Catchy title about Astro

Off course I’m gonna write about Astro! It’s a big news, everyone writes about it, so why should I be exception? Astro is code name for next version of Adobe Flash Player 10. While still in beta, meaning not much support, new features are known and explained on Labs .

While others are in agony for new info about FP10, some are already way ahead, testing and writing tutorials, like senocular on drawing API.

Non-developers don’t need to do anything yet, since beta is just that – beta, but they do need to prepare themselves for totally new experience FP10 enhancements are bringing. If you are still eager to try FP10, you will need to first uninstall previous FP versions and don’t expect many demos just yet.

Download Flash Player 10

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Flex components styling

Flex applications are known by their default theme. Changing default colors and fonts of Flex applications is called styling. Everything you can do with HTML, you can do also with Flex, because main responsibility for styling is on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). You can create your CSS file directly typing code in your MXML file using Style tag or using external CSS file.

In Flex Builder, best practice is to create ‘assets’ folder within your project and create new CSS file, let’s say ‘mystyle.css’. Then you make reference line to include that file with Style tag, source property:

source="/assets/mystyle.css"

If you want easier way for styling your components, try Flex Style Explorer . This free online tool will help you achieve visually awesome results in no time. When you are finished playing, copy CSS code and paste it in previously created mystyle.css file. You can even run the Flex Style Explorer inside of Flex Builder or download SWF and run it from desktop. Great!

Now let’s take a look at example simple navigation . We have ViewStack and LinkBar components. Using Flex Style Explorer I altered LinkBar appearance, which is also possible for every Flex component.

Here is CSS code:

/* CSS file */
LinkBar {
borderStyle: outset;
borderColor: #999999;
horizontalGap: 12;
separatorWidth: 2;
letterSpacing: 1;
cornerRadius: 0;
backgroundAlpha: 1;
backgroundColor: #0099cc;
separatorColor: #333333;
rollOverColor: #006699;
textRollOverColor: #cccccc;
textSelectedColor: #ffffff;
disabledColor: #ffffff;
fontSize: 10;
fontWeight: bold;
dropShadowEnabled: true;
shadowDistance: 4;
shadowDirection: right;
}

download style

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Flex example: simple navigation

Coding in Flex is possible in different ways, which depends on habits and personal style. Someone likes pure code, simple text editors and messing with compiler, while others are much happier with heavy IDEs. Flex Builder has more to offer with both styles, source coding and design approach.

Next example shows how to create simple navigation with just few lines of code. We use natural combination of two tags ViewStack and LinkBar. ViewStack has four Canvas tags and every one of them includes one Text field. Just to make difference between Canvases text fields have labels Home, Portfolio, About and Contact.

Connection between ViewStack and LinkBar is made with properties. ViewStack has id property with value “myViewStack” and LinkBar property dataProvider with same value. Grab source code below.

Download source.

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From yesterday, Flanture is part of Flex Bookmarks, very nice Flash directory.

AIR for JS developers free ebook

First of all if you didn’t noticed now is the right time to start with Adobe AIR, when 1.0 is out and stable and you have one more reason for this if you are JavaScript developer. That reason is Air for JavaScript developers pocket guide free ebook which you can buy in paper or download for free in PDF file format. The book is published under Creative Commons 3.0 license, meaning you can copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work. Book has 204 pages packed with general introduction writings about AIR, but also has mini-cookbook inside which covers topics from Windowing and File API to Embedded Database and Networking.

On right sidebar I have asked you another poll question: What do you want to read about on Flanture. Feel free to give your answer and contribute. This is 4th poll in this series and many more will come. If you feel like writing for Flanture and you find yourself in some aspect of Flash Platform, submit your article and I will publish it as guest blogger’s post. Your writings must be unique and exclusive for this blog.

Flanture also feels quite happy about new Blogger’s feature - scheduled posting. It is one of those things when you say something like: This is invented just now? It’s better now than never.

Learn Flash Video

Flash CS3 Video book is written by Tom Green and Adam Thomas. Tom Green is professor of interactive multimedia in Toronto, he is working with Community MX and he contributes to Adobe Developer Center. Adam Thomas is a professor of rich media and web development. He runs Robin Hood Tech web studio. Here is a shorten list of what you will learn from this book by chapters:

Best practices of using the Flash CS3 Video Encoder
How to create the FLV Playback component

How to use video and audio clips in a Windows Movie Maker project
How to prepare video projects for Flash video

How to create an FLV file using Flix Pro
How to preview an FLV file

How to use the FLV Playback custom UI components
How to use a Video object in Flash
How to use ActionScript3.0 to add components at runtime

How to create an Alpha channel video in a video editor
How to create reflected video

How to apply simple effects to video
How ActionScript is used to programmatically add filters and blend modes to video

How to use ActionScript to create and apply masks and masking effects
How to use the Tween class to animate masks

Used the color tools and filters to create an iPod ad
Used SWFObject to place a Flash SWF file in a web page

Used a series of movieclips to trigger FLV file playback
Discovered how to play a sequence of videos

How to create a simple webcam feed
How to use a webcam to detect motion

Learned how to embed cue points in an FLV file using the Flash Video Encoder
Discovered how to use components and ActionScript to navigate through an FLV file

Learned how to author video applications for a cell phone
Discovered how to convert a Flash movie to a QuickTime video