I have a new article at Community MX that covers how you can use XSLT with ColdFusion and ASP.NET.
The article covers the creation of the XSLT document and code samples for performing a server-side transformation in either ColdFusion or ASP.NET.
Looks like Google is wowing us again with it’s Google Suggest. As you type your search term, google offers keyword suggestions in real time. They even show how many matchs that suggestion will deliver. This is yet another very inpressive use of technology to provide real-time search suggestions.
I’ve created a Published Works section on my site so everyone can see my most recent articles. I’m up to 8 articles at Community MX now. The most recent article is titled Managing Intervals in Flash. Check it out and let me know what you think. :)
I got to New Orleans for the MAX conference yesterday. I’m expecting a great conference. Only problem so far is the wireless connection. I had to go down the street to a local resturant to get internet access. It’s amazing how dependant I am on the web. :) I feel much better now.
During the keynote on Tuesday Mike Downey from Macromedia showed off the alpha channel functionality in the next version of Flash Player code named Maelstrom.
I know most people saw the video Moock put on his blog, but the keynote showed an additional feature. The alpha channel supports levels of opacity. He demonstrated by showing smoke, water and fire over the top of static Flash content. WOW! This stuff rocks.
I’m also really excited after talking about a lot of the performance enhancements and…dare I say ActionScript 3.0!
It hasn’t been officially confirmed by anyone at Macromedia, but with all the activity going on at ECMA and the hints being dropped everywhere, its fairly obvious that it is in the works.
The Birds-of-a-Feather sessions last night were great too. The Flash Engineering team should really be commended for all of their advancements in both the Player and the IDE. Looks like they may have even added the most requested feature into the next version of Flash Player…file upload capability.
I have two new tutorials/articles over at Community MX. The first is on how to create a filter for the Macromedia V2 List Component. The tutorial also covers how to do this same thing in JavaScript. This will give you an idea of how the two languages compare.
Creating a Filter For the List Component
The second article was just released today. It covers a technique for integrating the browser’s history into your Flash movie’s navigation. Using this technique will allow you to log navigation events in the browser’s history, therefore allowing the back and forward buttons to control your Flash navigation.
Check out my new Singleton article over at Community MX.
Flash 8 is currently in development and its codename is 8Ball. There has recently been a lot of dicussion about what this release will include and who it will be geared toward. The last two releases of the Flash IDE have been focused on developers. Therefore, according to Mike Chambers of Macromedia, 8Ball will be focused on designer enhancements.
Mike talks about this at his blog. You can read it here.
While I am a developer that does very little design, I understand the importance of designer tools in the IDE. I personally feel that the developer enhancements that need to be made are in the Flash Player. The following is a short list of some enhancements I would like to see to the ActionScript language:
Check out my lastest article at Community MX on creating a timeline controller class. This controller class will alloww you to play a timeline animation forward and backward. You can see it here.
B-Line Express has just released a beta of its highly anticipated BLDoc application. This is an ActionScript 2.0 documentation generator. It introspects your classes and any JavaDoc-style comments to produce the documentation.
Very nice tool, check it out: BLDoc