Finally Fireworks CS4 is updated with a fix for the annoying text position bug. I have only had the update for a day but it appears to be working fine. More info @ the Fireworks blog.
Fireworks CS4 Updated
May 10th, 2009New Flash Wordpress template now available.
March 15th, 2009Hi all,
My new Flash - Wordpress template is now available from my lab. It is coded in Actionscript 3 using Flash CS4.
You can check out the example site in the lab too.
For more details click here
Microsoft: drop IE development and adopt Webkit
February 25th, 2009Why not?
I waste a lot of time making sites work in IE6 and still in IE7. The problems I face are too numerous to mention and are just plain embarrassing for anyone responsible of IE development. Plus with the Javascript processing speeds being achieved by Firefox, Safari and Chrome just make Microsoft look sad.
So, given the economic crisis, why doesn’t Microsoft sack their IE team, and put Webkit into their next web browser.
Blog updated to AS3
February 21st, 2009Hi all,
After several months of working in my spare time, I have finally launched a new version of my website, this time based on Actionscript 3.
I still have more work I want to do on the site before I am happy with it. Both visually, and behind the scenes.
Converting my website to AS3 was more difficult than I ever imagined. I have written a lot of stuff using Adobe Flex (see Lifetick’s app) and am very familiar with AS3 but in the Flash IDE it was very tough.
Flex builder is based on Eclipse and it is a very strong coding environment. For a start, all classes are automatically imported, there is great code completion (including completing your own classes, variables, function etc…) The debugging is excellent, including debugging from the browser, and it will not even compile if you have a problem in your code (flash sort of did this, but too many mistakes went through with out identification)
The problems with Flash CS4 are too numerous to mention. Aside from Performance, the workspace layout feels too complicated and cluttered. The new motion editor for tweens seems great, but just makes it harder to do simple tweens (maybe I need more time with it) The debugging was very difficult. As I said before, you could not debug from the browser only from a stand alone swf (if I am wrong about that, please correct me in the comments with instructions), The connection between classes and movie clips feels disjointed, movie clips are not as strict as classes but it feels weird to code, plus I didn’t seem to be able to override a function of the class my movie clip is based on.
At the end of the day, I didn’t enjoy making this new version of my site, I felt I battled with Flash the whole time, everything was a struggle, and it left me wanting to return to Flex as fast as possible. If you do any application building, you must try Flex, and leave flash behind, you will not believe the difference.
ps: I have removed the AS2 version of my template from sale, I hope to make the AS3 version available for sale at a later date.
It’s not just me: more Fireworks woes
February 8th, 2009I have the same text rendering problems as described on these sites:
- http://keithics.com/blog/article/adobe-fireworks-cs4-text-engine-problem/
- http://blogs.adobe.com/sarthak/2008/12/cs4_text_woes_workaround.html
- http://groups.google.com/group/macromedia.fireworks/browse_thread/thread/f0894c43dd3cd902/1e40b0fae5752226?lnk=raot
It is embarrassing to think the product was even released in this state.
Flash CS4 is a piece of junk and should never have been released
January 26th, 2009Just some random thoughts after my first real day working in CS4.
Lightning Review: Fireworks CS4
December 26th, 2008I have previously complained about Fireworks 8, and even Fireworks 9, which was just Fireworks 8 with the 8 crossed out and a 9 put in its place. Don’t get me wrong, I love Fireworks, and think it is the best app for designing User interfaces and Web sites, I just think it needs more work to be… well… a really great product.
However, things have changed and I have recently bought Fireworks CS4. Things are not perfect, but I’ll start with the good bits. (btw, these refer to the Mac version)
1) Application Window Mode. Grouping all the panels together in one window is a welcome improvement to the mac version. I was sick of repositioning small utilities windows and accidentally clicking outside of them and switching to another application.
2) Tabs: Finally, tabs comes to Mac! I don’t know why it took so long, but it is another welcome improvement.
3) Minor improvements to the UI, and feature enhancements. Lots of little bits and pieces over the entire app, too numerous to mention.
4) New concept of “Pages” - a bit like frames but useful if you create concept designs but need multiple page layouts.
Now the bad.
1) Slow, it is still slow and cumbersome. I would prefer a faster more lightweight app. That’s why I switched from Dreamweaver to TextMate. Basically, I want a TextMate equivalent to Fireworks. Anyone???
2) Buggy, there are a few bugs in it. The most annoying is the one where my text suddenly moves and is no longer sitting inside their bounds. Really bizarre bug, and very very annoying.
3) The upgrade process: I downloaded the trial, and after the 30 days I bought it online, however the serial number I was given didn’t work on the trial version. It just said invalid number. WTF!!! I called Adobe and they said to uninstall the trial version (and empty the trash) then download the version from my online Store account (isn’t it the same thing, why ask for a serial number on the trial?). So I did that, and then it couldn’t find Fireworks 8 or accept my Fireworks 8 serial number to do the upgrade!!!! So I was back on the phone to Adobe to sort it out. Not an ideal process. Why couldn’t it just work??
Overall its a welcome improvement, however I would only consider it a great app if it was 2001.
I am now trying out Flash CS4, and so far it looks good, but I think the Flex Builder has a more superior coding environment.
First Impression: Ruby on Rails
December 23rd, 2008I sat down and did something I had been wanting to do for ages. That was to learn Ruby, and work with the Ruby on Rails framework.
My first impressions was anger. WHY HAD I NOT LEARNT THIS AGES AGO!!!!
The structure seemed so logical and the behind the scenes structural setup was impressive. I couldn’t believe how fast I was able to get a working application going. It just makes me so annoyed that I have wasted so much time working with PHP for years.
I hope to report more on my experiences as time passes.
For the record, I followed these setup instructions and sample app:
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started_with_rails.html
I also used TextMate to write with, using the Ruby on Rails bundle.
Why I didn’t use XML-RPC
September 3rd, 2008I often hear people asking why I didn’t use XML RPC when I created my Wordpress - Flash Blog.
I thought I needed to explain my reasoning.
First up, Wordpress’s XML-RPC API appears to designed mainly for Creating Editing posts, not designing a front end. So you need to think about that fact when looking at my reasoning. For backend integration, it is alright… I guess.
My main criticism of the XML-PRC process is how verbose the XML requests and responses are.
By knowing exactly what information I need to make a database request, and exactly what information I need back, I can simplify the xml requests and responses to make them, smaller, faster, and simpler to understand and work with.
Here is a samplexmlrpc response, and a samplepressconnect response. The Press Connect response is half the size of the xml-rpc.
I know there are advantages to the xml-rpc specification, but I can’t personally warm too much to something that verbose when I can write my own function which does the job in half the time, and something which I find easier to work with.
New Look in September ‘08
September 1st, 2008Out of no-where I designed a new look for my website. I had been playing around with a few designs for the last few months, but at the end of last week, I finally hit a new design a liked, I hope you like it to.
I also have a few more blog posts planed and maybe even some new Flex code for the lab.
I am still selling the .fla template I used for my last site. I have no plans to re-sell this template at the moment.
I also must apologise for what I consider a usability flaw with the site, and that is that it doesn’t reset the scroll position when you change pages, but I had to disable that functionality because of a really bad redraw bug with Firefox on the Mac. - gee I hate Firefox on the mac! As always, I recommend Camino - but it is afflicted with the same bug because it uses the Mozilla engine. If anyone has any tips for a work around please share. (basically if I reset the scroll position using javascript, the flash movie goes white, except for any areas which have redrawn - like a button, or loading icon, but the rest of the movie remains completely white!!!)
For new visitors, this is a flash blog, which uses a Wordpress backend. I have developed my own php scripts to extract the data (which you can get for free from my lab), and just incase you are wondering why I don’t use XML-RPC, I plan to write about my reasons soon… hopefully.
Enjoy the site 