A couple weeks ago Benjamin Mace told me about a friend of his that he was trying to get involved in writing for the Flash community. The friend he had in mind was Bob Clagett, the co-founder of Velocity Works and the mastermind behind the Choppers Inc. website.

Bob has a really interesting attention to detail in his projects. His websites look great, function great, but what makes him so unique is the way everything flows. Nothing “just appears” on stage. Everything that is displayed on stage “arrives” with its own flourish. He’s been a Flash developer since Flash 3 and has been doing database driven Flash development since Flash 4. Over the years, he’s really developed a distinctive style and an amazing talent.

So, the awesome news is that Bob has agreed to join us at ActionScript.com! He’ll be writing about his work and experiences with Flash over the years and contributing to the community with his insights.

To my total shock, my entry in Turdhead’s ActionScript Poetry contest got dugg. Not just a little dugg but full on front page dugg. Never underestimate the number of geeks out there.

Anyway, submissions are still open (for today only) at Turdhead.com.

I was really thinking this Microsoft Live was just going to be a lame-ass rip-off of Google services (without any support for FireFox and certainly no Mac support). But, this is one awesome service that is very needed and seems to work well in all browsers and across platforms (Mac and Win).

FolderShare is a killer service that helps you keep files in sync across computers. Personally (I work too much) I develop both on computers in my office and computers in my home. I have a core library of ActionScript classes that I have developed over the years. But, once in a while, I make a change in my core architecture at one location, and I forget to copy the file to my other location. I've tried to keep current versions on a thumb drive, but I'm not diciplined enought to keep up with it. When I think I'm doing a good job and resolving source differences with my thumb drive, I've been more likely to implement problems that will sneak up on me later.

Many of us at ActionScript have been looking at different options to overcome this problem. We have source control for projects, but for core architecture, it's been every man for themselves.

FolderShare not only keeps your own files in sync, it allows you to access them online, and you can create online shares that other invited (and permission controlled) users can access. Best of all, it's all FREE!

Two things that would turn this service from a very nice app to a totally killer app would be 1) source control (or at least history/roll back options) for your files and 2) public access (the ability to create a public read-only link to your files) which it may have. I've only just started playing with it. But I'd really like to have a syncronized folder of my own core AS classes that I could make public for anyone else to keep up with. That would make this a truely killer app.

Something awesome from Microsoft that isn't a total rip of someone else's idea (they acquired this one). Great idea, great service, fits a very specific need, and the price is just right!!

Turdhead.com is having a contest for people to express a poem in ActionScript. I tried to submit my version of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, but I'm not sure my comment made it through the spam filter (aparently Vito gets a lot of people commenting about internet gambling and penis pills).

Update: I realize that it's not only impossible to read the poem below with tiny white text on a black background, it's freakin' irritating! So, I took the time to make a nice color coded version of my ActionScript 2.0 port of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare The to a Summer's Day for your enjoyment.

Anyway, here's my entry. Hope you enjoy.

// Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
// by William Shakespeare
// ported to ActionScript by Satori Canton
//
// Original poem can be viewed at:
// http://plagiarist.com/poetry/915/ 

var summer:Object = {};
var thee:Object = {};

summer.name = "Summer Day";
thee.name = "Thee";

summer.lovelyness = 9;
thee.lovelyness = 10;

summer.temperature = 98;
thee.temperature = 98.6;

summer.lease = new Date(2006, 7, 31).getTime()-new Date(2006, 5, 1).getTime();
thee.lease = new Date(2042, 6, 12).getTime()-new Date(1970, 8, 25).getTime();

summer.complexion = 0xFFCC33;
thee.complexion = 0xFFCCCC;

summer.fair = 10;
thee.fair = 10;

summer.getValue = function():Number  {
  return --this.fair;
};
thee.getValue = function():Number  {
  return this.fair;
};

summer.incrementTime = function():Number  {
  return --this.lease;
};
thee.incrementTime = function():Number  {
  return this.lease;
};

var man:Object = {};
man.hasEyes = true;
man.canBreath = true;
man.lease = 10000;
man.liveLong = function():Void  {
  this.lease++;
};
man.giveLife = function(o:Object):Void  {
  o.lease++;
  trace(o.name+" is given life");
};
man.compare = function(o1:Object, o2:Object):Void  {
  if (this.canBreath && this.hasEyes) {
    this.liveLong();
    var n1:Number = 0;
    var n2:Number = 0;
    var o1isBetter:Boolean;
    for (var i in o1) {
      if (typeof (o1[i]) == "function") {
        o1isBetter = o1[i]()>o2[i]() ? true : false;
      } else {
        o1isBetter = o1[i]>o2[i] ? true : false;
      }
      if (o1isBetter) {
        trace(i);
      }
      n1 += Number(o1isBetter);
      n2 += Number(!o1isBetter);
    }
    this.giveLife(n1>n2 ? o1 : o2);
  }
};

man.compare(summer, thee);

I hate it when I read an article online that is recommending a product (like a book or software) that links to buy that particular product with an affiliate link.

I don't have anything against a writer making a few bucks from their website (I do it myself all the time). But when you are reading someone's endorcement for something, you spend ten minutes reading an article about how something is the greatest thing since sliced bread, you're convinced that you have to have this product, and they link to it with an affiliate link, then you're not sure if the product is really that good, of if the writer is just a good huckster.

So, whenever I write something endorsing a product, and then link to that product, I usually put the words "not affiliate links" next to the link to make it as clear as possible that I mean what I'm recommending and not taking money from sharing the information with others.

Late last year, Jason Liske from Redwood Design wrote to me about creating a photo gallery component in Flash. Nothing too extreme, just preload images and thumbnails. When you click on a thumbnail, the full sized image and any text associated with the image would cross-fade into view.

I made the component (actually three components that work together). On their own (during testing) they didn't really look like much. But they did what they were required to do and Jason seemed pleased with it.

Jason sent me an e-mail today to let me know that the site he was working on for Bernard Trainor & Associates is now live. The photo gallery is under the "Projects" link. Jason has done so much great design work, I could hardly tell what parts are the components I made. Some really nice work on his part.

Last May, Macromedia Consulting put together a cool CSS explorer for Flex 1.5. Now, they've updated the application for Flex 2. You can controll all aspects of the way a Flex application looks via CSS. But the CSS properties are different from HTML CSS, so this tool makes it much easier to design your CSS for Flex and learn the properties that are specific to Flex components.

Xavi Beumala and I were talking a few weeks ago. He was showing me a new Flash extension he was creating to offer some flexibility when searching for assets in the library in a way similar to Eclipse. Relying heavily on the "search as you type" concept, he created a very useful tool for finding assets in your Flash movies.

When I saw it, it was very cool. But Xavi has been polishing it, and has released it as an open source project at osflash under the name Alf (Advanced Library for Flash)

Alf has a number of great keyboard shortcuts to optimize your workflow. Check out Xavi's blog for details on how to use Alf.

Gabriel Belvedere has made a very cool and very addicting little game called Please Key Me! I love little games like this. But what's really cool is that he's using TextScript to create the text effects in the game.

I don't know why, but it always surprises me when someone actually uses something I publish. I've been writing for ActionScript.com for years, but I never imagine anyone actually reads it (moreover uses any of it) :)

Adobe released a number of open-source ActionScript 3.0 libraries. Some of them are very useful, some are more application specific. But they are all good for learning the new coding style.

corelib includes a great MD5 encryption class that could pretty easily be ported back to AS 2.0. There are also a nice serialization class in there.

FlexUnit is a unit testing framework (similar to JUnit) for ActionScript 3.0 (not just for Flex). If you're not familiar with Extreme Programming and Unit Testing, check out AS2Unit for a great tool to apply unit testing to your ActionScript 2.0 projects.

The RSS and Atom libraries read various types of RSS feeds (and automatically manage parsing the XML based on the type of feed). Cool stuff!

Available Libraries:

corelib
FlexUnit
Flickr
Mappr
RSS and Atom libraries
Odeo
YouTube