On the 4th of this month, gskinner.com released version 2 of GTween. This version is more compact (3.5k) than the previous one, runs more efficiently, and introduces a new plugin model for greater ...

Flash SwitcherLets Firefox switch between different versions of the Flashplayer plugin, for compatibility debugging. This extension allows you to easily switch from one flash player plugin version to another, or also to remove or save the currently installed plugin (maybe for testing the express install). Once installed you will find the “flash switcher” icon in the Firefox statusbar at bottom right (and also in the Tools Firefox menu). Click on it and a list of available options will appear.

After updating the old FDT to 3.5beta, you have to crack it all over again. Thanks to halley for sending me the crack patch — sharing it here with anyone else who needs it. Click to download the FD...

The new site went into design and development on July 27 this year, mostly in my spare time. And now the construction is finally done — it’s shipped. http://www.mousebomb.org/ the homepage now redirects to the new version — go take a look. The new version really did drag on. Since the 2007 version I hadn’t updated my personal site for ages. In fact, before building this one I designed two other versions — one during Spring Festival 2008, and another in late September 2008. One of them was going to have a star-travel theme. On the first visit a login box would pop up saying “Commander, welcome back” (just like Tiberium Wars). Once inside, you’d see a galaxy where visitors piloted a spaceship to explore planets, could send out cosmic radio waves to chat, and so on.

Requires Flash Player 10

The first note on security sandboxes. Security sandboxes have tripped up plenty of people, so this is well-trodden ground. This afternoon I ran into error 2123. The scene of the crimeA certain list flash page needed to support gravatar avatars (gravatar’s cross-domain policy file lives at http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/crossdomain.xml). While loading the avatars they serve up, I hit a security sandbox violation, with this error: SecurityError: Error #2123: Security sandbox violation:

Last time I ran into the problem of Flash’s NavigateToURL being blocked in IE, and the fix was to set wmode. Last night I hit another wmode problem: a text input field in Flash (a genuine TextField in CS4, type=’input’), once embedded in a web page, couldn’t take Chinese input properly in Firefox — the IME worked, but everything typed came out garbled.

This article gives us a bit of insider gossip about Flash CS5. There are a few typos in it, and for someone whose English isn’t up to much, like me, it was enough to bring tears to your eyes. A few things I paid attention to: Adoption rateLooking at the current state of the Flash platform, FlashPlayer10 installs are still climbing, and the new figures are expected to reach over 90% coverage in the near term. Flash CS5 featuresThe biggest news for developers is that Flash authoring is finally integrated with FlashBuilder. If you’re using Flash CS5, you can export a new FlashBuilder project through a new export dialog.

ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds Book Overview The demand for multiplayer games and virtual worlds has exploded over the last few years. Not only do companies want them for site stickiness through social networking, but developers have tremendous interest in exploring this niche area. While developing multiplayer content is challenging, it isn’t as difficult as you might think, and it is fun and highly rewarding! ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds explains fundamental multiplayer concepts from connecting to a server to real-time latency hiding techniques. In this book you’ll learn: How to connect users to achieve real-time interaction When to make decisions on the server versus the game client Time synchronization techniques How to use dead reckoning smoothing to hide network latency About tile-based games the isometric view Techniques for customizing and rendering avatars in a virtual world In addition, you’ll learn everything that goes into building: A real-time multiplayer tank battle game A real-time multilayer cooperative game A virtual world

Based on the design, I found that Flash CS4’s Slider component is too thin — it needs to be thicker, i.e. I have to change the Slider’s height. I checked the API docs, and there’s nothing for setting the SliderTrackSkin’s height. Looks like I’ll have to dig into the UI components myself. Exploration… Result: In Flash CS4, the UI component files are under [X:\**]\Adobe Flash CS4\Common\Configuration\Components, and the source files are under [X:\**]\Adobe Flash CS4\Common\Configuration\Component Source\ActionScript 3.0\User Interface