Archived entries for tips

[Tips] Easily develop AIR apps for Blackberry Playbook

Looking back during the early days of my involvement in this, I kept telling myself, “how hard can it be?” As you may know, RIM is almost the new kids on the block in the Tablet race game for 2011, which suffers a lot of criticism for not having a lot of app compared to its competitor, which is also true for Android, prior to launch previously. Give this platform a try, and you will know how much RIM has poured their trust and appreciation for Flash developer in this manner. And it is definitely not the developing for Android where you will still need to install the AIR player separately (which is EXTREMELY lame). The PlayBook has AIR integrated into its CORE OS, which means, you can get every single PlayBook on the planet to run your app without any extra installation.

Why is this post relevant to you? I’m pretty sure you might stumble across this infamous blog post: You Win! RIM by Jamie Murai. Certainly, RIM did listened to the rants and frustration of developer and evolved overtime to remedy their over-complicated process. Few months have passed since then, and I can’t tell how much I’m thankful to RIM for its appreciation for developer, and especially the Flash platform. I’m here, happy with my PlayBook (from the Free PlayBook offer) going to share with you the entire workflow and process, which afterall, is not as scary as it seems, but in fact, has toned down a lot more compared to the earlier days. Sure, you might argue Apple has the best submission mechanism and workflow in the world, but that does not happen overnight, neither do Android Market.

This will be the definitive guide for Mac users with Adobe Flash Professional to creating their PlayBook app. To give you an idea on how much time and effort you need to spend from developing to submitting an app to AppWorld, in point forms below, the 5 steps to your first app in AppWorld.

  1. Downloads (1 day)
  2. Apply as vendor (may take up to 3 working days for vendor application & code signing keys approval)
  3. Simulator and development (minimum 1 day, varies depending on complexity of your app)
  4. Signing your app (for submission to AppWorld) (1 day)
  5. Waiting for review and putting app on sale (7 – 14 days)

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  • July 20, 2010
  • In Misc, tips
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[TIPS] Enabling Adobe Photoshop to save .ICO (icon) files

Are you a web designer or developer scratching out your head figuring how you can save those .ico files besides from doing it online?

Online converter :

The picture above shows after placing the plugin into the correct folder on your Photoshop installation, you can now save your file in .ICO format.

Telegraphics offers free plugins for Photoshop and Illustrator. Go to the official site: Telegraphics.com.au (down at the moment of writing) or alternative download link : Korean website and look for ICO (Windows Icon) Format.

Once you have downloaded the file (ICOFormat-2.0b3-CS3.dmg), refer to the screenshot below on where to place the .plugin file (if you are on a Intel-Mac).

Favicon

What is favicon? It’s a small 16×16 icon that appears on most modern website that you visit. The wikipedia page has a really comprehensive information on the history and support for the subject.

How do you make sure that the icon appears on your homepage? You need to place the code below within the <HEAD> </HEAD> tag of your HTML document

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/myfolder/myicon.ico" />

  • January 29, 2010
  • In Flash, tips
  • No comments yet

[AS3] Add Class to Stage using String

Was working on a project today and stucked and wondering how you can actually place a large number of custom classes in your Library and then call it out via a name that is formed out of a string?

Example: … “mcApple”+number+date

You can actually do it by using the method known as  “Class Reference”.

var yourString:String = “mcName”+”customName”+customData;
var className:Class = getDefinitionByName(yourString) as Class;
var mc:MovieClip = new className();

this.addChild(mc);

See? Doesn’t seem to be too hard and it’s really helpful especially when you’re still very much of a semi-developer/designer and need to access the library dynamically.

References:

[Tips] AS3 User location/country detector based on IP

I have wrote a script that automates the process of your project in detecting the user location based on their current IP address via maxmind’s Javascript API. What you will need to do is to

  • See the demo below
  • Get the source code
  • Read the comment inside the FLA and start using it  :D

What is this?

A simplified script that detects the visitor’s country and other details such as latitude/longtitude based on their current IP address.

Why is this necessary?

I felt that there is a need sometimes for us to automate the language selection or region selection process in some major big site that helps in cutting down user frustration through multiple clicks before going into the site. I figured this could be useful.

How to use it?

What you will need to do is to wait until the loading listener is completed before using it.  Sample usage :

var userCountry:String = getCountryName();

Where to get the files?

Download the source file

View the demo (SWF)

[Tips] How to dynamically create tilt shift effect with Flash (AS3)

screenshot

If you have no idea what is Tilt-Shift. Probably you can have a short read on it at wikipedia. But perhaps to some, when done right, can produce really unexpected and sweet result (look at UNIQLO CALENDER). While to other, it’s being done to death. Of course, this is merely a quick tidbits on how you can “almost” achieve the effect without even touching Photoshop or other image editing tool, but with just few line of Actionscript. And yes, designers can do it too!

Demo : See it in action!
Download : The Source file. (Flash CS3, AS3)

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