Strict XHTML target=”_blank” replacement

Occasionally, just occasionally, web standards really annoy me. Not because of what they stand for, but because of the stupidity of the people who came up with them. Case in point, if you want a link to to launch in a new window/tab, all you have to do in HTML is type…

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. More

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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