In AS2 we had Array.sortOn() and it worked fine if you had an array full of Objects with nice property names to sort on. But what happens when you have an array of MovieClips and you need to sort the array based on the Y axis? You’d have to pop/shift/unshift/slice/splice … wait … what?
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Adobe Flash is unique in that the content you create with it is intrinsically artistic and programmatic. Even if you are working by yourself, design and development must work in harmony in order for a piece to reach its full potential. With ActionScript 3.0, Flash has become a far more powerful tool—and in some ways, far more intimidating.
In this first installment of my “ActionScript 3.0 for developers and designers” series, I provide an introduction to writing classes and walk you through some of the nuances to the new language by building a modular preloader. Along the way, I’ll identify best practices to optimize performance and suggest strategies for reskinning artwork to achieve a desired look and feel.
Read it at the brand new Adobe Developer Center.
(I consider this the long overdue encore to the Minister of Techgnarlagy’s AS2 preloading tutorial.)
October 15th, 2007 by Jamie / 27 CommentsI will be at FITC Hollywood next week, speaking on Monday afternoon. And in case you missed it .. I posted a code for a 10% discount a little while back. Hope to see some of you there.
October 15th, 2007 by Stephen / 0 CommentsMike, Jamie and I had a great time at MAX in Chicago this week. Bringing home the MAX Award in the video category for the HBO Voyeur site was a high point, especially when the emcee announced me as Jeff Hirsch when I went up to accept the lucite brick trophy. Read on for some of other highlights for me.
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Adobe AIR is a thrilling new frontier for anyone who is accustomed to building browser-based games and applications. To show off some of the cool features of Adobe AIR, I’ve built a fun little game inspired by a mini-game in the LucasArts series Monkey Island. I wrote the game in ActionScript 3 and created all of the animations on the Timeline in Flash CS3 Professional. I’ll share with you some of the thinking that went into the design of the game, how I used Adobe AIR features such as the local database, custom chrome, file management, and cross-platform window control. Finally, I’ll show you how to package and deploy the finished game to the desktop using the new Adobe AIR extension for Flash CS3 Professional.
You can read the article, download the game and get the source all at the brand new Adobe Developer Center.
And let me know what you think, too.
October 1st, 2007 by Stephen / 4 Comments
