Flashpress 0.8 Features

I’m currently rebuilding my noponies illustration site with Flashpress and of course a Wordpress backend.

I’ve added in some new features to Flashpress as I’ve worked through the site, these are related to the data returned by each PostVO object, I’ve tried to make it a little simpler to get what you need from this object, without needed to go back to Wordpress for simple stuff, like a posts tags.

So, I’ve added in the following to the post vo object:

1 / If the post has a featured image, the URL to it is included, otherwise its an empty string
2 / The posts tags are listed (if it has any) as an array of each tags name
3 / The posts categories are listed (if it has any) as an array of each categories name

The addition of tags and categories makes filtering the returned data quite easy.

Are there any other features that people want? I was looking at the user authentication aspect of Wordpress at work last week, and was wondering if people have the need to be able to authenticate users? Possibly useful for adding comments etc?

1/ I think I’ll add a user authentication method, it wont really log a user into wordpress, but it would be useful for testing user access rights etc. Thoughts?

Once I finish my noponies illustration site, I’ll release the source files, so that there are some richer examples of what can be done with Flash and Wordpress.

Simple Flash to browser console logging

If you are like me, you like to be able to trace out commands etc from Flash into your browser container. I generally use FlashTracer on Firefox or a more full featured debugger.

However, sometimes I simply want to trace elements into the console of either Safari or Firefox. This is as simple as using ExternalInterface and a small javascript method that takes a single parameter and writes it to the browsers console, via console.log(). Which can then be inspected via Safari’s debug panel or within Firebug on Firefox. And yes, I realise I could use Flashbug or something similar, but to be honest, I hardly ever use Firefox, hence the desire for something that works in Safari.

Simple example file is attached.

Source files
Simple Flash logging (219)

FlashPress 0.7 Released

Small update to FlashPress.

I’ve added in the ability to get a posts ‘Featured Image’, which was introduced in Wordpress 2.9.

At the moment it simply returns the thumbnail size. If there is any desire for the feature, I can add in the ability to get other sizes?

Source Files
Flash Press 0.7 (266)

FlashPress 0.6 Released

OK, I finally had some time to tidy this up a little.

So, here it is, FlashPress 0.6.

Supports both ZendAMF and AMFPHP. Supports Wordpress 3.0.

This version of FlashPress uses the Wordpress API rather than directly working on the wordpress database. It also includes write support for some methods. This is experimental and you should test this fully before deploying it. There is also an experimental search method, that will probably change internally as I get my head around the SQL required.

This is a beta, so let me know how you get on with it, and post any bugs etc so I can look into them.

The example file is minimal, with just a listing of the various method calls and their parameters. As I get time (unlikely) I’ll add to the examples. I’ll add the method lists to this post as I get some more time.

Note: I’ve tested this release against Wordpress 3.0, and it seems to be working fine. Let me know if you enounter any issues.

Source Files
Flash Press 0.6 (240)

Jquery Fullbrowser Background Images

I seem to be spending more and more time using jQuery than I do Flash, but I think that is just the nature of my current job. I’m actually really enjoying jQuery, it’s a breeze to use and in most instances you can do what you can do in Flash with javascript, only quicker.

To cut a long story short, I had a project come up that needed a javascript full browser background image class, and being the nerd I am, I thought I’d roll my own rather than use any existing jQuery plugins.

I approached it from a Flash standpoint, and tried to replicate the way I use my Flash full browser classes. So rather than operating on a container of image urls as most jQuery full browser plugins do I set this one up to respond to a method call, and load and display each image as requested. The reason for this approach was that I wanted the plugin to only load what images were requested, by me when I wanted them. I’m thinking however of adding in the ‘operate on a container of image urls’ approach to a future iteration.

As this is my first attempt at writing a jQuery plugin I’ve probably made a ton of noob mistakes. Let me know how it works and any bugs you encounter.

Plugin Features

  • Set Fade in time
  • Center image within browser window on x axis
  • Callback methods

An example of loading a single image;.
http://www.noponies.com/dev/jquery-npfullbrowser/static.htm

An example of setting up a slideshow;
http://www.noponies.com/dev/jquery-npfullbrowser/slideshow.htm

Source Files
Here is the relevant source file; jquery Full Browser Background Images (487)

By downloading, you agree to the terms of use, outlined here: http://www.blog.noponies.com/terms-and-conditions

Dependencies
Zero

Actionscript 3 watermark image class

A recent project needed a watermark added to any images that could be downloaded off the site. Originally we used a PHP solution, which worked fine. But I wanted to do it inside of Flash and use the save methods in FP10.

So, I wrote this simple little class to adding a water mark to a display object, and the returning that display object as bitmapdata for say, passing to Adobe’s jpg encoder.

Maybe someone will have some use for it?

Source Files
Here is the relevant source file; Watermark class (410)

By downloading, you agree to the terms of use, outlined here: http://www.blog.noponies.com/terms-and-conditions

Dependencies
Zero

Actionscript 3 RSS Reader Demo

I made this as a simple test for RSS parsing for a job a little while back, and it never was used for anything, so I’ll post it here as it may be of use to someone.

Its a simple RSS parser that uses the RSS and Atom libraries http://code.google.com/p/as3syndicationlib/ to handle parsing its RSS feeds. Although parsing RSS is trivial, I wanted to use a provided Adobe library for the hell of it.

The file is not overly documented and uses my scrolling panel and scrollbar classes to handle scrolling the RSS items.

An example is below.

The Flash plugin is required to view this object.

Source Files
Here is the relevant source file; Rss Reader Demo (454)

By downloading, you agree to the terms of use, outlined here: http://www.blog.noponies.com/terms-and-conditions

Dependencies
Zero

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