UPDATE 07/11/11: I can now confirm that this solution definitely works with both the HTC Desire (original) and the new HTC Sensation on the Orange UK network.

One of the things I was most looking forward to with the Android 2.2 update was the ability to create a wi-fi hotspot using your phone, or tethering as it’s more commonly known. Extremely handy when travelling on trains in the UK as very few of them have broadband facilities available. So it was one of the first features that I tried out after my phone upgraded itself, but was immediately disappointed to find that although my laptop connected to the hotspot easily, there was no internet connection available.

I searched long and hard for a solution to this and it soon became immediately apparent that this is an issue specifically for HTC phones on the UK Orange network.

Luckily the solution is easy, but don’t be surprised if you have to repeat the following steps after each Orange update – annoyingly it does occasionally reset to the default settings. This should get you up and running though…(in theory!)…

1. On the home screen click Menu -> Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Mobile networks -> Access Point Names

2. You should see the following three options:

Orange Internet
Consumer Broadband
Orange MMS

Select Consumer Broadband

3. Change the following settings, taking care to make sure that you copy these details exactly (including capital or lowercase lettering)…

APN from consumerbroadband to orangeinternet

Username from <Not set> to Orange

Password from <Not set> to Multimedia

Authentication type should be set to CHAP.

4. Press your Menu button, tap “Save”

Now in theory, you should be able to create a hotspot and connect to the internet. Hope that helps someone!

So every year I like to double my excitement for Flash on the Beach by preparing my lecture schedule in advance. It’s also really useful to use as reference at the conference itself – to remind me which of the three tracks I preferred when I actually had the time to sit down and read the overviews, and also if you need to find me you’ll know where I’m most likely to be.

So here’s my preferred schedule so far – there’s still a couple of unknowns but it’s looking pretty well rounded already…

DAY ONE

9.30 (Main Hall) Keynote

10.45 (Corn Exchange) Greg Rewis “From zero to app in 60 seconds”
jQuery Mobile & PhoneGap frameworks – building native phone apps with html5/css3

12.00 (Corn Exchange) Jon Howard “Playability: Making games for kids”
Analysis of game building from one of the CBeebies team

14.00 (Main Hall) GMunk “Tron GFX”
Deconstruction of Cinema4D development on Tron Legacy

15.15 (Corn Exchange) Rich Shupe “Multi-platform web video delivery”
Coding video to reach the widest possible audience

16.30 (Main Hall) Han Hoogerbrugge “ProStress or the graphic universe of Han Hoogerbrugge”

20.00 (Main Hall) Jon Burgerman “A short talk about working and not working and how to waste your time proficiently”

DAY TWO

9.30 (Main Hall) Philipp Moeser “Scaling & Organisation: Massive Flash Projects – how to build a top 10 game on facebook”

10.45 (Corn Exchange) Seb Lee-Delisle “Pixels for the people”
Was going to choose Richard Galvan’s “easy cross platform mobile development”, however Seb’s lecture includes both mobile development and potential inspiration for new projects

12.00 (Main Hall) Dr Woohoo! “Paper.js:Vector graphics scripting on top of HTML5″
Fascinated by being able to export directly from illustrator to js

14.00 - unsure yet – not inspired

15.15 (Corn Exchange) Remy Sharp “HTML5: where flash isn’t needed anymore”
Potentially contraversial. I want to see if I can be convinced that I need to abandon flash for all but larger projects.

16.30 (Main Hall) Cyriak Harris “Destroying my laptop with After Effects”

20.00 (Main Hall) James Victore “Who died and made me boss?”

DAY THREE

9.30 (Main Hall) The Elevator Pitch

10.45 (Main Hall) Keith Peters “Making Tools”
Always inspiring. I’ve learnt more code from Keith’s books and lectures than every other source combined.

12.00 (Main Hall) Jam
Its a shame that both Lee Brimelow and a very useful mobile dev lecture are up against this. The Jam is always a winner.

14.00 - unsure yet – not inspired

15.15 (Corn Exchange) Jared Ficklin “Visions from the man cave”
Potentially the only lecture to feature Kinect Hacks

16.30 (Main Hall) Joshua Davis “The Unknown Voyage”
Always a pleasure.

17.30 (Main Hall) conference wrap up

Hopefully see you all there – mine’s a Stowford Press!

Within the first three months I was strolling down a premiere red carpet next to Bruce Willis, which was both thoroughly exciting and completely surreal. And now after 12 months I’m working on some of the most exciting Flash projects I’ve ever worked on. All in all, it’s been one hell of a year.

Even though I haven’t been posting to my blog recently, I’ve been storing away ideas for blog posts in the hope to get back to it soon. So you’re likely to see an influx of new posts very soon, including help with Android Wi-fi hotspots, Facebook application tips and a whole bunch of useful new AS3 classes – watch this space.

Also, before I go I think it’s probably worth mentioning that I’ll be attending the wonderful Flash on the Beach conference again this September. Hopefully I’ll get to see some of you there – drop me a line if you fancy a pint.

Cheers! TBOH

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…Step 1 – Install Flash Debug Player

First off you need to make sure that you have the flash debugger installed. You can download it here and you can test if it’s installed by clicking here. Don’t worry if you’re using Chrome and the test site is saying that you don’t have the debugger installed, if you view the link in any of your other browsers you will see it has worked.

NOTE: if you use FlashDevelop like myself then you’ve probably already got the debug player installed, but it won’t hurt to reinstall it anyway (and it will update you to the latest version).

Step 2 – Install Vizzy

You can download Vizzy here. To test, open a swf that you know contains traces in your browser and make sure Vizzy is open at the same time. Vizzy will act like your Flash IDE Output window. But again, don’t worry if you’re using Chrome and it’s not working at this point.

Step 3 – Disable Chrome’s pre-installed Flash player

Steps one and two should be enough for you to view flash tracing in most browsers – Firefox was working straight away for me. However if like me you want to use Chrome instead, you will need to disable Chrome’s internal pre-installed Flash Player. Don’t worry it’s very easy…

a) Open a new Chrome window (CTRL-N if you’re reading this in Chrome)

b) type

chrome://plugins

into the address bar.

c) You should see a list of plugins – Flash is most likely to be the one at the top. Click “Details” in the top right hand corner and you will notice that there are 2 versions of flash installed. One of these is the pre-installed Flash player and the other is the Flash Debug Player you installed earlier. Find the one that ends with gcswf32.dll (ie. Chrome’s version of the player) and click “Disable”.

That’s it, you’re done. Clicking here should now tell you that you have the Debug Player installed and Vizzy should now work for you.

Enjoy!

yourString = yourString.replace(/\s+/g, '-');

So for example, if yourString=”blah blah blah”, it will now become “blah-blah-blah”. This is especially useful for amending URLs.

Happy new year!

So here’s the solution to your woes. It’s one that’s worth saving to one side as a “copy and paste solution”. Increase the height of the image (or movieclip) to the size that you want it to be and then apply the following line of script…

(AS3)

mc.scaleX > mc.scaleY ? mc.scaleY = mc.scaleX : mc.scaleX = mc.scaleY;

(AS2)

mc._xscale > mc._yscale ? mc._yscale = mc._xscale : mc._xscale = mc._yscale;

(“mc” of course should be replaced with the target of your image or movieclip)

Hope that helps!

var r:RegExp = new RegExp(/[^a-zA-Z 0-9]+/g) ;
yourString = yourString.replace(r, "");

Robert’s your father’s brother.

escape()

If you’re receiving a text input and needing to send it out to a URL, for example in a search box, you need to convert any special characters into character codes before you request the URL. For example, a space should be sent as %20.

The escape() command allows you to do this with one command rather than having to search through character by character and reference it to a character codes array.

Here’s a simple function that utilises it:

public function processSearchTerm(s:String):void
{
var URLString:String = escape(s);
_rModel.searchTerm = URLString;
}

Calling this function, eg:

var oldString:String = "a test string";
var newString:String = processSearchTerm(testString);
trace(newString);

Should return:

a%20test%20string

Hopefully if you weren’t aware of it already, it will save you as much time as it did me!

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.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Ferris Bueller

So 2 months ago I accepted a full-time position with a fantastic digital agency called ThinkJam, and began the process of slowly dissolving my company. On October 1st Plagro officially closed its offices to new business.

Although I will continue to maintain the websites of existing Plagro clients on a freelance basis, I now intend to take a break from the stresses of running a business and concentrate purely on development for a while. ThinkJam are a fantastic company with some extremely impressive clients. Even after only 2 months I feel very comfortable working for them and have already noticed a massive improvement in both my development skills and my own general well-being. They’re a great agency and I think I’m going to be very happy with them.

So what does this mean for TBOH?

Well, it means that I now have a lot more time for personal projects. I’m currently spending my spare time working with a few APIs that I’ve been meaning to play with for some time now and I’ll post any findings as I go along. I will also be revisiting the Tweeter class very soon – I’ve been working on a series of classes that I’m currently calling TweetEvent that will allow for greater searchability of Twitter (hashtags and users included)…and I will post it up as soon as it’s vaguely usable.

As I’m developing on a full-time basis again you’re also likely to notice an increase in short posts – I would like to keep up the momentum of simple problem solving posts both for my own reference and as a way of helping others who encounter the same time-wasting issues.

So…onwards and upwards…