A couple of weeks ago I posted a bitmap effect I’d created a while back using the BitmapData class in AS3. It works pretty well, but the problem with it is that it’s a bit limited, in the sense that it can really only be used with a static image. (You could use it with an animation, but not...

You may have seen the news earlier today that an open source version of Wolfenstein 3D was released for the iPhone. John Carmack has written a lengthy, but very interesting description of the process of why it was done and how the porting the game to iPhone hardware went. If you’re interested at...

Pop quiz: In AS3, are static methods & variables inherited by subclasses? Answer: No. Static methods and properties of classes are not inherited by subclasses. You can however access the static members of a parent class from within it’s subclasses. This question came up today as I was helping...

I saw this effect a long time ago, and wanted to use it in a project, but after about ten minutes of searching for the original, I gave up and just decided to make my own. See it in action. This is just a basic bitmap effect that uses BitmapData to draw an image, with the pixels spilling down from the...

Are you, or do you know any Flex developers that have amazing skills? Rain (the company I work for) is currently looking for a senior Flex developer, and if you’ve got what it takes, we want you. More details on the job posting are online at: http://mediarain.com/us/employment/flexdeveloper Rain...

Working on a recent project, I needed to collect mailing addresses, and to get the state info I decided use a ComboBox. I know I’ve done this before in the past, so I went looking for the code defining the list of states so I wouldn’t have to type it all up again, but after about five minutes...

I’ve been a big fan of the ASDoc tool since I first found out it was in the Flex SDK. Just in case you’re not sure what ASDoc is, it’s command-line tool that’s used to generate documentation for your code, just like the online documentation that Adobe provides for Flex and ActionScript...

For a new project at work, I’ve been really digging into building iPhone apps. I’ve been pretty happy with using Xcode and Interface Builder for the work, and they’re some great tools. The only problem is that to be really productive in an IDE, you need to learn a bunch of the various...

By now, most Flash developers know that ActionScript 3.0 is a huge improvement over ActionScript 1.0 & 2.0. These improvements come in the form of faster performance, enhanced features, and the general awesomeness that comes with using the AVM 2 in Flash Player 9. However, one of the biggest hurdles...

While digging through my archives, I came across this little experiment I did back in January of 2005. I had been playing a lot with the drawing API in Flash, and got the idea to try redrawing a bitmap image, but using the drawing API. As this was originally done in the days of Flash 7, before we had...