Archive for the 'Work in Progress' Category

Text on a curved path in Flex - Resurrected

Updated: I’m going ahead and making the rough original source available since I have less time to work on this than expected. Please let me know if this helps you on any project or at least gets you started :)

One of the more popular posts on this blog is “Warping Text in Flex“. People are frequently asking for the source code and I am frequently not giving it to them (unless they say please) because it’s really really dreadful. Truly. So I have brought the project back to life as something I’m not embarrassed of.

An open sourced as-is etc version of this component will be posted shortly (preview below). The component will use a three point Bézier curve for the text path. Currently, this version uses the geometry classes from http://www.algorithmist.net/ but the released version may or may not.

Continue reading for a simple preview …
Continue reading ‘Text on a curved path in Flex - Resurrected’

SpinjAS - rotate / scale / move DisplayObjects

I’ve started a little pet project called SpinjAS (named after the super-cool toys). It’s a super-simple and fun way for your users to move objects around, size them and rotate them when you don’t need a more precise tool like object handles. Here’s a quick demo:


(Right click to view source)

It’s just an experiment and, yes, I know it’s not an original concept. But it is (as far as I know) an original Flex implementation. The limited current feature set is quite simple: radiusMax, radiusMin, scaleMax, scaleMin.

I would love to hear what you have to say … so far I’ve had about 30% positive feedback and 70% say “ok, cool, but when would I ever use that?” What about you? Does the concept have potential with some specific added features?

Formally introducing <my:SimpleMP3 />

To learn more about the mysimplemp3 project, click the <my:SimpleMP3 /> tab at the top of this website. The project is hosted here on Google Code where you can download the latest swc or check out the source.

Currently the only demo is my proof of concept found here. I’m looking forward to seeing the components and projects you end create with mysimplemp3. Please keep me posted - and let me know about feature requests and potential bugs! Thanks.

Almost introducing <my:SimpleMP3 />

What's this? It looks easy!

OK. I really don't like building MP3 player components in AS3 for Flex. It's doable, sure, but tedious. In fact, I don't like it enough that I've done something about it. Now it can be fun to make an MP3 player in Flex! (not available yet, but there's a demo below).

XML:
  1. <my:SimpleMP3
  2.     id="music"
  3.     url="http://url.com/my.mp3" />

Now, just treat it like you'd expect!

Actionscript:
  1. music.play();
  2. music.pause();
  3. music.stop();
  4. music.volume = 0..1;

Yes, there's more: scrubbing, streaming, buffering, panning left to right, auto load, auto play, auto rewind, repeat and most importantly ... states! Read more and play with a quick demo after the jump.
Continue reading 'Almost introducing <my:SimpleMP3 />'

Warping Text in Flex

Update: New updated example in "Text on a curved path in Flex - Resurrected" - please see instead of this entry.

There was some discussion in the 615Flex Google group earlier about how to warp text in a Flex application. (If you have any valuable input or resources please leave them in the comments). I thought it would be fun to mess around with the idea, so I put together this really weak example of a text warp component.

Read on to see a little example ...

Continue reading 'Warping Text in Flex'

ASO & David’s Bridal Brochure

I am working on a tri-fold brochure for All Stretched Out Limousine Service. They have recently entered into a cross-promotional relationship with David's Bridal. This is pre-first draft, but I thought it worth sharing. Any comments are appreciated!

Tri-fold brochure for ASO & David’<p>s Bridal