I have been working to understand more aspects of the Flash platform and how we are implementing it in our Full Sail curriculum and this XML basics article I just found was really helpful in explaining E4X syntax and how to traverse the XML node tree.

The article does mention implementing the Flash IDE for their code, but Flex Builder is a much nicer environment for building ActionScript projects. Plus, you can install a copy of the XML Buddy Eclipse plugin in FB and it just happens to be one of the few XML editors that auto-completes custom nodes (the only other one I've found is Espresso).

All the unnecessary hatin' that has been happening lately toward the Flash platform has been getting out of hand and definitely on my nerves ... so I have decided to start animating small little nuggets of fun into some of my drawings here on the blog. If you are not among the misinformed and propaganda-gobbling masses, please enjoy! Of course, I am also adding a nice bit of accessibility for all the iPhone users, taking advantage of SWFObject's graceful degradation capabilities.

Since I have absolutely been loving Illustrator's new "blob brush", I decided to spend some time today getting further acquainted with its pre-cursor, the Flash brush. The last minute eye tracking is a bit kludgy, but it will do for this bit of fun. Here's the preliminary attempt:

//TRACKING THE CURSOR, THANKS TO http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/144/tn_14417.html
stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, mouseMove);
function mouseMove(event:MouseEvent):void{
	monsterGuy.eyeLeft.rotation = parent.mouseX/2 -180;
	monsterGuy.eyeRight.rotation = parent.mouseX/2 -180;
}

One of my favorite Action Script-ers to follow, Felix Turner of AirTight Interactive, recently posted about all of the applications, plugins and resources he uses for Flash development. It is definitely a list worth checking out (as are many of the lists compiled by the great Smashing Magazine) and if nothing else, it gave me a reason to draw this nerdy guy, marking out all of the languages and frameworks I am either working with or delving into.

I've been incrementally been posting about the tools I use for design and development (especially about my favorite leafy friend), so I won't do that here ... but if you've been missing out, definitely head back and check out some of the older posts.

And as much as this guy pales in comparison, I still thought it was worth mentioning ... in honor of Jake Parker's sweet Inktober project, I drew this straight to ink, using a dull Faber Castell brush pen. Oh and in case you missed it, Bob Flynn is also joining in on Inktober. Love his work, in Flash and out!

There is an easy way have 10.6 load the 32-bit version of Perl, but unfortunately, even after doing so, it looks like Validator is still having some other issues.

There is no contact information on Robert Crews' website, so I went searching for some viable replacements. Apple has a Developer Connection article installing a local W3C HTML Validator and you can download nifty Stand-Alone HTML/XHTML Validator for the Mac (which Veerle made some nice icons for), but neither will validate against a custom DTD.

Enter XMLMate ... the open-source, robust TextMate plugin for "Checking XML and XHTML documents for Well-Formedness and Validity while editing them in TextMate with support for DTD, W3C XML Schema, RELAX NG, Schematron, XInclude, XML Catalog, and XPath 2.0 Visualizer". Yeah. Wow, indeed.

I still don't own a copy of the pricey TextMate (despite how much I like it), but this add-on is nice enough for me to click thru the license screen every launch. Enjoy.

While creating an example AS3 file for our Deployment of Flash Projects class just now in Flex Builder, I almost found myself in an absurd "the-files-are-missing" predicament that we hear about every now and then from our students. Turns out some of it may not be so absurd ...

While Flex Builder allows for multiple Undos in several areas of its interface, it also has a subtle way of not indicating where those Undos are taking place. Example? At the start of my project, I created a new folder to store some assets (FLA, SWC, etc.). While progressing through the project, writing code and undo-ing in a few class files, I happen to accidentally click into the "Flex Navigator" pane. The next time I hit undo, FB undoes the creating of my "assets" folder. I don't notice and continue working and the next time I compile or head to the Flash IDE to update the graphics, I get reference errors because of the missing files. Dandy, ain't it?

This could possibly be a workflow/UX issue that stems from the underlying Eclipse environment, but maybe Adobe will read this and realize they need to work harder to improve their "go to" Flash/Flex development environment.

I happend to be testing one of the current Illustrative projects locally and notice the following PHP error on my date('y') function:

The error wasn't occurring online, since the live server's php.ini file or the server itself was setting a timezone. Turns out that the newest version of PHP (5.1.0) that ships with Snow Leopard now requires that a default timezone be set.

You can read through the quick fix on the Mac OSX Hints site to resolve the issue on your machine.

One of the problems Norm and I have found with our DFP students building ActionScript 3 projects in Flex Builder is that any AIR-specific code that is implemented lacks code-completion and error-resolving. A really simple solution, though, is including the Global AIR SWC in the project's Library. You can follow along with the video for a demonstration on how.

If you haven't already, definitely check out AppleInsider's or TechCrunch's coverage of the sweet App Wall that developers at Apple made for the recent WWDC event.

Here are all the deets:

"What you're looking at:
Over 3,000 apps - and growing - are downloaded every minute from the App Store. This is a live feed showing the activity of 20,000 popular apps currently on the store. Every time a customer downloads an app, its icon lights up (5 min. delay)."

"How we made it:
This hyperwall was built using the latest in Apple technology. It's powered by 20 Mac Pro towers running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It was programmed in Quartz Composer using new OpenCL APIs. And it's shown on 20 synchronized 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays."

Another instructor on the Web team at Full Sail (Michael Smotherman) put out this handy little jQuery Cheat Sheet that I thought you all might find helpful when working with that wonderful client-side library. He also worked up this great little MooTools add-on, for creating slide animations between areas of HTML content. Enjoy!

During the DFP lab session yesterday, Norm and my students were having issues validating their XML data files using a couple of the services we normally recommend. Namely, their XML files were showing no errors, despite adding intentional mal-formed tags and whatnot.

It just so happened that Norm was reading through one of FlashTuts newer posts about different methods for setting up a Flash Development Sandbox and discovered a great Eclipse plugin for writing and validating XML documents, called XMLBuddy. If you download the 3.1 version, it works pretty seamlessly with the current Flex Builder environment ... so well in fact, that it lead to me writing a Document Type Declaration (DTD) that our students could use as a schema to validate their first project's data file against.

Since Panic's beautiful Coda app has been my code environment as of late, and since I like my code to be wonderfully colored, I decided to try my hand at writing a Syntax Mode for DTDs. Coda's syntax coloring is built on SubEthaEdit's "Mode" model, so it really wasn't too difficult. Regular Expressions are still a bit of a mystery to me, but with Grant Skinner's RegExr AIR app handy and Ruby's yummy <regex> being used, it worked out nicely.

If you've got any DTD writing planned in the future, feel free to grab a copy of the syntax mode file and enjoy! It get installed here: ~/Library/Application Support/Coda/Modes/

Coda Coloring Mode - DTD

Also, if you are in need of a great (and free!) Mac app that parses and validates your XML files, check out Validator by Robert Crews. Nifty indeed.