Bulk loader is an excellent open source package for managing multiple file loads in AS3. Supporting a wide variety of file types (xml, swfs, images, sounds and more) as well as multiple progress indications (files loaded / total files, weighted percentage and beyond), it’s hard to imagine writing a big, asset heavy project without it.
Crazy sounding, I know (I know!). And a few months ago, I would have told you that it was in fact crazy. But that was before I found baluga.net’s webthumb.
Almost offensively easy to use, Webthumb’s API works off a simple xml query that you can make from almost anywhere. It’s very easy to set up a lot of the finer details as well, including how the thumbnail is cropped, delay before taking the thumbnail and of course the size — indeed, you could just have a full view the site as opposed to a thumbnail.
The service is free to try out, with a 100 free credits a month (one request counts as one or more credits depending), though additional ones are quite reasonably priced. And while I probably wouldn’t recommend generating a thumbnail each time from the flash, there’s certainly no reason you couldn’t set up a cron job using flash or VRML or whatever the kids are into these days.
Lee Brimelow, of TheFlashBlog fame, has posted up a neat AIR app that lets you easily download videos from YouTube in their original flv format. Good example of something that really works well for AIR – more often than not, people make AIR apps out of things that should really just be on the web (you need to make that countdown timer into an application? really?). Next steps: convert to quicktime and add to iTunes.
Sometimes all you want to do is wait a few seconds to make a call to a given function, particularly when you’re doing some sequenced animation. While this is certainly easier now that we’ve got the Timer instead of setInterval (*shudder*), it’s still not a one-liner, especially once you take garbage collection into account.
That’s where Delayer comes in.
- import com.squidder.delayer.Delayer;
- new Delayer( _testfunction , 3000 , “hello there” , 33 );
- function _testfunction( s:String , n:Number ) : void {
- trace( s + ” , ” + n );
- }
Simple enough! The only required variables are the function and the delay (in milliseconds). From there, you can pass through as many arguments you like, if any. There’s also a cancel function, in case you’re into that kind of thing.
TweenMax is the band new tween class, from the outrageously brilliant mind of Jack Doyle. It is the wonderful love child of TweenLite and TweenFilterLite and has some really excellent features, not least of which is the inclusion of bezier points, so we can finally and easily do some tweens on a curve.
Amazingly, Jack managed to pack all of this functionality in 8k (vs 3k for TweenLite), so serious hats off to him – I can certainly say we’ll be using this from now on. Be sure to check out his comparison chart for full deets.
Now more than ever, flash developers are dependent on outside source code for tweening. In as2, you could get away with using the built in tween class, but the as3 version has proved itself virtually unusable, especially in light of some of the alternatives.
There are a slew of good options out there:
Tweener,
TweenLite,
TweenMax,
Go, and more, all with similar feature sets. So which one’s the best?
We here at squidder have this debate often, with some devs who prefer Tweener and others who rely on TweenLite. Fortunately, there are others who have done the heavy lifting for us to give a numbers to numbers face-off.
My favorite point of comparison is the
speed tester over at GreenSock. Although it was created by the author of TweenLite (so you could cry foul, I suppose, though it doesn’t seem like there’s any reason to), it seems to be the easiest way to quickly compare tweens in a real world situation.
For those of you interested in running your own test, you can roll over to the
TweenBencher. Again, this is a tool created by one of the makers of a tween class (Go), but read that as you will. Regardless, the tool certainly puts out some good hard numbers.
Personally, I don’t think you can go wrong with TweenLite TweenMax, but one thing is for certain: they’re all better than the built-in tween classes.
We’re going to start taking care of things here in NY by providing a standard method in (almost) all the swf’s we generate that will take care of killing itself (stopping Timers, tweens, etc) and generally cleaning up its p00p. Of course, this will ultimately depend on ass-tight documentation since we all like to play resource musical chairs on projects…
CDN/Streaming services, like Akamai Stream OS and Limelight, are great. And if you’re going to have a ton of traffic, streaming live events and more, they are indispensable. But what if you have a small project? Or you’re just looking to experiment?
Chances are, if you have a small need, Akamai will just point you to one of their partners that they basically resell bandwidth to. There are many of these partners and, in my experience, probably the best thing is to just call Akamai and ask they direct you to a partner that fits your needs.
But there’s a big difference when you’re calling from a big agency and when you’re calling as a freelancer with a small client.
I’ve experienced both and will say that the latter can often be disheartening. But there are alternatives, which is where
Influxis comes in. Don’t let the 1992 green on black design fool you. Starting as low as 10 bucks a month, they are perfect if you’re just looking to get to know flash media server. At the same time, I’ve also used them for much larger scale projects (30k+ server connects in 5 days) and they performed wonderfully.
When big CDNs are overkill, remember that there are reasonable alternatives. I’m sure there are hundreds of other companies like Influxis and if you’ve had a good experience with one, definitely let us know.
The April 2008 security update for the flash plug-in is coming. And it looks mean, especially if you do a lot of communication between flash and the browser in the form of javascript. While it shouldn’t effect those of you already using allowScriptAccess=”always”, its still worth checking against any flash applications you have out in the wild.
Face it. Documentation is a total pain. Fortunately, generating it doesn’t have to be. And while projects like NaturalDocs make things a little easier (and cleaner) to work with, there’s nothing quite like a good ol’ Adobe style, frame loving, totally unorganized doc folder.
Seriously, though. Commenting for ASDocs is extremely easy and ultimately a great way to go if there’s even the slightest possibility that someone else might look at your code. Plus, it’s standard and has a lot of great benefits, like showing up in introspection for those of you developing in FDT 3. And, if you are developing flash/AS3 in Eclipse, it’s super easy to set up documentation generation at the click of a button. Screenshots and more after the jump.
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