Peter Elst

While thinking about some cool examples for the JSFL File API introduced with the 7.2 updater for Flash MX 2004, I came up with the idea of building an MP3 player panel for the Flash IDE. Think about it, practically everyone likes to have his/her favourite music on while coding away in ActionScript

It was actually surprisingly simple to build, just a couple of components and under 50 lines of code. From the feedback I’ve gotten people were really excited about this example. When I’ve got some more time I’ll add support for playlists and shuffle.

Other windowSWF’s that I’ve got in the works are an FLV previewer and XML browser.

In case you’re wondering the JSFL File API does not (yet) support browsing to a folder to select the source file URI. Guy Watson’s FileSystem API does have a function that allows this and I’m working on getting an example ready using his FileSystem extension.

You can download the MXP here, feel free to drop me a line with your thoughts and/or suggestions!

The Text shadow timeline effect allows you to set an x offset, y offset and color for a shadow to be created for the selected textfield.

It can probably best be described as a down-to-basics version of the built-in dropshadow effect, another great starting point for getting involved with building your own Timeline effects.

You can download the MXP file here, the source files are also packaged seperately.

For those that attended my presentation on JSFL at Flashtival yesterday, I’m packaging up some of the examples I’ve shown starting with the Triangle tool. This is about the easiest example I could think of and is a great way to get started with creating your own Tools for the Flash IDE.

I’ve got a couple of things on my to-do list for this extension, if you feel like experimenting with the code you can certainly try to implement it yourselves:

- Support for a fill color
- Use the SHIFT key to constrain it to an equilateral triangle

You can download the extension as an MXP here, I’ve also packaged up the source files seperately if you just want to look at the code again.

Feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment if you’re having some problems with the code!

If you’re not at Flashtival, Rotterdam right now you’re missing out on what I think could be the coolest Flash talk of the year. Peter Hall is just presenting a session on DDF (Document Driven Flash) which allows pages to be reused as both HTML and Flash.

Using simple Dreamweaver generated HTML, some JavaScript and XPath magic he’s showing us a great framework to quickly and easily use the same content in both HTML and SWF format. It’s not meant to be a full XHTML parser (check out DENG for that) but the idea is pretty cool to say the least.

I believe he’s doing the same presentation at FlashEurope so if you missed out today, you can try to make it over then.

I’ve just finished my own session on JSFL and building Flash MX 2004 extensions and will be posting some of the cool stuff I’ve built while preparing for this session in the coming days!

I’ve been working on a cool little windowSWF widget for the Flash IDE that allows you to easily preview custom styles for the built-in UI components without having to compile your project each and every time.

I’ll be showing the code for this in my session on JSFL at Flashtival, Rotterdam this coming Monday after which I’ll make it available for download — if you’re heading out to that conference you can consider this a sneak-peek of more exciting stuff to come