Updated: Google -Dis-Re-approved My Ad (Rant) · 6 days ago by Pickle
UPDATE: The Google AdWords team actually read the letter I sent them. I was a little worried that they would cancel my other ads, but that was not the case. “Thank you for your email and for bringing this to our notice“ (Google) Apparently they made a mistake and have reinstated my ad. So I just want to say: Google, I’m sorry if I overreacted with my venty letter… and AdWords is pretty awesome, and by far the cheapest per-click advertising I buy.
My AdWords ad was just rejected by everyone’s favorite search girlfriend, Google. I never realized that Google does not allow certain words to be used by advertisers. So of course I tried to guess what other words are also forbidden: Sex, Porn, Cigarette. Smoking is allowed, although most (but not all) of the ads are for people trying to quit. I was a little surprised to find that Gay is allowed and the first ad was for Online Hot Gay Movies…
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New AS3 Site Now Live · 8 days ago by Pickle
My upgraded website has gone live. The previous AS2 version of this website was the basis for the AS2 version of the AFW Template. This new version will be the basis for the AS3 version. The Textpattern back-end system made the switch instantaneous. Hopefully I’ll have more time to publish articles now that this site has launched.
The New Hookah Cafe Website: http://www.hookah-cafe.com
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Publish And Exclude: Flash CS3 Plugin for Optimizing File Size · 54 days ago by Pickle
Thank Matthew Tretter for hacking into existence the AS2 feature mysteriously missing from AS3. In AS2, class files could be excluded from compilation with an xml file filename_exclude.xml which listed classes to be excluded from filename.swf. I’ve modified and packaged his JSFL script into an MXP file for quick and easy installation.
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Seamlessly Combining 2D and 3D in Flash with Planes, Part 1 [AS3] · 66 days ago by Pickle
Integrating Papervision3D in a useful way can be tricky. Suppose you’ve created some useful website widget. When the user clicks the settings button, the widget does a 3D-flip and shows the settings controls on the other side. To achieve this in AS3 and Papervision3D, temporarily transfer both display components into a plane, using MovieMaterial. Hide the component, spin the plane by tweening rotationY (or rotationX), and when the tween is complete make the settings component visible.
In the case where you’re transferring only one display component to one Papervision3D viewport, it’s pretty simple to implement this kind of functionality. It starts to get tricky when you want to transfer multiple display components to one viewport and have those components interact in some way with a 3D world.
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How-To: Rockstar Flash Programming [AS3] · 88 days ago by Pickle
Rockstar Flash programming is about making cool stuff with the least amount of work. Rockstars need time for tequila shots, uncontrollable fornication, and role playing games. They don’t have time to code their own tweening solutions, or 3d libraries. The main focus of this article is to recommend a set of tools, frameworks, and utility libraries that work really well and will save you time if you’re not using them already. I’ll also cover how to approach loading assets into Flash (an unglamorous topic that does not receive nearly enough attention) to make your site as fast as possible.
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ATXI: AMFPHP + Textpattern Integration · 116 days ago by Pickle
Use this AMFPHP service plugin to integrate the Textpattern database with AMFPHP to allow fast data exchange with Flash.
This is essentially a faster alternative to the afw_getarticle Textpattern plugin.Edit: My original thought was that remoting would replace the afw_getarticle Textpattern plugin, however afw_getarticle still provides functionality which lets the developer leverage the Textpattern platform for XML generation in a way that ATXI cannot emulate (yet).
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PureMVC+SWFAddress Template: Integrating SWFAddress with PureMVC [AS3] · 119 days ago by Pickle
So I’ve been trying to chart the best course as I begin to learn about AS3. After some meandering, I’ve decided that I need to use the PureMVC Framework for AS3. So far I like PureMVC mainly because it encourages consistency. In reality, PureMVC is not a very big chunk of code. It’s pretty bare-bones. However, the design philosophy behind the framework is probably as important as the framework itself.
Googling led me to the blog of Ashier de Leon who recently did a wonderful job of integrating SWFAddress and PureMVC. I’ve repackaged Ashier’s work and modified the Class structure after reading this PureMVC forum post. A new class SWFAddressProxy treats SWFAddress as a part of the data model (as opposed to a view component) and lets the programmer use Notifications to interact with the address state…
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How CASA for AS2 is similar to AS3 · 121 days ago by Pickle
I’m finally migrating to AS3 and so far it’s been a breeze after working with the CASA Framework for AS2. AS3 seems to implore you to program in an Object Oriented (OO) manner. While AS2 already supports the use of classes, I never really used them much until CASA encouraged me to use classes along with OO programming techniques…
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afw_events Screenshots · 126 days ago by Pickle
Today I received a request for some screenshots of afw_events. Apparently it’s been tricky for some people to install and they want to see if it’s worth the trouble. So here goes…
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afw_events: Textpattern Plugin · 140 days ago by Pickle
Use this plugin to manage article-based events. Edit events via an YUI AJAX-Powered interface to quickly insert and edit events.
This plugin does not use an additional database to store any info.
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afw_getarticle: Textpattern Plugin · 141 days ago by Pickle
This tag works very similarly to article_custom, except that the section and url_title of the article(s) displayed are determined by either POST or GET variables in the URL. Also, the default limit is 1.
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AllFlashWebsite Template, CASA Release [AS2] · 146 days ago by Pickle
Based on the original AFW Template. This version uses CASA to accomplish the same thing, only better….
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Adding Bam! to AFW Template [AS2] · 189 days ago by Pickle
On the Textpattern side of things, the template is pretty solid. Since most of the code is from well-developed OS projects, the functionality is there. And for my part, I added the…
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The AllFlashWebsite Template [AS2] · 223 days ago by Pickle
This template attempts to be a complete solution you can use for any Flash website that needs features going beyond the trivial Flash animation doohickey. Don’t judge the template by the unattractiveness of the demo (it’s pretty ugly). It isn’t meant to offer you any visual styling help, whatsoever. That’s all up to you. Hopefully you’re a Flash developer who creates original, interactive sites that actually use Flash to push the boundaries of the browser beyond HTML. This template allows you the flexibility to create whatever kind of site you want, but offers a framework which will help you work more efficiently and create a site that is highly compatible in many different ways. Some of the benefits include cross-browser compatibility, CMS, effortless SEO, mixing flash and non-flash content, XML in Flash, RSS in Flash, Printing from Flash…
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Adding a Print Button to a Flash Webpage [AS2] · 230 days ago by Pickle
Flash doesn’t provide a good, built-in way to print a web page. But then again, it doesn’t need to. By building on top of the content-managed XML model, adding a print button requires very little work.
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