Factum Vicesimus Quartus » Actionscript

Flex book component (alpha)

Wietse Veenstra — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 06:59:35 +0000

Sitting first row (next to Ruben), I have watched my fellow trainee Ruben Swieringa working on his pageflip book in Flex for the last few months now. And I must say that it’s already the best pageflip book out there, as far as I know. It includes features as pageflipping, hardback option for every page, tearing-a-page-out functionality, automatic flipping, support for transparent pages and a lot more. Go check it out by clicking on the preview-image below. Read more overhere…

Very impressive Ruben! Keep up the great work!

ShareThis

Reflection Manager 1.0

Wietse Veenstra — Tue, 29 May 2007 18:31:27 +0000

I have updated my Reflection Manager to version 1.0. I have implemented a blurring option like suggested in the comments on my previously posted version (0.9). I have also built in the functionality to update the reflection when its target component is dragged or resized. Furthermore I made some minor updates to improve the performance even a little more. I hope this will be of some good use to you. Let me know when you use it, what you think of it and/or if you have found a bug or have other suggestions on improving it. Thnx!

Open the Reflection Explorer (right-click for the source).
Open the source-view directly.

ShareThis

ReflectionManager v0.9

Wietse Veenstra — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:59:00 +0000

<– I have updated the Reflection Manager. The new version can be found overhere –>

Last week I needed a reflection at the bottom of the application I was working on. After searching the internet for a while I found some reflection classes on my favorite Flex resource, Flexbox. But after testing 2 of these I saw that the smoothness and speed of my application was decreasing drastically. So I took some time to figure out the structure of the reflection and came up with some ideas on improvements that I could built in. I wrote a new Reflection Manager, which I think is a little more efficient in some ways. I separated the bitmapdata for the alpha gradient and the component copy so that I can update them separately and then combine them into 1 bitmapdata by using the copyPixels method. I did this so it only draws the alpha gradient bitmapdata once and only updates the component data when the Flex UpdateEvent occurs. When the component or the reflection is resized, it also updates the alpha gradient data. This saves quite some CPU power.

The height of the bitmapdata is equal to the height given by the user for the reflection and not the entire height of the component your reflecting. Less pixels are drawn this way which you don’t see after all. There are still some improvements to be made but it’s a good start I think. Check it out!

Open the Reflection Explorer.
View source.

Let me know what you think, suggestions on how to improve the Reflection Manager are welcome as always.

ShareThis

Free Flex and ActionScript 3.0 API posters!

Wietse Veenstra — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 19:07:39 +0000

<– they have stopped this service for the time being because of the overwhelming number of orders. Let’s hope that production will resume soon! –>

Maybe you have seen the gigantic API posters Adobe created for Flex and ActionScript 3.0. Well you can order them for free now! The only catch there is: you either have to write a blog post or put a link on your blog with the image to Flex.org. Small thing for 2 great posters! They are great resources and the posters are way better readable then the PDF versions. Check it out!

ShareThis

Flex SuperPanel v1.5

Wietse Veenstra — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:17:38 +0000

I updated my SuperPanel extension to version 1.5. It now includes focusing of panels, the focused panel has a different color, double clicking on the header to collapse/open the panel, and maximizing the panel to the full screen size. If a panel is being dragged it is 50% transparent now for better visibility. There’s also a button on the bottom of the stage to add new panels to the test-stage to further explore the functionality. I didn’t get the minimize funcionality working yet but it’s certainly planned for a future update.

View the demo here (right click to view source).
View the source here.

Future updates include:
- Minimize to the bottom of the stage
- The option to change the title of the panel
- The option for panel not to overlap eachother

Ofcourse suggestions are always welcome and let me know if you find any bugs.

ShareThis

Flex SuperPanel

Wietse Veenstra — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:06:07 +0000

<– there is an update of the SuperPanel which can be found overhere –>

I really like to work with the Panel component in my Flex projects, but it lacks some functionality I use quite often so I extended it which resulted in the SuperPanel component. The SuperPanel can be dragged around on the stage, it can be closed, collapsed and resized. I have some additional updates planned but I wouldn’t want to keep this from you so here is the first version. I hope it will be of some good use to you.

View the demo here (right click to view source).
View the source here.

Future updates:
- Different header color for focused panel.
- Click to content area to focus panel.
- Doubleclick on header to collapse the panel.
- Minimize to the bottom of the stage.

If you find any bugs or have any other suggestions, please let me know.

ShareThis

Flex Videodisplay full-screen

Wietse Veenstra — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 14:49:25 +0000

Yesterday I was working on my flex videoplayer again and I explored the brandnew full-screen support of the latest Flash Player (version 9.0.28.0) together with Remon Strampel. We discovered an ActionScript class written by Manish Jethani which extends the mx:videoDisplay component in Flex and adds full-screen support to it. To use this ActionScript class, place it into your flex application folder (I placed it in a sub-folder called ‘com’) and create an XMLNS link in your mx:Application tag, create an import link in the script area of your application and simply replace your VideoDisplay code with FSVideoDisplay. Now you can create a button which calls a function that resizes your video window. See code below for an example:

The original article of Manish Jethani can be found here. NOTE: You need to update some files before you can use this new feature. The files can be found here. You also need the latest version of the Flash Player (version 9.0.28.0) or later.

ShareThis

Panels, panels, panels

Wietse Veenstra — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 06:36:24 +0000

The last 2 days were very interesting. We agreed to work @ home on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which I like because I work best @ home playing some metal on the background, with all my reverence (books, tutorials, etc) around me:) Yesterday I also worked @ home because the buses weren’t driving. I tried to find out 1 specific thing in Flex which came up during the discussion of the concepts we all made. We all thought about a dynamic sidebar for a website. The panels of this bar should be opened and closed by the users at any given time. So i started be creating a button which opened and closed 1 panel. After this, I tried to create the same with 3 panels in a VBox. After a while I had written an ActionScript function which did the job and I must say that I was very pleased when it opened and closed and the other panels reacted the way I wanted. Today I will focus on the graphical layout for the website (concept) and write some more for my POP. But first breakfast. Ciao

ShareThis