So I have this dilemma. It's unbelievably frustrating. I want to believe a feasible workaround exists, but after hours of messing around, I couldn't come up with anything. Allow me to explain, maybe some of you have an idea of what to do.

I'm working on a Flash site that needs to handle various languages and lots of dynamic text. In order to facilitate this, I've decided to implement runtime font loading and embedding. Each font is exported into its own SWF file and a class is attached to it. For instance, I have ArcherBold.fla which has one font item in the library named ArcherBold that is set to export for ActionScript and the class fonts.ArcherBold (which extends flash.text.Font) is attached to it.

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ActionScript 3, Flash      8 Comments »

2K Games and Rokkan launched the Mafia II website today. Very heavy experience with lots of HD video. Pretty cool stuff. Keep an eye out for new chapters to be rolled out in the near future. Shouts to Charles, Faisal, Errol, Bryan, Andy, Kat, Jessica and Mat for doing a great job.

ActionScript 3, Flash, Video Games      No Comments »

So you're going to be in town for Flash on Tap and you're a fan of the beer. As I said in an earlier post, I will not be attending. But that doesn't mean I can't help out. Here's a list of places to eat and things to check out concerning Beer in Boston. Once I got going on it, it turned into a decent size, so if you leave Boston unhappy with the beer selections, it's your problem.

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Beer, Flash, Flex      No Comments »

Flash on Tap is coming up real soon (May 28th-30th). The speaker list looks amazing. But what matters more to me is the beer. Sadly neither Matt or I will be attending Flash on Tap, but if I was, I would be hitting up The Bruery, Stone and Lagunitas. Unfortunately, the cost of these conferences are pretty high for out-of-pocket, and it can be quite a hassle to try to get a company to pay for you. Either way... This looks to be a terrific Flash conference, and you can't go wrong with adding beer into the picture. Although watch out, Todd is an angry drunk.

That being said, Matt and I will be volunteering at the American Craft Beer Fest (June 19th/20th). This is one of (if not the) largest beer fests on the East Coast and shouldn't be missed. There's also a good chance I'll be attending the Great American Beer Fest.

Beer, Flash, Flex      2 Comments »

No, I don't have an iPhone. Thats right! No iPhone here. Why you say? Well, I dunno...it just never was all that exciting to me. I'm always skeptical of hyped up products, not to mention Apple's first, and even sometimes second, generation of a product tends to have its fair share of problems. So once I heard about Android and the "Google Phone" I decided I wanted to be a rebel and go the way of the nerd. I've had the phone for about four or five months now and I have to say I'm an extremely happy G1 owner. Sure its not the most "jazzy" OS for a phone, but I'm not the type of person that needs to be wowed by the user experience, especially when I look at my phone as simply a tool for accomplishing simple tasks, not being constantly entertained. At any rate, now happy and comfortable using the platform, I've decided to start teaching myself how to make applications for it.

I haven't got too far in depth with the SDK yet, but I'm rather pleased to see some vague similarities between an Android project and a Flex project. The first, and most obvious, similarity is the XML based view definitions and other external resources. Second, I've never written Java before but I'm picking it up very quickly. A few friends have already told me that ActionScript 3 and Java are very similar, but I had no idea it would be this easy. The most difficult thing for me at this time is just trying to remember all the considerations you have to make when writing an application for a mobile platform. The book I've got my hands on, Professional Android Application Development, has done a great job of outlining what to think about when writing an Android app, but I highly doubt I'll remember it all come time to write my own app. Alas, thats all part of getting into a new platform.

In the future I hope to write a bit about my experience learning the platform and perhaps provide some unique advice for any other Flash developers looking to get into it. Who knows, maybe I'll have an application available on the market some day!

Oh, and Marc will hopefully be getting into iPhone development soon too.

Android, Mobile      1 Comment »

Here's a great example of a site that allows the user to create a custom composition by using a butt load of animated bitmap assets. I'm quite impressed, one of the most solid executions of this technique I've seen in a while. Not to mention Harry is a great little character to have as a host.

General      No Comments »