Jack Doyle is a genius (Grant Skinner also deserves mention, a genius in his own right). TweenLite (and TweenMax, and TweenNano, and Tween…) proves, yet again, that it is the best ActionScript tweening engine in the world. I haven’t been this excited about a tweening engine in a while. Check out the new features of [...]

Zend Framework 1.7 has been released!
Here’s what I’m excited about:

Zend_Amf with support for AMF0 and AMF3 protocols
Performance enhancements in Zend_Loader, Zend_Controller, and server components
File transfer enhancements
“In addition, almost three hundred bugs have been fixed”

Download it today!

I ran into a rather annoying issue the other day related to content alignment in Flash; as usual, this problem exists exclusively in Internet Explorer. To be more specific, it is an issue with how the Flash Player ActiveX control is written.
If you are aligning content in Flash that uses the Stage width or height [...]

Here’s a quick little “gotcha” when using the Zend PHP Framework:
If you plan on using Flash at all (i.e., SWF or FLV files) be sure to append the necessary extensions the .htaccess file in the “public” folder to the rewrite rule:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule !\.(js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css|swf|flv)$ index.php
Note the added “swf” and “flv” extensions. Otherwise access to these [...]

Here’s a “heads up” to anyone who may be pulling his/her hair out wondering why NetStream won’t load an FLV. For whatever reason (I’m guessing it’s a bug), if you have a strongly-typed NetStream within a function, it will not work.
For example, the following code will work on “_root”:
var my_video:Video; // my_video is a [...]

When ActionScript 2.0 was released – and later Flash 8 – it was exciting to see the new capabilities of the Flash player. But, the improvements of ActionScript 3.0 over ActionScript 2.0 are incredible. When I jumped in and started playing around with ActionScript 3.0 I discovered many significant changes, all for the [...]

I’m really excited about the upcoming release of Partigen, check it out here: http://www.desuade.com/.

Three days ago (April 11) Microsoft released an Internet Explorer update in response to the patent battle between Microsoft and Eolas. After installing the update, Internet Explorer (not other browsers, fortunately) users will be required to “activate” embedded objects and plug-ins before they can interact with them. Here’s what sucks, most users will receive this [...]

In Optimizing Flash Buttons (Part 1) and (Part 2) I talked about improving the efficiency of creating movieclip buttons; although the methods/approaches discussed therein are valuable (but that’s for you to decide), sometimes a more powerful or abstract solution is required. In the text that follows I’ll dissect a class that I’ve created that [...]

Last week I shared the method I use to optimize (movieclip) buttons within Flash. Now, I’m going to take it one step further, by putting the following on the first frame of the topmost layer:
_global.path = “/index.php”;
_global.pg_1 = _global.path + “?id=1″;

function eventListener(my_mc, mcInstance){
my_mc.onRollOver = function(){
this.gotoAndPlay(“over”);
}
my_mc.onRollOut = function(){
this.gotoAndPlay(“out”);
}
my_mc.onRelease = function(){
getPage(mcInstance);
}
}

function getPage(mcInstance){
var newPage = _global["pg_" + [...]