Category Archives: RIA

Easily format your code in Flex Builder

By Torbjørn. December 11, 2009

flex-iconA quick tip if you’re using Flex Builder and are missing a quick way to format your code. Flex Formatter is a free open source plugin that adds some very useful buttons to your IDE. These will make ASDoc, format, and code rearrangement just one click away.

Get the plugin from SourceForge or read Grant Skinner’s installation guide to install it from within Flex Builder.

Also posted in Flex, Front-end | Leave a comment

Silverlight 4 (Beta) unrolling!

By Trond. November 30, 2009

silverlightMicrosoft has really put an effort into the newest version of Silverlight (v4), making it into a fully usable platform for RIA development. I suspect the release of Windows7 has freed up some more resources for the Silverlight team. Microsoft has addressed much of the critique of the previous versions of Silverlight. A lot of new controls, support for data-binding, MP4-video and a lot of development-tools makes Silverlight 4 a platform worth checking out for your next RIA-project. I have scratced a bit on the surface of this upcoming release, and here are some of the reasons why I am looking forward to start with Silverlight 4.

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Also posted in .NET, Front-end, Silverlight | Leave a comment

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Watch out for wmode

By Sven. November 30, 2009

wmodeThe Flash Player has supported the wmode parameter since version 3. The default value for wmode is “window”, which causes the SWF movie to run in its own invisible window above all content in the browser window.
<param value="window">

This causes problems when using DHTML menus and the like. The solution for this is to set the wmode parameter to “opague” which makes the Flash Player render its content directly onto the browser’s window.

Setting the wmode to anything other than “window” (opague or transparent) solves the DHTML menu issue and other issues, but at the same time it creates a bunch of other problems to be aware of!

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Also posted in Flash, Front-end, HTML5 | 1 Comment

Back to basics with jQuery

By Trond. October 19, 2009

jquery

For a long time I have been using JavaScript for the bare necessities, relying on Flash to do the heavy-lifting. After investigating a couple of OK “Flash-sites” I found out they were not actually made in Flash, but in JavaScript. Seemed both had jQuery as the foundation for their scripting. I’ve been using jQuery blindly as a “switch-class” engine for styling only, but could it really do more than a little CSS-manipulation?

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Also posted in CSS, Front-end, JavaScript | Leave a comment

Fade dynamic text without embedding the font

By Sven. June 3, 2009

I recently learned a technique that I appreciate a lot. A small and very easy solution, which documentation is very well hidden. My initial problem: Fading a textfield (using its Alpha values) without needing to embed the font. Having a Flash solution that should work with many languages, and in my case with Russian characters. Until I had to take the Russian characters in mind I embedded the fonts and everything was fading nicely. But when I chose the Russian language no text appeared at all…

After googling the web for a while, looking for workarounds I finally found a great solution. Setting the BlendMode on the textfield to BlendMode.LAYER will do the magic!

myTextField.blendMode = BlendMode.LAYER;

The image slideshow displayed on http://www.visitnorway.com now uses this solution and should be working good on all languages.

Also posted in Flash, Front-end | Leave a comment

Everybody is talking about the weather

By Sven. August 7, 2008

The summer is over and this summer’s weather is on everybody tongue. Especially in Norway everybody is talking about the weather…

With that in mind I have created a little showcase of a small AIR application. The application collects weather info from yr.no and is limited to showing the weather in Norway (for now). You are able to search for locations in Norway and get the weather forecast for that location. Using SharedObjects you can also save your favorite locations and set your startup location. The forecast is updated every hour so you always can keep up to date to how the weather will be on your location :)

Try it out by installing from http://www.svenway.com/applications/weather/

The application is created in Flex based on a simple Cairngorm architecture.

Also posted in AIR, Flex, Front-end | Leave a comment

…but Director wasn't dead!

By Trond. April 8, 2008

Everybody has written Director off for the past two years. “It’s dead and buried” we’ve been chanting. Well then, prepare for a miracle, because Director has arissen from the dead and has just been re-launched in a version 11.

Features include support for all known and unknown media formats (videos, images and audio), a brand new 3D engine with physics subsets, Lingo is “gone” and replaced with JavaScript as main scripting language, text-renderer, a brand new interface and of course a vast selection of new Xtras (plugins).

Director 11 is not a competitor to Flash due to the lower penetration of the ShockWave plugin (4,5 MB). However, it sails ut as a competitor to AIR, and a serious one as many of the new Xtras are certified with Vista and OSX. Many of the new Xtras have capabilities far beyond the AIR environment.

Adobe is pinpointing the game-industry as well as the traditional video and e-learning markets with this new release. Personally I see it as an actor on the application-market for specialized task-applications as well.

Check it out here.

Also posted in AIR, Flash, Flex, Front-end | Leave a comment