Category Archives: ActionScript

Mercurial and FLAs

I’m starting to play around with Mercurial and wanted to see how well it handled FLA files. Mainly I wanted to know how much the repository would balloon as your revised and committed the FLA. So I did a simple test where I made an FLA, committed, added a big image to it, committed, made [...]
Also posted in Flash, General Geekery | Leave a comment

Loading in local external assets into an Air app

I’ve recently been tasked with turning an existing Flash app (that is to say, a self contained Windows EXE/Mac App) into an Air app. The original was only meant to run locally. It was never meant to be hosted on a web server. This module depends on loading in lots of external XML docs and [...]
Also posted in Adobe Air, Flash | 3 Comments

Compiling SWFs from TextMate with the Flex SDK

I finally feel like I’m all growds up. Perhaps some details about this transition will follow in the coming days. But let me just say that this is the post that finally got me up and running with the Flex 3.3 SDK and TextMate. I’m not sure how often I’ll use this method. It’s way [...]
Also posted in Flash, Mac, TextMate | Leave a comment

ActionScript TextFormat.font values

One thing I have to do a lot with ActionScript 3 is make TextField instances at run time that use something other than the default font. One way that I’ll do that is like this: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 // make a new TextFormat object and set its "font" property var myFormat:TextFormat [...]
Also posted in Flash | 4 Comments

Error #2121 when loading external SWF

I’m running into an issue that goes a little something like this: I have an external SWF that I’m loading into another parent SWF The external SWF is simply a still image I created from a PNG using Fireworks CS3 I package up the parent SWF and external SWF and send it to another computer [...]
Also posted in Flash | Leave a comment

Flash Developer vs. Flex Developer

I’m Erik P. Hansen. And I’m a Flash Developer. But I should really just call myself an ActionScript Developer. I’m in the middle of watching episode two of Flasher Magazine which has an interview with Doug McCune. The thing that struck me most, and made me cringe, is when he talks about how the term [...]
Also posted in Flash | Leave a comment

Hit Area of external assets with alpha channels (PNGs and SWFs)

Let’s say you are loading in an external asset that has an alpha channel, such as a PNG or a SWF*. Now let’s say that you want that asset to act like a button, with rollover and click actions. No problem. No reason you can’t do that. But, actually, there is a problem. The hit [...]
Also posted in Flash | 9 Comments

Cool Timer Built With Flash and JavaScript

Thanks to Tim Ferris for this link. E.gg Timer quickly creates a countdown timer based on the URL you type in. So, http://e.ggtimer.com/1minute creates a 1 minute countdown timer. And http://e.ggtimer.com/1hour5minutes does exactly what you might expect.
Posted in ActionScript | Leave a comment

Quick Tip #1 – Randomize an ActionScript 3 Array

Okay, finally getting down to what I wanted to do when I jumped into WordPress this morning! I’ve often wanted to randomize an Array. You know, take an Array and shuffle it up. Maybe I’ve got a list of images to show in a slideshow but don’t want to show them in order. Whatever… there [...]
Posted in ActionScript | 4 Comments
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