Using Flashdevelop on a limited user account in Windows

I've been using flashdevelop for writing my AS these days, and its a pretty nice editor, I'd say. This new work place that I joined a few days back, everyone-except the Flash developers-(the C++ devs and Java devs, that is) use Linux for their development. And when I was given a user account for this windows machine, I ended up getting a limited access user account. Now that meant that I have to go through all those 'request for software installation-get sysadmin to install software' process. After a few unsuccessful attempts to get a local admin access - or a power user access, I had to accept the limited user account.

Now as I was getting started with coding, I started missing FlashDevelop. And went on to raise a request for installation of the same. And the sysadmin was kind enough to install it for me - from his admin account. But when I logged in from my account, I wasn't able to use it. FlashDevelop saves (and loads) the panel settings and stuff in xmls in the settings folder inside the flashdevelop program files folder. Now when I was logging in from the other user account, the folder was becoming unaccessible for my account. Doh!

We tried adding access to that particular folder for my user, and all that, and nothing seemed to help. And I had almost given up. Thought of going back to Eclipse + ASDT combo, and got it up and running. But at the back of my heart, I was still missing flashDevelop. Thats when this sysadmin came up with a idea. He temporarily added me to the powerusers user group, and then installed flashdevelop from my own account. Then removed me from the poweruser group, and hurray! It works now!!

MAX 2006 - Singapore

Two days after the MAX here in Singapore, am still high from the feeling of having been there. Having read a whole lot of things about the Las Vegas MAX conference on various blogs, this one was more of a selective re-run of a few sessions. So there wasn't something that made me go 'wow', but ya, you always get to learn a lot, when people are talking.

My agenda for this MAX was to go meet the people behind FSUG of Singapore. But it looked like the community isn't very active in here. I met Timothée Groleau and Arul Kumaran, and that was it. Tried to look around for Ryan but didn't get to see him. He was more in the creative track sessions I believe.

Robin and Ted and flexDaddy were pretty impressive. I did want to attend a few sessions on the Mobile track and a few in the creative track, but the sessions on the 'application development' track were pretty impressive that I couldn't switch to the other halls. Missed sessions from
Jeremy Clark and Bill Perry and Eric Natzke.

And as an aftermath of MAX, I've taken up evangelising Apollo this year. At work we are discussing about building a desktop client of a Flash app we are building, and I've already started 'selling' the idea of making it an apollo app. For now, looks like it might go wrapped in mProjector though.

A few pictures I took on the first day are in here. Haven't uploaded pics from the second day. After the second day at MAX, I came back to work- to spend the next 23 hrs straight at work! And went back home and slept abt 12 hrs in one go. Need to tune back to a normal 24 hr day schedule now!

So a few new things I learnt in there:
1. There will be a workflow that will suppport Apollo development in CS3 version of Flash, Dreamweaver and a future version of FlexBuilder.
2. Guys have started thinking/designing a 2-and-half D support in a upcoming version of flash player.
3.

Project BlackBox from Sun

Probably a lot of people have by now heard about the project blackBox, from Sun Microsystems. For those who haven't heard yet, BlackBox is a prototype of the "world's first virtualized data center". Its a complete datacenter system packed into a standard shipment container! Check out the video tour here.

I read it through Tim Bray's weblog . He describes the blackBox to be 'just totally drop-dead fucking cool'. And thats more or less the same I felt after going through their videos! ( he seems to have gone through some bashing for using the f-word in there, but thats out-of-scope of this post ;o)

Btw, I also came across this advertisement from Sun for Java - Java is everywhere: Pretty neat and appealing. Probably we should have some TV commercials for Flash as well :) What say?

code Search - google / Krugle ?

Google launched their codeSearch tool(http://google.com/codesearch) yesterday. And it doesn't know that there is a language called 'Actionscript' ?

Krugle(http://www.krugle.com) knows Actionscript. And I like what they have done for the UI as well.

How do you "code search" ? Google / Krugle ?

Full-time / Part-time flash developers required in Bangalore, India

A friend of mine is looking for a flash developers to work with them for Attomic Labs (http://www.attomiclabs.com/), either part-time or full-time.

The expected skillset includes:

Atleast a couple of years of RIA development experience in AS2.0 using OOP methodologies
Working Knowledge of XML
Should be a good team player
Understanding of AS1.0, Flash components-V1 & V2
and good communication skills, of course.

Component development experience in AS2.0 experience would be greatly appreciated.

If you feel that you have the above mentioned skills, please mail me your CV at [arulprasad at gmail dot com], and lets talk.

They are setting up a office in Bangalore, so candidates applying for a full-time position should ideally be willing to re-locate to Bangalore (if not currently in Bangalore, that is). Remote involvement is possible, for successful part-time candidates.

Showing list of fonts in a Flash V2 comboBox formatted with the corresponding fonts

I was browsing the actionscript.org forums today and found a query by a user. It read "I have a combobox full of font names. I was thinking that it would be pretty cool to have the actual font format show in the label as well. ...."

I had a lil free time and thought I'd give it a shot.

This is what you need to do:
1. Drag a comboBox component from the components Panel to your FLA's Library.

2. Add the following code:

/* --------------------------- code starts here --------------------------- */
import mx.controls.ComboBox;
var myCB:ComboBox;

function init ()
{
myCB = ComboBox(createClassObject(ComboBox,"myCB", this.getNextHighestDepth()));
myCB.setSize(175,22);
myCB.rowCount = 7;
myCB.dataProvider = TextField.getFontList ();
myCB.open ();
myCB.addEventListener ("change", function ()
{
myCB.textField.setStyle ("fontFamily", myCB.value);
});
myCB.addEventListener ("load", setCBListFonts);
myCB.addEventListener ("scroll", setCBListFonts);
}
function setCBListFonts ()
{
for (var i in myCB.dropdown.listContent)
{
var _tf:TextFormat = myCB.dropdown.listContent[i].cell.getTextFormat ();
_tf.font = myCB.dropdown.listContent[i].cell.text;
myCB.dropdown.listContent[i].cell.setTextFormat (_tf);
}
}

init();
/* --------------------------- code ends here --------------------------- */

3. Test Movie, and you should be done!

This is how the final SWF looks: (If SWF doesnt show up below,check it out here)

[OT] : blogspot.com, typepad.com, geocities.com banned in India!

I had been wondering why a few of my favourite blogs were not accessible today morning. And only by evening(when a friend of mine told over chat) did I know that my blog was blocked too! I figured out the govt of India had asked the ISPs to block a few blogs because they were supposed to have 'objectionable content'. Wonder if they mistook me when I said i'm a flasher ;o)

On a serious note, I'm pretty seriously pissed off!

More info here.

Meanwhile someone let me know about this site:http://www.pkblogs.com And guess what was the first blog I read through this proxy? The one which was supposed to be the reason behind this ban (na, am not gonna provide a link) - and I never even knew about this blog before! Guess the Govt of India has ended up providing some indirect advertising for those bloggers with 'objectionable content'!

Oops, now will the sue me for saying this? :P

May be I'll cut it short here. Hoping they lift the ban soon! - Or may be its time I booked my own domain name...

Update:07/ 22/ 06 : the ban seems to have been lifted off now!

18 Errors - No comments found

I was browsing through the AS3LR on LiveDocs today and at some point in time stopped at this (http://livedocs.macromedia.com/specs/actionscript/3/as3_specification195.html) page. Returning back to the FF window after a while freaked me out for a second.

LoL

saving XML from Flash, using PHP

I was trying to create a XML file on the server, using PHP. The XML string was being sent from Flash, by adding the same as a property to a LoadVars obj. ( Since I had to send few other data items as well - other than the XML string, I couldn't use Flash's XML.sendAndLoad method; Ok, I can see you guys yelling out, "why not AMFPHP!", but then the app was designed by non Flash clients and they didn't know AMFPHP then)

On the PHP end the following was the code to save the doc.

$doc = new DomDocument();
$doc->loadXML($xmlstr);
$doc->save($picture_path);

When I tried saying the xml, I wasn't able to get it saved. The error was at the loadXML method call. PHP wasnt able to load the XML, from the XMLString. But I was able to trace the XML string. Except for the escape characters for double Quotes ('"' were '\"' at the php end) for the XML node attributes, things looked fine. I tried copying the same string and hardcoding it on the php page, and the XML file was being created, with no issues.

After a few attempts, I was able to narrow down the problem to the attributes in the XMLNodes. the escape characters were indeed the problem. ( am not a php programmer, so, i dont know why)

Now this is what I have as a solution to this:

in the php end, i have done a stripslashes call, before i load it on the DomDocument Object. Like this:

$doc = new DomDocument();
$xmlstr = stripSlashes($xmlstr);
$doc->loadXML($xmlstr);
$doc->save($picture_path);

And it works!

[OT] - Look what they did to Flash 8!

Found this link on flashcoders list today. Awesome stuff!

http://abum.com/file/shadow/animations/17632.swf

Reminded me of the XIAO - XIAO movies that used to make rounds loong time back, when i was in college, (and I barely knew flash then)