Looking for Inpiration
Many of you that know me on a day-to-day basis have seen or heard me talking about Macromedia Flash the last several months. I’ve been writing code since I was 12 which is about 25 years now –shuddering at the thought–. I have done just about everything: C, C++, BASIC/VB, .NET stuff, Delphi, script, bla bla bla. What I love using most is combining C++ with Javascript. I’ll talk about why someday but stick with me here. What inspired me to start coding and still inspires me today are video games. Why I never got into the game industry is beyond me. I love working with both sides of my brain; working on projects that exercise the artistic/creative side and the analytical/logical side.
About a year ago I felt like was in a rut. I needed something to inspire me. I needed something… something beautiful. I don’t know how else to describe it. I was in the bookstore every day looking at all the coding books looking for a new language, a new technology I haven’t tried… anything. I wandered a little further than I usually do; just past the linux books, ASP and web development… hmmm… Flash. I thought to myself, “I’ve never looked into Flash. I wonder what its all about. Sure are a lot of online games using this thing.” Scanning the Flash section I notice the Actionscript book
The Documentation Dance
So, after buying 6 or 7 books on flash, reading tons of tutorials I think I have a pretty good feel for Flash and know Actionscript fairly well. We have a project we are working on at work that requires some visualization. We decided, “Hey! Lets use Flash as the front end GUI!” Cool. I had heard about Flash Components and thought I would take a crack and making the GUI widgets Flash Components. I started digging and reading some documentation about components but discovered there really isn’t that much out there on how to make your own components. There are tid-bits here and there including Macromedia’s site but nothing I really found conclusive. Everything was more of a “using components” type of thing. Mostly very basic.
If you want it done right…
So that’s when I started my own Flash Component Creation Documentation. The first thing I started doing was going through the base classes (UIObject and UIComponent) and analyzing and documenting every line, every member and function. I registered FlashSecrets.com and plan on putting articles on component creation as well as any other topic on Flash that I had trouble finding. Ideally I’d like the site to center around game development but I think I’m going to also add component creation. Anything I consider advanced Flash coding.
I’ve just about finished commenting UIObject. As soon as I finish commenting UIComponent also, I think I’ll have enough to do a write up on those two alone as the start of a series on creating components.
Stay tuned!