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 2009 Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:49:20 -0700 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.14 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss I've been trying to decide how I feel about all the commotion over Hoss Gifford's session at FlashBelt 09, and whether or not to chime in on the whole matter. However, as I watched a few understandably upset individuals snowball into a torch wielding mob RT'ing themselves into a frenzy, I decided I would proffer a few thoughts. I am a believer in moderation, truth, and positive action, and I hope that by adding my own thoughts I can help to steer all of this energy in that direction. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/06/hossgate09_find.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/06/hossgate09_find.html Events Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:49:20 -0700 We have released RegExr 0.3b. The most significant feature additions are the ability to save your patterns locally, and the ability to share patterns on a searchable community database of regular expressions. RegExr is a tool for learning, editing, testing, and sharing regular expressions. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/05/regexr_03b_rele.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/05/regexr_03b_rele.html Flash Tue, 26 May 2009 18:52:53 -0700 I love Adobe AIR! I think it's an amazing platform with a huge amount of potential. However, AIR has one problem that could earn it a bad reputation before it has a chance to truly realize that potential - idle CPU usage.... I have created a simple class that will automatically reduce your application's frame rate when it is in the background http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/05/idle_cpu_usage.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/05/idle_cpu_usage.html Flash Thu, 07 May 2009 11:29:34 -0700 I think the nicest thing about this ActionScript 3 performance test harness is how flexible it is. You can easily use it to quickly test a couple of functions on the timeline, or you can build a set of performance testing suites to support a project under development, similar to unit testing. You can even use PerformanceTest to test the render time for complex vectors or filters. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/04/as3_performance.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/04/as3_performance.html Flash Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:30:17 -0700 Adobe just released the "ActionScript 3.0 Client Library for Facebook Platform API", which is a wordy name for a pretty straightforward AS3 Facebook API we've been working on for the past few weeks. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/03/adobe_releases.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/03/adobe_releases.html Flash Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:15:12 -0700 I'm happy to release a free update to the Flash CS4 project panel that addresses some of the rough edges. Reskinned, external editor support, JSFL API, UI tweaks and more. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/03/free_update_to.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/03/free_update_to.html Flash Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:24:13 -0700 I have always had a lot of respect for Jack Doyle. I'm happy to announce that we are currently evaluating ways to integrate the gTween and TweenLite/Max tweening libraries to create something better than either of them. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/03/gtween_and_twee.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/03/gtween_and_twee.html Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:59:12 -0700 We just announced the winners for round 1 of tweetcoding. There was a surprise tie for first place. All three judges (me, Ted Patrick, and John Grden) had a very difficult time narrowing down the field of almost 250 entries to our winners and runner ups. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/03/tweetcoding_win.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/03/tweetcoding_win.html Flash Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:08:20 -0700 It was really incredible to watch ideas and themes evolve as people built on them. It was educational watching people employ new tricks to squeeze out every possible character - I even learned a few things. Overall, it was one of the most active, fun, and positive community activities I've been involved in recently. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/03/tweetcoding_sim.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/03/tweetcoding_sim.html Flash Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:56:39 -0700 What could you code in 140 characters of AS3? Find out, and you could win Flash CS4. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/tweetcoding_con.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/tweetcoding_con.html Flash Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:16:16 -0700 I tried hard to resist, but I finally broke down and started using my Twitter account. I'm leaning towards an even mix of ActionScript related tweets and random stuff. This blog will remain the location for anything that makes sense to formalize and document, but Twitter will give me a place to post all the little miscellaneous thoughts, tips, one-offs, and rants... http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/gskinner_is_on.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/gskinner_is_on.html Other Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:47:59 -0700 GTweeny is GTween's lightweight younger sibling. It is currently under 3kb, but I'm looking for feedback on this class: is a 1.5kb savings even worth it? Should I strip it down further to make it a 2kb core tweening class? Regardless of GTweeny's future, this ~4kb 3D image gallery makes for a pretty decent demo. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/gtweeny_lightwe.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/gtweeny_lightwe.html Flash Mon, 02 Feb 2009 10:39:16 -0700 Probably the most exciting addition to GTween beta 5 is GTweenTimeline. This new class lets you easily build a virtual timeline of tweens, actions and labels, then control the whole thing as though it's a single tween. You can even nest timelines inside each other, just like on the Flash timeline. Even better, it only adds about 1kb on top of GTween if you choose to use it. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/gtweentimeline.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/gtweentimeline.html Flash Mon, 02 Feb 2009 10:04:42 -0700 this release is a significant rewrite to the full tweening engine. It stabilizes much of the positioning logic, and makes it more predictable. It also involved some very significant changes to the API, and the introduction of two important new classes: GTweenTimeline, and GTweeny. GTween specific enhancements include... http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/gtween_beta_5_r.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/gtween_beta_5_r.html Flash Mon, 02 Feb 2009 09:20:09 -0700 Another new feature I've added to GTween beta 5 is support for synchronizing timeline animations with scripted tweens. This lets you ensure that animations will remain synched even if you change the framerate of your FLA or if you pause, reverse, repeat, or otherwise manipulate your tweens. Here's a simple demo of it in action. http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/01/synchronized_ti.html http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/01/synchronized_ti.html Flash Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:17:04 -0700