http://webroo.org Matt Sweetman :: Flex & Actionscript Development Tue, 08 Jun 2010 10:15:26 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I eventually got round to trying out Processing.js - the javascript implementation of the original Processing. You can see the result below in a little experiment called Fireflies. Fireflies (View in Google Chrome/Firefox) I actually ported this from a javascript experiment I did around the same time as the snowfall one. I thought ... http://webroo.org/2010/05/03/experimenting-with-processingjs/ Over the holidays I gave myself a break from Actionscript and took a look at the HTML 5 Canvas object. It's been a while since I programmed any javascript, and AJAX technologies seem to be the popular choice for web apps these days (goodbye Flex!). I decided to port over ... http://webroo.org/2010/01/17/html-5-canvas-vs-flash/ I have a recurring problem with buttons. And when I mean buttons I mean anything that has a mouse handler and inherits from InteractiveObject, which includes Sprite and SimpleButton. The problem is when two or more of these objects are siblings (i.e. in the same container, not nested) and they ... http://webroo.org/2009/12/01/overlapping-hit-areas-for-sibling-sprites/ I never had reason to doubt the modulo operator, but it turns out it's been hiding a little secret from me all these years: it works differently in other programming langauges. I discovered this while converting a Python program to Flash. In Python the result of the modulo operation has ... http://webroo.org/2009/10/24/modulo-and-the-negative-divisor/ Here's a quick little utility I used in my last project: a simple class that syncs with a time source. It can be used to ensure your application runs on server time rather than the user's system clock. You sync once with the remote server at the start, and then ... http://webroo.org/2009/08/11/time-sync-for-remote-server/ I've recently been working outside of Flex in standard Flash & Actionscript, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to try the CS3/4 components. They're much leaner than their bigger brother's, and as a consequence don't offer anywhere near the functionality, but their simplicity means they're fast and easy to ... http://webroo.org/2009/04/19/auto-size-button-for-flash-components/ I'm surprised I haven't stumbled across this before, but it caused a little head-scratching in a recent project. The problem involves having a class with a mixture of binding tags (i.e. with and without custom events), but assumes you are programming to the interface the class implements. In this case ... http://webroo.org/2008/12/06/bindable-interfaces-with-custom-events/ The Glow and Blur effects are useful tweens that can be used to animate flash filters in Flex, the only problem is they don't implement the quality property. It's hard coded at a value of 1. In most cases this isn't an issue, and where performance is concerned it's best ... http://webroo.org/2008/11/04/quality-glow-and-blur-flex-effects/ On a recent project I needed an overlapping tab bar, something that the default Flex TabBar doesn't implement. While you can can easily change the spacing between tabs using a negative horizontalGap, you cannot retain a top-of-the-pile-like status for the selected tab. They are permanently stacked left-to-right on top of ... http://webroo.org/2008/02/27/overlapping-tabbar-in-flex/ I've decided that what I should really do is start a new blog. I've been using other people's blogs as a source of information and trouble-shooting for many years, and I think it's finally time to give back some of the good karma. I'm going to share some of my ... http://webroo.org/2008/02/15/new-blog/