Free Flash Analog Clock 'Year of the Ox'

In meantime here is yet another free Flash analog clock 'Year of the Ox'. File is resizable and small and Ox sign actually moves around. When hours clock hand is on right side Ox sign is on left and vice verse, to have clean look at the sign all the time.

Download Ox clock

And if you wondered this is how it looks inside clock movie clip.


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Long journey ahead

I'm just at beginning of this as3.0 journey and already I can see it will be long one. I got the sense language is huge, not only because of many build-in classes and new language features but also because implementation of future acquired knowledge will be hard as hell. AS3.0 with it's object oriented programming features is more suitable for larger projects and teams of programmers and might be holdback for single freelance developers, while procedural style sometimes is not enough.

Events and event listeners are already familiar to me, but I haven't used them a lot. They scared me a little bit and I tried to avoid them in earlier projects. However, after diving in and trying to understand what's the fuss all about I realized they are far more flexible and easy to grasp with than I previously believed. Point is to practice in writing them and after a while they come as something very natural.

Since I have some experience with DOM, jQuery and stuff like that concept of Event Propagation was already familiar to me and I find Display List easy to understand, but also addChild() is my new favorite method.

Oh, right, frame rate can be change during runtime - very cool!

As for OOP features, inheritance is simple, composition is OK and encapsulation is something to work on but can be mastered, but polymorphism is much harder, at least for me. I guess this is also question of prectise and writing code. I'm in a process of collecting links to as3.0 tutorial blogs, so drop me a line if you know any good or you are author of one.

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Smooth ActionScript Transition

If you follow my updates via Twitter, you probably already know about my decision to finally seriously start with ActionScript 3.0, something I have tried to avoid for a very loong time. In the end I couldn't ignore it any more and I realized that transition doesn't have to be rough with right tools.

First of all I have convinced myself that AS3.0 is completely new language, it's version number doesn't have anything to do with previous versions (besides creators) and I should start from scratch. Fact that I'm not so good at AS2.0 nether can only help :)

I'm starting with two books, first one I already wrote about is Learning ActionScript 3.0 : A Beginner's Guide, check my review.

Second book is The ActionScript 3.0 Migration Guide: Making the Move from ActionScript 2.0 and I'm not sure if latter one will help me or bother me on my way.

Since I have some experience with Java I found AS3.0 much more like it and some new language features are just like those in Java. Actually, I think AS3.0 is closer to Java than to AS2.0! (and I don't mean classes but OOP features). I read about Event Propagation, bubbling and Events in general and it's very easy to understand - for now. I must say I'm more excited about learning AS3.0 than I was when started with AS2.0. Wish me luck.
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Flash Analog Quartz Clocks

I completely forgot about my Flash clocks folder, waiting for publishing and now is the time to give them away. This time I give you two similar Flash analog quartz clocks, blue one and brick one. Both are 8kb, resizable. Use it and share it freely (don't sell it, please).

Another 20+ clocks are waiting in same folder for some future posts. Stay around by subscribing to RSS feed in a reader or if you want to receive updates via email use blue box on left sidebar. Also, feel free to send your design and I'll make it a clock !

DOWNLOAD CLOCKS

need more Flash clocks?

- Classic Blue Flash Analog Clock
- Worldmap Flash Analog Clock
- more free downloads

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New Flash Stock Marketplace

Let's start with something new. If we look at online stock services, vast majority are about digital photography, raster and vector stock images like Fotolia, iStockPhoto, BigStockPhoto and many others. Different content is much less represented. One of few services that deals with Flash stock files is FlashDen marketplace, part of Envato creative ecosystem.

FlashDen has both author and referral programs. Author program starts with 25% earnings and goes up when earnings are higher. Referral program is one of the best. They offer amazing 50% on any referred sale in 3 months period (was last time I checked).

If you are familiar with AdrianTNT service you know it works few years now offering Flash menus, buttons, components and libraries. This long experience has created new service, MMFiles (which stands for MultiMedia files), Flash stock marketplace with excellent programs.

Adrian offers 60% to all authors! This is really the highest rate out there! This is also direct response to FlashDen, hugely criticized by community for low 25% rate for starters. MMFiles also has 40% referral share rate, which is also great. However, MMFiles is very new, currently has only about 150 files online. This means support by bloggers is essential in this stage, hence this post.

Do you think MMfiles has any chance to establish itself as Flash stock marketplace and does they need community support?

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