Iconmaker

I found a free Icon-Tool Iconmaker (what a name!) which supports icons for Windows XP in 32-bit color depth. You only have to register on there website and get a free key via email. Direct download here.
This is required for creating Icons for SWF Studio which I use as Flash wrapper for Flash desktop applications.

Making Flash without Flash

A while ago an open source flash compiler was developed by Nicolass Cannasse called MTASC. Today the new MTASC release 1.02 was published.
Now it is possible to compile SWFs within Eclipse and the ASDT plugin.

You can find a tutorial on this at Actionscript.com.

Making the Datagrid dragable

Currently I am building custom components which contain the DataGrid component.
When a datagrid row is selected the cellPress-event is fired. In the method handling this event a dragaction is initiated handled by a Singleton-class the DragManager.
The problem: when the mouse is pressed and you roll over other rows the rows get a rollOver and get highlighted instead of leaving the row which content is dragged stays highlighted.
My solution is overwriting the onRowPress method of the datagrid:

import mx.controls.DataGrid;
private var grid:DataGrid;
 
this.grid.addEventListener("cellPress",this);
this.grid.onRowPress = function(rowIndex:Number){
	this.selectRow(rowIndex,true,true);
	if (!this.enabled) return;
	var len : Number = this.columns.length;
	var row = this.rows[rowIndex];
	// fire cellPress event
	for (var i=0; i<len ; i++) {
		var col : mx.controls.gridclasses.DataGridColumn = this.columns[i];
		var delta : Number = row._xmouse - row.cells[i]._x;
 
		if (delta>=0 && delta<col .__width) {
			this.dispatchEvent({type:"cellPress", columnIndex: i, view: this, itemIndex: rowIndex + this.__vPosition});
			return;
		}
	}
}

The changes to the original method is that the super.onRowPress isn’t called and a few “this.” had to be added. I know that this is not beautiful solution but it works. Another possibility would be subclassing the datagrid e.g. DragableDataGrid. Until now I like the quick and dirty solution.

Kittentoshi

Kittentoshi.com relaunched.
I made a flashsite for my friend Alexandra who works as a professional designer. To give Alex a good possibility to handle updates I developed a simple XML engine. The site content is dynamic and defined in a XML file which referrs to content SWFs. The navigation is based on the XML structure and on the framecount of every content SWF. When a content is loaded the subnavigation is based on the _totalframes. Alex simply has to define a stop action in the first frame of every content and in the subnavigation every single frame is accessable.
Check out Kittentoshi.com. You will like the illustrations and designs Alex made.

Macromedia News

I don’t know how many use the Macromedia News Firefox Extension.
This is a small icon in the bottom right corner of the browser which blinks when new News are available. When you click the icon you get an overview of all news and can click one which opens in a new tab (can be defined in the preferences).
I think this is the most prominent way how to publish news. It is impossible to miss news and you need no further software as your browser (Firefox of course).
Also there are other tools and webservices with APIs around the MXNA newsfeed.
I’d like to have this extension with customizeable newsfeeds.

Flash ASO Caching problems

When you work with AS 2.0 and classes you have to be aware of the fact that Flash MX 2004 (Pro) uses some kind of caching. When a AS 2.0 class is compiled an ASO-File is generated which is located “SYSTEM_HD/Documents & Settins/USERNAME/Local Settings/Application Data/Macromedia/Flash MX 2004/en/Configuration/Classes/aso”. There can be problems if you are working on a network drive which is mentioned this Flash Technote.

I work a lot with classes and came to another problem. A bigger project won’t compile with no error message or warning. In the timeline I had only:

_root.app = new App();

In my App-class I import and use several classes. By commenting out step by step every class I got the class which caused the silent error.
The class which caused the problem was probably compiled wrong or incomplete so the whole application won’t compile with any error message.
I got it working by deleting my aso files (the one who caused the error should be enough).
Took me quite some time to figure this out so my hint: if your project won’t compile and you have no idea why first delete the aso files.

There is also a tool for deleting the aso files and for accessing common (nested) folders of flash or other flash-related functions called Flashtray Tools. To run the Flashtray software you need do install the Mircrosoft .NET 1.1 Framework.