Cairngorm Creator

I found this ill Cairngorm generator called Cairngorm Creator. I thought I would try it out for a project I am working on. I didn't go into detail writing out my methods and variables but it was super dope to have the app generate the stubbed out classes with all the proper imports for my project.

check it!

Ill Sites: Ikea

Ikea has done some cool stuff with stop motion video on their websites. They got a new one with some cool effects with audio and video. Not sure what the site says since it in Sweden, but very ill none the less.

check it

FlexMVCS

So one big debate I have with other developers is what framework or architecture we agree on using. When it comes to AS3, people seem to be leaning more towards PureMVC for Flash Based projects just because Cairngorm is more and more a Flex based architecture.

Today I found FlexMVCS. Some folks who worked over at BunchBall created a flex friendlier version of PureMVC that addresses some of the issues of using PureMVC in flex.

You can snatch up the SVN repository info at their google code site

What do you think?

Converse, Psyop, Pharrel, Santogold, and Julian Casablancas

Psyop threw down some very ill motion on a spot to celebrate Converse 100th year anniversary.

We were talking at work to see if this was possible to do something like this if papervision.

Web414 August 2008 Meeting

I am giving a talk at the next Web414 meeting in Milwaukee about my experience with developing an application in Adobe AIR. I am super excited. Ever since I started with Flex 3 I have been super geeked about what I have been learning. So if you are in the Milwaukee area on the 14th of August I would love you to come by! The meetings are held at bucketworks located on 1340 N 6th St Milwaukee, WI.

Click here to sign-up.

Thanks to Mike Rohde for hooking this up!

Snappin: The Charges Against ActionScript 3.0

Colin Moock has posted on O'Riely's InsideRIA charges against ActionScript 3.0. He makes a stand for Flash developers who are having issues with AS3 and feeling that the "ease of use" of previous Flash version is going away. I think alot of the points are good but I also think to make room for more scalability of the structure you have to let some things die.

Check it

Colin also has a video with Jim Cobert that talks about the Flash Player from the FITC Toronto. Some good talks about some of the current bugs in Flash and how they are trying to deal with them. Check that out!

Adobe AIR Update Framework.

I am getting closer to having FlossyFX completed. One feature that I need to work on was the auto update to provide users with new versions of the app. I did a search online to see how other people are doing it and found that Adobe released their own package called Adobe AIR Update Framework last month.

The framework uses XML on a server to store the latest version, update description, and download path. You point the code to the xml and it checks itself against your current version using the application xml file.

The framework comes in two version for UI and non-UI and also in ActionScript and Javascript. I was going to code up an example but I think the samples that Adobe provides are solid. You can download the code and samples on adobe labs.

One thing to note is that the framework is still in beta, but it seemed stable enough to use. I guess you could provide the final code update when you update your app!

Check it

TweenMax AS3

My man Matt Przybylski just lead me to TweenMax. TweenMax is TweenLite's big brother. It has a ton of goodies from regular tweens to filter and bezier tweening. After trying it out seems, it to be one of the best (and smallest 8K!) tweening engines I have tried so far.

I definitely like the ability to stop all tweens and delays. This is always good when user starts or stops an interaction.

Check it!

Thanks Matt!

Reading .wav files to AIR.

So while working on FlossyFX I was trying to see if there was a way to import .wav or .aiff files into AIR to play in Flossy. Since those file types aren't native I was trying to look for alternate ways to get this going.

At first I thought I could write a hook to lame to convert the file into an MP3 then import into AIR. But from what I read security is tight, so that was a no go. Boo!

Then I saw Merapi, a project that allows a bridge between Java and AIR. So I signed up for the beta. I am still waiting for the beta email, but while waiting I found Benjamin Dobler's Rich Apps blog. Benjamin broke down how to take the byte array information from a wav file and stuff it down to a swf for the sound to play. This totally answered my issue of getting wav files working.

Now I am in the process of taking the wav conversion code and converting the idea over to aif files as well. The binary structure of an aif file is way more organized then wav is it seemed fairly easy to get to the byte data. I just have to make sure it's saving the data in all the right places. If I get the code done I will post the solution.

Here is the post on the wav conversion. I did have to change the code a bit in Benjamin's WavSWF Class and add the LoaderContentInfo to the Loader because of the new security settings in AIR.

FYI, if you are looking for more information on ByteArrays check out http://bytearray.org/