March 28, 2004 (462 Words)
I started this project pretty hasty in Flash MX2004. When I realised that Robert Penner's bezier equations wouldn't work in Actionscript 2.0 the simple solution was to swap to Actionscript 1.0 in the 'Publish Preferences'. The more I code in AS1.0 the more I feel guilty for not learning AS2.0 and some of the new features like Screens. I know I'm gonna need them soon, so I decided to rebuild my application, taking advantage of AS2.0, that way I can easily use some of the components like drop-down boxes and windows etc. I started to look at some of the new features...
Actionscript 2.0
It was fairly easy to adjust Penner's equations. AS1.0 was a bit relaxed on prototypes and didn't like extending the Math object without a proper class°. I just created a new object Math2, problem solved. Now I know I should write a whole class but if it ain't broke...The way AS2.0 uses classes is very cool for creating applications, but because my application takes some time to format a large TTF file, I need to spread it out on a timed loop, eg.. processing letter a..., processing letter b... etc. This might get confusing when using classes and creating some kind of trigger for when it ends would be hassle, so I decided to leave it the way it is. Again, it ain't broke.
Screens
So, I liked the look of screens and quickly organised my project onto individual screens, which was neat for a bit until I couldn't get them talking to each other... just simply setting some variables was quite painstaking and It seemed kind of unpredictable. Also I learnt that all screens are on frame° 1 therefore cannot have a preloader. As a future thought, I would like this on the web, so maybe screens were a bad idea for me. I'm not too sure at the moment, I might revisit it later. Also, for some reason, an application developed using screens takes ages to publish, which would slow me down and be very frustrating.
Projects
Aha, so now I have a flash Project with all my required files in. Very neat. But I wish it kept a history of file versions. It seems a bit silly for me to check files in and out, when I am the only on working on it. Let's see how long it lasts. I am now using a program called AfterThought Lite which will backup my work in date named folders. So I now have a full history of my developments.
Overall, Flash MX2004 hasn't done much for me, but it's a start. At least I can now take advantage of some AS2.0 Components (like sliders and colourpickers) to develop my work faster.