Impressive Flash Actionscript 3.0 Tutorials
As i will be on constant lookout for some nice resources and informative tutorials on Flash, I came across an impressive collection of Flash Actionscript 3.0 Tutorials.
Noupe has collaged such useful and mostly used tasks in Flash.
These tutorials include Controlling Timeline using Actionscript 3, Creating custom cursor, Customizing Context Menu, Some Papervision3D Tutorials etc...
Just check them out, I am sure they will be useful...
Get to know FlashLite for Digital Home (FLDH)
As you all know, FlashLite for Digital Home refers to Flash on IPTV's and SetTopBox.
Dale Rankine talks more about what exactly FlashLite for Digital Home is, its Limitations, Best Practices, Capabilities etc. in this video.
This video will help us in understanding what FlashLite for Digital Home is!!!!
Check it out....
HYPE Framework for Flash
As you all know, Flash with ActionScript 3.0 is very powerful in creating Flash applications. But its a bit tough for newcomers to get used to it so fast in case of coding and creating something very exciting.
To make things simple for Flash beginners, HYPE Framework is introduced.
"HYPE is a creative coding framework built on top of ActionScript 3. A major goal of HYPE is to allow newcomers to Flash and ActionScript to creatively play and express themselves while they are learning how to program."
Inorder to start with it, you just need to know basic programming concepts like loops, variables, conditional and functions etc.
Here is just a quick demo of HYPE:
My First APE Experiment
As you all know APE(ActionScript Physics Engine) is an OpenSource free AS3 2D Physics engine that can be used for Flash and Flex.
I just tried APE and made this simple SWF as a beginning into the world of Physics in Flash. You can drag these RectangleParticles which you see in this swf. You can get the SWF here.
Cool Flash Menu’s For Flash Websites
For people who want to create their portfolios or websites in Flash, here are some of the cool Flash Menu's. Check them out and you can get some new ideas for your own Flash Navigational Menus.
Source Files for the menu's can be downloaded from link: Rapishare
Check these cool Flash Menus...
The Rise of Flash Video
As you all know Flash Video is everywhere now on Web. Its the mostly used video across web world.
I really wanted to know how Flash Video has evolved over time. What made web users to shift towards Flash video from existing players like Quicktime, Windows Media and Real players? These were some questions which were lingering my mind for sometime.
I found an interesting article about this topic written by Tom Green. It throughs light on all he factors which made different players like Quicktime, Windows Media and Real to lose ground on Web.
Not only that it talks about history of Flash Video, how the FLV format evolved.
Check it out at http://www.digital-web.com/articles/the_rise_of_flash_video_part_1/.
Physics Engines For Flash
As we all know, there are many Physics Engines for Flash now. Each have their own Pros and Cons, but Actionscript 3.0 provides increase in performance compared to Actionscript2.0. Whatever might be your requirement for Physics in your Flash design, we are going to talk about some useful Physics Engines available now for Flash.
ActionScript Physics Engine (APE)
APE (Actionscript Physics Engine) is a free AS3 open source 2D physics engine for use in Flash and Flex, released under the MIT License. APE is written and maintained by Alec Cove. The latest version available 0.45 alpha. You can get more info on APE at http://www.cove.org/ape/.
Using Motion Editor in Flash CS4
Motion Editor is one of the new Features of Adobe Flash CS4. This helps us in creating animations of nice quality, accuracy yet with a minimal of effort compared to the conventional way of animation we used to see until Flash Cs3.
Till now, if we had to create any animation, we have to create keyFrames, apply Tween, apply Ease if needed. If we had to remove the tween Undo Tween or Remove Tween. It was all a bit tedious one. But with new Motion Editor, all these tasks are made simple and quite fast with good accuracy.
Tips on Flash Unit Testing
Unit Testing and Test Driven Development are a hot topics in the Flash community.
Recently i came across a nice insightful article on Tips for Flash Unit Testing by Jesse Freeman at InsideRIA.
The articles lists out some nice tips like:
- Test Before you code.
- Test one Assert at a time
- Test the little things
- Unit Tests help when refactoring
- Know when to Unit Test.
To read more elaborately about these tips, check out this article at InsideRIA.
Creating Dynamic Accordian Menu in Flash CS4 with ActionScript3.0 and XML
Recently i came across a very nice tutorial for creating a 'Dynamic Accordian Menu using Flash CS4 with ActionScript3.0 and XML' by Mario Santos.
Its totally dynamic as in all the menu Items can be configured in an XML and you can load text or image or a SWF in the opened state.
Final Output:
You can get source files for this turorials as well...