FlexCamp OC Awesome line up!

FlexCamp OC is coming up quick! Make sure to register now!

We’ve got an awesome speaker line up all set, Boeing is gonna be rockin’!

• Speakers

  • Marc Bir on: TBD
  • Thomas Burleson (Universal Mind) on: TBD
  • Tom Gonzalez on: Degrafa
  • Adam Flater (Universal Mind) on: Flex 4
  • Tony Hillerson (EffectiveUI) on: Flex Frameworks Breakdown
  • Evan Gifford (Blitz)on: TBD
  • Juan Sanchez (EffectiveUI)on: Flash Catalyst

Orange County CA is the place to be January 31st! Join us, and these great speakers, and the ASFusion crew for some awesome Flex community action. Only $25. Oh and don’t forget the food and fun after!

Setting a symbol color on an FxTextArea control in Flex Gumbo

The following example shows how you can set a symbol color on a Flex Gumbo FxTextArea control by setting the symbolColor style.

Full code after the jump.

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Setting the origin X and Y coordinate for a linear gradient stroke in Flex Gumbo

The following example shows how you can set the origin X and Y coordinate for a linear gradient stroke in Flex Gumbo by setting the x and y properties on the LinearGradientStroke object.

Full code after the jump.

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Setting the rotation of a linear gradient stroke in Flex Gumbo

The following example shows how you can set the angle of a LinearGradientStroke stroke on a Flex Gumbo Ellipse object by setting the rotation property on the LinearGradientStroke object.

Full code after the jump.

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ACE Solitaire, 2009 Resolution, Happy New Year

Ahhhhh the first post of a new year, Happy New Year! During the long holiday I decided to do something very different with my idle time and focused on finishing a Flash game I have worked on quietly for about 3 months called ACE Solitaire.

Become a FAN of ACE Solitaire

ACE Solitaire was build using ActionScript 3 and leverages some earlier code written by Darron Schall during the early IFBIN and ActionScript 3 days. The codebase has been almost entirely rewritten to support the features needed in ACE Solitaire and will soon leverage the full social aspects of Facebook. Currently the social aspects are limited but there is a lot more code to release in the next 2 days before I return to work.

The game is written in pure Old School AS3 using ActionScript Project in Flex Builder. The output SWF is 19K and that includes the card graphics made in Flash CS4, tiny tiny! The game is specifically designed to allow for long gameplay (4hrs in same session) and I tested the game running for 48hrs without any memory leaks or abnormal behavior. I also had some fun building forms with just Sprite, TextField, and Drawing API which is way fun if you haven’t tried it, I just love TextEvent.LINK (later post)! One unique element is that I added in imaging support into the game so the app can upload screen shots to Facebook ( bug reports, high scores, shared games ). The game is also unique in that it supports FullScreen to allow you to play ACE Solitaire taking advantage of the full desktop real estate.

My recent work at Adobe (MAX+Groups+Video+Community) has really limited my ability to write software and this project scratched a huge itch for me personally. It really made me realize that in 2009 I need to write and blog about the code I write much more often. It is my top resolution for 2009 and I get so much enjoyment out of writing code that it really isn’t work for me, it is fun. I guess once an evangelist, always an evangelist. With this project in particular it really helped to be a Solitaire addict. Over the holiday I think I played over 500+ games of ACE Solitaire.

Back to code, 2 more full day sprints!

Ted

Setting the miter limit on a stroke object in Flex Gumbo

The following example shows how you can set the miter limit on a Flex Gumbo stroke by setting the miterLimit property on a stroke object.

Full code after the jump.

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Setting the joint style on a stroke in Flex Gumbo

The following example shows how you can set the joint style on a Flex Gumbo LinearGradientRect object by setting the joints property to a static constant in the JointStyle class (flash.display.JointStyle).

Full code after the jump.

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Creating a linear gradient stroke on a Rect object in Flex Gumbo

The following example shows how you can set a linear gradient stroke on a Flex Gumbo Rect object by setting the stroke property to a LinearGradientStroke object.

Full code after the jump.

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Maintaining an video’s aspect ratio on a VideoDisplay control in Flex

The following example shows how you can maintain a loaded video’s original aspect ratio on a Flex VideoDisplay control by setting the maintainAspectRatio property.

Full code after the jump.

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mouseChildren=false

There is a beautiful property called mouseChildren that I had completely forgotten about. mouseChildren=false turns off all mouse events at a node in the DisplayList so that event on children only reach the actual object where mouseChildren is set to false. Essentially this allows you to enable certain graphics/objects to be invisible to the DOM Event phases and behave as part of the object they are parented to.

Why would this be important?

Say you are writing a game or component and you make these amazing skins for all the elements in the game. If you do not set mouseChildren to false (default is true), you will get events within the skin and need to detect what Object you are working with when events occur. You will see code start to appear that reads:

//within event handler
if( event.target is Card ) do this…
//then the madness begins as you hunt up the DisplayList for the object in question
event.target.parent blah
event.target.parent.parent blah blah

By setting mouseChildren to false, events on any mouseChildren are given to the parent automagically.

ok back to coding…

Ted