One of the great promises of Flash, back when it was introduced, was that finally designers would not have to worry anymore about the limitation of web fonts. But Flash developers all around had to find different way to use and implement the designers’ choice efficiently.
Lots of websites done with static content or localized only in one language did not need to worry much about fonts, however as Flash grew in popularity and demand, projects became more complex and required text to be dynamic and localized. That’s when the party started.
What is presented here is a workflow that I have been using with my team for quite some time, and it has proven efficient. I do not dare to say it is the best, especially since dealing with fonts in Flash is such a pain that many people have probably lots of different ways to import and use fonts properly.
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Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Flash, Tutorials.
Posted on 2010/01/28
Although its performance is still not at its best, Flash has a bright future in gaming, simply look at how many MMORPGs are made in flash and how many websites host games. With Flash soon to support multitouch events and also soon being ported to the iPhone and I think we will see more games made with the platform.
Time and again I have read articles by people complaining that Flash does not support gamepads. I think I understand Adobe for not wanting to spend time creating more preferences windows and other sorts of open doors into the Flash Player. Be that as it may, I may have found an interesting solution which makes using a gamepad ot interact with Flash possible. Read more after the jump.
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Posted in ActionScript 3.0.
Posted on 2009/10/12
In many projects, you will be faced with the necessity to load images dynamically. Oftentimes I have been requested to use a loaded image as a background for a website that took the full viewport area. What you need in such a case is to know that you have to resize your image proportionnally, and even though that seems obvious and simple, people often ask me how to deal with that. I provide the sources for this tutorial at the end of the post. Read more after the jump.
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Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Tutorials.
Posted on 2009/10/10
In the last post, I thought I would be able to start explaining a bit, but I got lost in my ramblings about the different ways to use assets into an ActionScript project. This time, I will get my hands dirty playing with code–and show you step by step how to get yours dirty as well. We will see how to use third party SWCs, how to create our own SWCs from the Flash IDE and how to load them efficiently. This tutorial requires you to have access to either Flash Builder, Flex Builder or a setup similar to mine with Eclipse and to Adobe Flash. I provide the sources for this tutorial at the end of the post.
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Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Eclipse, Flash, Flash Builder, Tutorials, Workflow.
Posted on 2009/09/25
Over the years, we have seen multiple ways to import our visuals and sounds into our projects. Some of these ways would have our assets included into the SWF, which meant the published file could end up quite big. Some other ways would have us load everything dynamically, which could be practical for some assets, but not necessarily flexible enough for all situations. Through all these options, how can we have our assets related to our ActionScript classes? Let's see and compare what is feasible and what is ideal.
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Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Flash, Flash Builder, Projects, Tutorials, Workflow.
Posted on 2009/09/23
If you are using Eclipse in a different language than your OS, that is. And on Mac OSX. Anyways that is what I faced. Hear my tale and be baffled!
Let's backtrack a bit. My OS is in French, as I am French Canadian. Whenever I use software that requires that I write (namely MS Word, but also utilities for emails, etc.), I want my software in my native language. However, in the case of programming (and that actually goes for Adobe's Creative Suite as well) I want my software in English. A simple matter of aligning more properly with a lot of tutorials online.
As stated in my previous post, I use Eclipse to program, and my setup is in English. After installing the Flash Builder plugin, I ended up with Eclipse's UI switched to French. Erh... what gives? During the process of installation, I did not chose French at any point.
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Posted in Eclipse, Flash Builder.
Posted on 2009/09/14
I've been thinking of what to write for my first post, other than "Welcome to this blog". I realized that since I intend to share my work habits and to make some tutorials out of what I have learned the past few years, I might as well present how I work.
I have tried different ways of writing ActionScript over the last years: the Flash IDE (not really efficient), FlashDevelop (is a good start), Flex Builder and finally Eclipse. Ok, the last two are actually the same. Here is why I am now using Eclipse to write my ActionScript projects, and sometimes even other projets.
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Posted in Eclipse, Flash, Workflow.
Posted on 2009/09/14
