Combining Flexbuilder and Flash CS3: Video tutorial

We all know Flexbuilder is a much beter tool for coding Actionscript than Flash CS3, and if you don't know, give a try right now with this video tutorial I made.

With most of the stuff today being about Flex one should not forget that Flash developers are still out there.
For real... I pitty the fool who would try to do something like this alphaomegathegame in Flex. Don't get me wrong. It can be done (maybe Red Interactive did it) but it's not the road I would walk (for now that is). But you can combine Flexbuilder and Flash CS3 in your daily workflow.

This tutorial covers the basics in setting up the development environment. There is more to it and we'll get back on that in the future, but this should get you on track.

Click here to see the tutorials.

Enjoy!







crossposted at labs.boulevart

Mariah Carey Desktop toy: Alpha release

I have had so many requests to realease the celebrated Adobe AIR Mariah Carey Desktop tool, so here it is for you to enjoy.

Click here to download it.

How it works:
1. The timer is a countdown to Mariah's birthday.
2. Click the Flickr logo and your desktop will be filled with Mariah pictures.
3. Drag the pictures around.
3. Drag an mp3 onto Mariah's head and watch the pictures dance.

Stuff for the next version:
1. Framing pictures.
2. Extra navigation, closing the pictures.
3. Better handling of the dancing pictures.
4. Fireworks and a video of Mariah instead of a picture :-)

Remember:
1. It's an Adobe AIR application, so if you don't have it, install the runtime first.
Download it here.
2. Adobe AIR is in beta, so changes can occur making this version of the Mariah Carey tool instable.

Some screenshots:

Flex components in Flash: Example with source

Here's how to load a Flex component in Flash and communicate with it through events.
This can be pretty nifty if you want to use the much better components that ship with Flex in your Flash application.

Click here to see it in action.
This example uses a simple button, but you could use a more complex datagrid if you'd like.

Here's the flow:

1. Load the Flex swf into your flash
2. Wait until the loaded Flex component reaches frames 2 (all Flex swf's have 2 frames indeed)
3. Add the eventlistener (for the event defined in the flex) on the application property of the loaded object. This property is actually a property of the SystemManager class. Remeber the SystemManager class does not exist in Flash. It's a Flex thing.

Here's some sample code to use in Flash:

import flash.display.*;
import flash.events.*;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
import flash.utils.Timer;

var loader:Loader = new Loader();
var timer:Timer;
//load the Flex Component
loader.load(new URLRequest("ButtonTest.swf"));
loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loaderDone);
addChild(loader);

function loaderDone(e:Event) {
timer = new Timer(100);
timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, handleTimer)
timer.start();
}


function handleTimer(event:TimerEvent):void {
//cast the loader.content into MovieClip to access currentFrame.
var myclip:MovieClip = loader.content as MovieClip;
if (myclip.currentFrame == 2) {
//use application property to attach the event listener
myclip.application.addEventListener("iAmClickedFromFlex", clickedFromFlex);
timer.stop();
}
}

function clickedFromFlex(event:Event):void {
trace("clicked");
}


Flex code: (just a simple button)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute">
<mx:Button x="5" y="20" label="I am a flexbutton" click="dispatchEvent(new Event('iAmClickedFromFlex'))"/>
</mx:Application>


This message has also been posted on Boulevart labs

Mike Chambers and Lee Brimelow in Belgium

Mister Mike Chambers and mister Lee Brimelow were the guest speakers at our Belgian Adobe User Group.

It's been really great to have these 2 guys with us. Mike and Lee did 2 sessions on Adobe AIR.

Mike gave us some general insights on AIR and what Adobe will be doing in the future. Keep an eye out for Hydra and Thermo.

Lee is pretty new in the Adobe team and he did a really great session.
He's a funny guy, if you have the change, go and watch him or watch the video here.

Lee is a flash developer and works with AIR mostly from Flash.

Topics on Lee's presentation:

1. Using Flash or Flex? Let the project decide:

Pro Flex:
Flex rich component set
Flex Builder 3 coding experience
Flex data binding

Pro Flash:
when using animation
Video (FLV Playback component)
No extra weight from the flex framework.

2. System Tray is in AIR now :-)

3. Hacks to launch native procesess.

This was live blogging. The sessions are now done and some pictures and the video will be up soon.

Take care!

Adobe MAX: Exclusive video

I still have to write about day 3 at Max, I know but last week has been extremely busy.
With Boulevart we are working on some cool stuff for DuvalE and some guys on the team are doing a great video site for Cronos.

Me, Nicolas and Richard dragged everybody in front of our camera for some real live footage.
It was great. Richard is working on a better version at the moment. So stay tuned!

Adobe MAX 2007: Day two & three

DAY TWO:

We stayed up pretty late the first day so we had about 4 and a half hours of sleep. Then already I got the feeling this was not going to change the coming days.

So to get our heads cleared we thought attending Lee Thomason's session would be a good idea:

1. Inside the flash player
This was definitely one of the most interesting sessions. We all work with flash, just doing our thing everyday. But we never actually realize what really is going on under the hood.

Lee Thomason gave us a some very good insights without making it too complex. I'll sum some of his key-points up for you.

1. Flash is retained rendering vs immediate rendering.
This means Flash always waits for the frame (updateAfterEvent) to do the rendering.
Except for Bitmap data in AS3 which is always immediate.

A tip for performance testing. Use bitmaps to measure time because they are immediately rendered to the screen.

2. Just in time compiling.
This is a standard for compiling actionsctript into bytecode.
Also known as the famous Tamarin open source project.

3. Coding tips for optimization
Used sealed classes
Integer array access
avoid globals in deeply nested code (keep globals out of loops)

4. Garbage collection
The main thing to remember is that Adobe will not release a public API for garbage collection.
This strategy is well chosen, because the garbage collector will be due to many engineering changes in the future.
If a public API would be available, the team would be tight too much to this API for future changes.

5. Text rendering
Animations ons 'Saffron' text, which actually is the method for advanced anti-aliasing on embedded fonts, should be better in flashplayer 10 version.
Font/text rendering is a difficult issue to tackle because of the many varieties and specifications around the world.

6. Some points on Flashplayer 10: code-name Moviestar
cross domain caching
fullscreen will support hardware acceleration
H264/AAC audio encoding
multi threaded rendering
encrypted streams
AS3 sampling profiler but only for Flexbuilder3, not in Flash :-(
mip mapped bitmaps downscaling of images without quality loss or artifacts.


2. Closed session on Mobile
In the afternoon Nicolas and I attended a closed session for +/- 20 developers organized by the Flash Mobile Team. Kathy Charneco did a great job in taking care of us and leading the session.
Present were Carlos Ulloa, Stefan Richter, team from Blueskynorth, team from Lightmaker, Mike Jones, Steven Verbruggen, Frederik Claerhout, Koen De Weggheleire and people from the Adobe team.
To me its seems now that most flash developers underestimate the flash mobile platform.
As Chris Petty from Blueskynorth stated, flash lite is present in many phones and is standard in almost every new model that is released on the market.

For developers it seems that maintaining 2 code-bases is mostly too much overflow and the incapability to adress specific api's, like bluetooth or text messaging are 2 big issues. The latter is of course very platform dependent, but when working on mobile platforms I think there is more to gain with giving up some independency in order to be able to create full functional mobile applications. Let's face it, developing for mobile already is very difficult because of the different screen sizes, platforms, keypads, etc... you. So why not create platform depend api's to address these extra features? This being said, FlashLite 3 is out and Flash Home for mobile is coming up. This is a complete operating system in Flash, yeah!

For consumers initiatives like a marketplace with new applications, the latest downloads/updates, etc... would be very useful. It seems user need to be more aware of the fact that they have Flash on their phones. Everybody in the world now knows what a Flash website is, so this perception of the technology should be consolidated on mobile phones as well.

I was very pleased with this initiative. It seems Adobe is aware of their community and what they have to say. Thumbs up!

3. Koen De Weggheleire: Playing with pixels.
Koen from newmovieclip and the leader of our belgian Adobe user group hit us with his knowledge about pixels and bitmapdata. Koen is a bright guy and he has a special style of presenting like nobody can. He can combine fun things with complex technical stuff without anyone getting bored. It's just hilarious to see Koen waving, jumping, turning at the stage, demoing his creations. Nice one Koen!


4. Closing party
The higlight of the day for sure!
It was a great party. There was lots of booze, there was a great live band, there we casino games and great card magiacians to entertain us. Richard, Nicolas and I dragged lot's of people like Justin Everett Church, Ben Forta, Serge Jespers, Aral Balkan, Carlos Ulloa, Andrew Shorten, Stephanie Sullivan, Thibault Imbert, Benjamin Dobler and many more in front of our camera. We had a great time and a montage will be available soon.

DAY THREE:

Things to remember:

1. Watch out for the new release of Flash:
Live preview of flv's in the IDE
New tweening system with bezier curves (bye bye motion guide) and tweens are now attached to the timeline and not the the object anymore
Kinematics! yeah!

2. The release of flash player 10
3D support
Advanced text layout
Custom filters, effects, etc.. Hydra
C/C++ support

3. Flash Home
The flash operating system for mobile

4. Thermo
A new software package for designers to create Rich Internet Applications

5. AIR
AIR is taking on the world. It seems everybody is finding his/her way into AIR.

The New Creatives: Cheap, fast and good.
Hoss Gifford

I saw Hoss Gifford last year at Flash on the Beach and his session blew me away back then.
Maybe it's just me but in session like this, I always leave the room with my sketchbook filled with idea's.
Wise words from Hoss:
Cheap, fast and good. A project can only be 2 of these at the same time.

AS3 Design patterns
Leo Schuman

Leo talked about, in his own unique way, some of the basics of the observer and the singleton pattern.
Important to remember is that programming to interfaces really works and that composition is to be preferred over inheritance.

Advanced Video Encoding
Giovanni Antico

This was a good last session for me. I am not the world's most renown video expert, so Giovanni's clear explanation of video was quite enlightening.
Check out his files of the presentation.
http://www.gantico.com/blog/2007/10/video-encoding-session/

For more fine pictures visit
http://about.boulevart.be

The crew hanging out with Serge Jespers


Me and Carlos. Say hi to your mom from me dude!


Me and Mike Jones.
Mike is a very nice guy and I am glad to have met him.

Adobe MAX 2007: First Day + Our session

I had some troubles with my internet connection yesterday evening at my hotel room, so with some delay here it is. The first day at MAX :-)

1. The Google Analytics Reporting suite, our own session:

Nicolas and I had a good time doing our presentation. We started with some Sandra Kim tunes, before diving into the hardcore world of code. We enjoyed it and the reactions on the application are very good and encouraging. Keep an eye out on the analytics website

For more pictures on our presentation check out: about.boulevart.be

2. Peter Elst on Best practices in Actionscript 3:
http://www.peterelst.com
As always Peter's sessions are pixel perfect. Most of the stuff het talked about I am already familiar with, but I went to support Peter. But remember, and we all know this, when going live ALWAYS DELETE your trace statements. Peter did a simple test with an array filled with 10000 elements. With trace statement 11 seconds to do a loop, without the trace statement 41 milliseconds.


3. The keynote:
Kevin Lynch, Ben Forta, Mike Downey, Justin Everett Church and the rest of the Adobe crew presented us with all the latest of Adobe: AIR, Flash player 10 codename Astro, Hydra, Flexbuilder 3,...

4.Xavier Beumala & Carlos Rovira: Flex in Flash
http://www.madeinflex.com
Xavier and Carlos talked about combining flash and flex. It seems that with the release of flexbuilder 3, the flex team has put a lot of effort into simplifying the skinning of components. The flex component kit is now standard in Flexbuilder 3.
Still to me it seems the workflow of skinning components or using flash to build them for Flex is not yet optimal. There are still to many parameters and rules to cope with to call it a fluid workflow. Important was the usage of Flex components in Flash . It's quite simple actually. You have to put an onEnterFrame event listener on the loader object once the flex swf is loaded and wait for the second frame. Then the flew swf is all yours and you can start listening to events dispatched from the Flex component.

5. Mario Klingemann on The Blind Sketckmaker.
htpp://www.quasimondo.com
Mario posed himself the question: "Can computers generate art?". He developed a few tools in AIR to help him find the answer. Basically he feeds his software images and with the usage of the image filters he retracts data from the picture in order to categorize it. The he let's the compouter generate images from a blank canvas and hold them against his database to check wether the picture the computer generated is art or not.
It was a very inspiring session to me and will make get more into the filters for sure. The point is the idea and not the technology and Mario is ahead of the class.



And yes, we had some great cava afterwards :-)

I am speaking at Adobe MAX Barcelona!

This is live blogging from the Adobe MAX event at Barcelona. Yihaa!!

First let me tell you it's already been great so far. We arrived yesterday, just went for a quick meal at McDonalds and headed back to the hotel to work on our presentation. In the evening I was invited by the people of Adobe Benelux to have diner at this cool place by the beach called Bestial. A big cheerio to the Adobe crew.

I had a great time. I was seated right next to the loveley Serge Jespers and it seems his table manners have been improved by now.

But today it's time for the real deal.

I am joining my collegue Mr. Nicolas Lierman on stage this afternoon for a demo presentation of the Google Analytics reporting suite. No suprise I am very excited.

I will be outlining some general information about AIR and why everybody should use it along with some less serious but very cool applications I made. There will be the Stinky Panda Tamagotchi and a desktop Mariah Carey (yeah really!).





Stay tuned, I will be back for more.

A few snapshots for you to enjoy:

The TV in my hotel room welcomes me personally. How cool is that?


We flew just 2 hours and here they are: Palmtrees rule!


Mr Nicolas Lierman looking sharp by the pool


Diner with the Adobe crew

Adobe AIR: Beta 2 drag and drop + window

Adobe released the beta 2 for AIR.

There have been some changes in the API. So if you did some projects in beta 1 you will have to change your code.

window is replaced by nativeWindow. For example:
stage.window.x is now stage.nativeWindow.x

The drag and drop API has been changed dramatically:

The classes TransferableFormats and TransferableData are gone.
You will now have to use the Clipboard and ClipboardFormats classes.
Dragging in for example:

import desktop.Clipoard;
import desktop.ClipboardFormats;

private function onDrop(e:NativeDragEvent):void {

DragManager.dropAction = DragActions.COPY;

var dropfiles:Array = e.clipboard.getData(ClipboardFormats.FILE_LIST_FORMAT) as Array;

}

So to sum it up:

1. use clipboard.getData instead of transferable.dataForFormat.
2. use ClipboardFormats.FILE_LIST_FORMAT instead of transferableFormats.FILE_LIST_FORMAT

Take care!

Adobe AIR summercamp ROCKED! We won!

Nicolas, Frederic and myself were invited by the good folks over at Adobe to come and compete at the Adobe AIR summercamp benelux.

And yes, we won! We are attending MAX in Barcelona this year, thanks to Adobe

Nico, Frederik you guys rocked, thanks for working so hard, the great teamwork and the spirit. I love you guys!


We created 'Stinky Panda'. A 3D tamagotchi that lives on your desktop. You have to feed it music and pictures, you have to put it to sleep and you have to clean it's crap. I kid you not. It will pollute your desktop fast with 'crap'. So you better clean up.





More on Stinky Panda and his future over at Boulevart labs.

Special thanks to Serge from Adobe, for inviting us, for setting this up and for helping us out during the night walk, respect and muchas gracias dude!

Many hugs to Benjamin Dopler for his insights on the ByteArray class and for being a wicked guy. Thanks man!
Thanks to Christophe Rooms from Adobe for his work on the drag and drop API, the databases and his support and last but not least Lilly from Blue Projects for organising and having some 30 nerds walk in line.

The guys from Lostboys ended up in 2nd place with a slick VJ mixing tool with an incredibly cool interface.
3rd position was for the guys from TribalDDB with something called the AIR Hole. A tiny application but with lots of power. You can send files directly to someone else by dragging it into the hole on your desktop.

It was great to finally meet some of the guys who's work I was allready familiar with.
I had a great time with Eric and Thijs from Lostboys, Joey and Jan Willem from TribalDDB, Andre from Atos Origin, Sander and his buddy from Satama, Sakri from Nascom, Pascal from Thesedays and on and on...

Thanks to all the teams for their support!
It was a blast and I hope to be seeing some of the guys back really soon.

I'll be on holiday for the coming 2 weeks but I will be back!

Adobe AIR and Flash CS3: Demo with source

Here is an AIR demo that encapsulates some neat AIR and AS3 tricks.
It is called the Kevin Bacon Drag and Drop.
You have to drag an image file (jpg, png or gif) to the top of the screen.
When you drop the file it will fall down.
Make sure it lands on Kevin's camera and your picture will appear on the screen behind Kevin.

This a summary of all the features implemented in this demo:
1. compiled and written within Flash CS3 (not Flexbuilder)
2. the Adobe AIR drag and drop API
3. pixel perfect collision detection in AS3
4. the use of custom events and event bubbling
5. Ratio scaling for images

Thanks to Grant Skinner you can now compile AIR files from within Flash CS3.
Download and read the instructions here:
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2007/07/creating_air_pr.html

The Adobe AIR API documentation is build in the Flex3 Language reference (look for the classes with a blue dot next to them)
http://livedocs.adobe.com/labs/flex/3/langref/

Download the installer file here:
http://cases.boulevart.be/blogs/DragandDropGame.zip

Download the source files here:
http://cases.boulevart.be/blogs/DragandDropGame_source.zip

Here's a few mac and windows screenshots:

crossposted at labs.boulevart.be

Look who's a web 2.0 expert...

pointed out to me by this fine dude: aboutnico

Check this out boys and girls:
http://techcrunch20.com/panel-of-experts/

Click the link and search for Mr MC Hammer!

Career change anyone?

Propod: Is Flash a tool for blogging?

With the release of FI's blog done in Flash, I started a post out at labs.boulevart.be to discuss if Flash is a suitable tool for blogging?

Join the discussion here:
http://labs.boulevart.be/index.php/2007/06/05/fi-propod-is-flash-a-tool-for-blogging/

Word!

gemaaktwatmee.be: Campaign for Jupiler

Commisioned by TheseDays, we worked at flash development for the campaign gemaaktwatmee.be for Belgian beer Jupiler.

Our developer Maarten worked together with the Thesedays developer team mostly at database communication using Json and Monorail.

There is an article at www.marketinginteractive.be too (in dutch).

Thanks to TheseDays.

Build and compile AS3, Flex2 and Apollo applications in Eclipse on Mac OS X

Tested Unit, the blog of Mister Sven Dens is online.

Sven is sitting right next to me here at the office and his first post is a litle jewel for all Flash/Flex developers.

He created a template that contains everything you need to build and run Flash/Flex/Apollo apps from ActionScript source files or MXML (Flex2) source files.

Donload the template here or visit Sven's blog for the source and more details.

Good work Sven!
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Silverlight for Flash Developers: Demo with source code

With Silverlight being the talk of the town, especially amongst Flash developers, what is the best way to get your head around it? Right... Get your hands dirty. There ain't much to gain from talking about stuff you never tried :-)

The best way to get started was to go out and try some very basic stuff for game development. So I started out with basic character controlling.

Download the silverlight plug-in, if you don't allready have it, and check out the result:
http://www.seeingisbelieving.be/blog/silverlight/ladybug/fullscreen/default.html


I am on a Mac so I did not use any IDE for the creation of this demo.
Windows users can use Visual Studio or Expression.
I only used TextEdit (Notepad) for Windows users. So you could say that Silverlight is platform independent. This demo was created on a Mac. Maybe some IDE for Mac will arise in the open source community one day. You could use Eclipse for your javascript development for now. Documentation that comes with the SDK is pretty good, so you should have a 'Hello World' pretty quick.

What you need:
1. html file
2. a xaml file (pronounce as "zammel")
3. min. 2 javascript files
4. the Silverlight plug-in
5. TextEdit or Notepad

Download the SDK here.

Developing Silverlight vs Flash:
It's not all that difficult to get it working, but it can be pretty confusing if you are a Flash developer. Because I didn't use any IDE it was very hard to debug and I am not a javascript master so I had to 'cheat' sometimes.

1. Scripting and manipulating objects is done in separate files. You define your UI elements in the XAML file and you manipulate them in another file with javascript. Or at least most of the time. Not so for animations. Pretty confusing indeed...

2. I made quit a mess trying to get simultanious keyboard input, but it works. I got frustrated over booleans not working (no debugging tools) so I faked them with strings, sorry...

3. There is no 'onEnterFrame' boys and girls. There is however a work around. You create an animation with duration zero, you set a callback handler where you restart the animation and where you can put your code to be executed.

4. Prototyping is back. You will be seeing a lot of these things: myobject.prototype.mymethod = function doThis() . I've only got rid of this 2 years ago and I feel that it's not doing any good for the OO approach.

5. No support for creating custom events if your are not working with C# or Visual Basic.

6. No collision detection for images. There is a HitTest method but you can't use that on images. Only on the Stroke object.

7. Bitmap manipulation in Flash (the bitmap API) is much much more mature.

8. The switch from Actionscript to Javascript is not that hard.

9. Embedding in an html page is a complete drag. I tried to embed my application in this blog but it doesn't work at all. Microsoft provided a service called Silverlight streaming. Here you can upload your application as a zip file where you add a manifest.xml file from where it can be streamed. They provide you with some extra code and code to embed your app on an html page but I can't get it to work. It is pretty easy if you have full control over the server where you host your pages but embedding a Flash app is much more straightforward.

10. Working with animations is completely different in Silverlight than in Flash. It is done in the XAML file where you work with storyboards. An animation is an object, you can target and manipulate your animations in the according *.js file.

I feel Silverlight has a long way to go, but .NET developers should be able to get a grip of it fast. It is still in Beta so I guess stuff like bitmap manipulation, cleaner embedding, collision detection, event handling,... are allready on the table over at Microsoft. Or they should be...

Download the source code here:
http://www.seeingisbelieving.be/blog/silverlight/ladybug/silverlight_ladybug_source.zip

Word!
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Work, work, work

To all my dear readers,

I know it has been a while but it's been very very busy the last two weeks. I know you've heard it before but it's true! Really.
Check it out:

Game development:
I have been doing a game for a recruitment campaign for Microsoft Dynamics, commissioned by the nice folks over at McCann:
http://www.lanceerjezelf.be/game.aspx


The game was done in the Asap framework and I must say it works very good. Development speed has gone up and everybody is working according one system which is a good thing. It's good, believe me! We did coding, design and photography for the game from zero to completion within 6 days.

Game development 2:
I haven been doing an offline installation for Suzuki. This jackpot installation was used at a 4x4 event in Brecht. Check out my test environment:

My collegue Bart doing a stresstest (look at him all stressed out...)


Second Life:
We have opened our own island, commissioned by our mother company Cronos, at Second Life and had a first event there with Radio1 and Boek.be:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cronos/152/157/34
Go there and watch streaming video's of presentations of books presented in a special package for 'De literaire lente'. I am very proud of our island and what we achieved there so far.





Silverlight:
I got my hands dirty on Silverlight

Internal stuff:
I've been working on our Subversion setup or at least I was mostly anoying my collegue Sven who actually did the setup. But we are on a roll now. I am so glad everything works fine now.

Yes, all of this in merely 13-15 days my friends...

More on all these things in following posts.

Respect!

Microsoft Silverlight and JavaFX: What about the flash developer?

Silverlight: Beta release.

JavaFX: Alpha release

Silverlight:

"Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web."

This sounds very much like the Flash player plug-in doesn't it?

It indeed is Microsoft's answer to Adobe's wellknown Flash player. But remember, it is still in Beta so changes will be made along the way.

In fact the only technology capable of delivering fast packed media experiences at this moment is Flash. Or would you prefer to give Ajax a try to create something like this:
http://www.gettheglass.com/

So you can state that Adobe has a monopoly within this niche of the internet business.
So now Microsoft claims to be ready, or almost ready because Silverlight is in beta, to take a piece of the market. Will they succeed? As we all know, they have done it before.

Flash has been MY tool, it really feels like it is mine, for years now. I can do almost anything with it: skateboarding, riding horses, swimming,... So yes I must admit, some say that is not professional behavior, my knees weakened a bit when I heard the news. Where would this leave me, what should I do, will Microsoft crush my beloved Flash or will Flash be like the I-pod? Just the most popular one out of many alternatives?

Flash has grown to become a steady environment with a huge and strong community. I don't see this crumbling down so fast. So don't panic but I agree with Steven from Minorissues that Silverlight should be taken serious:
http://www.minorissues.be/blog/index.php?itemid=189

JavaFX:

"The demand continues to grow for secure, interactive content, applications, and services that run on a variety of clients. To simplify and speed the creation and deployment of high-impact content for a wide range of devices, Sun is introducing JavaFX, a new family of products based on Java technology designed to enable consistent user experiences, from desktop to mobile device to set-top box to Blu-ray Disc."

It seems that Sun is mostly aiming at Ajax with this one.
Their focus is mainly on multi platform development. Sun completely missed the interactive webcontent boat. Their applet hasn't really changed since 1996 or so, while Macromedia's Flash platform seemed to be versatile enough to grow and become market leader for interactive web content.

Again we'll have to see what happens.

Conclusion:

A lot of things are happening for multimedia developers these days. What technolgy should one choose, which 'side' should one choose?

For me, it is not about choosing sides. As a multimedia developer you should always embrace new things. You should by some new books and study.
The boys and girls at marketing departments, the deals within the industry and the user will guide us...

A true Nerd is never scared... Never!

Word!

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More impressive work: Red Interactive

I read about this nice site over at boomblogue:

http://ff0000.com/universe/

The site is in beta and for you to test.

Impressive and very well done!

Royal Boulevart Football Club

Yes,

Alive and kicking the Royal Boulevart Football Club!

Talented as we are, we will rule the universe!

Our first game will be the 11th of April against the These Days Football Allstars

Thanks to the believer and chairman Claudio

Eye Project: impressive work from Yugop

Brought to me by Zuppaman and brought to you by Yugop and Takayuki Fukatsu:

Eye project

A video posting site for the Japanese telecom company KDDI. One of the first AS3 commercial projects with some impressive scripting including papervision running in the background.

enjoy!

Fonky Flash is online!

Yes, Mr. D Jannes has got his first post up!

Fonky Flash

Read about what he did with L-Systems in Flash.

He is sooo nice, he even shares his code with us.

Nice work dude.
Catch you on the flipside!

Adobe releases Apollo alpha on Adobe labs

Yes it's here!

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/

Download, play and have fun!

It also seems that the product managers from Adobe are thinking about changing the name for the official release.

I feel, and many developers with me, the name should stay.
You can take the poll here:
http://blog.everythingflex.com/2007/03/15/apollo-the-great-debate/

Big cheerio to the Apollo team!

The Apple Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS) to Flash

Not only the keyboard of my MacBook lits up in the dark, it seems to be equiped with a Sudden Motion Sensor or SMS.
This motion sensor is designed to protect your hard disk when the computer is dropped or undergoes severe vibration.

The Sudden Motion Sensor is designed to detect unusually strong vibrations, sudden changes in position or accelerated movement. If the computer is dropped, the Sudden Motion Sensor instantly parks the hard drive heads to help reduce the risk of damage to the hard drive on impact.

Ofcourse the sensor can be used for more vital applications as well. How about a game of Pong anyone? It has been done in Processing, so why not give it a try in Flash. Just for the sake of it!

Here is an example I've build using Java and Flash.
I know the ball is going at 'loser' speed, but hey it's MY party and I cry if I want to!
Download the source code here:

http://www.seeingisbelieving.be/blog/AppleSMS2Flash.zip

Included are the Unimotion library and the Java API to work with it, the Flash files and the Java socket server.
The big picture is you use the Unimotion library in Java for detecting the motion and then send it to the Flash through a Java socket server.

Related links:
Lincoln Ramsey (created Unimotion library)
Daniel Shiffman (created the Java API for Unimotion)
Grant Skinner (for the Flash collision detection)
Info about the SMS

Mr Tom Anthoni is alive!

May I introduce you:

Drowning in a sea of Flash

The blog of the talented and handsome Mr. Tom Anthoni!

He will blog of all things flash and other cool stuff. He is a cool guy and I hope he will have a long and prosperous life in the virtual world!

Cheers dude!

Mike Downey demonstrates Apollo

Mr Mike Downey, who looks a bit like Quentin Tarantino if you ask me, from Adobe demonstrates an eBay-branded application created with Apollo.



Apollo is a cross-operating system runtime that allows you to install desktop applications that are built using web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, and Flash.

Although Zinc has been around for some time now doing a good job, this promises to be very cool and give us Flash developers a new point of view for creating rich applications.

Here's the link:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/videos/apollo_demo07/index.html

Word!

Google is in my house!

The wall!

Zuppaman told me they removed the These Days wall with one giant Val Kilmer poster.

So this link is a tribute in honor of the old These Days wall...

http://blog.thesedays.com/thewall/

For the insiders: 'De Wim kan het niet aan' is still there.
Sweet guys, really sweet... :-)

BoulevArt impressum: A day at the office...

BoulevArt, a day at the office...

1. One of the finalist of World Press Photo is right behind me...


2. This is DJ Dirk Bielen, also known as the AD who loves obscure eastern german techno...


3. Join us!! Your desk is waiting :-)


4. We needed a wall just like the developers at These Days. Love you guys :-)


5. This is the stuff our project managers do... hmmm

Herman Asselberghs wins at Transmediale

Belgian artist Herman Asselberghs won the Transmediale festival this year with his film 'Proof of Life'

The work 'Proof of Life' by Herman Asselberghs is testament to the power of art to bring its audience into the present. Its layering of meaning and the interplay between different times and spaces, mirrors current multiple realities saturated in images of terror,the viewe) is impotent and in a perpetual state of emergency. 'Proof of Live' is an artwork which first and foremost speaks to a universal and splintered human condition through both the description and metaphor of incarceration.
Consistent with a long history of text based interventions, Asselberghs plays with a space denoting an, 'absence of presence and presence of absence' with strong resonances, reminiscent of the film essay by Alain Resnais, 'Night and Fog'. Sitting between audio performance and site specific installation, this work demonstrates the power of the text. Contemporaneous in form and content, referencing and further propagating mediated witness and solace, ‘Proof of Live’ invites us into a space in order to question the degree of our own comfort and the abstraction of the world around us. (transmediale.07 jury statement)

I submited my project Beautiful Mess, but there were 1030 submissions so I won't take it personal they didn't select me :-)

Congratulations Herman Asselberghs.

Live in Second Life

Yesterday evening at 11.00 pm CET Windows Vista was launched in Brussels with a concert from Praga Khan.
One Agency took care of the event in Second Life.

I was there and here are some screenshots:

Compile AS3 on OSX without FlexBuilder

A glorieus moment in time...

After 10 years it finally happend, I got myself a Mac.

I have always been very happy with my pc and spreaded the message that Mac's were used by girls or the more girlie type kinda guys...

Well now I have one myself. So yeah I am in touch with my feminin side!



I have to say that I enjoy working on this machine more and more. The keyboard lights up in the dark! How funky is that? That is actually the main reason why I got it really.

So one of the first things I had to do was setting up my development environment.
That includes playing around with AS3 yeah!

So here's a litle 'howto' on compiling AS3 on the Mac. Flexbuilder is a much more complete solution (codehinting, debugging, ...) but is not free and Flashdevelop which is great does not support Mac.

So I am using Eclipse, Ant and the Flex2 SDK.

You can download the tutorial and project files here: (project files are included)
www.seeingisbelieving.be/blog/as3onosx.zip

Thanks to Steve Nelson from BFPUG for setting up the project templates.

Yves Pauwels won an FWA (another one)!

I don't know Yves personally, but he has done some great stuff.

Today he won an FWA for this one:

http://www.pedro-verhue.be/

Very well done and congrats dude!

An old interview with Yves (2003) on the FWA:
http://www.thefwa.com/interviews/int85.html

Sticks ans stones

My good friend Steven passed me through 5 sticks. This means I have to reveal 5 things about myself most people don't know about me.

I know it's been a while since he asked me. Steven my deepest apologies for being so late but here they are.

* From the age of 10 till about 17 I played handball. I played with a club called Ajax in first division (at that time). I even got a national selection when I was 16. It seems they are in big trouble at the moment if you read the news at their website (dutch).

* I got my first computer at the age of 9. It was a Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer model II. I sometimes cry in bed at night because I sold it...

* I played guitar for several years in a band called Janez Detd.

* I am more a Pearl Jam than a Nirvana kinda person.

* I care a lot about good hair...

Papervision3D: another flash 3D engine

Thanks to self proclaimed flash evangelist Nicolas who pushed me into the flash 3D engines I started playing around with Sandy (see previous post) and Papervision3D.

Papervision is an engine written for AS2 as well as AS3.
It is still in private beta but the results are stunning. I have been goofing around with the AS3 engine and it's really performing well.

You will need flash player 9 to view this:
Check it out in a new browser window :
http://www.seeingisbelieving.be/papervision/PaperTest.html

Download the source here:
http://www.seeingisbelieving.be/papervision/PaperVisionTest.as

This demo features around 300 objects on stage with 2 sided bitmap material and a moving camera. I have never seen 3D performing like this in Flash.

Sandy is performing slower and you need the pixlib framework too.
I know it is not really fair comparing an AS2 to AS3 application when it comes to performance.
But the AS2 version of Papervision seems to be performing better than Sandy as well. Feel free to comment :-)

Sandy however supports much more primitives and methods than Papervision3d. Papervision only has mesh, plane and point while Sandy implements box, hedra, plane, sphere, cylinder, line, etc..

Anyway all the guys and girls (it seems there are too few girls doing stuff like this) who are putting things like this online deserve a big cheerio!

CHEERIO!!! and thanks to the open source flash community!

Sandy: a flash AS2 3D engine

Here's a little test I did with the Sandy 3D engine.

You can find it here:
http://osflash.org/sandy

In the video you see Helena, my 2 year old daughter cheering 'pianisimokey'. She rules!

We are hiring senior flash developers!

Join us now or weep forever baby!