Google Chrome, Flash Debugger and Tracing in the browser

Yesterday I was trying to test a fullscreen button on a video player and realised that I couldn’t unless it was inside a browser window. Unfortunately this meant that I would have no way to view traced results, so I installed Vizzy, a browser app that allows you to view flash traces whilst viewing your flash in a browser.

I’ve known about Vizzy for a while, but I’ve previously had no real need for it and when I’ve tried to install it in the past it didn’t seem to work with Chrome (my current browser of choice) so it was uninstalled pretty quickly. But this time I had no choice but to get it working – and as it turns out, the solution was pretty simple… More

King of the Shortcuts (FlashDevelop)

I’ve been using FlashDevelop for a while now. As Actionscript editors go it’s great, but it’s also 100% free which sweetens the deal even more. It does everything I need it to; creates projects, organises files and code hints comprehensively. In a word, it rocks.

But yesterday I was introduced to something in FlashDevelop that I’d never seen before. The king of all shortcuts:

CTRL - SHIFT - 1

How I’ve lived without this shortcut before I don’t know. I feel like a fool for not discovering it earlier. It does absolutely everything…

• Place your cursor next to a class variable, hit the king and you get a little pop-up menu offering to create you getters and setters.
• Written a variable inside a function and now want to make it into a class variable? Place your cursor, hit the king and you’ll be offered to “Promote to class member”. It will then declare the variable at the top and correct your function accordingly.
• Need a new function? Type the function name, press the king, “Generate function”. Done.
• Need a new class? Type the name, king, “create class”, done.

This shortcut literally does absolutely everything from declaring variables to generating functions. I keep discovering even more things all the time. It’s such a timesaver. Truly the ultimate multi-purpose shortcut.

Fun with Partigen pt.1

I recently downloaded a copy of Partigen 2, the latest version of the outstanding particle engine by Desuade. To say that I’m impressed would be an understatement.

Not only is the engine now written in Actionscript 3 and available as open source code, the full paid-for version comes with an amazingly easy to use Flash extension panel which allows you to create particle effects in literally seconds. The smoking example above took less than a minute to create (not including the time it took to crop the photo and import it into flash).

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