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 ...

Even though I have no plans of releasing these to the public, I thought you might enjoy seeing this fun little cross-platform project I have been working on. It is really just a fancy list for me to keep handy and remind me of what to work on most days. Not only does it come with a spiffy iPhone version (including a custom iPhone icon, of course), it now has an Adobe AIR version that ...

It has been a few days now since Ars Technica announced Google's Developer Preview for Chrome on the Mac and I have been loving every minute of it. While I do miss the robust plugin architecture of Firefox and the slickness of Safari 4's "Top Sites", Chrome's speed trumps all.

New tabs and windows are quick to respond and page loading is ever so snappy. And though I am not entirely won over by it yet, ...

Despite how much I love the new Safari 4 features, I have been experiencing some really poor performance as of late ... specifically, a 3-5 second stall at every new window launch, new tab or trying to scroll through a part of a page I had not been using previously. Though it may be due entirely to the upgrade to Snow Leopard, I don't have anything concrete to back up that theory and am forced ...

With the currently progressing update to the Dra Studio and some recent client projects, I have been trying to find a decent Wordpress theme or framework that I could start from and build each future project on. After trying out quite a few nice and fully-featured ones, including Thematic, Hybrid, Starkers, The Buffet Framework, and Emptiness, I found myself more encumbered than enabled ... having to match up with their structure and layouts, working within ...

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 ...

Sadly, one of my favorite lil' Mac tools, Validator, which is perfect for validating XML files against custom Document Type Declarations (DTDs), is currently not working with Snow Leopard, or more specifically, Snow Leopard's implementation of 64-bit Perl.

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 ...

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 ...

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

Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are required to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/New_York' for 'EDT/-4.0/DST' instead in ...

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.

... well not really, but close enough. Thanks the non-exporting and defunct joy that is SimpleLog, I have been staring my eyes out at MySQL tables and gui blog entries. I am only 1/4 of the way thru, but no worries ... I will continue to digitally dilate my eyes until you can enjoy the wholeness that is the next release of this blog. Soon ... soon indeed.

Thanks to Jason M reminding me yesterday about the joy that is the free MySQL database management app for the Mac, Sequel Pro, you will now find that many of the old posts (especially of the sketch variety) are now correctly displaying images.

Also, for all you RSS and XML fans out there, you may want to check out the following:

iTunes RSS Generator
HTTP Client

Both are coming in really handy for the Project 2 ideas our DFP ...

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!

Just a quick post … last night we had a good time in class talking about some of the fun interface gags that have been finding their way online. If you haven’t seen some of the innovative stuff Apple and Quicksilver have done with their sites and adverts, be sure to check ‘em out! You might also want to watch the cool Wario and HEMA interface destructions.

In my ongoing attempt to fall more and more in love with the “One-Window Web Development” amazingness that is Panic’s Coda app, I have reached another yet milestone. I present to you the following Syntax Modes, re-colored to match the ever-popular Textmate “Twilight” theme:ActionScriptCSSHTMLJavascriptJSP-HTMLPHP-HTMLXMLCoda Coloring Theme - "Twlight"In case you are wondering, the font I am using is the delicious Inconsolata by Raph Levien.P.S. If anyone wants to send me a few example files of ...

After Sitepoint showed us all how easy it is to add custom references to the "Books" section of Coda (using their excellent HTML and CSS references as examples), I began my search for even more handy code guides with which to fill out that big empty gray space at Command+6.

Jon Hicks had some good stuff to say, as did the Coda Google Group, but what really got me moving was when I found Ray Brown's ...

The last 48 hours or so, I have been chucking a whole pile of new web, logo, illustration and t-shirt projects at the Illustrative Portfolio section. Even took some time to rewrite the CodeIgniter PHP files to optimize their indexing and output. Now, instead of having to manually add each thumbnail and larger image reference by hand, I can simply upload new examples to specified folders and magically, new samples show up on the Portfolio ...

I am a little late to the game on this, but recently I was creating an iPhone screen optimized version of a site for my personal usage and thought I would share some of my findings.

The InitialThough Apple recommends through the expansive information in its iPhone Developer Connection to implement CSS3 conditional statements to effectively achieve alternate style-sheets for personal computers and for the iPhone, I wasn’t satisfied with the resulting functionality. Yes, it did ...

I think it is interesting that there are two versions of the Vote for Change website; a more generic one (left) and an Obama-specific version (right) and that the right one is where most people will end up, as it is the Google sponsored link that appears first when searching for the query “vote for change”. Hmm …Either way, it is probably important that you go and make sure you are ready to vote. Carebears ...

With the recent release of the new and updated Twitter, the majority of tweak-able profile design settings were lost and the twitterpated among us have been relegated to only changing the following:Background imageBackground colorLink colorText colorSidebar colorSidebar line colorThat isn’t much to work with, so I decided that with the recent re-styling of my Twitter page, I would share the Photoshop template I used and (hopefully) simplify some of the tedious process of creating ...

or maybe an even better question: Should I customize my form elements like Apple? Let me explain.The DilemmaUp until recently, I haven’t really worked too directly with the <form> elements, but when finding that I needed to add more screen sizes for the Desktop section of my page on this site (as well as wanting to expand on the demonstrations I offered in my GWD classes), I decided to implementing drop-down listings, using ...

Secret Friend Society by DraStudio on ZooomrIn light of the recent Dra Studio re-design, I thought it might be fun to share some of my ruminations and recent thoughts about back-end content management systems and such that I saw as possible solutions for both the this site and the Illustrative. site, but for some reason or another, abandoned. I also wanted to share some of the more influential sites that I found inspiring me ...

Open in Textmate (uploaded by DRA Studio)Had a really fun lunch meeting with one of the WDD (Web Design & Development and) degree course directors yesterday. It is so enjoyable being able to sit around and talk about web standards, markup and CSS syntax. Yes, Courtney, that is really nerdy … but still, so much fun. For all of you coding-kids, Chris dropped a little script on me that I am finding really handy. MacroMates, the ...

I am in the middle of some research for my Graphic Web Design course and I am in search of an article I thought I had read a while ago.If I am remembering correctly, it outlined the pros and cons of using the two typical methods of hiding content using CSS styles.Option #1:selector { display:none; }Option #2:selector { text-indent: -9999px; }The second is a little trick I first saw Zeldman use, but I know the ...

During a recent project, I came across the problem of creating a number image gallery thumbnails at a specific size and saving them into the appropriate folders. Sounds easy, right? There should obviously be a great third-party Mac OS X app already out there for this, right?Apparently not. I mean, there was at one time a great app that I was using to create my thumbnails, but between Mac transfers and not needing that particular ...