squidder.com

Google to Flash: Game over, man! Game over!

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:01:58 -0500

Set up your sentry turrets, because google is coming for your flash content. Sure, it'll look fine after the initial pass. But just let it gestate a few days and the innards of your flash movie will be splayed all over the place.

It really remains to be seen how this new development from The Company Google will affect us flash developers. In some ways, it could be bad -- imagine an instance where only some of the text is embedded but not necessary representational. Yeah, yeah, it'll index data calls as well, but still, you should probably stick to some good ol' SEO best practices for now... On the other hand, it probably spells relief for clients, which can only mean more work for flash devs everywhere... and disaster for Earth.

Out.as to rest of world: Are you not entertained?

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:40:56 -0500

We at squidder wanted to highlight an oldie, but goodie, package, from our heros over at Big Spaceship labs. Out does just about everything you might want a logging tool to do, including the ability to exclude certain classes from speaking out at will.

Strength & honor, Big Spaceship. Strength & honor.

Dear SWFMacMouseWheel, will you marry me?

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:38:05 -0500

The mad genius over at PixelBreaker has come up with a really clever javascript/flash hybrid implementation of the mouse wheel for mac. And to top it all off, integration with SWFObject is already done. Seriously, SWFMacMouseWheel, ring is in the mail.

Exclude actionscript bytes, avoid hurt feelings

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:11:02 -0500

Here's a cool one: Matthew Tretter over at ex animo has come up with a particularly clever way of using JSFL to avoid redundant actionscript bytes when building complex applications by excluding actionscript classes (which you could easily do in AS2, but not so easily in AS3). Well played, jasofel, well played.

Beware scrollRect: Seems great, can be nightmare.

Wed, 28 May 2008 09:22:42 -0500

We here at squidder have a love/hate relationship with scrollbars. Partly because, while seemingly simple, they can overly complicated very quickly.

So when we wrote our latest scrollbar class, we decided to try out scrollRect. Seemed pretty strait-forward -- just pass in a rectangle and it takes care of all the masking, offset and everything. Way more efficient than setting a mask and then moving that about... or so we thought. (cue dramatic crescendo)

FreshAirApps.com: a breath of fresh, uh, air.

Tue, 13 May 2008 17:11:13 -0500

A lot of people really haven't figured out the best use for AIR apps yet, and we at squidder are no different. Most of time, an online app will let you get away with most everything that you want to do. Personally, I think the infatuation with AIR comes from a desire for flash developers to feel more like 'real' developers (zing!).

No, seriously. One of the best ways to see what to do (and what not to do) is to just take a look at what other people are doing. And there may be no better place to do that than at freshairapps.com. Regular expression checker anyone?

And yes, I feel bad for writing that headline.

SWFAddress plus mod_rewrite = SEO bliss

Thu, 01 May 2008 14:45:45 -0500

We at squidder often talk about the best way to bring SEO and accessibility to our flash work. And in many ways, the work is simple when you add in fancy tools like SWFObject -- just spit out the content you want to appear to a search engine in the div that gets overwritten!

But what if you've got an extremely complex site, with many sections, pages and drill downs that you want to make accessible? One option is to simply spit out all the content, no matter how long, into that same div. Yes, that will get indexed by search engines, but not only does it make the page you're loading very large, it also doesn't link users directly to the content they searched for.

That's where SWFAddress and mod_rewrite come in. Full deets after the jump.

Dictionary + Timer = Delicious

Thu, 01 May 2008 12:31:08 -0500

I encountered a problem yesterday in attempting to instantiate many (5-30 ish) timer objects while needing to provide each with a unique parameter. The ez solution? Create a dictionary object with whatever arguments you need to pass to your timer. Then add your timer to the dictionary. Once your timer is up, simply look up the dictionary definition for your timer event's target. Here we go:

private var dictionary : Dictionary = new Dictionary();

private function yourFunction(x:Number : void {

var timer:Timer = new Timer(500,1);

dictionary[timer] = x;

timer.start();

timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, callBack);

}

private function callBack(e:Event) : void {

trace("!! my parameter = " + dictionary[e.target]);

}

New 3d platform: so beautiful, should have sent poet.

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:43:17 -0500

The new Alternativa3D platform needs to be seen to be believed.

This kind of stuff makes me love flash and at the same time never use it again. Excuse me while I go weep quietly to myself.

Stop. You had me at TransformMatrixProxy.

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 09:42:45 -0500

We at squidder have a total actionscript crush on Jack over at GreenSock. He continues his run of amazing classes his TransformMatrixProxy class, which performs some kind of strange voodoo magic using the transform.matrix property to let you tween skewX, skewY and more.

To get access to this awesome class, you'll need to join Club GreenSock. 50 scoots gets you these goods and more.

Faust: Use flash, skip deal with devil.

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:21:58 -0500

We're late to the game as usual on this one, but if you've ever had a client who wanted MAXIMUM standards complacency and compatibility, its time you checked out Faust flash augmenting standard, evangelized by the future-loving folks over at space150.

Basically, its a really clever way of passing the content that you're overwriting when you use SWFObject directly into the flash. Super clean and requires only one data call. Handy for things like navigation bars, which while fancy in flash, can also easily be viewed (and indexed) without flash. Hats off, space150, hats off.

Cool kids love fast cars, SnapToPixel flash extension.

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:12:37 -0500

A universal truth of flash is that stuff just needs to be on pixel to look good. Sometimes that's a total pain in the butt. You may get handed a flash file by someone who doesn't realize the importance of the rounded number, or you may just forget until its too late.

That's where you can play it like the Fonz and use our SnapToPixel flash extension. Written in JSFL (or jasofell, if you prefer), the command lives in "Commands -> SnapToPixel" and quite simply runs through all the keyframes on each layer and makes sure each object, text or movieclip is on pixel.

Keep in mind that this will not work on strait-up shapes because of the way jasofell treats them. There also may be a little hankiness if your object is rotated at all (at which point, snapping to pixel won't matter anyway).

Originally written a year ago, we've updated to work correctly with CS3. You can check it out at our google code page. And, if you're so curious, you can see the outrageously simple source code in our squidder svn.

The coolest thing you'll see today

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:16:39 -0500

We at squidder love all manner of technology, not just flash. Like wii remotes. And Johnny Lee. And you should too. If you haven't seen this stuff, be sure to check out the video above.

It'll be the coolest thing you'll see today. More Johnny Lee's wizardry can be seen at his site.

Users to Adobe: "make some noise", "raise the roof"

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:13:31 -0500

If there's one thing that could be a ton cooler in AS3, its the audio capabilities. Yeah, we've all had fun making spectrum analyzers, but that was back in the hazy, drug riddled days of 2007. This is 2008 and 2008 demands better audio stability and features.

That's where the "Adobe, MAKE SOME NOISE" (sic) campaign comes in. Besides yelling at us, the project aims to end the spotty performance of the existing Sound packages, as well as push for some new, and nifty sounding (HA!), features for the next round of flash.

Coke Zero game fun, incorrectly refers to football.

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:52:42 -0500

While I don't like to post stuff that you can readily find at the FWA site (squidder awards?), I just caught myself playing with this new Coke Zero game for over 10 minutes. Which is an eternity, really. Of course, you're talking to the guy that seriously can't wait until Line Rider is a DS game.

Overall, the experience does a magnificent job with video and emulating very well that Tarantino, Bobby Rodriguez style (my personal hero. Who else can direct Dusk 'till Dawn AND Spy Kids?). Hats off, too, for reasonable loading times.