Posted: July 6th, 2007 | Author: Daniel | Filed under: Accessibility, Flash, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails | 3 Comments »
I just came across a new plugin that lets you embed Adobe Flash content into a Ruby on Rails based application with minimal fuss. It is based on the OpenLaszlo view helper and uses the much loved, and frankly indispensable, JavaScript based swfObject method.
If your Spanish Italian is up to it, you can check out the original Lipsiasoft project page. If on the other hand, like me, you have a bit of trouble getting your Spanish Italian on, you can always turn to AgileWebdevelopment.com who have an English page on the plugin over at: http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/flashobject.
Cheers to Lipsiasoft for making our lives even easier!
Posted: June 12th, 2007 | Author: Daniel | Filed under: Adobe, Flash, JavaScript, Mac, Web Applications | 1 Comment »
MacRumors is currently running an article claiming there will be no Adobe Flash support for the Apple iPhone. You can find the full article here.
It was revealed yesterday at the WWDC, the Apple Developer conference, that the iPhone would include “support for Web 2.0 applications.” I guess we will just have to wait and see if Apple’s definition of “Web 2.0 applications” includes HTML and JavaScript, but not Flash.
Posted: March 19th, 2007 | Author: Daniel | Filed under: AIR (formerly Apollo), Adobe, CSS, Flash, Flex, JavaScript, Open Source, Web Applications, Widgets | No Comments »
The Apollo SDK is now available for download on Adobe labs.
I’ve had a quick look at some of the example Apollo applications (they’re tucked away a bit) and amazingly, I’ve already been able to use one at work this morning: the Pixel Perfect example.
I’ve also been on the lookout for a nice RSS reader as I haven’t been able to find a suitable Windows alternative for Vienna, my RSS reader of choice on Mac. I’ll be giving the Fresh RSS reader a go over the next couple of days.
Posted: September 28th, 2006 | Author: Daniel | Filed under: AIR (formerly Apollo), Actionscript, CSS, Flash, Flash Player, Flex, JavaScript | 2 Comments »
Apollo, the Adobe desktop runtime environment currently still in development, will most likely not have a special form of right-click context menu functionality.Apollo applications are, in essence, a collection of your traditional web technologies bundled into an installable application. Examples of exisiting technologies you will be able to leverage are HTML, Flash, CSS and PDF. On top of that, you have Apollo specific functionalities that will allow you for example to access the file system or automatically search for updates.When a user right-clicks inside an Apollo application, they will see the context menu of the type of technology they are currently interacting with. If, for example, the application is built in Flash (and it seems most early Apollo examples are) they will see the Flash context menu. Right-click on an html link and you will see the context menu of the Apollo html rendering engine, a choice Adobe have yet to publicly announce. UPDATE: This functionality has since been added to AIR and allows completely customisable context menus. It’s a pity Apollo won’t have an across-the-board right-click context menu, even if it may be difficult to achieve. I think it will confuse some users and diminish the application-ness of the Apollo experience. Things are looking bright though. Apollo will usher in completely different types of applications and programs.
Posted: July 31st, 2006 | Author: Daniel | Filed under: Actionscript, Flash, JavaScript | No Comments »
Just a quick note for those sending string variables with special characters from Flash to JavaScript in FireFox.
I came across a problem whereby strings with special characters would not be sent to Firefox properly. In Internet Explorer everything worked fine, but Firefox was having none of it; any string containing a special character was not passed to JavaScript. No garbled messages or weird characters, just plain old empty nothingness.
It turns out a ‘bug’ in FireFox decodes the string before it is sent to JavaScript. You can find out more about the problem on the FlashCoders list here.
The solution on FlashCoders involves double escaping the string you want to send, like so:
System.useCodePage = true;
escape(escape(myString));
FYI, I’m using the Flash/JS Integration Kit to send the variables.
Posted: July 19th, 2006 | Author: Daniel | Filed under: Actionscript, Flash, JavaScript, Open Source | No Comments »
Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on a major project whereby our team needed to pass values to HTML.
Initially we used a plain old getURL ActionScript function when we needed to pass values to JavaScript. This worked fine untill we tested its cross-platform compatibility. Not soon thereafter, our hopes and dreams were dashed when we ran into trouble with Safari; even though the documentation claimed that Safari supports this method.
This method also meant it would be difficult to get values back from JavaScript, should the need arise in the future, and knowing how things usually go, it probably will.
So we did what any smart developer would do, we turned to the Flash/Javascript Integration Kit, developed by Christian Cantrell and Mike Chambers; back when Macromedia was still Macromedia, and Adobe was, well, Adobe.
It works a treat and we were able to swiftly wipe any cross-browser concerns aside and move on to more important things.
I can heartily recommend its usage to anyone integrating Flash with JavaScript. The documentation was concise and easy to follow.
You can find the project’s homepage at osflash.org/flashjs,where you will also find a link to the kit itself.
