Mar
23
This video is truly inspirational and really demonstrates how digital media has changed and is changing our lives daily. It also looks like a screen cap of my monitor on a good day.
Hats off to whoever created this piece, nice work!
Mar
18
Not sure if this is a known issue, or a known fix (workaround). It’s a weird one. For whatever reason, I was getting no sound when test publishing (Command Enter) from the Flash IDE. I also noticed I wasn’t getting any sound when viewing a quicktime video. So I decided to scour the web for a solution. I found one.
Turns out all you have to do is open up GarageBand, create a new project, play a few notes on the piano (I chose Beethoven’s 5th, followed by Push It by Salt n Pepa – I don’t think these songs had anything to do with the fix), close GarageBand, and viola, sound again in the Flash Player and Quicktime.
I’m not sure why this works. Does anyone out there know why? Or better yet, does anyone know a proper fix for this? Mr. Jobs, are you reading my blog?
Mar
7
As I mentioned in my presentation on Tuesday at 360 Flex pipes.yahoo.com have launched a wide open crossdomain file today. Flash Community rejoice! This is huge news for us. Not only does it mean we can load in manipulated aggregated data feeds, it also means we can load in feeds that normally we do not have access to because there is no crossdomain policy. Before you could do this with a php or any server side based page proxy file. But now you don’t have to worry about that. Log in to pipes, do a simple fetch, save it, and load in your pipe through pipes.yahooapis.com. Simple! If needed, you can manipulate the feed, remove unnecessary data and output it. No one wants to parse irrelevant data, especially client side! As some have already said, pipes is the future of the Internet and if we didn’t know it already flash is too!
One last thing, if you want to learn more about using pipes, there is a great video tutorial up on the Yahoo! Developer Network.
Thanks a lot pipes from the entire flash development community.
Feb
28
I had a sadistic moment on the week-end. I am not sure what came over me. My desktop computer (probably the last PC I will ever buy) was running very sluggish, it has probably been a year since I did a complete overhaul of it. My mother board fried a year ago, so I got a new one, upgraded some ram, and dressed up the old beige elephant. So it is an AMD Athlon 2000+ with 2 gigs of ram, not too shabby. Since it was running sluggish and regular defrags didn’t seem to be doing anything I figured it was time to run the trusty old “format c:” and start fresh. So that went smooth, everything deleted, I put in my bootable xp pro disk, installed xp without a hiccup. For whatever reason there was an issue with my xp key, a quick call to India (or wherever the xp tech support is), a new key was issued to me and I was up and running.It was a beautiful thing only seeing that windows xp screen for a few seconds during boot up. So now I was left staring at that very ugly, over saturated hillside photo that is the default xp wallpaper. First thing, let’s hit windows update, make sure I have all the patches and updates, I didn’t think there should be too many since the disk I installed from had SP2 on it, I was wrong, about 250 megs of updates.
Time to eat lunch, wash the car, etc. while Windows downloads the updates, installs them, and restarts 42 times.
Ok, I’m back, everything seems good to go. Once again I am staring at that horrible wallpaper. Whatever my turkey sandwich was spiked with made me want to try and upgrade to Vista. A clean install, nothing to lose on my machine, should be pretty straight forward, right? So I hit up the vista site, I see they have an application you can download to see if your system is Vista ready. Perfect! I download it, run it, fairly straight forward process. Only took about 2 minutes. Good news, my system passed. Only warning is my sound card driver. No problem, hardware vendor has drivers on their site.
So I go out and pick up a copy of Vista, yes, a legit copy, hear that FBI, Bill, a legit copy! $250 (or whatever the price was), not bad, heck, it’s the life line of your computer. So I stick the disk in, a very ugly blue and green screen greets me. From this screen I can run the test again or install Vista. I was still proud of my system for passing the test the first time I didn’t think he deserved the stress of going through that again. So I clicked the install Vista button. Waiting, waiting, waiting, blue and green screen, no text. Them WHAMO! My first error, I didn’t even make it to the first step of the install process and I have an error.
Supposedly my computer doesn’t have full ACPI support and Vista cannot be installed! Um, what, but my boy passed your test? The test results didn’t mention anything about this. My XP hardware profile says I have ACPI, why can’t Vista see it? WTF?!?!? The only interactive element on this very painful message window is an OK button. I click it and it just closes the Vista Installer. I tried it again, restarted, tried it again, the same message every time.
Now I’m pissed (seems to happen the longer I work on a Windows based system)! The free online test said my system was good to go. I buy the software, I open the software (once it is opened it can’t be returned), I attempt to install it and I learn it can’t be installed on my “Vista-Ready” system.
So that’s my story, I told you it was short, I wish I could write more but I didn’t even make it to step one. Once again, thank you Microsoft. You really know how to drive people to other OS’s. Very generous, do you get tax exemptions because of this charity work.
UGH!
Jan
19
I am not one to usually bash Microsoft, I usually keep it in, but I recently switched to a Mac and I love it. But if I could ask Microsoft for one thing, I could ask for a million things to make their software better. But I just want one tiny thing that has pissed me off for awhile now.Why is it when you double click on a URL in IE that the entire thing doesn’t highlight? It stops at the start of the query string. So only the address before the ? is highlighted, then you type in your new address and you get a 404 or 500 error. Firefox does it on mac and pc, Safari does it, but IE, nope.
Like I said, it’s minor. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I hate having to select the URL, drag and highlight the entire thing or hit CTRL A when a simple double click should do exactly what I want.
Ok, end of rant. Thank you for your time.
Jan
19
When I think back and reflect on the last 10 years of my life, a lot has changed, or has it? I have been involved with the internet in some way or another since the early to mid 90′s, essentially the beginning of when it began to take off for the general public. My first question is, has the Internet changed in the last 10 years. Of course it has! But wait, the Internet itself hasn’t changed. It is the same setup, however, how we use it and the technology to access it has changed (thank god). I remember my first time connecting to something outside of my computer, a network, sort of. It was a BBS, and I connected to it via my 900 baud modem connected to my Commodore 64 computer. On the BBS I could download games, leave messages for other users, ask questions, request games or software. Sound familiar? This was in the 80s!! File sharing as we know it today wasn’t even a twinkle in Shawn Fanning’s eye. I also thought by looking up a company in the phone book, I could dial their regular phone line and hack into their systems. I called banks, I called car companies, even my school, sorry to all those receptionists who had to listen to the soothing sounds of connections attempts. Ok, enough reminiscing. What’s my point.
The Internet came out of nowhere, and literally changed the world as we knew it. Sure it took a little while to take off, but what new medium doesn’t. When TV was invented in the 50′s, not everyone had a television set, there were only a few shows. It probably wasn’t until the 70s when most families had TVs in their living rooms. In 15 years (or so), the public facing Internet has gone from a couple sites to more than a billion users online everyday. There is a generation growing up right now who will never know what it is like without email or SMS messaging. What it was like to write a letter and wait weeks for a response.
OK, enough history, what are you getting at Scott? Good question, but in my incoherent rambling I do have a point. The Internet has changed society, no question about it. If you think otherwise shake that thing above your shoulders. It was only 8 or so years ago when you actually had to go into a bank to do your banking. If you were single and looking for a partner, you actually had to get off your ass and meet someone at a club or on a party line phone service. It was only 10-12 years ago if you wanted to research a car before you bought it you had to go into a dealership, grab some brochures, and low and behold, talk to a sales person in a bad sports jacket. What else could we possibly do with this ancient (I use the term loosely) technology? A better question, what can’t we do?
I have been in this industry long enough to experience some extreme ups and some very painful downs. And right now, we are in a very lucrative up. However, it’s different this time. The industry is smarter. The crash at the turn of the millennium, the dot bomb if you will, was partly because everyone was jumping on the Internet bandwagon. Only problem was they didn’t understand what they were jumping on. They were building web sites because it was the cool thing to do, because the second you had a web site you were global and you were going to be instantly rich. Some people did become instantly rich. And they went instantly bankrupt just as fast.
This time around it’s not only about global reach. It’s not about having a web site because you need to, unfortunately there are still a lot of companies that have web sites because they feel they have to. This time around it is about us, the users, it’s about community. It’s about sharing, about user contribution. It’s about access to information, wherever, and whenever you want. We used to access the internet from our big clunky beige computers. Some still do. But now we are accessing it from cell phones, from refrigerators, from cars, from air planes, everywhere. Take a look around, user contribution is driving the internet. You don’t have to be a geek in the basement anymore to have online presence. In the past 10 years, the internet has done a complete 360. Ok, I know what you’re thinking. No shit Sherlock!
I’m a developer, we all know that; if you don’t you do now. More importantly, I am a Rich Internet Application Developer. And my point is? My point is this. The internet started out with text, a few graphics, and form fields. HTML hasn’t changed that much, sure there is CSS now, JavaScript, server side options out the wazoo, but the basic ingredients are still, text, graphics, and forms. What I am getting at, is we all want the next big idea, the next billion dollar idea.
I am not going to tell you how to come up with the next billion dollar idea, if I could, I wouldn’t be writing this. But what I do want to share, and it may piss some people off, but that’s ok. The way we use the internet has changed; user contribution is as popular as olives in a martini bar. However, the interfaces users are presented with have not changed all that much from the early days of the Internet (of course there are a ton of exceptions to this statement). This is not a Flash Developer bashing HTML, and saying every site should be Flash. Anyone who thinks every site should be Flash should turn off their computer now, find the busiest street in your area and see if you are as tall as those dashed lines in between the lanes.
Ok, so how I see it, we are part of the A.D.D. Generation, as sad as it is. In order to get users to contribute to our billion dollar idea site, we need to keep them interested and engaged. Not always an easy task. Sure with great design, a standard text/graphic/form site could do the trick. And lots do. But I think things have to be kicked up a notch. Great design is only part of a user experience equation. And unfortunately, a lot of times great design takes away from the experience because it takes forever to load the page. I am not sure of the actual numbers but I have read you have 4 seconds before you will lose your user. 4 seconds! That is an awfully short amount of time. How many forms have you submitted where nothing happens and you sit there waiting, watching your browser load animation play, wondering if anything is going to happen? Then you click the submit button again thinking that something must of went wrong. Before you know it you see 4 postings from you in your favorite blog. Oops. Now with a true rich internet application, the second the user clicks the submit button, you could present the user with a status, a load bar, a bird pecking at a slab of slate Flintstone style. Something, anything to indicate to the user what is going on.
I hate the whole Web 2.0 term, but I am going to use it right now to get my point across. We are in the so called Web 2.0 era, so why the hell are we still using web 1.0 interfaces?? It feels like technology is moving full steam ahead, ideas are grand, bandwidth is spreading and speeding up, however, we are afraid to try anything new. The whole purpose of the internet is changing, so it is about time we change how we design and develop for it. We have to start thinking more about user experience, about how the application is going to be used. You can’t use the same application on a cell phone and a pc with a 24 inch monitor. We have the ability to determine what the user is on, so we should be enhancing the user experience for these devices. Making our presentation layers truly scalable to whatever method the user is using to access your application. Devices can share logic, they can share data, but please don’t allow them to share presentation.
It’s a very exciting time to be a developer, especially a RIA developer. There is a definite shortage out there, which for us developers isn’t a bad thing, economics 101, Supply and Demand. Lack of developers == higher wages and better opportunities for us all. With any labor shortage comes below standard hiring and this is what could ruin it for the rest of us. Hopefully this rambling will mean something to someone. I guess this is what drinking a few beers does to my already scattered mind.
Here is the cliff notes version of this rant. The direction of the Internet is changing. Technology is changing daily. However, I don’t see a huge shift in user experience design on the internet. The internet of yesterday is not the same as the internet of tomorrow. The internet is available everywhere and user experience design and development should be accommodating for this or else you are going to get left in the dust if you haven’t already. Sorry if this doesn’t make any sense, it sure does in my head and that’s all that matters right now 
Jan
14
Ok, I haven’t blogged about this yet, and I know everyone else and their grandma already has. Heck, it was even mentioned on my local cable access station. So now it is my turn to drop in my 2 cents. I can sum it up in one word, well two but then this blog wouldn’t be rated PG. WOW! And 3 other words I want one!!!!We all know the features of this amazing piece of hardware so I won’t list them again here but I will mention a few. The touch screen, finally something that makes sense, I have always hated the archiac keypads on modern day phones, I remember getting my first touch tone phone, probably circa 1984. So the touch screen interface only makes sense, and exactly what Steve Jobs said, software now drives the interface, software is not limited to the hardware. And the only con I can think of, is it is one more mechanical thing that can die, basically if the touch screen dies, your foobard. Other than a few battery issues with early iPods I can’t think of any other serious mac hardware issues, and personally mac software interfaces are, and have always be cutting edge.
The other thing I am excited to announce, which hasn’t been released to the mainstream (that I know of) is it looks like Flash will be included on the iPhone. Since Safari is on the phone, the flash plug-in will be included. It doesn’t say if it will be Flash Lite 2.0 or the full version. part of me thinks it would be Flash Lite, but if it is running a full version of Safari and a full version of OSX, maybe it will be Flash 9 included. This would open up a whole other can of worms in the mobile universe. Actionscript 3 for your mobile application. Does anyone have a definitive answer on this? I would hope people wouldn’t start creating massive Flex applications for a mobile device because they could. I found the Flash information on this forum. Again, don’t know if it is just a rumour, but still, it’s very exciting!! See, I need one for QA purposes!!
As you can see, I’m pumped about this phone. IMAP email (yay Yahoo!), full iPod, 2 megapixel camera, ok, that could be better, but its still decent, better than my 0.5 megapixel phone camera I have now. Ok I’ll stop, I said I wouldn’t spew all the features.
Stay tuned, I will be in Silicon Valley in less than two weeks, and I will definitely be bragging on here the second I get one. Heck, I will probably be writing the post from my iPhone, if that’s the name they’ll legally be able to use. Heck, I wouldn’t care if it was named Pile o’ Shiznatt, I would still want one. In my opinion, Cisco, you can keep the name. It’s not the lowercase i that makes this phone awesome.
Sep
8
O’Reilly just launched (or I just found) a massive library of all the code in their books that users can search through. Users enter search terms to find relevant sample code from nearly 700 O’Reilly books. The database currently contains over 123,000 individual examples, composed of 2.6 million lines of code – all edited and ready to use. http://labs.oreilly.com/code/
Aug
14
Our friends at www.dallaway.com have created one of the best QA tools since VMWare. Sloppy deliberately slows the transfer of data between the client and the server. Essentially, Sloppy is a proxy and purposely bottle necks your connection to simulate a selected modem speed. Sure you and all of your friends have high speed connections, but there are still 25 to 30 percent of the (North American) population that connect to the internet through traditional phone lines 30 percent is a large portion of potential hits on your site so you better make sure it isn’t painfully slow and that it works on dial-up. Sloppy is the perfect tool for this. Make sure you download it and add it to your web development tool belt.
Jul
10
I finally got around to really playing with Actionscript 3 and two words come to mind LOVE IT. Especially the new XML Class which is based on E4X, or true integration of XML in Actionscript. Gordon Smith said it best “Compared with the current XML support in the Flash Player, E4X allows you to write less code and execute it faster because more processing can be done at the native speed of C++.”
After playing with it and doing a few benchmark tests I noticed it wasn’t any faster than the XML object of AS 2.0. Maybe the E4X support isn’t fully optimized in the Flash 9 beta, really this shouldn’t matter because Flash Player 9 is final. But really, who cares, we’re talking milliseconds here, it’s like trying to figure out if you or your friend blink faster. The real bonus of E4X is its simplicity and query like abilities. No longer will we have to depend on an XPath implementation in Actionscript to query xml data. XPath was very slow and very processor intensive with it’s multitude of nested loops. I have seen XPath take down many of browser in my day.
Enough reminiscing, lets get back to E4X. XML nodes can now be drilled down using dot notation, just like a regular object in actionscript. There is also an attribute identifier operator (@). Take a look at the following simple example:
var myXML:XML =
<items>
<item id="RedButtons" width="300">
<label>My Red Label</label>
</item>
<item id="BlueButtons" width="200">
<label>My Blue Label</label>
</item>
<item id="GreenButtons" width="250">
<label>My Green Label</label>
</item>
<item id="RedButtons" width="400">
<label>My Other Red Label</label>
</item>
</items>;
//an XMLList is a subset of XML data
var myList:XMLList = myXML.item.(@id == "RedButtons");
//the new way of writing for each loops
var count:int = 0;
for each (p in myList) {
trace(' - ' + myList[count].@width);
count++;
}
//or a standard for loop
var len:Number = myList.length();
for (var i:int = 0; i<len; i++) {
trace(myList[i].label + ' - ' + myList[i].@width);
}
So, what’s the first thing you noticed. That’s right, no more firstChild.childNodes, etc. Thank goodness! Finally an XML object is treated like a regular object.
As you can see the new XML class is called XML, the AS 1/2 XML class is now called XMLDocument. If you attempt to use legacy code and you compile to AS 3.0 make sure you update the class name first.
In the real world you would probably load in dynamic XML, but you will notice I simply typed in a simple snippet of XML and the compiler didn’t puke. Handy! So my first query which returns an XMLList (another new class) which contains only the item nodes with an id attribute that equals RedButtons. Very similar to XPath. But much quicker because it is native to the player now. Using my XMLList, that I so creativly named myList, I perform two seperate loops. A for each loop and a standard for loop. A couple things here you’ll notice, the syntax on the for each loop has changed slightly. Previously you simply wrote:
for (p in myList) {
trace(p + ':' + myList[p]);
}
With AS 3.0 you now have to add in the word each.
In my standard loop you will notice I have typed my index (i) as an int. It is good to use an int when you don’t need a floating point number such as a loop index. You would think this would increase performance, but really it doesn’t. You will also notice my len var equals myList.length(). length is a method so make sure you remember the brackets.
Inside both loops all I am doing is tracing out data. The only thing special here is how I access the attributes using the @ operator.
Well there you have it. Very simple example I know. I’m not sure which I am more excited about, this or the Regular Expression support in AS 3.0. Either way, I can’t wait for my clients to start letting me use it!