Flash: Transparent Video
Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 by LuisHow to make a transparent flash video using Adobe After Effects 7.0 Pro and Flash, by Paul Jenkins.
Archive for the 'Learnings' Category
Flash: tabIndex and IE workaround
Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 by LuisProblem:
In Internet Explorer after the last tabIndex, focus goes to the browser address bar.
Solution:
An easy workaround is to create an empty MovieClip which receives keyboard focus and automatically gives focus to the first selectable (editable) text field, button, or movie clip.
Example:
[flash]http://www.blog.lessrain.com/wp-content/upload/test_01.swf,250,100[/flash]
Actionscript:
- import mx.utils.Delegate;
- var timeline:MovieClip = this;
- var myformat:TextFormat = new TextFormat ();
- myformat.font = "Verdana";
- myformat.size = 10;
- var tf1:TextField = timeline.createTextField ("tf1", this.getNextHighestDepth (), 10, 10, 200, 18);
- tf1.type = "input";
- tf1.selectable = true;
- tf1.border = true;
- tf1.setTextFormat (myformat);
- var tf2:TextField = timeline.createTextField ("tf2", this.getNextHighestDepth (), 10, 40, 200, 18);
- tf2.type = "input";
- tf2.selectable = true;
- tf2.border = true;
- tf2.setTextFormat (myformat);
- tf1.tabIndex = 0;
- tf2.tabIndex = 1;
- var tabHackMC:MovieClip = timeline.createEmptyMovieClip ("tabHackMC", timeline.getNextHighestDepth ());
- tabHackMC.tabIndex = 2;
- tabHackMC.onSetFocus = Delegate.create (this, focusLast);
- function focusLast ():Void
- {
- Selection.setFocus ("timeline.tf1");
- }
Flash: Uninstall and Install for testing purposes
Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 by LuisUntill now I've been using Flash Plugin Switcher to uninstall and install the Flash Player in order to test some stuff such as Express Install and the Flash Player detection.
Recently I downloaded the latest version of Flash Plugin Switcher which for some weird reason destroyed completely my IE making impossible to install or uninstall any Flash player version.
From now on I will install and uninstall the Flash player using a different method:
- Runing this uninstaller, will uninstall Macromedia Flash Player from all browsers on your system.
- Here you can find archived Macromedia Flash Players available for testing purposes. For testing the Express Install I have used the installers for Flash Player 7 inside the r61 folder (Flash Player 7,0,61,0).
- Macromedia Flash Player Support FAQ
Flash: Back Button and Deep Links Topic
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 by LuisI know this is an old topic, but I feel like posting about it. Since a few months ago I tried to make flash websites a little bit more usable and functional taking advantage of some new Flash 8 features and going back to old topics such as the browser back button support and deep linking support.
So far we have tried to implement this features in the last two projects we have done for redbull with 95% success, as usual MAC and Safari still very problematic.
Today I found this article in Jens Franke's blog where he points to a good solution for the Back-Button Support which apparently works in Safari.
Realated entries:
Other articles:
- Going backwards with Flash (Via cruciallimit blog)
Flash: FE labs
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 by LuisRobert Taylor, creator of FlashExtensions.com has set up a small Open Source library of resources regarding Flash and its capabilities such as Drag n' Drop Selected Text , Detect Line Number and Position of TextField or a set of algorithms to display the right color of text for the right background.
Flash: Nasty XML load bug in Internet Explorer
Thursday, November 17th, 2005 by ThomasLoading XML files in Flash over an SSL Connection in Internet Explorer fails if the Pragma:no-cache or Cache-control:no-cache HTTP headers are set on the XML file.
Wow! I've been chewing on this one for a while... We have a Flash site running on https with dynamically generated XML content. The server always returned the Pragma:no-cache header so that the dynamic data isn't cached in the browser.
The bug is especially hard to find because the request goes out to the server successfully, but the XML object in flash remains undefined for no apparent reason. Only after removing the header output on the server it started to work.
Not nice.
This MS bug report seems to be related.
[edit]
This post has been replaced by a more recent one, including an application to test the caching behavior of Flash in different browsers.
Flash loading and browser cache test-suite
[edit]
Some more posts on the topic:
Flash: Video Articles
Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 by LuisMacromedia has released a couple of new interesting Flash Video articles:
- Introducing True Alpha Video in Flash 8 (Wes Gorgichuk). Learn from this simple example to create and import your own alpha video.
- Best Practices for Encoding Video with the VP6 Codec (William Caulfield). Prepare your video for the web with the new Flash 8 Video Encoder.
Flash: How to de-interlace video in real-time
Sunday, October 9th, 2005 by LuisFabio Sonnati has a very nice and useful article in his blog about how to de-interlace video in real-time using the Convolution Filter in Flash 8.
Worth to read: Flash real-time deinterlacing best-practice.
Related Articles:
Flash: Flash 8 garbage collector benchmark
Saturday, October 8th, 2005 by LuisInteresting benchmark test, by Frédéric Saunier, to demonstrate how the new GC behaves when we fill an array with many new instances of an object and we destroy the array.
Flash 8 garbage collector benchmark.
Related articles:
- Garbage collection in Flash Player 8. (Tinic Uro).
- Performance Improvements in Flash Player 8. (Macromedia Flash Player Developer Center).
Flash: Video Tutorials [UPDATED]
Friday, October 7th, 2005 by Luis
New set of Video Tutorials by flashextensions.
- Processing the Enter Key in a TextField.
- Debugging External Classes.
- Referencing XML with an ID Tag.
- Detecting when a MovieClip is Created.
- Quick Registration Point Change (with ALT key) .
- Create a Quick Panel with Flash 8 Filters.
Updated, Flash 8:
- Flash Detection and Express Install. Learn everything you need to know in order to build your own detection agent and installer.
- Flash External Interface. Learn seemless communication between external applications and Flash with this new Flash 8 featrue.
Previous related entries:
Flash: Create background pattern in Flash 8
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005 by LuisQuick example of how to create a tiled bitmap in Flash 8 using MovieClip.beginBitmapFill method instead of using duplicated movieclips.
SWF sample:
[flash]http://www.blog.lessrain.com/wp-content/upload/tilebackground2.swf,400,200[/flash]
Actionscript:
- import flash.display.BitmapData;
- var pattern:BitmapData = BitmapData.loadBitmap("img_105");
- function createTiles():Void {
- with (_level0) {
- beginBitmapFill(pattern);
- moveTo(0, 0);
- lineTo(Stage.width, 0);
- lineTo(Stage.width, Stage.height);
- lineTo(0, Stage.height);
- lineTo(0, 0);
- endFill();
- }
- }
- createTiles();
Related Entries:
Flash: EFFECTiveness in Flash 8
Monday, September 19th, 2005 by LuisWell, probably this is not as fancy as 'fire', 'smoke', 'particles', '3d', but I would like to highlight this post from Tinic Uro where he gives some ideas of how to use the new 'Flash 8 features' in a different and practical way.
Worth to read: Using Flash Player 8 filters for good.
More ideas around this topic:
I think, since the new Flash Player has access to the pixel data of a webcam, we are close to the possibility of creating hands free devices that will enable many disable people to use their computers, such as Mouse Vision.
Related post: Flash 8 and webcams.
