My First Post

Hey, this is my first post from posterous.com!

Posted via email from Rutkoski

Managing Menu Buttons in Actionscript 3

One very common task in creating Flash applications is managing menu buttons. It tends to be a very repetitive business. The best approach would be to create a component with a label that you can change at runtime. But in order to create such a component first you need to understand how Flash UI Components work, and that’s not easy. But there are other, simpler approaches that you can use.

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Actionscript Physics Engine

APE stands for Actionscript Physics Engine and it´s a great engine that allows for easy creation of dynamic systems that simulate physics. You start by creating particles and groups of particles, apply forces (such as gravity) and constraints (such as spring) to these particles and groups and add listeners to detect collisions beetween them.

The engine is in a very mature state and in constant development. And it’s open-source.

More about it at: http://code.google.com/p/ape

Gaia Flash Framework

Flash Frameworks are a big thing nowadays. They make the job of creating a Flash-based web site easier, help you organize your code and files. There are many of these in development out there, but Gaia Flash Framework is one that stands out in the crowd.

Apart from it’s intuitive work-flow and beying open-source, what makes it so great is that it integrates into Flash CS3/CS4, providing an user interface that makes the creation of web sites as easy as pushing a few buttons.

Other features like deep-site-linking, timeline or actionscript based transitions, actionscript 2 and 3 support and scafolding complete the package.

Check out the demo video at http://www.gaiaflashframework.com/.

Actionscript 3 Padding Component – Applying the Decorator Pattern

PaddingDecorator is an Actionscript 3 component (extends UIComponent) that uses the Decorator Design Pattern to add padding to DisplayObjects.

You can download the component here.

Usage:

import org.mi.layout.decorators.PaddingDecorator;

var mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip();

var padding:PaddingDecorator = new PaddingDecorator();
padding.left = 10;
padding.right = 20;
padding.bottom = 30;
padding.top = 50;

padding.component = mc;

addChild(padding);

Cross-Browser Horizontal Div Centering

For a cross-browser, horizontal div centering you’ll need two divs:

.outter {
  text-align:center;
}

.inner {
  text-align:left;
  margin-left:auto;
  margin-right:auto;
}

Simple!

CompositePost WordPress Plugin

This is a rewrite of a plugin I wrote some time ago.

It let’s you write posts and pages composed of other posts and pages.

IMPORTANT: IF YOU DOWNLOADED THE PLUGIN FROM WORDPRESS.ORG, PLEASE RATE IT (USE THE STARS). THANKS.

Usage

Write anywhere on a post:

[composite option=”value”]

You can specify one or more options. The options are the same used in the get_posts() function (see http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/get_posts).

Example

Show all posts from category Projects and include post with ID = 1:

[composite category_name=”Projects” include=”1″]

Templates

CompositePost create a loop using a template located in the plugin’s folder (usually /wordpress/wp-content/plugins/composite_post). The default template is /wordpress/wp-content/plugins/compositepost/default.php. You can have as many templates as you want, just specify wich one to use, like this:

[composite category_name=”Projects” template=”my_template”]

CompositePost will look for the file at /wordpress/wp-content/plugins/compositepost/my_template.php

Download

Download the plugin

Versions and Bug Fixes

0.3 – Fixed: missing post’s original content, not showing up.

0.2 – Fixed: for the <!–more–> quicktag.

0.1 – First version .

About LayoutManager and Updating the Display List

DUH! Hehe. Thanks for the comments and for clearing this one for me. That’s so obvious I don’t know how I missed it. Event.ADDED, Event.REMOVED and the event propagation mechanism takes care of this problem. Closing this one up.

LayoutManager Download

Beta version of LayoutManager can be downloaded from: http://code.google.com/p/as3-layout-manager/downloads/list.

Layout Manager

Ever since Flex came out people have been after similar functionality for Flash. There aren’t many options out there, but a few worth mentioning are http://www.soundstep.com/blog/downloads/baseui/ and http://www.nbilyk.com/flash-layout-manager. After studying these (great) diferent approaches, I decided to give it a try and build my own version, similarities not a coincidence.

LayoutManager and LayoutElement

LayoutElement extends a DisplayObject’s size and positioning properties. Both size and position can be specified in pixels or percentage of a container. LayoutManager manages LayoutElements and updates them as necessary.

LayoutManager Demo

LayoutContainer

LayoutContainer extends Flash’s UIComponent and works much like ScrollPane, except it’s content can be added/removed directly just like any other DisplayObjectContainer.

Layout Containers

Layouts Containers, such as Canvas, HBox and VBox, extends from the LayoutContainer class and add LayoutManager and LayoutElement functionality.

HBox Demo