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Sunday, October 5th, 2008 - Flash, Wordpress

So I found this sweet set of tools called pressConnect it has most of the functions that I had already defined and need. But it didn’t work out of the box and I needed to make some  some changes… and write a few extra functions. Also I’m quite Lazy and couldn’t be bothered creating a new xml flash site from scratch so I brought the flash template from flash den that I though I would hack.

So far so good, I have the site retrieving the pages and displaying them also I have the content loading from those pages when the nav is clicked, I just need to display it.

P.S The template is in AS2 - it is well written but AS2 is not that much fun after you have been developing AS3 solely for so long. If you haven’t made the switch.. I suggest you do… it just makes so much more sense. Anyway enough of that AS3 rant.

But all in all it seems to be going well.

Friday, October 3rd, 2008 - Flash, Wordpress

Data Transportation

The fist step was for me to decide what way I should transfer data between flash and WordPress. I had 3 options I could see. 1. AMFPHP 2. JSON 3.XML

1.AMFPHP would require extra installation into my WordPress. And I thought that if I used this method and then allowed this onto the wild, it would be allot harder for people with less understating of code to implement

2. JSON - While this is a viable option and I would use this in a solution that I was creating in  my professional life. I feel that general people wouldn’t have a good grasp of what was going on and would require some specialist knowledge on the both the flash and PHP side

3.XML this is my choice, it is possibly not as efficient as the other 2 but it is a common data markup. People understand it and have been using it extensively for a few years now, help is really available and there is no extra files needed or frameworks to install into WordPress or flash. I call this one the peoples choice

Data vs Presentation

So after the decision to use XML was made I started  looking into XML driven flash file, ones I had made and other examples out on the net and I found that most of the content and presentation is mixed together. E.g the XML defined the content but in most case it also defined the look of the text should be. In this case I don’t think is right. I feel that the XML/content should be separate to the presentation layer/flash. Apart for where the user a specificly supplied a different look in the editor.

Getting the data

I think that a generic set of functions, pages retuning data should be created first that exposes common elements for consumption by either PHP, Flash or anything else.  With this methodology in place it would even allow me to write data transformers that take these feeds and tailors them to meet the needs of any project in the future

No that I have my basic plan I needed to define some core hooks that would allow me to get the data I need and they are as follows:

Category List
Category  Post List
Page Menu
Post List
Post

That’s all for the moment

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 - Flash, Flex, Wordpress

If you don’t already know I’m a Senior Flash Developer/Technical lead… and I love WordPress.

Now I was thinking the other day about WordPress and flash and it came to me. There is  no reason (at least I don’t think) why you couldn’t  use flash as the front of your WordPress site.

This lead me to doing some research and finding some interesting posts about the topic but it was all just dirty hacks. I thought surely there must be a way… then it came to me… just make a theme that will format the wordpress data into something flash can understand…..

Why would you do this instead of making a complete stand alone flash… well my friends have you see all the sweet tools already built into wordpress… It already has alot of functions that we will use and need and not only that if I want to redesign later E.g go back to an HTML Version….. just a  new wordpress theme… all data intact and still well ordered….

So Im going to document this as I go…. I think this is going to be fun

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 - Flash

Hi all I have jus had my first file posed on Flash Den.

Memory gauge is a very helpful movieclip that allows you to see how much memory you flash file is using and can help you find out if you have a memory leak.

The gauge is totally scalable as it is vector based.

Just copy or drag it to the stage of your flash movie for runtime memory feedback

Get it and preview it here

Thursday, September 18th, 2008 - Sweet Links

Shit happens. Sometimes, it happens to you. If it does happen, you might wish there was something you had told the people around you. How you feel, what you regret, where the money is stashed.
For this, you need a dead man’s switch.

http://www.deadmansswitch.net/

thanks to Lee… by the way head over to his tumblr page… allways heaps of very cool stuff.

Thursday, September 18th, 2008 - Blogging Tips

Web help had a interesting post on their blog about the new google site links… it would seem that they are series of latest posts for their new site links….

http://www.webhelp.co.nz/blog/2008/07/29/google-latest-site-links/

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 - Flash

http://www.adobe.com/newsletters/edge/december2007/video/index.html

I think so… not to sure what this will mean for flash though

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 - Sweet Links

An open source muxtape clone. Now lets see RIAA try and stop them all.

http://opentape.fm/

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 - Featured Articles

[ʞuıl]

˙ʇɥƃnoɥʇ ǝʌɐɥ p,oɥʍ ˙ʇı op ʇɔɐɟ uı uɐɔ noʎ ʇɐɥʇ ʇno suɹnʇ ʇı ˙sƃuıɥʇ ǝsoɥʇ ɟo ǝuo sɐʍ uʍop ǝpısdn ʇxǝʇ ƃuıuɹnʇ ʇnq ǝlqıssod ʇ,usɐʍ ʇɐɥʇ ʇɥƃnoɥʇ ʇsnɾ ı ‘ʞuıɥʇ puɐ qǝʍ ǝɥʇ uo ƃuıɥʇǝɯos ʇnoqɐ pɐǝɹ ı ʇɐɥʇ uǝʇɟo ʇou s,ʇı ʍou

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 - Featured Articles

Are you a website developer? Or maybe striving to be? Then have we got a nice assemblage of invaluable sites for you to check out. These seven are the ones we believe that you need to be aware of to help keep you in the developer’s proverbial loop. So once more, we ask that you give a gander to the list below…you don’t have to…it’s not like a requirement. You could stumble if you want to, but you might miss something spectacular. Oh, yeah, there’s some razzle, little dash of dazzle. Just saying. Could be worth a few minutes…

http://arbent.net/blog/design/7-websites-no-website-developer-should-be-without via studiowhiz