monkeyflash.com
January 21st, 2008 | Posted in Flash & ActionScript, Tutorials
The ability to create a custom preloader is a must in any Flash developer’s toolbox, but the process is very different in ActionScript 3.0. External files are no longer loaded into a waiting empty movie clip on the stage like you might have done in earlier versions. Instead images, SWF files, and any other external content are loaded using the Loader class. The process is different, but not difficult. Let’s put together a basic custom preloader that can be used in a Flash movie for loading external images or other SWF files. »
January 16th, 2008 | Posted in Flash & ActionScript, Tutorials
One of the new features of the video playback component in Flash CS3 is the ability to assign a preview image, or a poster frame, to an FLV to make it easier to position and adjust. However, this new feature comes with a footnote that reads, “The preview image is displayed at authoring time only. To generate a runtime preview image, use the export button and load the image back by writing your own ActionScript.” Unfortunately, the missing ActionScript is not included in the documentation. In this tutorial, I will show you one way to include a poster frame in front of a Flash video. »
July 10th, 2007 | Posted in Flash & ActionScript, Tutorials
One of the best new features in Flash Player 9 is its ability to play video full-screen, using the same outside-the-browser technique you’ve seen on YouTube and other video sites. One click opens the video to the full width of your monitor with a black background, and even includes a message letting the user know that they can return to their desktop by pressing the Esc key. Here’s the best part: using Flash CS3, you can add full-screen capability to your Flash video without writing a single line of ActionScript, and with only a tiny change to your HTML. Let’s take a look at how easy it can be. »
July 2nd, 2007 | Posted in Flash & ActionScript, Tutorials
In the past, if you wanted to create a bouncing animation using code, you’d spend hours pouring over physics equations and adjusting variables until you got it just right. By using the Tween class instead, you can create the same effect with just a few lines of code, and skip the high school physics review. A recent project gave me a chance to play with the Tween class, a relatively obscure set of scripts that can be used to create varying programmatic animation. »
June 14th, 2007 | Posted in Flash & ActionScript, Tutorials
Creating drag and drop functionality in Flash CS3 is quite different than in older versions if you’re using the new ActionScript 3.0. While still relatively straightforward, the code can be a little more intimidating to users who are less familiar with ActionScript programming. If you’re like me, you’re here to try to keep your knowledge up-to-date, so let’s learn how to create a simple ActionScript 3.0 drag and drop game step-by-step. Download the FLA and follow along with these steps. »
November 5th, 2006 | Posted in ColdFusion, Tutorials
Recently I needed to use Verity’s Spider (Vspider) to crawl my dynamic website to create a collection that could then be searched. I was able to find useful information here and there but not just one place that had all the answers. I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers, but hopefully you will find this beginning-to-end tutorial of making a dynamic site searchable using Vspider helpful.
The last several versions of ColdFusion have shipped with a 3rd-party indexing engine called Verity. Creating standard Verity collections is covered in most ColdFusion books in great detail. The standard indexing is great if you have static .html or .cfm pages but what if you have pages that are mostly database driven? »
October 10th, 2006 | Posted in HTML & CSS, Tutorials
Recently, I fought another browser inconsistency battle over the placement of image bullets to the left of an unordered list. While Firefox places the bullets where I expect, Internet Explorer places them too high, moving them out of alignment with the text. IE also occasionally moves the text too close to the bullet, and refuses to move it no matter what styles I apply. It’s only a minor difference, but in some cases this misalignment can become disorienting to the user. »
June 30th, 2006 | Posted in HTML & CSS, Tutorials
Wouldn’t it be really cool if there were a way to create an image rollover that doesn’t require preloading images or JavaScript? Wouldn’t it be great if you could create horizontal or vertical navigation using only a clean unordered list markup in your HTML? How about having both of them, together?
Let’s take a look at the HTML code we will use for this example. I wanted to keep the code as clean as possible, while making it possible to arrange the display of the items in a variety of ways. »
June 20th, 2006 | Posted in HTML & CSS, Tutorials
One of the simplest and most efficient forms of navigation for a website is the horizontal list of items, separated by the pipe (|) symbol. Unfortunately, marking up a <p> tag with the pipe character in between links is messy and not very accessible. A more efficient method to solve this problem is to use an unordered list to markup the navigation links. We can then use CSS to style the vertical list horizontally and add the appropriate separators. »
June 20th, 2005 | Posted in ColdFusion, Tutorials
In a recent discussion about an upcoming project, the idea of “reaching beyond the browser” came up. We wanted to provide students (our target audience) with an avenue to provide feedback in addition to the web. After our meeting we had two questions to answer: What was the best way to provide interaction to mobile devices, and what could we use in our current infrastructure that would allow us to talk to mobile devices?
The answers were SMS (Short Message Service) and ColdFusion MX 7. Thanks to the awesome Macromedia MAX conference in November, I was aware that ColdFusion MX 7 was going to include a new Event Gateway that allowed a ColdFusion application to send and receive SMS messages. My next step was to set up a sample application, so our team members could see how it would work. »