I love the Trance Around The World radio show by Above and Beyond, downloading  it for listening later is very annoying however and involves some fiddling with browser source and other things, so to make life easier I built this little tool. What it does is grab the HTML from the above and beyond page then parse it for the MP3 file, then it uses the FileReference class in flash to download it to your HD.

Anyways, enough jibber jabber. Source is enabled:

Hope you enjoy!

Thankfully however adobe provide the tools to allow for resizing the native window. So I produced this little mxml component to let you resize the window:

The coloured edges indicate where the application is draggable, including the white corner areas.

The component that lets you do this is pretty simple:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:Group xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
		 xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
		 xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/halo">

	<fx:Script>
		<![CDATA[
			import flash.display.NativeWindowResize;
			import flash.events.MouseEvent;

			import mx.managers.CursorManager;
			public static const RESIZE_AREA : int = 10;

			protected function onRollOver(event:MouseEvent):void
			{
			}

			protected function onRollOut(event:MouseEvent):void
			{
			}

			protected function onMouseDown(event:MouseEvent):void
			{
				var grp : Group = event.target as Group;
				var resizeFrom:String = "";

				if (grp==topSide){ resizeFrom=NativeWindowResize.TOP;	}
				else if (grp==rightSide) { resizeFrom=NativeWindowResize.RIGHT; }
				else if (grp==bottomSide) { resizeFrom=NativeWindowResize.BOTTOM; }
				else if (grp==leftSide) { resizeFrom=NativeWindowResize.LEFT;	}
				else if (grp==topLeft) { resizeFrom=NativeWindowResize.TOP_LEFT;	}
				else if (grp==topRight) { resizeFrom=NativeWindowResize.TOP_RIGHT;	}
				else if (grp==bottomRight) { resizeFrom=NativeWindowResize.BOTTOM_RIGHT;	}
				else if (grp==bottomLeft) { resizeFrom=NativeWindowResize.BOTTOM_LEFT;	}
				else { return; }

				stage.nativeWindow.startResize(resizeFrom);
			}

		]]>
	</fx:Script>

	<s:Group id="topSide" rollOver="onRollOver(event)" rollOut="onRollOut(event)" mouseDown="onMouseDown(event)"
			 x="0" y="0" width="{width}" height="{RESIZE_AREA}">
		<s:Rect width="100%" height="100%">
			<s:fill>
				<s:SolidColor color="0xFF0000" />
			</s:fill>
		</s:Rect>
	</s:Group>

	<s:Group id="rightSide" rollOver="onRollOver(event)" rollOut="onRollOut(event)" mouseDown="onMouseDown(event)"
			 x="{width-RESIZE_AREA}" y="0" width="{RESIZE_AREA}" height="{height}">
		<s:Rect width="100%" height="100%">
			<s:fill>
				<s:SolidColor color="0x00FF00" />
			</s:fill>
		</s:Rect>
	</s:Group>

	<s:Group id="bottomSide" rollOver="onRollOver(event)" rollOut="onRollOut(event)" mouseDown="onMouseDown(event)"
			 x="0" y="{height-RESIZE_AREA}" width="{width}" height="{RESIZE_AREA}">
		<s:Rect width="100%" height="100%">
			<s:fill>
				<s:SolidColor color="0x0000FF" />
			</s:fill>
		</s:Rect>
	</s:Group>

	<s:Group id="leftSide" rollOver="onRollOver(event)" rollOut="onRollOut(event)" mouseDown="onMouseDown(event)"
			 x="0" y="0" width="{RESIZE_AREA}" height="{height}">
		<s:Rect width="100%" height="100%">
			<s:fill>
				<s:SolidColor color="0x000000" />
			</s:fill>
		</s:Rect>
	</s:Group>

	<s:Group id="topLeft" rollOver="onRollOver(event)" rollOut="onRollOut(event)" mouseDown="onMouseDown(event)"
			 x="0" y="0" width="{RESIZE_AREA}" height="{RESIZE_AREA}">
		<s:Rect width="100%" height="100%">
			<s:fill>
				<s:SolidColor color="0xffffff" />
			</s:fill>
		</s:Rect>
	</s:Group>

	<s:Group id="topRight" rollOver="onRollOver(event)" rollOut="onRollOut(event)" mouseDown="onMouseDown(event)"
			 x="{width-RESIZE_AREA}" y="0" width="{RESIZE_AREA}" height="{RESIZE_AREA}">
		<s:Rect width="100%" height="100%">
			<s:fill>
				<s:SolidColor color="0xffffff" />
			</s:fill>
		</s:Rect>
	</s:Group>

	<s:Group id="bottomRight" rollOver="onRollOver(event)" rollOut="onRollOut(event)" mouseDown="onMouseDown(event)"
			 x="{width-RESIZE_AREA}" y="{height-RESIZE_AREA}" width="{RESIZE_AREA}" height="{RESIZE_AREA}">
		<s:Rect width="100%" height="100%">
			<s:fill>
				<s:SolidColor color="0xffffff" />
			</s:fill>
		</s:Rect>
	</s:Group>

	<s:Group id="bottomLeft" rollOver="onRollOver(event)" rollOut="onRollOut(event)" mouseDown="onMouseDown(event)"
			 x="0" y="{height-RESIZE_AREA}" width="{RESIZE_AREA}" height="{RESIZE_AREA}">
		<s:Rect width="100%" height="100%">
			<s:fill>
				<s:SolidColor color="0xffffff" />
			</s:fill>
		</s:Rect>
	</s:Group>

</s:Group>

To use it in your app just add the component into your existing view somewhere:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:SkinnableContainer xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark" xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/halo">

	<components:WindowResizer width="{width}" height="{height}" alpha="0" buttonMode="true" />

</s:SkinnableContainer>

Setting the alpha to zero will obviously hide the coloured areas at the side of the window.

Grab the mxml here: WindowResizer.mxml

For a while now (alot longer than I had hoped for) I have been working on a project that falls outside the realms of my usual kind of games-related projects. Im not ready do describe exactly what it is yet but im excited about it.

For months I have been struggling with the techinal challenges the project has entailed and I have dabbled with many new and highly diverse technologies including JavaFX (Java), Qt (C++) and Mono (C#).  I have been looking for a cross-platform technology that will get the job done that I need and doing it in an elegant manner.

I thought I had found it with a combination of JavaFX and straight Java using the PureMVC framework. I however was plagued with problems throughout with Bonjour, jGroups, JmDNS, JNI and JNA.

So after months of work, hardship and struggles I read a very interesting article on the up-and-coming Adobe AIR 2.0  that was opened for beta in December. With 2.0 Adobe are bringing NativeProcess  to Air. What this means is that you can you can execute native code (.dlls, .so, .jar etc) from Air. To me this was bloody brilliant as I had been playing with Air reccently and my day-job heavily involves Flex and I simply love the power and beauty of Flex.

So what this meant to me was that I could write the bulk of my project including its interface in my much preferred Adobe Flex (Air) and then use Native Process to communicate with a small kernel of Java that would do all the dirty work that Air itself cant do.

So after a little playing with Flerry for Air->Java bridge I started to think about the structure of the code and the framework I would use. For my initial few runs at this project I had been using the Java version of PureMVC. I really like some aspects of PureMVC but I think its can be so overly cumbersome in some circumstances (ill write another post on this in the future I think). So instead I looked at the alternatives.

I have been using Mate alot recently at work and on my own mini-project the Audio Book Organiser. However as this project is partly for my own learning and personal growth I decided to look at what else there was out there. From the videos by Jessie Warden I had heard about Robot Legs. Apparently this framework has been around for a while, but it was the first I had heard of it. Taking at look at it I immediately became very excited as it looks like it offers all the things that make PureMVC great but without the extra coding-baggage that goes with it.

To add to my interest it appears another very interesting, very new action-script technology has been introduced into Robot Legs called Signals by Robert Penner. Signals is an alternative to the standard events dispatching method found throughout flash (more on this in another post).

So why have I called this post “the bleeding edge?”. Well Adobe Air 2.0 is still in beta and has only been for a month or so. Its so new that some parts still havent been documented atall and the only way to find out how they work is to post a msg to the devs on the forums. Signals is also new and its integration into Robot Legs is very new indeed (last coupple of weeks). So at the moment I feel as if im at the forefront of some very new, very exciting technology, a stark contrast to my fiddlings with the ancient Java.

I realise this post is very text and tech-heavy but I needed to post about it before I forgot all the pain I have gone through with this project to get where I am at the moment. Future posts ill be delving a little deeper into some of my experiments with these new technologies ;)

I think its actually quite genius:

It reminds me old the old powers of 10 video:

Thought id mention these videos as I have been watching them and really like the content. They are a series of video blog posts by one of the ‘celebrities’ of the Flash and Flex world, in which he talks about lots of stuff related to whats going on in the industry and the various frameworks he uses or recommends (or doesnt). He also has a few things to say about beer, which is a bonus!

Anyways theres three of them so far, and can be watched over on his blog:

1 vs Many, Mediator vs Presenter, 30 mins – JXLTV – Episode #1
Conferences, Why Frameworks, Cairngorm 3 – JXLTV – Episode #2
Apple’s iPad, HTML5 Video, Gaia Flash Framework – JXLTV – Episode #3