A new era for Papervision3D

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…

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Flash on the Beach 2009 – The Aftermath

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…

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Flash on the Beach 2009

So it’s that time of the year again when all of the Flash geeks from around the world descend on Brighton to “educate” themselves. Four days of Flash geekiness in it’s purest form. Education, inspiration and quite a lot of dissipation.

I can say without any doubt that FOTB 2008 was the most inspirational event that I’ve ever been lucky enough to attend. I picked up more skills and creative ideas in 4 days than I had done in the entire previous year. It was exhilarating to say the least.

Flash on the Beach is a wonderfully constructed event that encourages free thinking and debate and is an excellent opportunity to mix with other Flash designers and developers from around the world. I met some amazing people last year and I am sure that this year will be the same.

However last year I was so overwhelmed by the whole thing, I missed at least two lectures that I really wanted to see through to disorganisation (and at least two more due to hangovers). So although there’s not a great deal I can do about the hangovers, I have decided to at least try to plan in advance a lecture schedule this year of the speakers that I want to see. I’ve listed it below so you can stalk/avoid* me (*delete as appropriate) if you’re going to be there.

Seriously though if any of you are attending FOTB this year, please do get in touch. It’s always great to meet like-minded people.

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Tweeter v1.0 – simplifying Twitter and Actionscript

If you want to add a Twitter feed to your flash website, currently the best way to do it is to pay a visit to Matt Pearson’s (Zenbullets) Twitter API explanation and buckle down to the code. However if like me you are finding your clients increasingly requesting Twitter feeds in their sites, perhaps you’ll appreciate my new Tweeter class for ease of re-use.

Try it out:

It’s based around Matt’s explanations and centres on drawing a single tweet from a single user (using the API’s “status” call). All I’ve done in my clumsy ham-fisted way is to simplify it for anyone who either doesn’t have the time to learn it or simply can’t be bothered. Now all you have to do is use something like the following code for it be up and running in seconds…

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The CSSLoader Class (v1.0)

AS3 is a wonderful thing, but it can be really long-winded sometimes when you’re trying to achieve something simple – the perfect example being the replacement of AS2’s getURL() class with a series of listeners. I know why it has been set up this way, I understand why it’s better that everything follows a uniform methodology and I do wholeheartedly agree with it, but there is no getting around the fact that you can get bogged down writing the same long-winded code over and over again. Frankly, it can be a pain in the ass and can sap the fun out of simple tasks.

Sometimes I get around these chunks of code using snippets (see Lee Brimelow’s tutorial on how to set up snippets in Flex Builder), but sometimes the code is crying out for a simple class to be made – in my opinion, loading external stylesheets is one of these times.

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