http://www.gskinner.com/blog/ News, views and source code from Grant Skinner & Company. Including information on OOP / OOAD, user experience and RIA development. Copyright 2010 Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:25:43 -0700 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.14 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss QuickFiles is a free OSX 10.6 AppleScript service plugin that lets you create new files of any kind in the Finder with a keystroke. Install QuickFiles then place files or folders that you'd like to use as templates into the "QuickFiles Templates" folder. When you run QuickFiles, simply select a template from the list, and it will be copied into your current folder. Best of all, everything can be controlled via the keyboard... http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/02/create_new_file.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/02/create_new_file.html Flash Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:25:43 -0700 People have asked me to share my thoughts, and I've decided that for the sake of people just getting started with Flash I'd talk about it a little. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/02/my_thoughts_on.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/02/my_thoughts_on.html Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:39:30 -0700 PerformanceTest v2 lets you benchmark execution time and memory usage in your AS3 code. It can be used with a single line of code, or you can develop robust test suites and integrate them with unit tests. Trace text outputs, or log robust XML reports to track and analyze the performance characteristics of your projects. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/02/performancetest.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/02/performancetest.html Flash Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:37:45 -0700 A complete guide to using namespaces in AS3: What are they? Why use them? How do you define them? How do you access them? http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/01/a_complete_guid.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/01/a_complete_guid.html Flash Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:57:22 -0700 Sometimes when you're coding, you find yourself toggling a block of code on or off by commenting it... it can be handy to know that there's a way to achieve the same thing by setting up your block comments in such a way that they can be enabled or disabled by adding or removing a single "/". http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/01/comment_blocks.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/01/comment_blocks.html Flash Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:20:00 -0700 I'm a big fan of ASDoc! It allows you to write simple comments in your AS3 classes, then generate HTML documentation from them. This is great in that it allows developers to maintain source code and documentation simultaneously, and it reduces the overall burden in writing documentation by reading the core API information from the code directly. Unfortunately, the ASDoc tool is command line based, and can be a bit of a pain to work with. That's where ASDocr comes in... http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/01/asdocr_simple_a.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/01/asdocr_simple_a.html Flash Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:06:27 -0700 GTween V2.01 is a minor update that adds support for AS3 events, allows multiple callbacks at the same position on a timeline, introduces a version property, and fixes a number of bugs reported by users... http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/12/gtween_v201_rel.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/12/gtween_v201_rel.html Flash Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:49:07 -0700 Flex Formatter is an extremely useful plugin for FlexBuilder / FlashBuilder that formats your ActionScript code (AS3) and MXML according to a broad range of settings, and helps you to generate ASDoc comments automatically. It is free, and open source... Here are directions for installing it... http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/12/indispensable_p.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/12/indispensable_p.html Flash Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:44:05 -0700 let it bloom http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/12/bloom.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/12/bloom.html Events Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:21:13 -0700 I just uploaded an update to the Wander motion class with a bunch of updates, including targetObject, rotationLimit, update(), getShortRotation(), etc... http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/wander_motion_c_1.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/wander_motion_c_1.html Flash Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:46:12 -0700 I thought it would be good to release a more optimized version of my AS3 ProximityManager library that was designed for real use and included some new features. Here's quick demo of it in action, showing 5000 items being updated... You can grab the code, docs, and demo here. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/as3_proximityma.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/as3_proximityma.html Flash Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:12:52 -0700 Adobe just released a beta / prerelease of Flash Player 10.1 on labs. Major improvements include global error handling, out of memory handling, better browser integration, support for browser privacy modes, globalization support, media streaming enhancements, additional content protection options, and a focus on mobile including multitouch.... http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/flash_player_10.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/flash_player_10.html Flash Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:08:34 -0700 Source code, demo, and docs for an AS3 Kaleidoscope / symmetry class. It's fast and robust, supporting one or more slices, reflection, display objects or bitmapdata as a source, rotation / position offsets, and a fast mode. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/as3_kaleidoscop.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/as3_kaleidoscop.html Flash Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:35:08 -0700 If you've ever wanted to calculate the logarithm of a number using a base other than Math.E in AS3, you may have noticed the lack of a Math function to do this (ex. Math.logx())... this simple function might save you the time it takes to figure it out... http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/calculating_log.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/calculating_log.html Flash Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:48:47 -0700 After a week of voting, we're ready to crown the winners of the 2009 gskinner.com Great Pumpkin Showdown. It was a much closer contest than last year, with the spread between the winners and losers being only about 2:1, but ultimately one pumpkin reigned supreme... http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/great_pumpkin_s_3.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/11/great_pumpkin_s_3.html Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:26:02 -0700