target="_blank"

in your <a> tag. But I’ve just discovered that this doesn’t validate in Strict XHTML 1.0, the W3C recommended doctype. There is of course a CSS3 replacement, but that renders the whole technique completely useless until all browsers have fully adopted CSS3. So the choice is, don’t do it at all or lose your XHTML validation to a number a errors. Or of course use CSS3, which means that only a fraction of your userbase is getting the experience you want them to have (doesn’t that defeat the point of accessibility standards?) Either way, it’s annoying as hell.

But here’s a solution, instead of using target inside your <a>, use the following:

onclick="window.open(this.href,'_blank');return false;"

It’s crude and it relies on javascript being enabled, but it does work and it does validate. The link will still open if it’s not enabled, but just not in a new window – so it’s a reasonable, if long-winded, compromise.

If you’d prefer to use CSS3, target-new is the droid you’re looking for.

Tickets for Flash on the Beach 2010 were released this morning and are selling like hotcakes. For those of you that don’t know, Flash on the Beach is the definitive conference for all things Flash/Flex/Design/Actionscript Development/General Web sexiness.

If you’re in the industry and have never been:

1. Shame on you;
2. Buy a ticket NOW;
3. Shame on you!

I can’t stress enough how much of a great time you’ll have. To give you a taster of what to expect, check out my review of Flash on the Beach 2009.

Hope to see you there!

Warning: 1090: Migration issue: The onMouseDown event handler is not triggered automatically by Flash Player at run time in ActionScript 3.0

This warning occurs if you try to use Actionscript 2 event handler names in your Actionscript 3 code, eg onMouseDown, onMouseOver, onRelease etc etc. Simply change the name and it will go away! Apparently it was added as a way of warning you not to mix up AS2 with AS3, but personally I find it a bit irritating as I used those names so that I would easily remember them (having coded in AS2 for quite a long time).

So as an example, if you’ve coded something like…

this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, onMouseOver);
public function onMouseOver(e:MouseEvent)
{
trace("over");
}

…simply change it to something that wasn’t previously reserved in AS2, like…

this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, onBtnOver);
public function onBtnOver(e:MouseEvent)
{
trace("over");
}

One other thing about Warning 1090 – apparently it won’t appear if you don’t use the Flash IDE to compile. But if you’re like me and you code in FlashDevelop and compile in the IDE (because you like to mess around with detailed graphic designs), it will unfortunately continue to plague you. Fingers crossed they’ll ditch it in CS5.

getURL("http:www.mysite.com", "_blank")

…to launch a web address.

Nowadays you have to set up a URLRequest and then use the navigateToURL command, like this:

var link:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://www.mysite.com");
navigateToURL(link, "_blank");

It’s straightforward enough, but it’s long winded and a bit annoying when you’re used to such a short command. So, I’ve gone ahead and created myself a getURL class which you’re welcome to download and use if it bugs you too.

Once installed in your AS directory, all you have to type is…

new getURL("http://www.mysite.com");

…to launch a site. Don’t forget you’ll also need to import the class if your preferred coding application doesn’t immediately spot it.

Unlike the AS2 original, I’ve set it up so that the target is automatically “_blank”…this is simply because it’s my preference when launching URLs from a button (as they tend to be external websites). If you wish to change this, simply type something like…

new getURL("http://www.mysite.com", "_self");

…or replace “_self” with whatever your preferred target is.

Enjoy

But now I’ve found the fix…and it’s an easy one…

Techie Version:

Some text:

1. Open RegEdit and navigate to:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Classes\CLSID\{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}
2. Change the AppID value to:
   {534A1E02-D58F-44f0-B58B-36CBED287C7C}
3. Test. It should work immediately.

Non-techie Version:

1. Click on the “start menu”
2. Type “regedit” into the search box and hit return
3. In the left hand pane open the following folders:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
   then SOFTWARE
   then Wow6432Node
   then Classes
   then CLSID
   
4. Now find and click on the following folder:
   {DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}

5. On the right hand side you should see a number of files appear. Mine showed four in total. Right hand click on AppID and select “Modify”
6. Delete the contents of the box and then copy and paste the following into it instead:
   {534A1E02-D58F-44f0-B58B-36CBED287C7C}
   
7. When you click OK, you should now be able to view PDFs using the preview pane. click on and off a PDF a couple of times with the preview pane open.

Hope that helps someone!

Please note: Although I know that this worked perfectly fine with my machine, I can make no guarantees that it will work with yours. By doing this you are altering your computer’s registry…I cannot accept responsibility if anything goes wrong as a result of doing so. I am merely offering this help for those that are confident enough to try.

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).

So not only is Partigen now code friendly for developers, it’s also timeline friendly for designers. An inspired move by Desuade.

Another extremely useful tool (especially for code ‘dabblers’ like myself) is the option to create your desired effect inside the Flash panel and then export it as XML for future use in Actionscript. This is something I fully intend to utilise over the next few weeks as I play with Partigen. However, for today I decided to stick with getting used to the internal control panel.

The example below was created to see if there would be any performance problems with multiple emitters. It utilises a total of 5 emitters – one for the smoke (sat behind a timeline mask) and four different snow emitters set at four different depths. It took about 30 minutes to create, but to be fair it actually only took 5 minutes to set up and then I spent the last 25 minutes pedantically tweaking the effects to acheive my desired look (I warn you now, it gets pretty addictive).

I know that this example isn’t exactly pushing the boundaries, but I’d say that it proves that the engine can cope with the majority of every-day requests that clients might make.

I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve cringed at a client’s request of something like “I want a realistic fire burning, with lots of smoke coming off it and rain in the background”. These things always sound much easier than they actually are. Time can be a killer on things like that. Well, now it really isn’t a problem. With Partigen I could pull off that effect in under 10 minutes, with very little effort and quite a lot of style. Nice.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be spending as much of my free time as possible with Partigen to see exactly what it can do – and how easy it is to control with Actionscript. I want to try out custom emitters…and more interestingly moving emitters. Watch this space as I’ll post my findings as I go.

So all there is to do now is to wish you all a very Merry Christmas…and a very happy new year. Have a good one!

The Hippy

I’ve been tearing my hair out for the last 24 hours trying to work out how the hell to get my precisely drawn design to scale correctly in Papervision. Anyone who’s tried this will know that it’s a frustrating blend of messing around with camera zoom, focus and field of view. But try as I might, I found it absolutely impossible to solve. I had come to the end of my patience and was ready to give up with PV3D and change the design completely…

…and then I came across this.

The thing that crossed my mind first when seeing this demo was “not only is it possible to reproduce a good pixel perfect 2D design in Papervision, but potentially it could be really great”.

After a bit of mooching around I came across the fantastic article that it was produced as a demo for. Rather depressingly, the article explains in very few words that all you need do is apply the following formula to the z axis of your 3D object:

3dobj.z = (camera.zoom * camera.focus) - Math.abs(camera.z)

I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank the author of the post for collating that information and producing such a simple yet thoroughly inspiring demo. You’ve saved me an enormous amount of time and taught me one clear lesson…when in doubt, stop getting frustrated and google it.

So one of the things that I didn’t discuss in my last Flash on the Beach post is that on the Wednesday afternoon, Ralph Hauwert announced that he was leaving the Papervision3D team. This came as quite a shock to everyone other than the team itself. I wasn’t at the session when he made the announcement but apparently he stated the reason for his leaving is purely so that he can spend more time on other projects and had nothing to do with his relationship with the Papervision3D team – this is also backed up in his recent blog post.

Ralph leaving has caused quite a ripple amongst the community and I can completely understand why. Alongside Tim Knip, Ralph designed the majority of the PV3D engine and the release of Papervision X (the next gen ground-up build) was reliant on them completing it together. The following quote from Ralph’s blog backs up my concerns…

One thing I’m not entirely sure of as of yet, is what to do with the PapervisionX code base. Built entirely from scratch by me and Tim Knip, this project really has part of my soul in it. It’s been exclusively me and Tim working on it, with plans to have the rest of the team start on it a while back. Currently, that hasn’t happened yet and the engine is not ready for release and officially not part of the Papervision3D code base. In other words; it’s mine and Tim’s. While I’d love to release it at some point in time, currently it’s not ready for that and with me leaving the team, it’s most likely not going to be released under that name, if released at all. I might decide together with Tim to donate it to the Papervision3D project, but currently I’m not sure on that decision yet; as there would have to be a considerable effort to make it stable for release. As it is unfinished now and publishing source code is somewhat a personal thing when most of it is yours, I’d think this is not what should be done right now. As I am going to pursue my own goals for the time being, this decision might take a while.

I will discuss with the team and Tim closely to see what can be done in the future, but for now, I don’t think it should be released. It might also be better for the team to work on it’s own Flash 10 compatible version of the engine.

Either way this is going to set PV3D back dramatically, which is such a shame. It was just beginning to get a foothold on the industry and many designers like myself are only just getting to grips with it. Not only does it have an impact on the technology, it also has a massive impact on how designers and developers are willing to push the boundaries with their work. I will continue to play with Papervision3D for the time being, but I have to be sceptical about the future of the technology and whether a potentially unsupported engine is the right thing to use for my clients.

Hopefully the Papervision3D team will make an announcement soon to put all our minds at rest…

Well I’m back from Flash on the Beach 2009 in Brighton and yet again I wasn’t disappointed. There were a couple of sessions that weren’t as good as expected and a couple more that unexpectedly blew me away, all-in-all I had a blinding time. Needless to say I’d thrown out my previously organised schedule by Monday lunchtime though

This year was so enjoyable I’m still buzzing a week later, hence this post. I’m not going to go massively into detail about it all, but there are a few highlights and lowlights that I think are worth talking about…

First off, Sunday. I attended Seb Lee-Delisle’s Papervision 3D workshop for the entire day. It began a little bit over my head because it appeared that everybody else in the room (bar one) were pure developers, so it was a little unsympathetic to us lowly designers. However as the day progressed I seemed to get into the flow of it and by the end of the day I felt as though I could go away and work with it myself. If Seb ever does a follow up course I’ll be on it in a flash (pardon the pun) – he’s a great speaker and I really felt as though I learned a lot from him. As for Papervision…I’m playing already, so when anything significant occurs I’ll post it on this blog.

During the course I met one or two guys that seemed to be on the same wavelength as me and at the end of the day we set off to the Waggon and Horses near the FOTB venue to have a swift half. A half soon turned into a pint, a pint into six (ish) and before we knew it we were heading down to the beach to mindlessly throw pebbles into the sea. The perfect end to what was a completely exhausting day.

Monday morning, 9am, the conference began for real. Before the keynote, 3 Mariachi took the stage (see photo above) and performed a hilarious ode to designers. I loved it, but as it was never publicly revealed who the Mariachi were, I did get the feeling that I was witnessing some bizarre little in-joke between the speakers and the organisers. It was good fun though and the accompanying graphics were spot on.

The keynote was by Richard & Mark from Adobe. It was interesting and showed a few new features in the latest Flash player update, but they were obviously saving the best stuff for the upcoming Adobe Max conference. Roll on October so we can find out what they were actually holding back.

Monday’s highlights for me were Keith Peters‘ developer inspiring session about game coding and Carlos Ulloa (above) taking us through how he developed four of his Papervision projects. Both were excellent as usual and I thought were the perfect start to the conference. Unfortunately I wasn’t as impressed by Hillman Curtis’ end of the day session – I was expecting something interactive and inspiring from the ex-Art Director for Macromedia, but instead we watched a few of his “video portraits”. Artistic it was, but without being too harsh, a little dull.

The day concluded with Joel Gethin Lewis’ evening inspiration session. It was a good and fitting end to a pretty good day, but the best was obviously yet to come. The party that night was at Audio. Last year I left early because it was so crammed, but this year I was with a great group of people and we found a pretty spacious corner to spread out in. Another great night.

Tuesday began at 9am with the new “Elevator Pitch” session – 20 new speakers each with the chance to make their mark in 3 minutes. Some were good, some not so good…all enthusiastic and inspiring the audience to get up next year and show off their own stuff. I think my favourite out of them had to be Jon Howard who demonstrated how to make 3 games in 3 minutes – funny and impressive. I think we may see more of him in the future. Also, a congrats to Erin from Plus Two (a company I’ve worked with in the past) for managing to explain their extremely impressive product in under 3 minutes. It was a pleasant surprise to see her up on stage.

Tuesday afternoon and evening brought some of my favourite sessions from the conference starting with a fascinating insight into the mind of Jennifer Shiman, creator of 30 Second Bunny Theatre. The afternoon continued with two surprisingly inspiring sessions – “Numbers in Art” by Joel Baumann and “Unconventional Web Applications” by the Contrast team. The first was much more art based than I had expected, being literally about how numbers feature in great works of art – I entered the session expecting to be mind-numbed about typographical positioning and layout standards. A truly pleasant surprise. The later was a truly thought provoking session encouraging the audience to reconsider “web standards” and push the boundaries of interactive design a little further. I had no idea what to expect from the session and I came away ready to completely reassess my approach to design.

Similarly that evening’s inspired session from Craig Swann hammered home that as designers we need to remember our roots and keep a firm hold on what truly inspires us. A great talk from a very charismatic man. After the final session we all moved onto a local club and Tuesday came to an end at about 4am on Wednesday morning…enough said I think.

Wednesday was sponsored by Resolve Extra. By the time I had checked out of my hotel and my life and come back into focus, it was 11.30 and time to listen to the genius that is Colin Moock. Having taught myself AS from a combination of his books over the years, I was hanging on the guy’s every word. Great session.

Next up was the moment I’d been waiting for all week – “The Jam Throwdown”. This came about for the first time at FOTB08 when a speaker was unavoidably detained and unable to turn up. John Davey (the organiser of FOTB) gathered together 6 of the best speakers from the conference and asked them if they would show off some of their latest work for 10 minutes each to fill the gap in the schedule. The result was astounding and by far the best session of the 2008 conference…and it rocketed Joa Ebert to notoriety with his demonstration of speed coding (I’ll get to that a minute). So needless to say, hangover or no hangover, this was a session I did not want to miss.

The standard of course was ridiculously high, a belittling experience in many ways. All of the work shown was outstanding, my personal favourite being Grant playing with his balls (see video above). And that’s a sentence you won’t hear me say very often. But even the speakers took a step back when Joa walked onto the stage for speed coding round 2. For those that don’t know what speed coding is, it is literally as it sounds…he codes as much as he can in the 10 minutes that he’s allotted. Sounds boring right? It really isn’t. The man types code faster than I can think about what I had for breakfast, he’s truly one of the world’s best (if not the best) programmers. The buzz in the air when he gets going is astounding, everyone trying to guess what the hell he’s doing…Joa just keeps his head down and keeps on typing. This year he’d obviously prepared himself beforehand (in 2008, he had no preparation and was making it up as he went along), but it still doesn’t take anything away from what he was able to produce in the 9 minutes and 40 seconds he spent at the keyboard. He produced an almost exact recreation of “Da Funk” by Daft Punk (including drum samples from scratch) with a 3D audio-visualiser that bounces along with it. A poor quality video of the end result can be found here, but to be honest it doesn’t do it justice. Truly astounding…

…and if we weren’t all feeling small already after Joa’s performance, John revealed the keyboard that Joa had been using whilst speed coding. Completely black, no keys. Talk about kicking us while we were down

After a very relaxed and enjoyable session with artist James Jarvis, it was time for the last session of the conference – Joshua Davis. I’ve been a huge fan of Davis for years and I was really looking forward to seeing him in person. The man is a rock star. A funny, inspiring and slightly cuddly rock star. The video above doesn’t really do justice to how he makes you feel, but it should give you an idea of the pure energy he puts into his presentations. More than any other time over the last couple of FOTB conferences, I truly felt as though I was in the presence of greatness – and that really is saying something considering the artists and genii that speak at these things. He oozes charisma and like no other speaker I’ve ever seen reaches out to the audience and says “look guys, this is easy, you can do this”. It was a fitting end to an almost perfect conference.

Finally before I sign off this ridiculously long blog post, I’d just like to the thank everyone I met at FOTB09 for making it one of the best yet for me. I met up with a great bunch of people this year, all of which I hope will make it back next year. Most notably Kevin and Mike from Twisted, Sean and Marie from The Inspiration Engine and Pedro from Zig Zig Za. I hope you guys had as good a time as I did. Roll on FOTB2010!