Writing efficient AS3

An interesting read over at Lost in Actionscript, with Tips on how to write efficient AS3

Squeeze some more speed and performance out of your code.

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This One's For You Jesus

Ahoy, it's been a while so i thought i would update you on what has been keeping me busy over the past few weeks. I've managed to squeeze in a few hours of uni work here and there but this game has been a hit at uni. Jump high, dazzle with a few flips here and there and see if you can get as far as those freaks on youtube... 

Take a look at Alan Rawkins' game Dolphin Olympics 2

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The Trons: a robot band

Yeah ok, they suck. But give them a while - the second terminator was way better than the first as well...

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The Things That Had Better Be Fixed In Flash CS4

I remember when Adobe bought out Macromedia, and then when they announced that Flash 9 would actually be Flash CS3 how excited I was imagining that all the crap parts of Flash would be replaced by their Illustrator and Photoshop equivalents.  And then Flash CS3 came out and I was completely underwhelmed.  I haven't been following the announcements for Flash 10 at all because upgrading is inevitable and if there are flaws,  I'll learn to live with them.  That said, here's a list of the things I can't wait to see the back of, feel free to add your own.

  • the solid white background of the textfields when you edit/select text
  • the default color pallete and swatches
  • font families and weights being handled differently than Photoshop
  • when you add a motion tween to a drawing object it automatically creates two symbols.  Why two, and why doesn't it give you the option to name them as they're created?
  • the help window's random ordering of classes/topics, and the useless search field
  • the pen tool.  this is the big one i expected in CS3.  let freehand rest in peace
  • the AI/PSD importer's tiny, tiny thumbnails.  this might be useful if every layer of every psd and ai file was labelled every time, but this is the real world
  • the AI/PSD importer's bitmap transparency artifacts.  this is redundant because the reason we need the asset to be transparent is 99% of time because we want to animate on a layer above different asset, and as soon as it is moved artifacts tend to shatter the illusion.
  • that weird one when sometimes if you change the position of a shape numerically you get the old "Invalid size and position" alert, and then it freaks out and draws a stroke around the shape for no reason
  • how when you cancel an export it takes at least the same amount of time to cancel as it does to complete and the progreses bar still progresses to the end
  • shape tween
  • the actionscript editor
  • new library folder/symbols can't have the same names even though they are different things
  • and my personal favourite, adding new frames at the end of an animation crashing the whole program
Apologies for the rant.

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Jackin' your clicks!

It appears that the flash player has a number of vulnerabilities being exploited by some hackers. Kinda makes sense. With the player being so ubiquitous it gives them more reach than targeting specific browsers. Some of these exploits have been fixed by Adobe, while others still remain. Check out hackers.org for more specific clickjacking details. Adobe has also posted a workaround for the clickjacking issue.

A funny one that has been fixed now, allowed the hacker to hijack a users webcam via a clciking game. This video shows how it was done.



Pretty clever actually. An swf file with its wmode set to transparent is placed on top of an iframe with the flash player's privacy settings panel, then the order of the two are alternated so that some clicks are on the game while others are on the settings panel. Without really knowing, the user clicks all the right buttons enabling access to their webcam. As the exploit relied on javascript, Adobe has now added a frame-bursting script to the settings manager.

Watch where you click.

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Brainwave Controlled Game From Square Enix

"Square Enix and Neurosky, maker of wearable sensory equipment, are coming out with a new 'Brainwave-Controlled' RPG. The game will be demonstrated at the Tokyo Game Show for the (Windows) PC, which features the NeuroSky MindSet headset. At this moment, the headset only detects the gamer's level of concentration and relaxation by means of a single electrode placed on the forehead."

Read the full article on Slashdot

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Tweensy: Yes, it's yet another tweening class, but this one looks pretty cool

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Get up to speed on Pixel Bender

With Flash 10 on the horizon, Pixel Bending is going to be on evey clients most wanted list of effects.

Get up to speed with how to install it and how to use it.

Part 1 - create a basic Pixel Bender Binary .pbj file for use in flash:

http://www.gotoandlearn.com/play?id=83

Part 2 - use you new filter in flash:

http://www.gotoandlearn.com/play?id=84

Get Pixel Bender Tool Kit from Adobe Labs:

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Pixel_Bender_Toolkit

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Abstract methods in flash

So if you've got any sort of programming background, you'd probably notice the omission of the abstract  keyword in AS3. As it relates to methods, an abstract  method in a class is one that should never be called directly, and should only be overwritten by a class which extends the original class.

Here's a technique for replicating that in AS3.

The root class:

package {
    public class Popup extends Sprite {       
        public function reveal():void {
            // to be defined in subclasses
            throw new Error("Abstract method reveal must be overridden");
        }
    }
}

And the class that extends it:

package {
    public class VideoPopup extends Popup {       
        public override function reveal():void {
            this.visible = true;
        }
    }
}

So if the base reveal  method is called, an error is thrown.

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10 Future User Interfaces

An interesting article from Smashing Magazine that presents 10 different user experiences. Some utterly useless but some with some real potential whose technology is already half way there.

Check it out: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/17/10-futuristic-user-interfaces/ 

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