What I normally do is create a new Actionscript project on my mac. Create and test the files and get everything ready for the training.

Then I copy the whole project folder onto a training pc, and sometimes I end up with problems. For example…

I frequently copy a project and then paste it. then I re-name the project and also the main as file to the new project name. But doing this can cause problems sometimes…

…when copying and pasting projects you end up with copies of previous projects still in the bin-debug folder (which will bloat up your project size)

…and also there occasionally seems to crop up a problem whereby the project still looks for another as file (say Example13.as) when the project is Example15, and has been named as such, and the main application as file has been set as such. The project seems to get stuck.

So I found that if you go to Project > Clean… and clean your projects, this should get rid of most of your problems.

The main issue that I could not seem to get rid of (sometimes) is that when you go to the properties of your project and look at the Application ActionScript section – you get a link to the old as file. Flash Builder knows it has been deleted, but it is still there. If you remove it from the list, something in the project still looks for it, and refuses to run your application without it.

The only solution I found then was to create a brand new project, name it how you want, and then copy/paste your code over.

So cleaning your Flash Builder projects seems to help a lot with problems like these, but not always.

I hope this helps everyone who gets issues like those mentioned above, and if anyone has any better solutions let me know.

Blueprint – a Flash Builder Extension, allows you to search the web for examples of code, directly within Flash Builder.

For example, suppose you are  tweening and want to see what examples you can find regard the Tween class. Just highlight Tween and press CTL-B (Mac) or Alt – B (PC).

This brings up the Blueprint panel, with the search results.

Now you will the results of a web search regarding the code you highlighted.

You can further refine your query by typing in additional terms, resize the Blueprint window to see more, and use the down arrow key to see the next example.

If you find something you like, just highlight it and press return and the code will be pasted into your file.

You do not have to highlight anything, you can just type something in a line and press CTL-B or just press CTL-B and type in something.

If you find something important, the current search can be pinned as a separate panel (just click on the pin icon top-right), so you can have it there permanently.

To install Blueprint just add the following to your software updates, as a new remote site…

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/blueprint/fb4/

… and install. Here are the installation instructions…

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Blueprint:Installation_Instructions

This looks like a lovely utility and seems to work well, I would advise everyone to try it out and see for yourself.

I have also given it a bounceEffect() and bounce() public methods.

These will give a bounce effect when it hits a boundary and the latter will make it move and bounce from the boundaries.  The boundary at the moment is just stage.stageWidth and stage.stageHeight, but I plan on allowing an object to be sent so that the instance can use its hight and width as the boundaries for bouncing.

There are also some getters and setters dealing with colour and radius, etc.

To stop the movement I created a haltObject() public function.

I just threw this together in a few minutes but I find it very useful so I thought I would share it with everyone.

Ball

Here is an example of its use…

var myball:Ball = new Ball();

addChild(myball);

myball.bounceEffect();

myball.bounce();

If anyone finds any issues, please let me know and I will update it, and if you find it useful let me know as well. I am sure that it is not perfect

Any thoughts on improvements and additions I will also be happy to receive.

Also note that i have zipped up the file as a Flash Builder project, so that you can just import the whole project if you use Flash Builder. Otherwise just go to the src folder and dig out Ball.as

A lot of games use Box2DFlash and so I thought it was about time to play around with it.

Also, i thought it would be a nice idea to blog about my progress. I will be using Flash Builder 4 (beta) to do all my work in, but the files can be used in Flash, or a.n.other development environment.

Firstly you will need to download the files from here…

http://sourceforge.net/projects/box2dflash/develop (svn)

…or from here…

http://box2dflash.boristhebrave.com/download

Check the latter link to see various examples of how you can use this engine.

The download also contains some test files, so if you do download them, have a look at the test files – these will give you an insight in how things work.

I will also be using the latest version, 2.1a, and a word of warning – there is a massive difference between this version and previous versions. As a result, most of the tutorials you will see on the web will not work with 2.1a, so i thought i would use this as an excuse to investigate Box2DFlash 2.1a and see how i can play around with it.

So i will be using Box2DFlash to create various projects in Flash Builder and i will post the code and the results here.

See you soon!

However, this being a new year and all, I thought in order to push myself to learn something new, why not blog about it and take everybody along for the ride.

And for this purpose I have chosen to learn Processing – and I have also chosen to start with this book…

The Essential Guide to processing for Flash developers

By Ira Greenberg

…I bought this book in pdf format from the friendsofed website recently and I will use it to to start the whole thing off – I plan to blog my experiments, problems, thoughts, etc for you all to see. I will be using an iMac 3.06 Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 Gb ram, running Snow Leopard (10.6.2).

Why did I choose to learn Processing? Because the artwork coming out from some people looks fantastic and it looks to be fun. Processing itself is free, and although I have yet to get to grips with the code for Processing, it is based on java, and actionscript/javascript are similar, so I am hoping it will not be too much of a headache to learn.

Here is the main processing website…

http://processing.org/

Have a look around there and you will see what I mean.

Bye for now and expect to see my first experiment soon.

Here are some particle systems that I came across in the process…

Flint
Pulse
Desuade
Stardust

…the latter is a new system, and I must say that I am impressed.

It is a nice system, easy to use, good documentation, and some lovely demos.

In particular, have a look at this one…

Butterflies

Check Stardust out, you will not be disappointed.

You will need some basic as3 knowledge, but you can quickly get results with a minimal amount of coding, and there are some lovely examples on the HYPE website.

Have a look at it and let me know what you think

hype

I have not tried them yet (but I plan to), but here is a short list of browsers/links to help you get started…

Browsers that have started implementing HTMl5

Chrome

Firefox 3.5

Opera

Safari

Useful HTML5 links

w3.org HTML5 spec

safari features

alistapart.com HTML5 article

websites using html5

However it takes CSS3 to do it, and although the standard has not been finalised yet, it doesn’t mean that the browsers are not taking advantage of any new techniques that they like.

Such as rounded corners.

At the moment I have only tested Safari andFirefox with this code – I do not know if it is possible in Chrome, IE, etc – but here is the css code…

Firefox (mozilla)

-moz-border-radius: 5 px [for all corners, circle]

-moz-border-radius: 5 px 10px[for all corners, but an ellipse]

Safari

-webkit-border-radius: 5 px [for all corners, circle]

-webkit-border-radius: 5 px  10px[for all corners, ellipse]

If you want each corner to be different just use the following…

-moz-border-radius-topleft

-moz-border-radius-topright

-moz-border-radius-bottomleft

-moz-border-radius-bottomright

-webkit-border-top-left-radius

-webkit-border-top-right-radius

-webkit-border-bottom-left-radius

-webkit-border-bottom-right-radius

Just put these lines in your CSS rule and voila!

The good news is, if someone logs on with a browser that doesn’t support them, they are ignored.

Have fun and let me know what you think

btw just google w3.org, css3, border-radius to get the full, propsed spec and see what else may be on the way.