BEP Interactive is looking for a full time flash developer/animator. Give them a shout if you are interested.
Blog
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Shared Libraries Lazy Load & TamperData
I’ve been using Shared Libraries for years, and only found out yesterday that they lazy load. Meaning, they load on the fly. I’ve made preloaders in the past for SharedLibraries, but wasn’t realizing that my “usage” of an asset was the thing actually triggering the load. It worked so I just moved on with life.
A Shared Library is a SWF that has symbols in it specifically made to be shared in multiple FLA’s. That way if you have an app that has multiple SWF’s, they can all share the same asset. This works great for large, internal videos, fonts, and sounds.
We had to do it because we have a design that uses 5 fonts. At an average of 12k to 20k per font, you can see the need to ensure that all 32 or so SWF’s all share the same font. We bring in the font symbols as imported for shared libraries, and viola. The path that they import from, the framework.swf, is problematic since it’s hard coded into the SWF. You can change it by right clicking on the symbol in the library and selecting “Linkage…”, but that’s a pain in the ass if you want to test locally vs. deployed to site.
No url is hard coded anywhere since we are using an Akamai load-balancer so these are the only exception per-se. Since they are relative, they still respect the load balancer. We’ve used JSFL to make our testing vs. deploy scenario transparent; the scripts update the Shared Font paths based on whether you are testing or deploying.
Anyway, in testing, my co-worker Tony showed me how to see what the SWF was loading. I don’t have ServiceCapture on my work PC up here, so he had me install TamperData . It’s a hot Firefox plugin that shows HTTP traffic. You can see the SWF make a call for the Shared SWF when the asset is used; it’s pretty neat! Great extension to have when you don’t have ServiceCapture. Don’t know if it can see AMF though, only HTTP stuff I think.
Most of the Shared Library stuff is different in Flash Player 9 and Flex 2 . I believe Roger mentioned awhile ago about how SimpleApplication uses like the Frame metadata to put shared font symbols on frame 3 or something… :: shrugs ::. Anyway, getClassByName will allow access to other SWF’s libraries now so the Jenga world is a lot easier, but although the docs say you can’t do it in ActionScript only projects, I haven’t tested personally. For those of us still doing Flash 8 and below, it works good.
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Writely’s New Interface
Google-fied! Still doesn’t work on Safari, the main Mac browser. I’ve only had 2 minutes to give her a once over. When I went to bed, it was the old domain name and old interface. This morning it’s the customary simple blue and white that Google uses on a lot of its applications. It’s now part of docs.google.com. It’s main new feature is the integration with Google’s Spreadsheets, kind of like Excel online. You can view both set of documents, as well as collaborate on them both now. Some interface elements have been moved around, but I don’t really have anything more useful to report. You can read more here. I liked the old interface, but recognize the need for consistent branding and perceived integration.
Writely is an online word-processing application. For those who have Word, it’s not very impressive. It has collaborative editing; meaning multiple people can edit the same document at the same time, all from a web browser. It’s useful to me because my Mac has no decent programs on it. Writely is better than TextEdit for example. I used Writely last night to write the previous blog entry. What IS impressive is that all you need is a web browser (except Safari on Mac), you can access your documents anywhere, and have a nice application for word processing.
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D&D @ MAX – Eberron Anyone?
I was planning to wait a week to ask, but I am already getting emails from groups and individuals planning events at the Adobe MAX 2006 conference 2 weeks from now. To ensure everyone has fair time to plan their days I figure I’ll ask now to give people ample time and options.Does anyone want to play a game of D&D in the Eberron setting some time at MAX?
I’ll be the DM of course. We’ll be running one of the low-level modules for the Eberron campaign setting. You’re welcome to use a pre-made character from any race and class, but she must be 3rd level or below. Eberron specific characters a plus! Additionally, I’ll roll up some pre-made characters for those who’ve never played or don’t have a low-level character handy.
I know times are tight. Sys-con‘s doing something October 23rd, Monday night that I want to try to make. Ted’s doing MAXUP’s during the day, and I’ll have to be a booth-boy for Universal Mind when I’m not speaking parts of the day, so that really leaves dinner time Saturday, Sunday, and Monday . I think I’m speaking twice at the end of the day Wednesday. I doubt there will be time during the day. I’m leaving Thursday night kind of early. I’m open to multiple nights in case there is interest since modules sometimes take multiple gaming sessions to get through. I need to check this weekend what else my company had planned, but I’m pretty sure nights are open. Adobe is running parties from like around 5 – 7pm Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. I’ve also got something different planned Tuesday eve’ as well.
My experience with conferences is that every night is full of too much stuff to do. Not to mention the fact we will be in Las Vegas, party central. For a lot of people, this is purely business so they’ll end up meeting someone in their industry they view as a peer or potential client, and go out to dinner. Others are people who’ve known each other online for years, but are only now meeting face to face.
Therefore, I’m totally cool with people playing it by ear. If you don’t want to commit till 2 minutes before, no problem. If there ends up being no time to play, no problem there either, just seeing if anyone is game.I can only run a 6 person game, so if you are interested, let me know either at jesterxl@jessewarden.com or jesse.warden@gmail.com and we’ll see how it goes.