Flash Spanish-Polish Application

I was asked today by a colleague what was I doing appart from work and I told him that the old days as a freelancer are over!
After 7 years doing it, I don't really want to continue doing freelance jobs, but as I still manage to have a couple of spare hours every weeks, I am actually working on four projects:
- 3 games
- a Spanish-Polish application
Everything is for fun and for learning purposes only and that's why the projects are going very slow...
I won't talk about the games yet, but the Spanish-Polish application so far is going as follows:

Splash Page


Main Menu


Selected Section


The main idea comes from an old application I did to help my girlfriend with her first Spanish words; this time is to help myself (and others) on Polish-Spanish studies.

Let's see how it goes...

salut!

Thanks London Flash Platform User Group!

6:45pm, last thursday my coleague Daniel Todd and me took a taxi to Old Street as the first London Flash Platform User Group was about to start.
We arrived just on time to a pub called Play for the first presentation given by Stefan Richter where for one hour he showed us the power of the Flash Media Server, the newest edition of the Flash Communication Server which has multi-user capabilities among many other cool features.
After the usual 15 minutes break, the second presentation came from Stuart Eccles who introduced us to the beautiful world of Ruby On Rails, a very intersting back end technology which its language seems to be very practical and easy to learn.
I had a great time and I think the organiser did very well.
Apart from that I would like to give a big thanks not only for the great presentations but because I was one of the lucky people who won a prize!
I started already reading Object Oriented Actionscript and so far seems to be one of the best books ever written about OOP and AS2 (if not the best!)
Thanks again!


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Multimedia Developer

Why am I not a Rich Media Developer?
Multimedia sounds a bit old fashioned for me and is because back in the nineties I was working in a computer shop and the term Multimedia meant that the computer had CD-Rom, sound card with speakers and microphone...
That was really long ago. But that's my position at the same company I did the internship during 4 months this year, Multimedia Developer.
In their words I am a "Maquetiste", a french term that means "the one who does graphics, code and flash" and that is exactly what I've been doing for almost 5 months now but is just from this month that I started as a permanent employee.
Big projects, big clients, Im having a really big time.

salut!

no more internship!

Four months ago I started an internship in a new media agency and the contract was due to finish by the end of May 2006.
During these last four months I've been learning a lot from great graphic designers and developers; I had the chance to meet really cool people and work in really cool projects.
In this month I have finished my studies and I have finished the internship!
hooray!
Well, Im actually waiting for the graduation and stuff though...
but anyway, Im not an intern anymore!

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now waiting for the results...

after 4 long months writing a report about my final digital project for the University, today I handed it out finishing with that the course.
I studied an MA in Digital Media and now is just a matter of time to get the results and the awards!
well, maybe just the results then...
I can't believe its over!
after year and a half studying full time and working full time... spending ALL my money on the course as I was considered an international student...
so today at 10ish I went to Highbury & Islington Station and then walked to the Ladbroke House to hand out the report

I will miss that route! and I will miss the:

Salut!

and now javascript issues...

As you might know, with the last update of windows xp there was an update to its "popular" browser InternetExplorer. These "critical" update instaled in all our computers something that stops any active content to be enabled when it loads.
What does it mean?
well, for instance if any person using internet explorer wants to navigate my website, they will not notice the "rollOver animations" that took me time to prepare and create and if they want to go to any specific section, they will click on it but nothing will happen!
The first click only activates the movie, so they have to click again if they want to go to that section... that is really anoying and it affects the users experience.

Flash developers to the rescue!
on kirupa, there is a great tutorial on how to avoid that issue using a technic created by Geoff Stearns which it was called FlashObject.

Adobe goes paranoic!
Adobe wrote an email to Geoff telling him that he SHOULD change the name of his technic due to legal issues with the name Flash. Now is called SWFObject.
Im wondering if one day they will come and ask us, people at neoflashers.org, to change our name... maybe neoSwiffers.org? Im being ironic though...

SWFObject update!
and few minutes ago, Geoff released the latest update of his SWFObject. But there is still one thing that concerns me and is what happened today in the office:
- what about if the client has disabled the javascript in his/her browser?
that is not my fault! hehe

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OFFF - 2006

Celebrated yearly, the Online Flash Film Festival is one of the most important events of digital media in the world. As usual, it will take place the second week of May in the beautiful city of Barcelona, Spain.

Since 2001, OFFF is exploring software aesthetics and new languages for interactive and visual expression.

Dates: 11-12-13 May 2006
more info available from: http://www.offf.ws

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Apple Boot Camp

my mate Mike from thatBlokeMike have just posted this info in the flashGroup forums and I think are quite interesting news.

CUPERTINO, California—April 5, 2006—Apple® today introduced Boot Camp, public beta software that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP.

So the idea is that the hard drive will have two partitions, one will run the MacOS Leopard (next MacOS X release) and the other will run WinXP.

As Mike said:

"cant beat em join em"...
This is great, because so many people are opening eyes to advantages of both

more info from apple here.

Well, I think will be a good time to aquire the Mac I always dream of having

Salut

FlashZone - Polish Community

FlashZone.pl is a great Polish online community of flash developers where I am member since 2004.
There are more than 20K registered members in this community which has forums, tutorials, examples to watch and to download and even an e-commerce microsite.
I never felt brave enough to post anything as I though the language barrier would be a problem, but not at all!
People at flashZone are cool and seems like they have no problem if someone comes and posts in a different language; everyone with good intentions is very welcomed!
Don't forget to visit this section to see some of the best Polish websites.

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@Media Conference 2006

If you are interested or are part of the web design fascinating world and have some money to invest in a great conference, this is the one you were waiting for:

@media, Europe's foremost professional web design conference, brings together some of the world's most highly respected web experts to talk about the latest major happenings, best-practice thinking, and cutting-edge techniques in the world of web design.

If you don't have the money yet, you still have 3 months to save it to be part of this 2-days conference in London.

Salut!

Flash Menu vrs Navigation

When designing a website or any other application, the navigation system is one of the most important bits of it.
Flash has been criticized in the past for its difficulty to create effective navigation systems where the client (the person who is watching the site) have no clue where he is nor where he can go next...
The other day, someone asked in a forum how to create a flash menu where:
- on rolling over the buttons, the colour of the text changes to red
- on rolling out, the text returns to its original white colour
- on pressing the button, the text changes to black
- a button should be disabled if it has been pressed
- when pressing a button, any disabled button should be enabled again

starting my FlashMX2004 and playing a bit with ActionScript, this is my solution:

var i:Number = 1;
for (i; i<=5; i++) {
var boton = _root["bt0"+i];
boton.onRollOver = function() {
sufix = this._name.substr(3);
texto = _root["e0"+sufix];
texto.textColor = 0xd95a1c;
};
boton.onRollOut = function() {
if (this.enabled == true) {
texto.textColor = 0xffffff;
}
};
boton.onPress = function() {
texto.textColor = 0x000000;
botonActual.enabled = true;
textoActual.textColor = 0xffffff;
};
boton.onRelease = function() {
this.enabled = false;
botonActual = this;
textoActual = texto;
};
}

what I have in my .fla are 5 instances of a button named Bt01 ... Bt05
and 5 dinamic text boxes called EO1 ... E05

voila! we have a flash menu that has an effective navigation.
Watch the sample here

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Firefox extensions for web developers

First of all, I would recommend to use Mozilla Firefox as a web browser instead of Internet Explorer as it has lots of features that makes it better
Some of these features are the extensions and if you are a web developer, I would advice you to use at least the following two:
IE Tab Firefox Extension that allows you to switch to iexplorer (embedding it in your firefox) and see how iexplorer users will see your website
remember that most of your clients use iexplorer as they dont know the Firefox benefits
Web Developer that adds a menu and a toolbar with web developers tools, this one is really useful when developing large scale websites

There are more extensions that are very useful as well but the two above are a must have if web development is your field.

And if you have a gmail account, gmail notifier is the one to use and gmail space if in case you need to have files handily without carrying any external drive

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February London MMUG

Yesterday was the London MMUGs monthly meeting where we had two great presentations;
In the first one Aral Balkan was showing us why he loves so much Flex 2 and in the second one Vishal Shah gave us an introduction to After Effects.
I have used Premiere Pro for Digital Video Production so I was a bit familiar with the environment and the technical issues on this second presentation; After Effects seems to be a great tool to finalize what it has been done using Premiere Pro (where you can capture video and edit/create small clips & movies)
As usual, after the presentations we went the local pub and had a great time talking to these great people.
Everything started at 6:30ish pm when me and my colleague Daniel Todd left work and went to the meeting where his brother (cool guy) was already there (we were a bit late)
Was very nice to see the guys again, some of them are:
Stephen Buckley
Stephen Downs
Elmer Zinkhann
Richard Leggett &
Emmanuel Okyere that will be giving a presentation for the London MMUG next month.
With Elmer, Rich and Tink (Stephen D) we finished at 1ish or so? don't remember to be honest...
oh happy life!

Salut

St Valentines - Yahoo

Happy Valentines to all of you out there!

Yahoo has given us (web developers) a couple of new resources:
Yahoo! User Interface Library &
Design Pattern Library

well done Yahoo! thank you very much!
PS: I wasn't that happy with Yahoo since they disabled my oldest e-mail account without any explanations, I lost lots of important e-mail addresses and data but these two new resources change my feelings

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Flash Lite latest agreements

- LG Electronics Signs Licensing Agreements With Adobe for Flash Technology
- BenQ Mobile Licenses Flash From Adobe For Integration Across New Handset Business

Well, seems like Adobe is looking at the mobile products and the electronic devices manufacturers are taking into account Flash Technologies.

One day one of my mates told me:

"not everybody has a personal computer but almost everybody has a mobile phone!"

So developers, there is a big market out there waiting for us because for example, while waiting for a bus or train a person can not be playing on his/her PC but for sure can spend a couple of minutes playing mobile games on his/her handsets

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Multi -Touch Screen

When I was working on a project for The Women's Library in London, my dream was to have the project presented in a computer with Touch-Screen to avoid using the mouse and keyboard.
My project is a kiosk part of the exhibition What Women Want that is running untill August 2006.
Now, I just remembered my project and dreams when I saw the following Multi-Touch Screen project:

Is just great!

If the movies in Jeff Han's website can't be seen, follow this other link (in Ducth but using Flash Video)

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Free Game Graphics e-Book

Mark Overmars, creator of Game Maker, was given the right to distribute a book written by Ari Fieldman called Designing Arcade Computer Game Graphics and the book can be downloaded from:
http://gamemaker.nl/feldman.html

Graphics play a central role in the computer gaming experience, and arcade-style games are no exception. Designing Arcade Computer Game Graphics emphasizes the development of quality graphics for 2D arcade-style computer games, both online and offline, including such topics as game design and documentation, animation, proper color usage, and fonts.

This link has been around for some time now, just in case Im posting it here as is a good resource for anyone interested in the game industry.

This and more resources can be found in Game Maker

Salut!

My Vertical Shooter tutorial in Kirupa.com!

Today Kirupa Chinnathambi wrote me an e-mail telling me he added my tutorial in kirupa.com
Im very happy as is my first tutorial published in kirupa where Im learning a lot from its tutorials and forums. There are tutorials about almost everything you would like to know if you are in the new media field: Web Technologies, Graphics and Motion, Swift 3D, Flash... and many more things!

Loading Movies is my first tutorial in English and was published two years ago in ActionScripts.co.uk
and Creating a Vertical Shooter is my second tutorial in English published just today!
I hope it helps.

Thanks Kirupa!

SE|PY 1.5.2RC7 new version - new logo

Im not pretty sure when Sephiroth changed SE|PYs logo, made by Jason Milkins, but today was released a new version of this Actionscript Editor and has the new logo.
Last monday I installed at work the previous version and as well it had the new logo, that's why I dont know exactly from when SE|PY is using this logo as I installed the 1.0.6.4 version a couple of months ago which still has the previous one:

More info on http://osflash.org/sepy
Great tool with great improvements!

Salut!

Internship

I started yesterday an internship in a great agency in Central London.
Is like a dream for me, after working for 2 years in the tourist industry as a Duty Manager in a hotel (two minutes walk from the agency!) at last I can be the whole day in front of a computer and getting paid for it!
As Confusius said:

Find a job you love and you will never work a day of your life.

The place is cool, colleagues are cool, lots of books about everything... is just great!
At the moment I am working as a Graphic Designer but during the internship I will do a bit of everything and get experience.
Less time for my own stuff but I think I will manage it.

Salut!