This week I attended FITC Amsterdam which was an excellent conference. The European crowds were definitely excited to see FITC in its overseas debut. Below is a video recap of the event.

Lee

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Here we go again with another extension. This is a simple calculator that can come in handy when you’re trying to figure out positions and values and don’t want to leave the Flash IDE. I downloaded the calculator SWF from Actionscript.org and did a re-skinning job on it before packaging it as an extension. The original was coded in AS 1 by H.G. Arunkumar. I considered porting it to AS 3 but half way through it I realized that it would be a complete waste of my time. Flash 5 SWF files still run great in Flash 9. Follow the steps below to try it out: Download and install the Calculator extension. (Right-click and choose Save Link As or similar) Open or restart Flash and choose Calculator from the Window > Other Panels menu. Start perfoming calculations! Let me know if you find any bugs with it. You can also leave a comment here if you think you have an idea how to make it better. Thanks, Lee

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I gave two sessions yesterday on Adobe AIR and I think both went well. I’ve been really jet lagged on this trip and I actually was up the entire night before so I wasn’t quite as high energy as usual. You can download a PDF of my slides from the AIR Conditioning presentation which includes all the code snippets that can be easily copied and pasted. For those in Amsterdam who will be coming to the AIR tour, don’t worry as I will have new slides and examples by then so it won’t be a repeat. I’m always impressed by the crowds in Europe as they are really enthusiastic and always have great questions. Thanks to all who attended!

Lee

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I arrived in Amsterdam today and am currently finishing up my slides in the hotel. Took a walk and got some photos, including the one above. The light kind of sucks for photography right now though. I’m staying at the SAS Radisson which isn’t the official conference hotel, but I like it. Below is what I will be up to over the course of conference.

Monday, Feb 25th
I’ll be arriving to watch Mike give the keynote. These aren’t as much fun anymore since I already know what were doing. Throughout the day I will be taking turns working the Adobe booth. I think I’ll just be answering questions and maybe doing some demos. The sessions that most interest me tomorrow are being given by Peter Elst, Nicolas Lierman, Colin Moock, and Samuel Agesilas. Not sure how many I’ll get to see though.

Tuesday, Feb 26th
This day is going to be a bit crazy. My session, which is entitled AIR Conditioning, begins at 10:15. Unfortuantely I am talking at the same time as Jared Tarbell so I’m not expecting a huge turnout. Don’t worry, I won’t take it personally as I would go see Jared as well . I am also taking over Mike’s session for that day which is called Building AIR Applications with Adobe Flash CS3 Professional and it gets under way at 1:30. I’m not sure what I’ll build but it will be a live coding session where I build a sample AIR application. Tiago Dias, Jared Tarbell, Andre Michelle, Ralph Hauwert, and Erik Natzke are the speakers that I’m most interested in seeing.

In addition to the conference during the day, there are also a host of parties being held in the evening that I’m sure I’ll end up at. Hope to see some of you there!

Lee

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For those of you who attended the on AIR bust tour last summer, you will remember an application that I demoed called SpitEmOut which allowed you to take screenshots from an FLV file and then see them get “spit out” onto the desktop. From there you can right-click and save it as a PNG. I have just updated this example for beta 3. Download it and check it out and you can also get the FLA file to see how it was built. You will need to run the application and then drag an FLV onto the player to get things started.

Lee

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Update: I have updated the panel with the changes suggested by weitweet. Great stuff! Now when you hit the edit button it opens the XML file in Flash for editing. The refresh button will reload your snippets without having to relaunch the panel.

The first version of the Snippets panel works well so long as you know how to edit the XML. What I would love would be if someone else tried to tackle some improvements to it. Unfortunately I don’t have much time at the moment. Here is the FLA source for the panel. Ideally you would be able to add and remove snippets directly from the panel. I have tried doing this but ran into some issues. Below are some important things I came across:

• - JSFL has a file API which allows you to read and write files. This works well. Look at the FLfile class.
• - The biggest problem is getting the spaces and tabs to render correctly. If you use “\n” and “\t” are used in the snippet it will convert into actual spaces and tabs which causes trouble.
• - You can use a XUL panel to allow the user to enter in the snippet name and code. But unfortunately you cannot get text on the user’s clipboard.
• - The fl.actionsPanel.getSelectedText() method doesn’t seem to work properly

Take a crack at it and let me know what you can pull off!

Thanks,
Lee

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Starting in late March the onAIR tour is invading Europe. Due to various reasons we won’t be touring in the bus, but instead will be taking trains to all the locales. I’m really excited at getting to spend some more time in Europe as my last trip was insanely hectic. Go on over to the official tour website and check out the schedule to see when we are hitting your location. Register early as seats will definitely fill up fast.

So what can you expect? Well it will be an all-day AIR event featuring speakers from inside and outside of Adobe, as well as local speakers whenever possible. Free food, beer, swag, and all you wanted to know about AIR and it won’t cost you a kroner, shilling, etc.

Hope to see you in Europe!
Lee

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