Peter Elst

I recently got a question about what the ActionScript 3.0 equivalent is of the LoadVars sendAndLoad method. It may look like a lot more typing (and it is) but the whole implementation is very clean by separating out the request, loader and variables which you can only benefit from in the long run.

import flash.events.Event;
import flash.net.*;

var myRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://www.myserver.com/myscript.php");
var myLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
var myVariables:URLVariables = new URLVariables();

myVariables.firstProperty = "first";
myVariables.secondProperty = "second";

myRequest.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;
myRequest.data = myVariables;

function onLoaded(evt:Event):void {
  trace("here we get the data back: "+myLoader.data);
}

myLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onLoaded);
myLoader.load(myRequest);

What happens in the code above is we set up a URLRequest instance that points to the server side resource you want to target. Next an instance of the URLLoader class is instantiated and we assign an instance of the URLVariables class to its data property.

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I’ve been reading through O’Reilly’s “ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns: Object Oriented Programming Techniques” by William Sanders and Chandima Cumaranatunge for the last few weeks and have to say its an incredibly useful resource.

The interesting thing is that this book approaches design patterns in the more traditional sense, not dumbing down on the object-oriented terminology. In that sense it is very approachable to those coming from a Java or C background and are looking for ActionScript 3.0 implementations of specific patterns.

On the other hand I can’t help but feel some patterns are shoehorned to fit in an ActionScript 3.0 context. True, ActionScript is a lot more like Java these days but there are still things that can’t directly be translated (or shouldn’t necessarily be).

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When opening a simple HTML document in Dreamweaver CS3 (Mac OSX 10.4.10) this afternoon I got this modal dialog pop up. Clicking Cancel or OK didn’t close it, and had to force quit the application.

Never seen this happen before, and haven’t been able to reproduce it since. A quick Google search seems to indicate this is some remnant from Fireworks or Freehand but don’t have a definitive answer as of yet.

Anyone else seen this happen?

In a bit of a surprise move (at least to me) Bruce Chizen will be stepping down as Adobe’s CEO as from December 1st and Shantanu Narayen, the current COO, will be filling his position.

We’ve had the opportunity to talk with Shantanu during the Adobe Community Summit last summer in San Jose in a more private setting and he left the impression of a very open and committed person with a passion to push the company forward and I have no doubt he’ll do extremely well as a CEO.

 
Read the press release here

Richard Galvan, Ted Patrick and Andrew Shorten presented the Adobe keynote on Monday to open Flash on the Beach 07. There wasn’t a lot of new information but I have to say they outdid themselves in creativity to bring the same message across.

At the very end there is a little sneak on how inverse kinematics is going to work in the authoring environment, its pretty nice and they didn’t show that before but I kind of expected it to work like that.

Flash “Diesel” does look incredibly promising between the new stage core, no more keyframes with the object tweening model, 3D ‘postcards in space’ by adding a Z axis, inverse kinematics both at author as at runtime and they promise a lot more to come.

Hope they’ll have a prerelease program starting for it soon!

“One conference to rule them all”

I just got back from Flash on the Beach ‘07 in Brighton – the lack of blog posts probably indicates how busy it has been between sessions, meeting up with friends and the various parties.

Its hard to pinpoint what exactly makes this conference so special but if I think John and the team hit the nail on the head with the mix of creative, technical and inspirational sessions and the fantastic speaker lineup. What I generally would like to see more at conferences is more advanced technical talks on AS3, Flex and AIR although the technical sessions were really good I’d say most were aimed at an intermediate audience.

Looking back my favorite session of the conference was without a doubt Jared Tarbell’s – “Algorithms to Fill Space“. His mix of math and creativity and presentation style blew my mind. Jared is also genuinely one of the nicest and down to earth people I know, hope to catch up with him again at conferences in the near future.

I’ve recorded Monday’s Adobe keynote in full (some hilarious bits in there with Richard Galvan, Ted Patrick and Andrew Shorten) and about half of Mario Klingemann’s new talk, will edit those down and get them up by this weekend.

Flash on the Beach ‘08 is planned for the end of September, I’m counting down the weeks!

Web 2.0 is a marketing term for slightly less crappy web based forms under the guise of being an application.

Web 3.0 brings web 2.0 to the desktop.

Web 4.0 brings the desktop to the web

GOTO 10

Its no secret that, being in the business of developing software for creative professionals, Adobe has traditionally had a proportionately large chunk of Mac users. With Adobe acquiring Macromedia and going all out to extend its reach to web, desktop, mobile and beyond (hosted services seems to be their next big thing) it seems that the business relationship with Apple and others is not as straightforward as before.

I think its fair to say that on a number of fronts Adobe is becoming serious competition to the established companies, just look at the potential of word processing with something like Buzzword — despite its current limitations of being run in a browser (the desktop AIR version is coming soon) it is in my mind already the clear winner. Web development has always centered around user experience and bringing that skill set to the users machine is paving the way for an entirely new desktop experience.

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