http://blog.pixelbreaker.com flash stuff... Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:40:28 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've finally found the time to port my SWFObject add-on SWFMacMouseWheel (catchy I know) to ActionScript 3.0 and SWFObject 2.0 There's now two examples in the zip, one for use with SWFObject 1.5, and a totally re-written version for use with SWFObject 2.0 (formerly SWFFix) All you have to do in your ... http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/flash/as30-mousewheel-on-mac-os-x/ I just came across the property System.totalMemory. It's very useful, especially for the engine I am currently working on, and dealing with AS3 garbage collection. It returns the memory currently being used by the Flash Player. It's in bytes so it pays to clean it up slightly. [as] var mem:String = Number( ... http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/flash/as30-memory-monitoring/ I got back from Brighton yesterday, exhausted after 3 days of excellent sessions and some heavy drinking sessions too! The high points for me were Mario Klingemann's "2D or not 2D, that is the question" talk about working with BitmapData. He showed how to make a "Magic Wand" tool a ... http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/flash/back-from-flash-on-the-beach/ I've found a bug in screentime, the software used to pack up PolarClock as a screensaver. When run on Leopard, after the screensaver exits back to the desktop, the Function keys and any shortcuts to the Dashboard or exposé don't work. I have contacted screentime about this issue, and will ... http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/flash/polarclock-on-os-x-leopard/ I've been developing an application recently that requires large numbers of classes to be initialised as soon as the application is loaded. It's an isometric display engine, a la "Sim City", with a world map of 800 x 600 tiles, and multiple layers ( terrain, objects, transport networks etc) ... http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/flash/as30-jit-vs-interpreted/ I've found a better more robust way of enforcing singletons in AS3.0 [as] package { public class Singleton { public static var instance:Singleton; public static function getInstance():Singleton { if( instance == null ) instance = new Singleton( new SingletonEnforcer() ); return instance; } public function Singleton( pvt:SingletonEnforcer ) { // init class } } } internal class SingletonEnforcer{} [/as] Note: The class "SingletonEnforcer" is actually placed within the same .as ... http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/flash/as30-better-singletons/ Today I came across an easy mistake to make when new to AS3. I set up a for loop, to count backwards through an Array. But for some strange reason the loop was never terminating! It was simple, here's the original code [as] var i:uint; for( i=arr.length-1; i>=0; i-- ) { } [/as] The mistake was simple, I ... http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/flash/as30-reversed-for-loop/ Something I have to do very often is looping a number within a range. This could be for a carousel navigation, a rotating banner or image slideshow, etc. The concept is simple, have a range, say 1 - 20, and simply call next() / previous() on it and return the ... http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/flash/looping-within-a-range/ A lot of people had been asking for this as a widget. So i've put together this version for the OS X Dashboard. The options are limited to language selection only. Download: [zip] PolarClock OSX Widget 356Kb http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/flash/polarclock-dashboard-widget/ After being freelance for the last 8 months, which has been pretty chaotic, I've accepted the position of "Senior Creative Technologist" at digit, a long established London agency. It's going to be a really interesting role for me, where I'll carry on working with the Flash Platform (Flash, Flex, and ... http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/work/new-role-at-digit/