Category: Flash

School’s out till January 10th, so all Saturday’s till then will be spent in bed till 3pm… which is when I usually would be getting out of class!

My last project was to write an executive persuasion paper, and present a speech to the class, convincing the board of directors to relocate (I chose expanding the business) to one of 3 chosen cities. I did some research on all 3 cities and states, sorted through the plethora of links, reading what was relavant, wrote my outline, wrote my paper, re-read it… and then passed out. There was no way to do the phat presentation I wanted to do. Not to mention the fact that my professor did not like PowerPoint… personally. By that, he didn’t mind if other people used it, but he felt that a lot of speakers will use it as a sheild and hide behind it; the PowerPoint being the star and not the speaker.

Not saying I’m handsome, but I’d never be upstaged by Flash. Therefore, I gave myself an hour and a half in the wee hours of the morning before school to work on it and finish it utilizing some of the images the night before. I’ve used Flash in the past as pretty much my outline of my speech on whatever I was speaking about. Really, it’s to help keep me on track as I love tangent trees.

I hadn’t used Screens albeit once to determine what the difference was between them and forms… and I wanted to see the new layout + had some JSAPI ideas. At any rate, within an hour and a half, I had my presentation saved to a CD and raced off to school. It took 6 hours for the coffee to kick in, but I gave my presentation last, and it rocked.

Screw PowerPoint… I got Flash.

Granted, there are pro’s and con’s to each, but for my personal comfort level, they (<a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/”>Macromedia</a>) just made it so easy for me to knock out a presentation even faster utilizing Flash. I just wish I could of used this a year and a half-ago applying for that PowerPoint job.

“I don’t see any PowerPoint on your website…” was one of the replies to a PowerPoint job inquiry I had applied for.

Oh well, rocks having it now!

Another genius thought created while day dreaming in morning, Atlanta traffic.

Xavier = Class
Spiderman = Prototype
Wolverine = ActionScript 2

… I know, Spiderman isn’t from the X-men, but I couldn’t think of a mutant that was strictly genectically mutated and had no inborn mutant powers beforehand.

Schweet! Not bad for about 14 total hours of work. Proof that components save you oodles of time. I utilized <a href=”http://www.blinex.com/”>B-Line’s</a> USA map for it. There are some usability issues with the window, but in the amount of time I had, I couldn’t implement some of my girlfriends text formatting or UI suggestions.

At any rate, a big thanks to Mike Haggerty for the opportunity!

Flash Map – <a href=”http://www.clark04.com/issues/turnaround/map/”>Wes Clark’s Turnaround Plan for Amercia</a>

Discussion going on the JSAPI (JSFL) list about DLL’s & JSAPI. I had an idea for an RA (Rich Application); a Flash app that had local file access, but could also write to the local disk as well. Basically, this one developer posted an Asteroids game. It allowed you to play Asteroids inside of Flash… that’s right, on your stage. He updated it to use the drawing layer and it was pretty fast.

Guy Watson chimed in about writing a special DLL that has the required header and API and then you place in the Flash External Libraries configuration folder so you can then utilize the methods of the DLL in JSAPI like so (via <a href=”http://mxblogspace.journurl.com/users/compiled/index.cfm?mode=article&entry=1096″>Compiled</a>):

sample.dll in folder

fl.trace(Sample); /// [Object object]

and running through the props:

for( var i in Sample )
{
fl.trace( i + ” – ” + Sample[i] );
}

Returns:

name Sample
MM__path – path\Sample.dll
MM_loaded – true

In Compiled’s example.

It got me thinkging about an RA…

Remember all those people (you may be one of them) that wanted local file access? Guy Watson mentioned that he was developing a DLL for use in JSAPI that could read & write files & folders because he was an official, 3rd party extension developer. Now, you can run Flash in a Flash Panel which allows you to have Flash movies have access to JSAPI. Therefore, you could have a Flash app, as well, that runs in a Panel AND give it access to that DLL which in turn gives Flash access to the local machine.

Again, after seeing that Flash game in action running INSIDE OF FLASH, I could see a plethora of people writing mini-applications, in Flash, in Flash… or using a SWF in a Panel inside of the Flash IDE. Although Central will soon give us local file access, why not develop your RA for the Flash IDE? Granted, Screenweaver and other 3rd party apps do this, but there is still a lot of opportunity and different features available here.

Postulations & Ideas…

Thoughts?