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Ok, this one pisses me off hardcore. It technically works correctly on paper, but so did Marxism… or so the saying goes… whatever.

I’ve been using getNextHighestDepth for movie clips that are expendable. Timers, counters, one time processes, etc. However, movie clips created in negative depths are protected, meaning removeMovieClip will not work on them. The same goes for movie clips created at or above 1048576. Unfortunately, getNextHighestDepth will return that depth. I haven’t pinned down at what situation those depths are returned. With nothing, it’ll return 0. With a clip at 1000, it’ll return 1001. I guess at some point it just jumps to that value.

At any rate, tracking down some bugs, and this is the 2nd time I was burned by this gotcha. I don’t give a flying fizz-nuck-chuck what ECMA says, this is bs functionality. In my understanding, this command was to help me not worry about depth management. Now, however, I’m back to where I started: worrying about depth management.

Consider yourself warned.

I took the Flash MX test at Brainbench. I’ll probably take the Flash 5 and 4 ones this weekend, plus all the Directors, and venture into the Adobe programs to annihilate my ego.

I must say their site is flaky in response times and very slow when wiggs out. And that Survey pop-up makes me want to beat the crap outta whatever web designer “took orders” and implemented it. You made a choice bro, time to pay. Sometimes it works very quickly and is responsive… other times it just flakes out. I left the browser window open at the end of my test because it was the 5th time I had taken it in 2 days… I never made it past question 15 without the browser hanging. I figured, fuggit, 404 or bust. Amazingly, it came back.

I must admit, too, a few of the questions were dodgey, but maybe that’s because I claim to know Flash pretty well, and get irritatated when I don’t understand a question. Like, one question about debuggers asked what you couldn’t do… but all 5 could be done. Another one about debugging was really horribly worded; I had no frikin’ clue what the “user” wanted to do, so I’m like… uh, if I want to skip a function, I just don’t set a breakpoint, but they made it sound like you already set it… and could move the code arrow in the debugger… wtf.

BTW, anyone know how valid these gents are? I’ve heard “they’ve been around for a long time”. That doesn’t mean anything to me, but I have read of an employer that hired someone cause they had Brainbench transcripts and another candidate did not. Regardless, if it’s not valid, I won’t publicly support it and vice versa… just curious.

Anyway, here are my scores. Think you can do better, sucka!? Then hurry, all their tests are free until the 14th.

Name: Flash MX Score: 4.49 Date: 2004-07-09

Scored higher than 96% of all previous test takers.

Demonstrates a clear understanding of many advanced concepts within this topic. Appears capable of mentoring others on most projects in this area.

Strengths
– Advanced Actions
– Animation
– Scripting
– Symbols

Weak Areas
– None Noted

Sub-Category Scores
– Conceptual 5.0
– Problem-Solving 4.0

My island as she’s coming along… soo many pieces to build and can’t spend more than 4 minutes on each as a rule. Also, the dock I broke my 4 minute rule on. It’s amazing how quick this stuff is to create; I guess that’s why my attention span is still not bored with all of this.

Da Boardwalk

Island Cove