FLVPlayback ActionScript Properties for Skinning

Some handy ActionScript from this article on the FLVPlayback Component.

flvPlayback.playButton = playbtn;
flvPlayback.pauseButton = pausebtn;
flvPlayback.playPauseButton = playpausebtn;
flvPlayback.stopButton = stopbtn;
flvPlayback.muteButton = mutebtn;
flvPlayback.backButton = backbtn;
flvPlayback.forwardButton = forbtn;
flvPlayback.volumeBar = volbar;
flvPlayback.seekBar = seekbar;
flvPlayback.bufferingBar = bufbar;

Counting Clicks on the Web

An interesting entry from the WSJ blog:

"When Web sites count their visitors, they may be overcounting by 150% or more, according to a study announced this week by research firm comScore Inc. ..."

What are you doing?

Hm...am I old, or does this sound like too much work?

"[Twitter is a]...global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!"

Google Presentations: an online alternative to Powerpoint

They'll be adding to Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Here's a blurb from The Google Blog:

"We've already freed those of you working in teams from the burdens of version control and email attachment overload when going back and forth on word processing and spreadsheets. It just made sense to add presentations to the mix; after all, when you create slides, you're almost always going to share them. Now students, writers, teachers, organizers, and, well, just about everyone who uses a computer can look forward to having real-time, web-based collaboration across even more common business document formats."

After Effects - Catch the Wave

Here’s a really cool AFX tutorial B found for creating a wave/stream effect:

Microsoft Silverlight

Check out this link to Microsoft’s competition to Flash: Silverlight.

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web.

Google as the Invisible Hand of the Online Economy

From SEO Book.com
Google as the Invisible Hand of the Online Economy

"So I just got approved for Google's pay per action advertising account. It was exceptionally easy to sign up, perhaps frighteningly so. Currently there is little risk to using Google cost per action ads, but long-term I think the risk proposition is much uglier than most people appreciate. "

How to design search engine friendly web sites

From Pandia Search Engine News:
Shari Thurow presents some practical hands on advice on designing web sites that rank well in search engines.

Made In the Shade: How wasabi became the new black, and other tales from the color industry.

Here's an odd but interesting article I read about the color industry in the New Yorker. Designing color palettes can be big business. Who knew?

"You could say that Leslie Harrington owes much of her success to the rise of wasabi green."

Uploading Files to a Remote Server Using Flash 8

A neat tutorial on Kirupa.

"The FileReference class allows Flash to open the familiar file selection dialog box that displays a list of files found on a user's file system. Once a file has been selected, Flash can then begin to upload the file to a remote server. FileReference also provides Flash with some information regarding the file that may be useful to you as a developer. For example, the name, size, and file type/extension can all be accessed through FileReference properties."

Flash: linebreaks within a text field

I know using HTML is one way around this, but this is also a neat simple thing to keep in mind: \r!

mytextfield.text = mytextfield.text + varText1 + "\r"
mytextfield.text = mytextfield.text + varText2 + "\r"

Handy Quiz ActionScript

I know...I should be learning AS3. But I'm still tucking this away for a Flash quiz addition. (Source: Live Docs)

var correctAnswers:Number = 11;
var totalQuestions:Number = 13;
//round to the nearest integer
//var score:Number = Math.round(correctAnswers / totalQuestions * 100);
//round to two decimal places
var score:Number = Math.round(correctAnswers / totalQuestions * 100 * 100) / 100;
trace("You got " + correctAnswers + " out of " + totalQuestions + " answers correct, for a score of " + score + "%.");

The Impending Social Search Inflection Point

Interesting article, I thought.

Full-screen mode in Flash Player 9

I was playing with StumbleUpon this weekend and "stumbled upon" this neat example of toggling to/from "full screen mode" in Flash 9. Further, there are a whole bevy of examples at Adobe Labs.

*

I became interested in how this is done, and found this useful Adobe tutorial: Exploring full-screen mode in Flash Player 9. Here's a quote from the introduction:

"Full-screen mode was already supported in previous versions of the Flash stand-alone player and projectors, and we have not changed that implementation. However, we have added new ActionScript that will work in both the stand-alone player and the browser players, and a new HTML tag parameter allowFullScreen to enable the mode. The full-screen mode in Flash Player is initiated through ActionScript and can be terminated through ActionScript, keyboard shortcuts, or by the user switching focus to another window. Full-screen mode is not supported for windowless or transparent Flash movies. If the user has multiple monitors, Flash Player uses a metric to determine the monitor that contains the greatest portion of the Flash movie and then goes full-screen in that main monitor.

"You must have version 9,0,28,0 or greater of Flash Player installed to use full-screen mode."

SharePoint: Contents = 1!!!

Wow. So, I accidentally deleted a list that was the source feeding several Data View Web Parts. When these Data View Web Parts, couldn't locate the list it caused the entire page they were embedded in to result in an error, producing an error like this:

http://[the site]/[sub site]/_layouts/1033/error.aspx?
ErrorText=List+does+not+exist%
0a0aThe+page+you+selected+contains+a+list+that+does+not+exist.+
+It+may+have+been+deleted+by+another+user.++Click+%22Home%
22+at+the+top+of+the+page+to+return+to+your+Web+site.

A brilliant co-worker provided the answer:

http://[the site]/[sub site]/default.aspx?contents=1

From there it was a simple matter to delete the offending DVWP. Viva contents=1!

Slideshow Pro - How to display captions outside of the component

I dig Slideshow Pro! I'm always looking up how to access the captions via ActionScript, and so I link to it. Voila.

var sspListener = new Object();
sspListener.imageData = function(eventObject):Void {
caption_ta.text = eventObject.data.caption;
}
my_ssp.addEventListener("imageData", sspListener);

Download fonts for Microsoft Office

It's a bit pricy, but seems like it might have some useful fonts...

www.fonts.com

Download fonts for your Microsoft® Office applications. Choose from more than 95,000 fonts by world-class designers from Adobe, ITC, Monotype, Linotype, T26, Fonthaus, P22, and more. Select TrueType, PostScript, or OpenType fonts for Microsoft® Windows or Mac. Supports the 2007 Office system.