If you are a teacher or trainer currently using Learning ActionScript 3.0 in a class, please get in touch. We are considering developing additional teaching resources (we have nothing created as of yet) and are anxious to know what you think would help you most. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the book? What tools will help you in your teaching? Any opinions will be appreciated!
If you're a student using Learning ActionScript 3.0 in a class, please let us know what kinds of class resources you think would be useful, and tell your instructor we're looking for input!
