Posted on

Flash 10 Beta – 3D Twitter Visualization

Adobe released a beta of their next version of Flash Player. Flash 10 introduces quite a few new features, including native 3D support. There is no patch for Flash CS3 in order to create Flash 10 content. Developers can download the latest version of the Adobe Flex 3.0 SDK, and compile Flash 10 SWFs from the command line. Because Flash CS3 is not involved in this process, you cannot use an FLA (You compile directly from AS files).

Twitter Cloudy
(If you don’t have Flash 10, it will show you a video and links to Flash 10)

While you could make 3D objects in Flash 8 and 9 (using Papervision3D), it would still require quite a bit of time to learn how to use Papervision3D, and utilize a 3D modeling program. I created the spinning globe from scratch with about 40 lines of code.

I can’t wait until I get a chance to do more 3D stuff with Flash 10!

Posted on

MyMotivatr – A 24 Hour Project

I recently launched a small web site called MyMotivatr, which allows users to quickly and easily create really slick motivational (or de-motivational) posters.

There are several online motivational poster-making tools, but they are usually very poor quality. For example, Despair, Inc has amazing, professionally-designed posters and a “DIY” user submission tool. If you compare the two, the DIY version uses high-compression/low-quality images, uses the wrong typeface (Times), does not drop caps or underline the title, and the description is not in small caps.

Using Flash, I created a tool that generates posters on the client, then submits the pixel data to the server, generating a permanent file. I paid close attention to detail, to make sure the result is as close to professionally-designed posters as possible.

MyMotivatr went live within 24 hours of conception, the maximum amount of time I was willing to dedicate to this particular for-fun project. During the site’s first 24 hours of operation, it received about 9,800 unique visitors, 22,500 page views, and 275 user-submitted posters.

Posted on

Actionscript 3: Faster Integer Math – Bitwise Operators

Several months ago, I stumbled upon a great resource for bitwise operators in AS3. Bitwise math is available in many languages, but this one looks at it from an AS3 perspective.

Since I first discovered that page, I have thought to pull it up a few times and searched Google for it (racking my brain to choose the right key words). By posting it here, I will not only be sharing it with you, but effectively archiving the link where I can access it quickly.

Check it out

It isn’t a tutorial or explanation of bitwise math. It is a list of common operations, paired with their decimal math counterparts. The best part about it is that the author details the change in performance between the two techniques (when used in AS3).

Great stuff!

If you have any bitwise math resource pages you would like to share, post them in the comments.