For the first time today i used FileReference in Actionscript. There are multiple uses of this but the one i was interested in concerned downloading. I jumped into *Flash's intuitive help section* and attempted to perform the desired outcome (saving an mp3 file locally).

So it all worked great, until i tried to save the file. Nothing happened after pressing save in the dialog box. Turns out the culprit was scope. I created a local function instance of FileReference instead of creating a class instance. When the dialog box opens it needs a reference it can get back to otherwise it's lost and the operation can never be completed.

For a more structured walkthrough check out Adobe's help on the matter.

De MonsterDebugger is an Air application from De Monsters that comes with a handy set of features. One of its better known features includes editing properties and calling methods at runtime. This alone definitely makes it a nifty little debugger. It also displays xml as a tree that is collapsable and expandable. At times the overall tree structure can be somewhat clunky but it's enough to get me using it. The only catch with these perks is that all your properties and methods need to be public so that they are accessible.

To enable MonsterDebugger in your application instantiate it first like this:
this.monsterDebugger = new MonsterDebugger(this);
this is the reference to the root of the application. This line alone allows to modify methods and properties throughout your application.

To make a trace you would write this:
MonsterDebugger.trace(this, xml);
this is the reference targeted object.

One last thing to consider is that you export the classes needed for MonsterDebugger from the Air application to the client side folder. To do this navigate to the following in the Air app:
File > Export Client Class
Point to the folder that contains all your application's classes

Download the Air application Version 2.51

Recently I was asked to create to animate water splashing from out from the wheel of a moving car, as if it was driving through a puddle. I studied animation at university, so I can say with some small amount of authority that animating water is generally considered one of the more difficult things an animator can do.

Probably the easiest way to solve the problem is to use video of water with a transparent background that has been modelled in a 3D application.

I used a video from iStock similar to this one:

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-video-8526304-water-splashes-in-slow-motion-preview-darker-than-original.php

it didn’t have the perfect splash I needed, but there were enough different types of splashes and angles to be able to piece something together with multiple layers and some After Effects trickery.

The biggest problem I encountered was that iStock footage uses Quick Time with Photo JPEG compression which doesn’t have an alpha channel. You can however still create an alpha channel using a “luma track matte”, as this tutorial shows. A luma track matte is basically where After Effects creates an alpha channel based on luminosity while keeping the integrity of the original footage.

Check out the video tutorial here:

http://vimeo.com/7385956

If you've ever experienced this one, there's an obscure reason: the bandwidth profiler.

If you have the bandwidth profiler turned on when you publish in Flash, stage.stageHeight will be 100px less than it should be.

?_?

You aren't allowed to link to external URLs that aren't in th esame domain from the standalone desktop player.

Why? It could be a file that you've download and could take you to a site that may harm your computer.

What you can do:
- Make it an AIR app
- Make it a projector (.exe .app)

In its most basic implementation swfaddress enables developers to deep link their project and incorporate browser functionality into their flash applications. This is pretty clever but it also has some pitfalls if not implemented correctly.

I recently worked on a project that required this functionality and experienced some unwanted behaviour i thought i would share.

- Earlier versions of swfaddress can break flash applications in browsers specific browser. (IE7 + 6)
- Be sure to handle situations when an incorrect URL is entered through the browser
- To err on the side of caution always make your application react and animate AFTER the URL in the browser has changed.

The below link is a folder i created that has the required assets to implement swfaddress in your project. This is version 2.4 and i can confidently assure its stability across all browsers. It contains the AS3 classes and javascript file needed. It does not contain working examples or instructions on the implentation, that can be found at the swfaddress site.

SwfAddress Assets.zip (10.98 kb)

If you've been working with Flash for a while, you will have probably come across this one. Some fonts will be fine when they're being used in Photoshop, but mysteriously won't be available in the droplist when you're trying to use them in flash. Normally this happens when you're trying to use a couple of different weights of the same family.

The reason this happens is because of the internal font names. Basically, embedded into all font files are a few different pieces of meta information, including a couple of different names. Photoshop is pretty smart about distinguishing between different versions of the same font, but Flash is not. So sometimes to get a certain font to work in Flash, you need to edit these internal names.

How do you do it?

Step 1: You need an application that can edit font information. For years I've used Altsoft FT master to do this, but it's a bit pricey, and I think a cheaper alternative is Typograf.

Step 2: Open Typograf and browse to the correct font.

Step 3: Right click the font and choose properties. 

Step 4: Edit all four of these to use the same exact text (copy and paste it from the Postscript name for example)

• Font Family
• Full Name
• PostScript name

I've done a bit of testing here, and you'd think that it would be easy to narrow it down to which particulay internal name Flash uses. Unfortunately that's not the case, so edit all of the names and make them all the same.

Step 5: Save the file (as a copy!)

Step 6: Uninstall the original font

Step 7: Re-install the new font file

Step 8: Get back to your flashing

Note: this guide is for PC, I'm not sure if the problem exists on the Mac, and if it does, I'm not sure if this will fix it ;)

This is awesome:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/timelinewatcher.html

Basically, instead of sticking this on frames in the timeline:

You can just listen for frame label events:

timelineWatcher = new TimelineWatcher(this);
timelineWatcher.addEventListener(TimelineEvent.LABEL_REACHED, handleTimelineEvent);

I'm so excited I don't even mind that this long line of code is breaking the formatting of this blog!

Found a decent tutorial from the Away3D blog that runs through all the basics of 3D in Flash.

 No doubt some topics will be really simple and familiar but it's great in that it gives a brief overview and some nifty examples.

http://www.flashmagazine.com/Tutorials/detail/flash_3d_basics/

Often when you're using video in flash (embedded in the timeline), you'd like to be able to do one of these things:

1. Play it backwards, using prevFrame() for example or
2. Jump to an arbitrary frame using gotoAndStop(frame)

Unfortunately this isn't normally possible. This is because when video is encoded, it's not really storing every frame, it's storing the difference between frames. So frame 1 is stored in total, but frame 2 is really storing just the pixels that are different between frame 2 and frame 1, frame 3 is storing the differences between 2 and 3 etc.

The problem with this is that it's an inherrently one directional process - if you want to play a video backwards, the information isn't available. The solution? When you import a video into flash (by dropping it into the timeline) you can change your import settings to make it possible to play backwards.

If you set the "Key frame interval" to 1 (2 is also sometimes good, experiment for yourself for best results) playing backwards is now possible.

The benefits are:

• The video will look better quality when stopped on any frame
• The video can be played in reverse
• You can jump to any frame in the video

The drawbacks:

• There's only one but it's significant - massive increase in filesize! Often this is prohibitive :(