April | 2004 | Mike Chambers

Archive for April, 2004

MXNA Feed Scroller Mods

Posted on April 29, 2004 by Mike Chambers | Comments (7)

Wow. A couple of people have already taken the code for the MXNA Feed Scroller and improved upon it.

Peter Elst turned it into a ScreenSaver.

Eric Dolecki updated it with a new look.

Hmmm…. I think I see a contest coming on….

Sample App : MXNA Stand-alone viewer

Posted on April 29, 2004 by Mike Chambers | Comments (3)

I recently moved moved offices, and am now sitting with the Flash team. One thing I noticed was that we have a nice 42″ Plasma screens, which was not being used. So, I decided to put together a simple application that would make it easy to help keep myself and the Flash team up with the latest news and information from the Flash community.

The application I created, MXNA Feed Scroller (original name, heh?), is a Flash based, fullscreen standalone application that displays information on the last 15 weblog posts from the Flash community. It is updated every 15 minutes. It gets its information from the MXNA web service API and uses the MXNA ActionScript 2 Library.

Here is a picture of the app in action:

Here is a screen shot of the app:

Central Licensing Survey

Posted on April 26, 2004 by Mike Chambers | Comments (5)

The Central Team is doing a survey on the Central Licensing model. Please take a couple of minutes to give us your input, as it will help us determine how Central is licensed.

You can take the survey here.

Colin Moock’s Essential ActionScript 2.0 Chapter Online

Posted on April 23, 2004 by Mike Chambers | Comments (3)

We have posted a chapter from Colin Moock’s forthcoming tome on ActionScript 2, titled Essential ActionScript 2.0.

You can read chapter 2, “Object Oriented ActionScript”, here.

You can find more information on Essential ActionScript 2.0 from here.

Certifiable certification Central application

Posted on April 19, 2004 by Mike Chambers | Comments (1)

Daemon has posted a preview release of their very cool certification exam application named Certifiable.

I saw a sneak peak of this at MXDU, and it is easily one of the coolest, and most useful Central applications available.

You can find more information on Certifiable (including screenshots and FAQs) as well as download the application from here.

Flash Resource Manager Updated / Flex and ColdFusion Support

Posted on April 15, 2004 by Mike Chambers | Comments (4)

I have released a new version of my Flash Resource Manager application. It includes a bunch of bug fixes, as well as the ability to highlight the search term in search results, and support for Livedoc based HTML docs (Flex, CF and Central have been tested).

Here is the change Log

Added ability to add Macromedia HTML based docs (tested with Flex, ColdFusion and Central)
Added Preferences > Help to manage, add and edit which HTML docs are included.
Added Flash HowTo help books to default install.
Added ability to search documents from the help tree context menu (will search for currently selected item).
Added ability to search plugins from the help tree context menu (will search for currently selected item).
Fixed bug where application window would not always have focus when launched.
Added preference to toggle the collapsed state of a node when it is clicked.
Fixed bug where regular expression check box was being ignore in searches (all searches were treated as regular expressions)
Fixed bug where items were added to search filter even if index file was invalid. (Thanks Jason Merrill)
Moved Flash docs to be contained within top level folders / nodes.
Added ability to toggle which top level Flash documents / books are available (View > Preferences > Help).
Improved start up time
Search terms will now be highlighted when viewing search results (this is currently an experimental feature).
Added back / forward browser buttons (I will implement browser features better in future releases)
removed toolbar layout persistence into separate file. This should not be edited by hand.

You can find more information, view screenshots, and download the application from here.

Flash Desktop Wallpaper Contest Winners

Posted on April 13, 2004 by Mike Chambers | Comments (7)

We have finality picked the winners for the Flash Desktop Wallpaper Contest. There were over 150 submissions(!) and it was tough picking the winners from all of them. I picked out 10 finalists, and then the Flash team voted on their top three.

Anyways, here are the winners in order:

If you are one of the winners, send me an email (mesh@macromedia.com) so I can send out your prizes.

Thanks to everyone who participated. We were really blown away by the quality of the submissions.

You can view all of the submissions from here.

Flash Resource Manager : Flex / CF support

Posted on April 11, 2004 by Mike Chambers | Comments (3)

Here is a sneak peak of the next beta build of my Flash Resource Manager application.

This screen shot shows the new support for Macromedia HTML based help (in this case Flex, ColdFusion and Central).

Flash Wallpaper Contest Winners Soon

Posted on April 9, 2004 by Mike Chambers | Comments (2)

Sorry for the delay, but we will be posting the winner for the Flash Desktop Contest in the next couple of days.

Flash Resource Manager Updated

Posted on April 8, 2004 by Mike Chambers | Comments (3)

I have just uploaded an updated to the Flash Resource Manager. This version includes a couple of fixes for users running non-English versions of Flash.

Specifically:

Added ability to automatically determine Flash Authoring language
Fixed problems with parsing non-English help XML documents

Note : You should no longer need to resave your help XML files into the correct encoding type.

If you are running an English version of Flash, there is not need to install this version.

It is recommended that you first un-install the previous version and then install the new version.

You can download the new version from here.

If you run into any issues, post them in the comments here.

Mike Chambers

Mike Chambers. Senior Product Manager, Developer Relations at Adobe.