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Why the iPad’s user agent string presents a problem
Apple marketed the iPad at launch as an internet device designed for the full web. So why then are they explicitly classifying it as a mobile device?Read the story »
Flash CS5 public beta cancelled by Adobe
Well, that was quick. Adobe has pulled the plug on the previously planned for Flash CS5 public beta, initially announced at MAX in October. So much for getting iFosfr rolling before final release. Official statement from Adobe after the break.
New tutorial on CS5 AS3 iPhone dev reveals improvements
Lee Brimelow, noted Flash Evangelist for Adobe, has posted a new tutorial at gotoandlearn.com on developing iPhone apps in the forthcoming Flash CS5 beta:
http://gotoandlearn.com/play?id=116
While the tutorial itself gives a clearer illustration of the development process, what's more interesting are some of the notable details that clarify or improve upon the MAX announcement back in October.
Tabulate updated to .2 alpha – AS3 tab management
There's still a long way to go for what is planned for this one, but I have just updated the google code project to the .2 alpha release here
doucmentation: http://www.jeffdepascale.com/documentation/tabulate
MouseEvent – relatedObject explained
One of those things that isn't immediately clear based on its name, the relatedObject property is a reference to the object that the mouse is now over, and is receiving a MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER event. This property is valid for both over and out events. This is a really useful property, a typical example is working with mutually exclusive rollovers. if you have a rollover popup that should remain visible if the users cursor rolls into the popup itself, you need to case your mouseOut to only hide the popup if the cursor is not over the popup itself. Here is an example:
Adobe Flash Professional CS5: Applications for iPhone
iPhone + AS3 - didn't see that one coming! So my question to Adobe is - can an AS3 iPhone app be a component of a larger obj-C based app? Or is AS3 content restricted to being solely a standalone app?
Adobe Labs - Adobe Flash Professional CS5: Applications for iPhone.
Managing mutually exclusive overlays and popups efficiently in AS3
Here's a quickie for handling mutiple in-Flash popups or overlays that should all open exclusively (that is, if one is opened, all other should close) within an application in AS3.
A couple of classes, first one is the manager itself:
Is it time to rethink the stage timeline in Flash?
EDIT - I revised the title of this post to clarify my position in response to zool's comment below. The following is NOT an argument against timeline animations, rather, one about where they belong in the modern Flash development flow.
I generally avoid writing editorial articles on my blog, sticking strictly to informational code bits and the like. But as a developer who works closely with designers/devigners, the validity of the Flash timeline in todays development world is a topic I think worth discussing.
Dispatching custom events between child SWFs in AS3
I've written about this before, but this time around I have an answer to this one. The issue goes a little something like this:
a parent SWF
a child SWF, dispatches a custom event
another child swf, nested in either the parent or the other child, listens for that custom event.
The error you'll receive is a type coercion error that looks like a mistake - can't convert [custom event name] to [custom event name]. So what gives? They're the same class, both SWF files have imported the event class correctly, yet they are colliding through the event dispatch. Well, it turns out it is a security violation due to the way in which the SWF was loaded. Change your loader context to new LoaderContext(false, ApplicationDomain.currentDomain) when loading in those child SWFs and suddenly they can talk to each other more openly than before and type checking correctly returns that all important 'true' - in other words, no coercion error. All of those imported classes match up - and you can even instantiate objects of a type defined in the other child SWF without importing it into your class. To get Flash to export it without referencing it though requires a SWC file for the SWF to reference the classes from (CS4 modified this process a bit with the ability to specify external libs, and Flex has had the same functionality for a while i believe). Colin Moock's Essential Actionscript has a chapter on doing just that, right at the end of the book. If you're interested in that process, he says it better than i ever could.
FYI - the fix mentioned in my previous post on the subject is still valid if you can't/don't want to change the application domain for the loader. Adding the reference to the document class of the top level parent SWF still rectifies the issue.
Jeff dePascale is a web and mobile applications professional based in Fairfield County, CT.
