ActionScript 3.0 :: Articles/tutorials - Best Practices For App Design?
Aug 6, 2010
I'm building my first Flash application. It's a stand alone barcode scanner - the scanner is built-in to the monitor. Basically it has a welcome screen with a video, and at any time you can either scan a product to get product info, or touch the screen for more options (more info, more videos, etc.), respectively.I'm looking for articles, tutorials, etc. that can give me best practices and tips for efficiently designing and organizing it. For example, what's the best way to switch between screens, keep track of which screen is showing, etc.
I've looked all over the web and can't find an article or tutorial on this, and while my app is working, the code is looking pretty spaghetti-ish and I really would like to learn the best way to plan and organize a project like this.
I'm trying to build a system where users (restricted to a very few admins) can publish news articles. The form is simple enough: an input field for "Headline" (single line) an input field for "article" (multiple line) and a file reference field to include a picture.
The idea is that you can EITHER write a headline and some text and then publish | OR | write a headline, some text then choose a picture and publish.No check boxes - no "would you like to include a picture" - just an idiot proof system where you can wither publish text - or text and a picture on the click of ONE button.
The picture is placed (via php) into the file system on the server, the text for headline and article are pumped into an SQL database (via php). I know php well and can do that bit with no probs but I'm having trouble with the function to pump the vars to the php if the user HASN'T chosen to include a picture.
1) has anyone done this before and if so do you have a "boilerplate" fla / php I could copy and paste into my project ?
2) can anyone see any problems in the code (posted below) which would explain why the upload of pictures always works but the sql insert never works ? On the stage are two input fields and two buttons (obvious names in the code are 'head_txt' and 'art_txt' )
CODE: import flash.net.FileReference; var progressBar:MovieClip; var reference:FileReference = new FileReference();
Using CS5 AS2.I'm creating a website in flash (all the files will be in one directory/folder on SharePoint) and want to make sure that what seems to be working fine is best practice.I have an index.swf with many buttons which will take the user to landing pages/content/other swfs. On these different buttons I have the script [code]The movie transitions nicely to name.swf and on this page I have a button that returns the user to the index.swf on (release) {loadMovieNum("index.swf", 0);}Things move back to index.swf nicely and user can chose to go to another landing page.It looks like I'm on the right track, bc nothing is going awry? but want to check. Am I following best practices for moving from one swf to another within a website?
I've been working on a game the past few days where there is to be a LARGE amount of stored data. By a large amount, I'm talking something like 200+ entries of around 12 fields.The game is being designed with the intent of playing it online (per say), so I can't rely on storing specially made files on one's computer (Not that I think I could and do it in a way where players cannot modify it). I also do not want to rely on a stored XML file on the internet or on a database, because if the website that has this data goes down or if the person loses internet access, then the game becomes unplayable.So, I need to store this data in the game itself, but I am unfamiliar with the best way to go about doing this. I've normally worked with outside sources for data storage, as they were designed in closed environments (aka intranet) or the website that the SWF would be on would also be where the database used is stored. Neither apply to this game, as the game will likely be put up on Flash portals like Newgrounds.
We have recently deployed Flash Media Streaming server 3.5.2 and Flash Media Encoder on a Windows 2003 machine. Do you guys know of any security best practices to follow for the FMS server deployment on a Windows machine, could you please point me to that resource.
What are, nowadays, the best practices for uploading a large file (which may cause a timeout) with ASP.NET Web Forms and/or MVC? Increase Server.ScriptTimeout (only for the specific POST request); Use some flash client-side uploader like swfupload ([URL]) or plupload ([URL]), but Flash uploads have some issues with proxies; Use some gmail-like javascript (like [URL]
When I create a website,I always end up with 2 preloaders... one to load the main swf (library items, etc...), and then a second preload takes place to load all the external images from XML.Is there a better way?I don't like the fact that there are two progress bars that run or a long pause in the beginning prior to the 2nd preloader. Please let me know if I'm missing something or if you follow any design patterns or best practices.I often run across sites that have one load and then images throughout the site load rather quickly.
I have a question about how best to remove display objects.removeChild(object);Given that there are no other reference to this object, does using removeChild alone make the object eligible for garbage collection, or does it also need to be given a null value as well?[code]In both these cases, I get the classic 1009 error. That leads me to believe that if you use removeChild, you don't also need to give the object a null value.?url...
I've been building Flash web sites for a long time now, as a freelance developer. I usually work alone, and so I'm the only one that touches the production work I do.Since I'm in this working position, I don't get a lot of exposure to other styles of flash production. I was wondering if any of you have examples of the best ways to produce high quality flash websites. I'm not talking about huge team projects, but small 40-50 work hour sites.[code]
What are the best practices for optimizing a transparant png image? What things can be done to make such a png file as small as possible without loosing to much of its quality? Best tools? Best Photoshop plugins? Other tips?
Let me start off by stating that I am a novice developer, so please excuse the elementary nature of my question(s). I am currently working on a Flex Application, and am getting more and more confused about when to use server side scripting, and when to develop web services. For most of the functionality I am working on, I am taking various files from the user (client), uploading to the server for processing/conversion, then sending back to client in new format.
I am accomplishing most of this using asp.net generic handlers (ashx) files, but not very confident this is best practice. But at the same time, does making web services make any more sense? What would be considered best practice for this?
I have a website that has a Flash banner. For devices that do not support Flash (like iPads) I want to display an image instead. What is the best practice to deal with this situation? Should this be handled from the front-end with JavaScript?Should this rather be handled from the back-end? (I am using Java on the back-end)
I have an application with about 20 models and controllers and am not using any particular framework. What is the best practice for using multiple remote objects in Flex performance-wise?
1) Method 1 - One per Component - Each component instantiates a RemoteObject for itself 2) Method 2 - Multiple in Application Root - Each controller is handled by a RemoteObject in the root 3) Method 3 - One in Application Root - Combine all controllers into one class and handle them with one RemoteObject
I'm guessing 3 will have the best performance but will be too messy to maintain and 1 would be the cleanest but would take a performance hit.
I thought i'd start this thread to uncover peoples habits and practices when it comes to the simple operation of adding and removing elements on stage. I ask because there are so many alternatives, and I keep wondering what might be the best/most eficcient way of doing it. Let me explain by giving an example:
Your user has chosen to click that flashing button that says "Sign up for our mailing list" and you need to prompt the user for a valid e-mail address by presenting him/her with an alert box on top of everything else. Do you.[code]....
If I've got a getter method, say a(), that returns the private variable _a. Obviously from outside the class I call instanceOfClass.a. But from inside the class, should I use the getter or directly _a? Suppose I'm writing a method that uses _a: should I use _a or a? var b = a; or var b = _a? Maybe for performance reasons it's better to directly access _a? Or since there's a getter a(), it's a good practice using always and only the getter?
Anyone have any tips for good practice with using event listeners? I've gotten into the habit for checking for event listeners (hasEventListener()) prior to removing them, but no errors are thrown if you try to remove an event listener that does not exist, so should I even bother?
Also, I've often gotten into the habit of checking for a listener prior to adding it sometimes, just to make sure I'm not adding it twice (mostly due to slightly sloppy code when they're added/removed on an as-needed basis). But doing a quick test, it seems this is also not needed. It seems adding an event listener of the same type with the same handler twice overwrites the first:
Since there's so much potential pollution within namespaces, particularly with the parser automatically declaring any MXML component with an id to be publicly-accessible using that ID I'm finding it dangerous to use just camelCase for MXML element ids. eg:
[Code]...
In Flash development, a lot of us did this for (automatically) declared stage instances like "mcMyTabBar" or "navMC" or "playPauseBTN". I'm looking for input from the Flex community about this. Am I just overthinking things? All of the related Style Guides and best practices documents I've read on the topic just say "use camelCase for ids, and make sure the id property is the first property". What's your take?
I have a bit of Flash experience, did a full featured movie player, other stuff in AS3 and got plenty of programming skills in other languages, BUT now I need to create a multi paged website. Quite easy, a few pages, some animations here and there, nothing fancy, got all the graphics.
But time is short on this one, so I need some advice about good practices (pack everything into one main MC or make separate swfs and load them in, etc.), where to begin, or what kind of book should I grab to make the job pretty.
I'm expert in AS2.0 but I couldn't get the fine starting point of the actionscript 3.0,. So please someone help me to start my as3.0 journey with fine kick(Tutorial link)..
How does Lee Brimelow create the screen shot based flash tutorials that are used on this site? I've tried to use Adobe Captivate for this - but because I want to use a custom flash player - I am having problems coverting the videos to FLV or MOV files. I'd like to deploy to .FLV files to the site.
I am pretty good with C++, very good with PHP and MySQL, CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.What I want to do is make an online game where 2 people can play against each other online They will be able to pick their uniforms which will be saved to a MySQL database, and the uniforms will show the color they picked when they play online.Now I just want to know where to get started her
Do you know of any drop-down menu tutorials? It is realllly hard to find any information about how to make them! I have been searching for quite a while now without any luck. The only tutorial I could find on building slide/drop down menus was by Tudvid dot com and it was rather terrible. I even bought a adobe book on flash yesterday for $55 "Classroom In A Book" but this also had no information.
Have any of you experienced the same problem? Do you use AS to build menus?
Going through the tutorial videos, sometimes I have to call a friend to find out what the word I can't grasp is. Example, on one of the tutorials, the lady says "in the authoring environment", but I could not hear the word "authoring" properly. My neighbor friend thought she was saying "operating environment". But after searching the help pages for "Flash environment", "authoring" came up and was able to finally guess the word I was not able to distinguish.
This happens to me frequently. My simple wish is for those videos to include caption text. they do it for most TV programs nowadays, why not tutorials. After all, tutorials are so much more important to be understood.
However as a programmer it's kind of important that I learn the language. Now, I know about myself that I won't learn anything if I read guides or try to learn the functions. I need tutorials to learn, in my opinion the best way to learn is to actually make stuff.So I was wondering, can anyone point me to a few tutorials for beginners?
resources for building (or skinning) your own video player aren't nearly as easy to find as I thought they should be, and these tutorials are fantastic. The only things missing, that how to achieve, are (a) the video counting in 0:00 as it plays, and also being able to list the duration - so display something like: 0:00 / 5:47
