Ginormous

Embedding Flash fonts for use with Flash Builder 4 Actionscript projects

Grant Davies — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 08:12:02 -0400

So I was having a very hard time getting some fonts to embedd in a game I was working on using the Push Button Engine, the fonts refused to embed in a screen even though I had them embedding in the flash file ( that gets exported as a swc), had them set for export in the flash file and then registered them and used text formats in the actionscript code. I read somewhere that flex 4 had broken some of the flash font embedding when using in Flash Builder ( the old Flex builder) to build an actionscript/flash project not using the Flex SDK.

I managed to get it working by embedding the fonts in code and setting the embedAsCFF to false since my flash text fields where classic text boxes.

[Embed(source="/fonts/ARIALBD.TTF", fontFamily="ArialEmbedded", embedAsCFF="false")] public static var ArialEmbedded:String;

( in the screen that used the code...)

var format : TextFormat = new TextFormat(); format.font = "ArialEmbedded"; levelEndScreenMC.scoreMC.textField.defaultTextFormat = format;

Once I did that and used that as a text format for my text boxes :

Everything started behaving.

Styling anchor tags on a Flex RichEditableText control

Grant Davies — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:56:21 -0400

I'm using dynamic text on a flex sdk 4.1 RichEditable text control. I pass the control some html via the TextConverter class like this

<s:RichEditableText
id="partnerShipCopyRichText" width="600" height="250" clipAndEnableScrolling="true" verticalAlign="top" styleName="contentCopy" editable="false" selectable="true"
textFlow="{TextConverter.importToFlow(partnerShipCopy, TextConverter.TEXT_FIELD_HTML_FORMAT)}">
</s:RichEditableText>

The "copy" includes some anchor tags ( hrefs) and when rendered by default the anchor tags are blue. I tried various solutions that appeared to work pre flex sdk 4.1 but stopped rendering the entire copy block. The solution I found was to use the TextLayoutFormatValueHolder class instead of the TextLayoutFormat class. I beleive using the TextLayoutFormat causes an internal type co-ercion except that is caught by the framework but not returned to the caller so the rendering fails without a visible exception.

To provide "global" anchor tag formatting this code works for me :

import flashx.textLayout.elements.Configuration; import flashx.textLayout.elements.TextFlow; import flashx.textLayout.formats.TextDecoration; import flashx.textLayout.formats.TextLayoutFormat; import flashx.textLayout.formats.TextLayoutFormatValueHolder;

var config:Configuration = TextFlow.defaultConfiguration;

var normalTLF:TextLayoutFormatValueHolder = new TextLayoutFormatValueHolder(config.defaultLinkNormalFormat); normalTLF.color = 0xFF00FF; var hoverTLF:TextLayoutFormatValueHolder = new TextLayoutFormatValueHolder(config.defaultLinkHoverFormat); hoverTLF.color = 0xFF0000; hoverTLF.textDecoration = TextDecoration.NONE; var activeTLF:TextLayoutFormatValueHolder = new TextLayoutFormatValueHolder(config.defaultLinkActiveFormat); activeTLF.color = 0x00FF00; config.defaultLinkNormalFormat = normalTLF; config.defaultLinkHoverFormat = hoverTLF; config.defaultLinkActiveFormat = activeTLF; TextFlow.defaultConfiguration = config;

I may end up creating an example when I get five minutes!

Rock and Roll Hotel release 1

Grant Davies — Mon, 09 May 2011 22:34:46 -0400

Just skinned the Rock and Roll Hotel release 1 for Ticket Alternative and sent to our beta testers!

Testflight - iOS over the air beta testing

Grant Davies — Sat, 07 May 2011 14:20:55 -0400

Used testflight for the Rock and Roll Hotel app we are building for Ticket Alternative, pretty impressed, build an adhoc ipa distribution in Xcode, upload to testflight, email comes to your phone and tesflight app, you select install, it works! You can add testers to your team in the Test flight admin interface, this is way more efficient than emailing a app and having testers install via iTunes.

https://testflightapp.com/

Adding facebook comments to a .Net page

Grant Davies — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:56:43 -0400

Facebook makes it very easy to add comments to a website but with their old api and new api and updates its often difficult to follow what you should and shouldn't be doing. In the end the code was very simple but it took us a few rounds to get it correct. Bluetube interactive implemented facebook comments for one of our clients Ticket Alternative as follows :

Setup your commenting "app"

First you need to create an app for your comments and if you have multiple websites I'd suggest creating an app with a unique name.. You do this under "my apps" in your facebook account, you can read more about it here.

You should now have an app id, and you'll want to cut/paste this somewhere for easy retrieval, it will look something like :

204151772941335

(example app id, don't use it)

Getting the code

You can then get facebook to generate the comment code for you

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/

You then need to paste that code into your page, correcting the appid if its wrong ( I have multuple app id's so it chose the wrong one)

The code will look something like this :

<fb:comments href="example.com" num_posts="2" width="500"></fb:comments>

I changed the num_posts to 10 and I also had a function on my clients website to generate the URL ( its .net) so mine looked like this

<fb:comments href="<% =this.GetFriendlyURL() %>" num_posts="10" width="500"></fb:comments>

I wanted to moderate comments so I had to add two meta tags to my main page ( this is a .net site with master pages so I had to add it to my master page)

< meta property ="fb:app_id" content ="204151772941335">

< meta property ="fb:admins" content ="somemadeupfacebookname,anotherexamplefacebookname">

Results

Voila, we have comments on our clients event pages

http://www.ticketalternative.com/Events/13865.aspx

Grant Davies — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:13:37 -0400

We launched the Dali microsite for the High Museum of Art : http://bit.ly/aZZT2r

SQLExpress remote connection woes

Grant Davies — Tue, 04 May 2010 22:08:13 -0400

Just been fighting with getting sql server express to allow remote connections, followed all the NB articles at microsoft to enable remote connections using the sql server surface configuration tool.

Microsoft KB article

I opened the ports in our firewall, doing a netstat revealed no process listening on port 1433.

I looked at the event log for errors, didn't see any, then started going through the event log entries from sql server. I noticed one that stated that sql server was ready for connections on any ip on port 1117, this made no sense to me.

I opened the Sql Server Management tool, went to the Protocols for SQL Server express, then selected TCP and properties. the IP All section showed TCP Dynamic ports on 1117 and nothing on TCP Port, so on whim I added 1433 and voila, remote connections are now allowed. never had to do this before.

Bluetube Interactive site updates

Grant Davies — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:56:18 -0500

just updated bluetube interactives website www.bluetubeinteractive.com with a bunch of news, new portfolio items and images.

We re now in the Adobe Solutions Partner Directory
Added allure of the Automoble
Added Leonardo
New news
Information on Flash Talk I'll be giving on Feb 23rd at the Atlanta Flash Users Group

Grant Davies will be speaking at the Atlanta Flash Users Group

Grant Davies — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:08:23 -0500

Grant Davies will be speaking at the upcoming Atlanta Flash Users Group meetup on Feburary 23, The talk we be on the site built by Bluetube Interactive - Defend the Dome.

The talk will cover:

How the assets for a 38mb website where managed so users still had a "good" experience
How the site was architected
How traditional flash timeline animation with action script control
How video was incorporated and used to simulate a 3d experience
How high scores/signup was implemented and reduce spoofing / hacking
How the keyboard sequencers and timers where built and we could control the easy/difficulty of the games
The lessons we learned

Bluetube Interactive Launches Allure of the Automobile

Grant Davies — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:54:03 -0500

Bluetube Interactive and Gnoggin Studios launched Allure of the Automobile this week, a flash based micro site for the upcoming automobiles exhibit for the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The Exhibition will feature some of the worlds most beautiful pieces of machinery ( cars ) and the micro site will allow patrons to preview the exhibit, learn about the cars and share their car stories online.