Archive for 2006

ASForms FAQ

ASForms FAQ | Download ASForms | How to use ASForms

 

 

 

 

What are ASForms?

ASForms is a group of Flash ‘form’ components designed to replace the buggy and bloated Adobe components. In other words radio buttons, drop down menus, text inputs etc. They are very light weight and snappy.

Can you skin them?

ASForms has been designed to resemble html form elements. Changing the colours, and fonts of ASForms is very easy. However changing the shapes requires further hacking. This is because ASForms has been designed to be fast and lightweight so the code bloat added by a full featured skinning engine has been omitted. If you want a fully skinnable set then you should check out some of the other component sets out there.

Are they fast to render?

Yes. One of the requirements of ASForms was that they would be very snappy.

Are they MTASC compliant?

Of course! All code has been developed in a AMES environment using a strict MTASC setting.

Are they Open Source?

ASForms are released under the GPL MIT.

Why don’t they do this or that?

ASForms are simple and light weight. If you want something more full featured then check out ASWing or some of the other open source component sets.

Whats up with the commenting?

I used a auto commenting java program to fill everything out and I haven’t finished making it all pretty yet!?!?

ASForms

ASForms FAQ | Download ASForms | How to use ASForms

 

 

 

 

ASForms are lightweight and snappy Flash forms (components). They are designed for people who don’t need a full component framework, but rather need quick and easy flash forms they can drop into an application without too much trouble or size increase. Forms included so far are: Radio buttons, checkboxes, text input, password input, hidden fields, drop down boxes and simple text boxes

Although a skin system has been implemented, it is fairly primitive at this stage – changing colours or fonts is easy but anything else is difficult.

Example of ASForms (7kb)
[kml_flashembed movie="/projects/ASForms/SmallDemo.swf" height="200" width="200" /]

 

Adding ASForms in is dead simple:

import com.hugeobject.asforms.*; // import asforms
// create some radio buttons in the movieclip 'base'
var radio:Radio = new Radio(base, "rBands", depth++);
radio.setPos(10,80); // set the x and y
radio.addFormElement("a1", "Interpol");
radio.addFormElement("a2", "Sebadoh");
radio.setSelected("a1"); // sets 'Interpol' as selected
radio.render(); // draws the radio buttons

// get the results from the radio
radio.getSelected()[0]; // returns 'a1'

The current version is stable enough to be used in production however the focus management isn’t great at the moment. Over the coming weeks I hope to get the focus management a-OK and let you choose which Skin file to use on a form by form basis.

If you are using ASForms or have any questions or find a bug, let me know via email. If you would like to be notified when I update ASForms please send an email here.

Code

ASForms – a lightweight actionscript component alternative.

AX – standards based flash.

Open Source Flash RIA development – case study

Summary:

After swapping to an open Source flash solution for a RIA, the following advantages were achieved:

• saved over 110 working hours in compile time (that’s crazy stuff!!!)
• integrated into the overall dotnet web application a million times better
• less bugs, tighter code, better code
• better development environment

technorati tags: Flash, FAMES, AMES, Open source

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Open Source Flash presentation (files inc)

Last December I gave a talk at OSDC on how Open Source Flash development is a million times better than using the Macromedia/Adobe IDE. I said I would upload the files etc. So at last (!) here they are:

• The presentation swf – made from OS Flash of course (AMES). You will need to click on the swf to make it active, then use left, right arrows to navigate (or spacebar).
• The code that made the swf, raw and loosely commented (I was in a rush back then )

technorati tags: Open source, flash

Flash components – As Forms

Anyone who has done any serious flash development has worked out that the macromedia components are bloated and buggy. There are some really decent open source alternatives out there but in general they didn’t suit me for a project I was about to start. Check here for an open source component list.

The project was basically a online registration form- the app had to capture data, process some of it then post it to a server. For something like this a full blown component framework was overkill. And because of the older userbase the components had to look very similar to existing html components so that there would be no confusion (hopefully ).

My requirements were:

- they had to look like established user interface components (a radio button had to look like a html radio button).

- they had to be very small in size (anything over 40k was way too big)

- they had to be as fast as using a browsers components (that is, they draw with no lag whatsoever)

- they needed to be skinnable (in regards to colours and size mainly)

- they had to respond to events and be easily redrawn

Although all of the open source flash alternatives were of a high quality they just didn’t quite fit my requirements.

So, I set about creating my own. Below you will find an example of what I have temporarily called As Forms (until I can think of a snappier name).

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Go Dave go

My mate Dave recently scored a quick job with 37signals.  Nice work Dave! I remember about a year ago, sitting in a crappy cubicle based work place and Dave was  telling me all about 37signals with a zeal  unbefitting anything web He implemented the sounds in campfire via a small flash movie.

 

Check out Daves project Xhtmlized – great idea.

technorati tags: 37signals, xhtmlised

Annoying “do you want to display the non secure items” message in IE

I’ve recently being working on a flash ecommerce application using SSL.

But, after checking to make sure its all good in IE, I started getting that annoying “do you want to display the non-secure items” message. After a few minutes trying out a few things I realised that it was getting upset because of the plugin urls specified in the Macromedia code:

pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”

To get rid of the message, I changed the http to https
ie.
pluginspage=”https://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”

technorati tags: Flash

XGL on dapper

about a week ago i upset X quite substantially, trying to install XGL on dapper. upset enough for me to reinstall

anyway i came across this guide on digg that looked too easy and bomb-proof that i thought i’d give it another go. it all was as easy as the three steps in the guide and the effects are way better than what i expected. the eye-candy is as good as anything elsewhere (think osx, expose etc) but the thing i like is dapper feels a little bit snappier. i used to get annoyed with the way windows dragged in linux – it always felt stunted and slow, but xgl/compiz makes linux feel as snappy as windows (and thats including fading up or fading in or wobbling to where ever you move it).

i can already see masses of eye-candy kids swarming to linux just for the effects.

This effect occurs when moving between workspaces. It can also be controlled by pressing CRTL-ALT and dragging the mouse. Its very smooth.

This is showing the expose (osx) effect, again very fast and very smooth.

technorati tags: xgl, compiz, ubuntu, dapper

Flock on Ubuntu

Ok. I’ve just installed Flock on Dapper and I’m very impressed. One of the features is being able to blog right within the browser. This was so simple to setup its laughable.

It even has a very cool ‘Drag stuff to blog it’ area.

I’m not keen on the blue icons – but its better than a lot of gnome programs out there

I was about to say – its a shame it doesn’t have built in spellcheck, but then I did a right-click and of course there it is. Nice one. 

 

 

To add the screen shot above, Flock logged into Flickr for me, uploaded my photo, then allowed me to drag and drop it into this post. This app is ace. I was using Epiphany as Firefox was dragging down the system when eclipse is open – but I think I might switch on over.