Flash add to del.icio.us

The usual way to have the "add to del.icio.us" option on a website is using html calling a pop-up window with the "post" page from del.icio.us passing a couple of variables to help filling in the form.

Using flash is the same, is just a matter of calling a pop-up and passing the value of the variables...
As you can see on the example on the right side of my blog, when pressing the del.icio.us flash button, it opens the "post" page with two text boxes already filled.

What I did is:
- Created a button on the stage with instance name "add2delicious" and on another layer put the following actionscript:

add2delicious.onPress = function() {
getURL("javascript:void(window.open
('http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://overloadstudios.blogspot.com
&title=Ernesto Quezada s Blog','popup','toolbar=no,
location=no,status=no,menubar=no, scrollbars=no,resizable=no,
width=700,height=400'))");
};

- Publish your swf for flash player 7 as for flash player 8 the pop-up just doesn't work;
and that's it!
I had to take out the single quote in "Ernesto Quezada's Blog" as the single quote is a restricted character on this script.

Salut!

Flash Skype Status - Part II

Ok, now I've got my Skype status shown on my website but... what?
does anyone know my Skype ID? can anyone then call me? or at least start a conversation with me?
Yes they can, we need to add only a couple of lines to our actionscript to allow people to interact with us, if we have the latest Skype
There is one limitation, we have no control on the image as it comes from the Skype server so we can't add animation...
well, actually we can!

What I did is, I created another movieclip inside of my already existent "image01" movieclip and called it (instance name) "loader_mc".
If we want our movieclip to move 1 pixel when the mouse is over, we need to update our script as follows:

image01.loader_mc.loadMovie("http://mystatus.skype.com/smallclassic/myID");
image01.onRollOver = function() {
this._y += 1;
};
image01.onRollOut = function() {
this._y -= 1;
};

and if we want an event to happen when the user clicks on the icon, we just add:

image01.onPress = function() {
getURL("skype:myID?chat");
};

so people can have a chat with me through Skype if I'm online or leave a message if I'm not.
There are more options and all of them are explained on the Advanced Skype Links.

Hey! there are many things to experiment with using Skype and Actionscript, just go for it! for example, I added a sound and a little colour effect when rolling-over.

By the way, if anyone reading this knows of any colour syntax plug-in for blogger, please let me know!

Salut

-- IMPORTANT UPDATE --
Part I
Part III
Free Skype Status Flash Button

and the latest one of this series:
Easy Skype status in Flash
---------

Flash Skype Status - Part I

The other day, reading my mate Elmer Zinkhann's blog I noticed he has a little Skypes icon showing his status.
I went to the Skype's website and after following a couple of links and adding a bit of my creativity, I ended up with a little flash that shows my status and allows you to start a chat with me if I'm online or leave me a message if not.
What I did is as follows:

Apart from being sure you have the latest SKYPE installed,

- First, allow your status to be shown on the web, following these simple instructions.
- Then select the look the button will have using the skype buttons wizard.
- When getting the code, paste the javascript bit on the html page that has the swf embeded
- The image address is what you will use in flash to show your status.
- Create a very small new movie in flash, mine is 120 x 50 pixels.
- Create a movieclip and give it an instance name, ie "image01".
- In the first frame of your movie add the following actionscript:

image01.loadMovie("http://mystatus.skype.com/smallclassic/yourID");

And that's it!
of course, you will change the image address you got when using the skype buttons wizard.
Upload your swf to your server and embed it into the html page you need to display it.

Bear in mind that if you are behind a proxy, the image will not update properly as flash loads the image from the cache.

Salut!

-- UPDATE --
Part II
Part III
Free Skype Status Flash Button

and the latest one of this series:
Easy Skype status in Flash
---------

4 years in London!

Barajas Airport, Madrid - 1st September 2002. I had two airplane tickets in my hands, one to go back to my country El Salvador and another one to continue my adventure in Europe.
The idea was to come to England just for 6 months to learn English so I took the plane to Gatwick Airport and kept the other ticket in my pocket.
2 and a half hours later I was on a train from Gatwick to Victoria Station, Central London...
So, I've been here in London for exactly 4 years now and just because I'm still learning English, I'm still in England!
Well, actually is because of my girlfriend, she thinks my country is a bit too far, so we have decided to settle down here.

salut!

LFPUG August meeting

What a great meeting we had last thursday!
I thought we would celebrate the Flash 10th anniversary but no-one even mentioned the subject (only me :P). Anyway, we met at Play, a club located in Old Street area, London, for the 3rd meeting of the London Flash Platform Users Group.
After a delay due to technical problems with the projector, Andrew Shorten from Adobe gave us a presentation called "Building Killer Desktop RIAs: Adobe’s Next Generation Technology". The presentation was really good and made me dream about the million of possibilities that are to come with the new APOLLO.
After the presentation, there was the biggest session of questions and answers I have ever seen in these sort of presentations!
Andrew even asked Tink (Users Group Director) if he should continue answering questions because of the time... the naughty answer from Tink: "we have the place until 2am..."
The second presentation was given by a London based digital agency called Glue-London who showed us many cool stuff they have done using video and flash, something I would call "online-interactive-videos".
After the presentations, I had the chance to talk with old friends and meet new people like Juan Delgado who I knew before from different Spanish speaking flash forums.
A bit drunk and very happy went back home at about 2am.
The only bad thing of the night was that my friend Simon, had his bike stolen just outside of the club.
As usual, I'm looking forward to going to the next meeting.

Salut

University results - at last!

Name of Student: Ernesto Quezada
NQF Level: Masters
Teaching Institution: London Metropolitan University

Qualification Awarded: Master of Arts
Classification: Merit
Award Title: Digital Media

To be honest, there was a moment I was hesitating whether I passed or not and it was because of the language and not because of any other reason.
After almost 4 years living in England, I'm still not too confident when writing in English, all these stuff about writing in "academic level" had me very worried when writing any essay and it was very dificult for me to write anything for the university. But I did it! and seems that I did very well as I even got the degree with Merit! (what's that? ouch!)

The Award Ceremonies will be taking place between late November and the middle of December

Salut!

London Flash Platform User Group - July

I've been trying to write about this for the last couple of weeks but... you know... erm... I've no excuse.
Last months London Flash Platform User Groups meeting was just great as usual!
as usual? if is only the second meeting!
well, anyway, was great!
We got there on time and enjoyed both Dave and Tinks presentations.
I wrote about the previous meeting as I was a lucky winner of a book and I found unfare not to write anything this time just because I didn't get anything from the raffle!
The place this time was the AKQA headquaters, where my mates Richard and Emmanuel work.
After the presentations, pizza and beer at AKQA we went to the pub where I had the chance to catch up with old friends and meet new people.

That let me really looking forward to the next meeting!
Let's see what suprise has Tink for us this month.

salut

behind the scenes

I'm here! behind the scenes!
and no, is not a new web 2.0 product.

After getting many emails from my friends, inviting me to use this or that trendy web tool, I've been wondering what's going on with me?
I mean, most of my friends are using day after day the internet and the "web 2.0" applications (that term is funny for me), del.icio.us, hi5, mySpace, etc... but myself, a guy that loves all this stuff, working on the field, is not using any of these tools! well, not using them as often as I would like to...

For instance, this blog; I haven't posted much recently and is because I've been busy creating web applications!

so, the tools the people out there are using, I haven't had the time to play with them as I've been there "behind the scenes" creating them. Not that I'm doing "web 2.0" stuff though but web applications in general what is in fact, very time consuming.

I would love to have the time to try and use all that stuff, posting my photos in any flickr like website, etcetera, but I just don't have the time.

Well, time to go and continue with the real life...

Salut

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!


salut

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!

salut

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

salut

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

salut

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.

salut

@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

salut

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

salut