Flash MX 2004 7.2. If you have a problem with "Too many activations" on the Mac, or with necessary re-activations on Windows after installing the ellipsis 7.2 updater, then check out the Flash MX 2004 emerging issues page for solutions to your problems.
Read the page here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/mx_04_emerging_issues.htm?pss=rss_flash_18889
Check it out. I couldn't activate Dreamweaver on Windows while using ellipsis (it spontaneously de-activated), and after the hot fix I could activate again. It works! Yes! Good bye activation problems (for now...)! Find the activation hot fix for Windows here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/service/ts/documents/win_fl72_reactivation_hf.htm
And find out more about the Too Many Activations problem (for which you have to contact activation support) here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/macosx_fl72_activations.htm
The upcoming Nintendo DS system (the dual screen gameboy with wireless) has a new design. Check it out here:
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=56167.
Reportedly the "handheld console" will be out later this year, and there are a whole load of games in development.
Although it isn't released yet (estimated release date is August 31st), Movable Type has announced a few upcoming features for MT 3.1.
New features include: Dynamic PHP publishing, Post scheduling, Subcategories and Application-level callbacks.
There will also be a plug-in pack based on the winners of the $20,000 contest they held recently. Bundled plug-ins include: MT-Blacklist, XSearch/Plus, KoalaRainbow, MultiBlog, Markdown and Notifier.
Personally I'm most interested in working more with the latest MT-Blacklist and checking out MultiBlog and Notifier.
I'll just quote the highlights from the Movable Type's blog entry. It pretty much all speaks for itself.
First, here's a quick summary of what’s new, followed by a longer explanation of what it all means.Key new features in Movable Type 3.1:
- Dynamic PHP publishing, controllable on a per-template basis: You can control whether you publish a dynamic or static page on a per-template basis, letting you balance the publishing and traffic for your weblog. For example, high-demand documents like XML syndication files can be static, for maximum speed and lower server load, and individual post archives can be dynamic, eliminating the need to rebuild pages when making a global template change.
- Post scheduling: Allows authors to set a time and date for posts to appear, permitting automatic updates to your weblog. Keep your weblog community up to date even if you're not at your computer to create new posts.
- Subcategories: A new category management interface gives you fine-grained control over the organization and display of your posts. You can even easily move a subcategory from one parent category to another.
- Application-level callbacks: Plugin developers get even more control, allowing plugins the ability to hook events like rebuilding and extend them with custom functionality.
In addition to the above features, we'll be releasing a plugin pack for Movable Type 3.1, featuring these winning plugins from our Plug In to Movable Type contest:
- MT-Blacklist: A comprehensive spam-blocking and management system for comments and TrackBacks, with an advanced interface and remote importing of blacklist entries.
- XSearch/Plus: A system which allows you to plug in alternate search engines for Movable Type. This includes a working implementation of a powerful Plucene-based search engine.
- KoalaRainbow: A visualization engine for Movable Type which uses its own query language to generate graphics based on arbitrary queries of data in your Movable Type system.
- MultiBlog: A plugin which allows you to include template content from one weblog in any other weblog in your Movable Type install, including full control over whether an update in one blog should trigger a rebuild in another.
- Markdown: A simple text markup language which allows you to create posts in plain text and have them display in semantically correct valid XHTML.
- Notifier: An email notification system which lets your readers subscribe to be notified whenever an individual post, a category, or even an entire weblog is updated. There's also a complete system for managing subscriptions.
Today Flash 7.2 updater (aka ellipsis) has been released. What does this mean to you? A radically different Flash, and that's not an exaggeration. There are over a hundred bug fixes, including a major performance improvement and component fixes. For example, you might have noticed at times Flash interacted badly with other software, and you had to reboot often. Or perhaps, Flash crashed while you were working, with no warning. Well - that's been fixed. Watch your task manager, and marvel. Above and beyond, the most influential improvement to my workflow.
And of course I have to note the addition of a ScrollBar component in the V2 component set. No more complaining from me! The ScrollBar is back!
To read about the significance of Ellipsis, read Mike Chambers article here:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/articles/context.html
FAQ and general information about 7.2 updater:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/special/7_2updater/
Additionally, there's a major new documentation release. Hundreds of new code examples (check out that ActionScript Dictionary), and thousands of doc bug fixes. Check out your install file, and look inside Samples\HelpExamples folder - you'll find a whole new set of example FLA files for you to explore and learn from including a PHP and Flash example, WebService example, animation example, and many more about the fundamentals of coding. Many of these example files use components, so hopefully these will be useful to you. Please feel free to ask questions here about the new examples. To read more about the documentation update, see Erick Vera's article here:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/logged_in/evera_flashdoc.html
For info on the new JavaScript Flash File API, read Guy Watson's article here:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/articles/jsapi.html
And for skinning V2 components, read Chafic's article here:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/articles/skinning_2004.html
And Mike Chambers article about the new-to-7.2 Delegate class:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/articles/eventproxy.html
Without further ado, the download is a must. Find it here:
Windows - 66.66 MB
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flash/updates/mx2004/update_fmx2004_7.2.exe
Mac - 73.46 MB
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flash/updates/mx2004/update_fmx2004_7.2.dmg
Do not uninstall Flash (7.0 or 7.0.1) before applying the 7.2 updater. The updater installs overtop of your current installation.
Feel free to post any questions or comments below.
Happy downloading,
Jen deHaan.
Permanent article link: http://www.flash-mx.com/flash/updater2.cfm
Peter has just posted a code snippet that you can use to make rounded rectangles using the Drawing API at the Flash MX 2004 forums. Check out the code snippet here:
http://flashmx2004.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=18&t=3847&st=0#entry15248
FlashPaper 2 will have a new single-user license. It's really nice to see this as its own product now. It's also nice to see sites using FlashPaper when surfing around. FlashPaper has Office integration, which is going to make it nice and easy to put those word docs online in a usable format. Many additional new features will make this a great release. Read about them from the link below.
Also, there is a public trial of FlashPaper out. Go to Macromedia to give it a test:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashpaper/
Contribute 3 has been announced. The combo of this, Flash Paper and Studio makes the new "Macromedia Web Publishing System". Check out these links for more information:
Contribute 3: http://www.macromedia.com/software/contribute/
Web Publishing System: http://www.macromedia.com/software/webpublishingsystem/
Flash Paper 2: http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashpaper/
At only five years old, Google is sent off to the Computer History Museum.
Click on the link to check out the Google blog entry and see not only the very first Google Server Rack (circa '99) but also one of the coolest photos I've seen in a long time, an original Atari Pong game from the arcades. Note the stellar craftsman ship and the handy two stainless steel knobs.
Ah, the age old question, how does one embed fancy fonts into a Flash document? Particularly when you're creating dynamic text fields with code?
Well, it is actually easier than most people think. All you need to do is add a font to your library by clicking the options button in the Library panel and selecting New Font... well, ok, there's a few more steps than that. But after you do this, you can rotate and fade out dynamic text, so it's pretty useful.
There are probably more than a couple occasions when you want to embed a font, or modify its _alpha or _rotation properties without having to break apart the text and convert it into a MovieClip symbol. This quick mini-tutorial shows you how you can take your fancy fonts and embed them into your Flash document so the end users can see your font, even if they don't have it installed.
my_txt.embedFonts = true;
my_txt._rotation = 15;
my_txt._alpha = 10;
Enter some text into the dynamic text field and test the SWF file. You should see your text slightly rotated by 15° and nearly transparent.
This is useful if you need to create your text field with ActionScript. Using the same general techniques you can also create dynamically created text fields using the createTextField method, although this requires a few more steps...
With the font already embedded into your library, you can now use the following code:
var my_fmt:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
my_fmt.bold = true;
my_fmt.font = "Palatino 24pt Bold"; /* this is the LinkageID not the symbol name. */
my_fmt.size = 24;
this.createTextField("new_txt", this.getNextHighestDepth(), 10, 10, 100, 200);
new_txt.setNewTextFormat(my_fmt);
new_txt._rotation = 45;
new_txt._alpha = 50;
new_txt.autoSize = true;
new_txt.embedFonts = true;
new_txt.text = "hello world";
The only real snag in all of this is that if you are using a manually created text field, the font name is taken from the Symbol name in the library. But, if you are dynamically creating text fields, it seems that you have to use the Linkage identifier instead.
You can even build feedback forms with embedded forms by modifying the code to the following:
/* Note: You'll still the "my_fmt" code for this example to work. */
this.createTextField("new_txt", this.getNextHighestDepth(), 10, 10, 400, 300);
new_txt.setNewTextFormat(my_fmt);
new_txt._rotation = 10;
new_txt._alpha = 50;
new_txt.embedFonts = true;
new_txt.text = "";
new_txt.type = "input";
new_txt.multiline = true;
new_txt.wordWrap = true;
new_txt.border = true;
Note that the autoSize property was also removed since that just throws a giant wrench into the works.
Whew, no small title!
I was answering some emails today and the topic of error reporting came up. Basically the person was wondering why Flash always reports the same error message for WebServices:
Error opening URL "http://www.flash-mx.com/ws/tipoftheday/tip.cfc?wsdl"
No matter what the error could be in the Flash app (bad bindings, no bindings, bad URL, etc), the error message always reports "Error opening URL".
After a bit of investigation, and a few trips to livedocs.macromedia.com, I managed to piece together the following short example. The only prerequisite (apart from Flash MX Pro 2004) is that you have a WebServiceConnector component in your library.
import mx.services.*;
//_global.__dataLogger = new mx.data.binding.Log();
var my_log:Log = new Log();
my_log.onLog = function(txt:String) {
trace(txt);
};
var myWebServiceObject:Object = new WebService("http://www.flash-mx.com/ws/tipoftheday/tip.cfc?wsdl", my_log);
var myPendingCallObject:Object = myWebServiceObject.getCurrentTip();
myPendingCallObject.onResult = function(result:Object) {
trace("\n\nTip received.");
/*
for (var prop in result) {
trace(prop+":"+result[prop]);
}
*/
};
myPendingCallObject.onFault = function(fault:Object) {
trace(fault.faultCode+","+fault.faultstring);
};
It is probably worth mentioning that both the Log class and the WebService class are contained within the mx.services.* package. So, if you want to avoid an import statement, you need to qualify the Log class with mx.services.Log. Likewise with the WebService class, which you need to change to mx.services.WebService.
Anyways, hopefully somebody out there finds that useful in some small way.
One from Think Secret this time. Apparently Apple is working on new iPods in fancy girly colors, but this time the BIG size (that will hopefully be appropriately priced - the ipod mini's are just so darned expensive).
Will be nice to see what these things'll look like, and who many gigs they'll cram into 'em. Gad, I'm turning into a hardware gadgety blog...
... when this comes out.
Not exactly new news, but I didn't see a big, close up picture before. Check out the specs on this to-be-released iPAQ pocket PC:
Check out this newer article on the next series of iPAQs, and click on the nice pic of the 4705 near the bottom. Sweet.
Another reminder - you can easily win a set of free books from www.flash-mx.com. All you have to do is send an email and you're entered into the contest. No making SWFs and trying to outdo others. No jumping through hoops. No answering skill-testing questions. No submitting tutorials or reviews. None of that. All you have to do is send us an email so we can choose a winner.
What do you win? A couple of "At your Fingertips" books from Sybex and flash-mx.com. One on Photoshop CS and one on Flash MX 2004! What could be better.
Send the word on, tell your friends! Everyone gets an entry. Read the details and entry information here:
http://www.flash-mx.com/contest.cfm.
COMING SOON! Win Swift3D from flash-mx.com!
Freakin-a. I would love to own this one. The Canon XL2 is a prosumer 3 CCD digital video camera with awesome picture, performance and more. A friend of mine has the XL1, and it was really quite impressive (another with the GL1 was also a sweet camera) - the standard camera out there when it comes to the prosumer level. Anyway, the XL2 has some notable improvements - check out the page here:
And you can also check out the press release for more information:
If I had 5K to drop for a camera, this would certainly be the choice :)
... forget Monster - if you want to work at Google, you need drive the interstate and then do some fancy math. This math is far beyond me, but I must admire the technique for hiring math gurus.
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=160966
http://ecommercetrends.com/ecommercetrends-56-20040709MysteriousBillboardRecruitsGeeksForGoogle.html
Check out the sneak peek of the next Mac OS: Tiger.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/
This tells you about interesting features, such as Dashboard (pretty much a direct rip of currently available Konfabulator), and Safari RSS. Dashboard lets you use widgets on the desktop (check out Konfabulator if you want to know what it's like). Safari RSS lets you type in a feed URL and view listings easily in Safari. Also enables you to compile listings from various feeds into a single page. New iChat AV looks cool, but I don't know many with or using webcams so not very intriguing to me. In addition, iChat regularly pisses me off with the limited number of messages you can send in 10 seconds (so I abandoned it for MSN until they fix this lame ass feature).
Enough prattling from me.
New Dev center articles are up this week, including one I wrote about publishing online documentation using RoboHelp. Check it out here:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/robohelp/articles/faq.html
And more great new content here:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet