Audio Player and Twitter Outtage

Our audio player prototype is coming along well, and I was able to rebuild Ryan Berdeen's SoundTouch Demo using the CS4 Flash IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and ActionScript 3 (AS3). The player works pretty well to adjust rate, pitch, and tempo on an externally loaded MP3 file. The controls appear to be stable.

On the Twitter scene, I've found a lot of useful links by following key players who tweet in the info-spheres of technology. Technical discussions on a variety of blogs, forums, and discussion groups are linked via LinkedIn.com and Twitter. Unfortunately, Twitter seems to be suffering growing pains, and its servers are down again for some reason. Error 503, not a good sign for Twitter.

Aloha, Joe

Getting Flash Windows to Shake Hands

Have you ever needed to embed Flash movies in two separate windows, then get the two Flash windows to communicate with one another? With the ActionScript 3.0 ExternalInterface class, you can get the Flash objects to communicate with one another through their respective window clients.

Each of the Flash movies will include ExternalInterface call and addCallBack methods to relay function calls through JavaScript functions in their HTML pages. The pages need to be able to reference each other's window, which can be done using Window names.

Ok, I know I should post an example of two Flash windows talking to each other. It's doable, I assure you. Someday when there's less crunch at work and more time at home I'll be able to post such an example. Meantime... sorry, lame excuse.

Aloha, Joe

Flash CS3 to Flash CS4

I've been jumping back and forth between the two Flash IDEs lately. Most of my work is done in CS3, but I'm finding more and more effective solutions in CS4. As I look deeper, there are some amazing classes like the new Sound API for Flash 10 that provide more controls over audio. Of course, applying new animation and 3D effects are greatly improved in CS4.

I registered for one of Adobe's online eSeminars on CS4, and hope to get even deeper into the benefits of using Flash CS4.

My latest project applies the Flash 10 Sound API to create new audio controls. I've been previewing several audio libraries, including the NoteFlight StandingWave2 sound library by Joe Berkovitz, and Ryan Berdeen's SoundTouch library. I hope to discuss the results of these studies sometime soon.

A couple of great resources for additional Flash and ActionScript 3 references have turned up on Twitter and in LinkedIn.com groups. To better focus on my attention on programming, I'm trying to rebuild my Twitter network. Follow jazzairtech.

Aloha, Joe

Exploring MapQuest Flash API

I just started experimenting with the MapQuest Developer API for Flash CS3 (ActionScript 3). So far it's been an enjoyable project! I worked through some of the samples and experimented with many of the cool MapQuest features that are available in the free developer Flash extensions. I'm having fun making custom points of interest (POIs) on maps, zooming, scrolling, and icons. There are a couple of traps that I ran into when following the AS3 code in the Sample Scripts found in the MapQuest Developer Library.

All was going well until I tried to build the Geocode interface found in the samples. It took a while to realize the right login parameters, but the main bug that bit my example was the server name. The sample script points to a geocode access server, but the correct server is actually the free server! That took a while to troubleshoot.

I uploaded a working version of the Geocode Address interface.

I think I'll tinker with this API for a while and see what waves I can generate across the Pacific!

Aloha, Joe

Embedding Fonts in Flash

I'm working on a project that displays articles from an external XML file. I want the text to be displayed as HTML, so I'm applying an external cascading style sheet (CSS) to the text field. In the Flash .fla file, I added a new font and linked it for ActionScript. Everything seemed to be working fine, and normal text was appearing like I imaged it would with the appropriate styles.

The problem was, I couldn't seem to get bold <b> or italic <i> tags to render the text properly.

After some digging, I found that I needed to add another new font for bold, one more for italic, and yet another for bold-italic text!

To add a new font, open the Options menu in the Flash file's Library, then select New Font... Select a font from the dropdown menu, and give it a name, which you will use like a new Font class. Be sure to update the linkage for your new font so you can apply it in AS3. If you need a bold, add another new Font, but check the Bold checkbox. Likewise with italic. Then when you apply a style sheet, you'll get the text displayed the way you want!

Aloha, Joe

Sound Spectrum Using Flash ActionScript 3.0

Working with the sound functions in Flash ActionScript 3.0, it took some work to understand the Sound, SoundMixer, SoundChannel, and SoundTransform classes. My goal was to use a sound object to animate other display objects. I found a few examples that applied sound spectrum functions, so I started by looking at Lee Brimelow's Sound Spectrum Display tutorial on his excellent Flash tutorials site, www.gotoandlearn.com.

I created a SpectrumTest class for manipulating the animation and sound object, which worked out well. Using an EnterFrame event handler, the function draws colored circles along a linear path representing frequency, and the size of the circles is derived from the values extraced from the SoundMixer's computeSpectrum function.

The first iteration displayed the animated objects in spectrum along a horizonal axis.

I decided to change the orientation of the spectrum along a vertical axis, so I modified the function. Additional controls include a play button and a volume slide bar. I also wanted to view the media load process, so I added a media progress bar along the top. You can view the Flash movie here: http://www.jazzairwaves.com/Flash/SpectrumTest/

This was a good learning experience for me, and didn't take too long to produce.

The song I used for this project is All Of Your Love by Aphek, an artist I enjoy listening to on www.acidplanet.com.

Download for this Flash project (song not included): SpectrumTest.zip

Aloha, Joe

RSS Feeds with ActionScript 3

I built an RSS app in Flash CS3 using ActionScript 3. The bulk of the supporting classes came from Mike Chambers' AS3 XML Syndication library, which was written a while ago. The parsing and date utilities needed to be modified so it would work with Flash 9 and AS3, but the essentials were there to work with.

I tested a number of RSS 2.0 feeds, such as FlashGuru's feed and a few from Feedburner. Now it's a matter of improving my display layout in a Flash object that will be embedded in a Web page. Fabuloso!

Aloha, Joe