Posted by Jacob Wright in ActionScript 3, CSS, FlexAug 31st, 2009 | 4 Comments
Question: What’s 2.8KB, can style any DisplayObject on the stage, and enjoys long walks on the beach?
Answer: Flex styling pwned!
So it’s leaked out on twitter that Ben Stucki, Ryan Campbell, Tyler Wright, and myself are working together on a new RIA component initiative. Taking a different approach than Open Flux, we are starting from scratch and building up fresh. We’re bringing together what we’ve learned from Open Flux and Stealth with the goal to release finished features and stable builds. We hope to provide something that we all can use in production. We haven’t...
Posted by Jacob Wright in AIR, ActionScript 3, Applications, CSSAug 26th, 2009 | 4 Comments
Flash is a great platform. You can build applications for the browser, the desktop, and… well, what else is there?
When building applications, especially those with a document-based model such as the Aviary apps, Odosketch, My Canvas, ZenStudio, the apps on acrobat.com, and many others, you need a file format for the document or project. Or some way to save it.
What Not To Do
You don’t want to save each item into a table in the database. I know a guy…who had a dream…that his friend did this. This guy’s friend in his dream had a table for each item that needed to be...
Posted by Jacob Wright in GeneralAug 25th, 2009 | 3 Comments
Been thinking about component architecture. Ok, so it’s a regular topic of discussion with Tyler. There’s a lot that goes into it, but at a high-level there seems to be two trains of thought, at least for me, that I’m trying to decide between: building for the component creator, or building for the component user. I’d like to discuss these two and round it up with the pros and cons. Maybe I’ll settle on one by that point.
Component Creator
The component creator wants legos. He wants the pieces he can build components with easily (when I say “he” I mean...
Posted by Jacob Wright in ActionScript 3, FlashAug 24th, 2009 | 6 Comments
Earlier I posted about the Response Pattern. Today I wanted to show an ActionScript implementation and how it would be used.
The API I decided to go with for this pattern uses method chaining. This is one of those things where people love it or they despise it. I'm sorry if you are one of the latter. Method chaining is where an object returns a reference to itself as the result of its methods. This allows you to call many methods on the object in one line. jQuery uses this and it is used a lot in the Zend Framework. As example you might have a drawing API helper that does this:
shape.fill(0x660000).rect(0,...
Posted by Jacob Wright in GeneralAug 21st, 2009 | 4 Comments
I don't presume to place myself at the status of GoF or Martin Fowler, but I came up with a concept that was then improved upon by my twin brother, Tyler, which I feel could stand to be called a pattern. I may not be the first one to do this, but if I am, then it really shouldn't be called a pattern since design patterns are observable patterns found in a lot of code that can be documented and generalized. I apologize in advance if it should not hold "pattern" status, but I think it is worth discussing, so please be kind. It's pretty simple in concept, and has turned out to be quite useful in practice....
Posted by Jacob Wright in GeneralJul 31st, 2009 | 1 Comment
Just wanted to let you know about a show I've fallen in love with. I've seen the commercials and thought it might be interesting to watch, but never got around to it. Once I saw a few episodes I was totally hooked.
A couple of weeks ago I watched two seasons of NBC's Chuck within 48 hours. I has become my favorite TV series followed by The Office and Lost, and I can't wait for season 3 to air next March. You can watch all 13 episodes from season 1 starting with the pilot on Warner Bros website. The second season has only about half of its 22 episodes online at nbc.com or hulu.com. You'll have to...
