Home : Notes Index : About/Contact : Downloads Books, online tutorials, products and tools related to Flash and ActionScript programming. |
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| ActionScript 2.0 class code | ||
| A static class for encoding and decoding XML and HTML character entities. Jim Cheng This link was posted on flashcoders in response to a query for a decoder for an XML string being received from a webservice created by a .NET developer. Jim says "I couldn't find a built-in [AS2] solution for converting the character entities [pulled from a database] back into Unicode characters, so I went online, found the specs, wrote a little scraper utility to grab the mappings for me and then wrote a small utility class to use the data for encoding and decoding. | added 2006-06-06 | |
 | Actionscript Drawing Classes Janis Radins Superbly documented AS 2.0 classes for drawing various shapes with the drawing API | added 2006-04-23 |
 | Apple style OS X Dock J.R. Graphix "an interactive Flash movie that mimics the behaviour of the original dock. Makes use of the original 32 bit icons with alpha channel." Uses downloadable Dock class. | added 2006-10-13 |
| Color and Gradient Picker Class Ivan Dembicki For attaching a fill/gradient color picker to an application | added 2006-04-24 | |
| Extended Delegate class Peter Hall A Delegate class which you can use like the built-in one, but has additional kill and stopListeningToEvent methods that help with cleanup (because listeners and Delegates persist unless you explicitly kill them and are not deleted when the instance they are created in is deleted). | added 2006-06-08 | |
| ImageLoader with smoothing Martijn de Visser Class to load images with that will be automatically smoothed; workaround for the Flash Player 8 non smoothing 'feature' for loaded images | added 2006-10-10 | |
| Interval Manager Kenny Bunch A manager to identify, create, and clear intervals, and to create delayed calls (like setTimeout in javascript), or create an interval that runs N number of times. | added 2006-10-17 | |
| Particle class Trevor McCauley One of several AS2.0 classes from the Flash section at senocular.com | added 2006-05-22 | |
| Resizer component Lee McColl-Sylvester A well-documented open source resizer component -- good example of extending UIComponent | added 2006-04-26 | |
| Richard Wright's AS 2.0 library Richard Wright AS 2.0 classes related to math, graphing, drawing | added 2006-04-24 | |
| ActionScript 3 | ||
| ActionScript 3 Overview, Documentation Adobe Start learning now -- it's coming with the next version of Flash (9) | added 2006-05-07 | |
| ActionScript tutorials, articles | ||
| Actionscript Cheatsheet Sean Moore (thotskee) If you're a person who likes to work from print docs hanging on the wall rather than (or in addition to) online or Flash IDE help docs, thotskee has developed an Actionscript 2.0 cheatsheet in several printable forms. (Update, 2006 May 1): Actionscript 3 cheatsheet now available also. | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Bevel filter example and code Laura Argue and Nahuel Foronda A nice example of how variables can be changed to affect the bevel filter in Flash 8, with generated code | added 2006-09-19 | |
 | Drawing API extras Ric Ewing When Flash MX came out, Ric Ewing developed these extra movieclip methods that make use of the drawing API. Each one is defined as a method of (ie, added to) the MovieClip.prototype property, which makes them available to any instance of the MovieClip class. | added 2006-04-23 |
| Flash-XML FAQ Luke Tupper "The Flash-XML FAQ aims to provide a definitive source for common questions about Flash and its interaction with XML (and XML datasources)." | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Shape-based collision detection in Flash 8 Grant Skinner From the page: "This is taking advantage of the player functions - it's basically drawing clips onto a bitmap in a specific color using a difference blen and looking for a specific color in the result. It runs better than I would have expected, partly because I'm using boundary intersections to minimize the bitmap dimensions, and rule out clips quickly." | added 2006-04-23 | |
 | Train Simple Online Tutorials Matthew Pizzi Tutorials on Flash and actionscript (including an example of building a class-based XML-driven application in Flash 8 by yours truly) and other programming topics. | added 2006-10-24 |
| Tutorial on the ternary operator Josh Buhler Tutorial on using the ternary operator | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Using XML Data in Flash kirupa A long and detailed look at using XML with Flash. Last section has information on specific issues / troubleshooting. | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Books on ActionScript | ||
 | Actionscript Animation Keith Peters Keith Peters of bit-101.com fame has produced 450 pages of equations and explanations for creating all kinds of motion, emulating physical properties like gravity and friction, particle behavior, a bit of kinematics, and collision detection in Flash. The best part of the book is the explanation of each of the concepts and the tips for optimizing code. | added 2006-04-23 |
 | Essential Actionscript 2.0 Colin Moock The gold standard for writing ActionScript 2.0 code: a reference for ActionScript 2.0, creating classes, and using them to write object-oriented applications. The one drawback I found was that the book came out before the Delegate class was introduced (in Flash 7.2) so there is no mention of how to use it. | added 2006-04-23 |
 | Programming Flash Communications Server Brian Lesser and others From a reader: "The book was EXCELLENT and has been totally indispensable to me as I continue to develop and improve my FCS applications." Notes from Brian Lesser on the book's relevance if you're using FMS 2 instead of FCS: "Regarding the first edition of the book and FMS 2.0.1, the great thing is that the FMS development team didn't mess with the API on the client or server side. They just added features without breaking the existing programming interface. So all the code in the book still works. But some big changes in the API will come with Flex 2 and Flash 9. Both will use the new AS 3 language AND will use the new document object model...Some time after Flex 2 and Flash 9 ship, I'd like to publish a number of tech notes on flash-communications.net" | added 2006-05-11 |
| Books on Animation and Drawing | ||
 | Flash 5 Cartoons and Games f/x and Design Bill Turner (and others) A wonderful source of cartoon tips, from walk cycles, character animation and lip-syncing to game code. Still relevant even though originally published for Flash 5. | added 2006-04-23 |
 | The Animator's Survival Kit Richard Williams Another well-recommended book on animating. "Williams systematically demystifies virtually every aspect of animation from simple walk cycles, to breaking joints to dialogue and acting. Williams also is a great storyteller and writer." | added 2006-05-08 |
 | The Animator's Workbook Tony White Good descriptions of weight in movement and other animation techniques (not Flash-specific but has been recommended more than any other animation book I know of). | added 2006-04-23 |
| Books on Programming | ||
 | Foundation PHP 5 for Flash David Powers Written for "someone already comfortable in the Flash authoring environment, and probably with some experience of ActionScript, who wants to add the power of PHP and the MySQL database to Flash movies to create a richer, more interactive experience." Often recommended on flash email lists. | added 2006-10-06 |
 | Head First Design Patterns Eric & Elizabeth Freeman A primer on using Design Patterns with Java examples but applicable to ActionScript, as shown in Bill Sanders' tutorial on applying the state pattern to an AS3 video player. | added 2006-11-27 |
| Email lists and forums | ||
| Flashcoder list Figleaf Good source of information on all aspects of actionscript coding -- assumes some experience with programming | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Flashnewbie list Figleaf Somewhat misnamed (should be flashusers, imo), this list is a good place to get help with beginning and not-so-beginning coding and other Flash questions | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Flexcoders yahoogroups High-activity list with Adobe reps and a bunch of passionate Flex developers. Officially "for enterprise software developers, developing Rich Internet Applications using Macromedia Flex." | added 2006-05-13 | |
| Google search of flashcoders archive Muzak A Google-based search utility for the flashcoder archive (use a querystring for direct searches, eg, http://muzakdeezign.com/flashcoders/?q=remove%20delegate) | added 2006-10-24 | |
| Flex | ||
| Adobe Labs Adobe Where to go to get the latest information about Flex, Actionscript 3, Flash 9 and all the other goodies about to be unleashed on you. Get the latest beta (and docs) here! | added 2006-05-13 | |
| Community Flex Tariq Ahmed "CFLEX (Community Flex) is dedicated to the RIA Technology known as Adobe/Macromedia Flex. The goal of the site is to aggregate tips, lessons, news, and articles from around the net." | added 2006-05-07 | |
| Flex Cookbook Adobe A great resource for finding, posting or commenting on Flex code solutions to common problems. | added 2007-01-06 | |
| Inspiration | ||
| Adobe's Flash Showcase Adobe What real people are doing with Flash. Includes Site of the Day. | added 2006-05-03 | |
| dopeawards.com Xscape Productions Flash-based web design (Flash and non-Flash) award site | added 2006-09-27 | |
 | Flash Goddess gallery Ann-Marie Cheung (founder) Featured artists from FlashGoddess.com | added 2006-05-03 |
| Showcase Archive for bestflashanimationsite.com bestflashanimationsite.com Great archive of inspiring Flash sites in 18 categories | added 2006-05-03 | |
| Open-source, Flash or actionscript-related | ||
| AsUnit Luke Bayes and Ali Mills "AsUnit is the primary means by which developers can truly implement Test-Driven development practices in ActionScript projects." | added 2006-05-07 | |
| Flasm Igor Kagan "Flasm is a free command line assembler/disassembler of Flash ActionScript bytecode. Flasm disassembles your entire SWF including all the timelines and events. You can also do some optimizations on the disassembled code by hand or adjust the code as you wish. Flasm then applies your changes to the original SWF, replacing original actions." This was the first big Flash open source project I remember, and it's still used a lot by people wanting to optimize their code and do things like changing or disabling the recursion limit that Flash sets, or changing the Flash version in the swf (fourth byte ascii 07 -> ascii 08, eg, especially popular when the Flash 8 player first came out). | added 2006-05-04 | |
| haXe Nicolas Cannasse "haXe 1.0 Release Candidate is now available for download: haXe is a new programming language for Flash coders. You can use one language to develop your whole website : including Flash, JS/AJAX and Server-side with database access. Release 1.0 (2006/5/2) includes a number of new things : - regular expressions - server Sockets - haXe Serialization - haXe Remoting - haXe Template System - new crossplatform Xml handling" 2006-08-31: We are happy to announce that Screenweaver HX - version 1.0 is now available! Screenweaver HX is an (open source) extension to the haXe programming language (http://www.haxe.org) for creating Flash interfaced desktop applications. GUIs can be made using either haXe or Flash/Flex (both AS2 and AS3 are supported). Screenweaver HX is fully OS-X/Windows cross-platform and works with both Flash 8 and 9. On OS-X, it runs native on both PPC and Intel Macs. | added 2006-05-02 | |
| Javascript popup generator Jeffrey Hill Generates javascript code to put on a button to open a sized window, with a variety of options | added 2006-07-07 | |
 | OSFlash Aral Balkan "OSFlash is a watering hole for open source Flash developers and users to meet, talk about and contribute to new and existing open source projects for the Flash Platform. OSFlash supports the development community by providing open source projects with free source code hosting and project management tools as well as a web presence on the OSFlash wiki. " | added 2006-05-02 |
| Server Communications, Databases, Remoting | ||
| PHP service class to return directory contents Mike Britton PHP-based web service (use with AMFPHP) to return array of files in specified directory on web server | added 2006-05-03 | |
| Tools: 3D | ||
| Swift 3D Electric Rain "The industry-leading tool for quickly and easily creating the highest quality 3D vector and raster animations for Macromedia Flash" | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Tools: Extenders for Standalone Executables & Screensavers | ||
| mProjector ScreenTime Media "Create stunning, fun, useful, interactive branded desktop applications in hours or days instead of days and weeks." I haven't used it, but someone who has says "I highly recommend mProjector. It's the best 3rd party wrapper out there, IMO, and I've tried them all. It's the easiest and smartest to code with, it has the best performance hands down, does asynchronous communication with the OS, allows you to package all your swfs into the executable which is now cross-platform." | added 2006-04-23 | |
| SWF Studio Northcode Allows you to create standalone rich media desktop applications and screensavers from your swf. PC only, as of this writing but works well for that. Quick and responsive help at the user support forums. From Derek Vadneau, about using SWF Studio for kiosk apps: "With one checkbox you get kiosk mode, which disables keys like Alt+Tab for app switching, and disables TaskManager and any way to shutdown Windows. You also get the ability to monitor certain applications and have them shut down as soon as they start." | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Zinc mdm "Create, Build and Deploy real Desktop Applications based upon the Macromedia Flash® Format! Available for Windows, Mac OSX and Pocket PC." Quote from a user "We use Zinc a lot, and it seems to be the best Mac/PC/Pocket PC compatible. Super fast and active support." | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Tools: General (for Flash and Actionscript) | ||
| Actionscript Viewer (swf decompiler) Buraks Action Script Viewer (ASV) is a a Win32 application which lets you see the actionscripts in SWF files, extract resources (bitmaps, sounds, videos, fonts etc., also outlines of vector symbols as actionscript or SVG or a JSFL Tool) from SWF files, browse the internals of SWF files while providing infomation about frames, instance names, symbols, movie clips etc. and a timeline view with context sensitive preview, and helps you reconstruct the FLA file for a SWF by exporting SWF resources and a JSFL command. | added 2006-04-25 | |
| Archived Flash Players Adobe downloadable players/plugins for past Flash versions for testing | added 2006-09-24 | |
| Easing Function Generator Timothee Groleau Drag yellow squares to create custom easing equations -- check the result and copy/paste the function. | added 2006-10-05 | |
| Flash Exchange Adobe Extensions that can be added to Flash using the extension manager: buttons, effects, xml-based menus and other prebuilt components. Some free, some for sale. | added 2006-04-26 | |
| Flash plugin switcher for Firefox Alessandro Crugnola Allows switching Flash plugins easily in Firefox, for testing content with different Flash versions | added 2006-11-07 | |
| Javascript popup generator Jeffrey Hill Generates javascript code to put on a button to open a sized window, with a variety of options | added 2006-07-07 | |
| override caching for Flash and Javascript Karina Steffens Discussion of not only the standard way of preventing caching in Flash (appending unique date and time to url) but doing the same in javascript, and checking the running environment in Flash | added 2006-11-07 | |
| Splice9 for bitmaps Brajeshwar Oinam JSFL Command Splice9 crops a bitmap into 9 pieces and put them inside a Movieclip named BackgroundCrop. Once the cropping is done, it creates assets (movieclips of 9 pieces) in library with a linkage name in a folder named Splice9 and brings the BackgroundCrop to the stage and names those instances, create layers, writes required actionscript, saves the file, publishes it. | added 2006-07-20 | |
| Webcam Barcode Scanner Chris Benjaminsen Flash 8-based barcode-scanner component. "It can scan UPC-A and EAN-13 barcodes (those on the back of most consumer products)." | added 2006-11-01 | |
| Tools: Graphics | ||
 | Flash Freezer Flash Freezer Sets of pre-made Flash vector animations for a very reasonable price. | added 2006-04-23 |
| Optimaze Electric Rain Compresses the vector graphics contained within Macromedia Flash (SWF) files to produce content that will play faster and more efficiently on the Web. | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Tools: Printing | ||
| BlazePDF Gregg Wygonik BlazePDF lets you save Flash content created with the drawing API in a PDF file. | added 2006-04-23 | |
| FlashPaper Macromedia "FlashPaper 2 allows anyone to convert printable files into Macromedia Flash documents (swfs) or PDF files with one click." | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Tools: Sound | ||
| Adobe Audition (sound editing program) Adobe Adobe Audition (formerly Syntrillium's CoolEdit) allows you to import music, edit and mix it, and export it in a variety of formats. Available by itself or as part of the Adobe Video Collection. | added 2006-04-23 | |
| AudioSparx digital audio AudioSparx Stumbleupon brought this one up -- looks like it has tons of samples to listen to/buy. | added 2006-11-21 | |
| Beatsuite Beatsuite Music loops, button and interface sound effects for Flash, royalty free music | added 2006-09-27 | |
| Flashkit sound effects files Mark Fennell (founder) The best free collection of sound effects is from the Flashkit sound section. Listen and download -- instant gratification. | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Hollywood Sound Effects Audio Network plc "Explore and purchase Royalty Free Sounds from Oscar winning Hollywood sound effects designers, Soundstorm, the award winning sound editorial house. " | added 2006-09-20 | |
| Loopsound.com Loopsound.com Royalty-free music loops and sound effects | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Ultrashock Audio Essentials Ultrashock 2-CD set of loops and sound effects | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Tools: Video | ||
| FLV Metadata Injector Buraks FLV MetaData Injector (FLVMDI) is a Win32 console (command line) application that can add 'onMetaData' AMF data to FLV files. (There's also a GUI frontend FLVMDIGUI). FLVMDI optionally saves an XML version of the injected data, and can add an additional string data. Free. | added 2006-04-25 | |
| Sorenson Squeeze Sorenson Media Sorenson Squeeze is the best product I've found for creating Flash 7 compatible flv's (or swfs, Quicktime movies, and Windows Media Player files if you use the Compression Suite) from avi's. I use it to convert files captured from my Canon Optura 40 to show on the web. | added 2006-04-23 | |
| Video, FlashComm, Flash Media Server | ||
 | Flash Video Notes Fabio Sonnati Useful information about Flash video, from the Technical WhitePaper about FlashVideo to real-time de-interlacing to dynamic buffering of streamed video. | added 2006-05-02 |
| Flex 2 and FMS 2 example Brian Lesser Looks at Actionscript 3 versions of NetConnection, Video, NetStream, and remote SharedObject classes in a sample application (updated for Flex 2 Beta 3 on 9 May 2006). | added 2006-05-11 | |
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