Patrick Mineault has released an extension for Flash 8 that automagically goes through the hierarchy of movieclips and places their center on a whole pixel.
This helps to eliminate blurry text when your font field and the movieclips that contain it in the hierarchy are set to non-integer _x and _y values.
Download the extension here:
http://www.5etdemi.com/blog/archives/2006/10/flash-command-unblur-aliased-text/
Not too long ago I received some monitor stands and upon opening the boxes I was surprised at what I found on the back of the assembly instructions:
Rolodex, you made my day. You created an "experience" for me, and it left a very positive impression about your brand. In addition, you found a way to bring some fun to the mundane task of screwing monitor stands together.
After going around the office and sharing my discovery with everyone (who, I should say, were all equally impressed), I quickly took on the task of folding my paper crane.
I only got half way done, however, because once I folded to a certain point I couldn't read the instructions anymore. Luckily others in my office knew what they were doing and were able to finish my crane for me :)
Looks like Apple is delaying almost all shipments of the 17" MacBook Pros. I received an email this afternoon stating that my order wouldn't be shipping until the 14th -- a whole week after the initial date given when I placed my order.
After receiving the email I quickly hopped online to see if others were having the same issues, and I quickly found all types of internet rumblings about people receiving the same email.
Looks like Apple is having some type of supply issue, and there are theories abound on the internet. Also makes me wonder how many people could have possibly gotten their order in before me -- I placed it no more than 20 minutes after the updated MacBooks appeared on the Apple Store site. Crazy.
One hint though -- if you call Apple's customer support, they'll give you free 2-day shipping for the delay. I guess it's better than nothing...
Update: With Apple releasing the MacBook updates this morning, things are starting to come together. Looks like they split their allotment of chips among the two notebook lines (MacBook/MacBook Pro) and the demand was better than expected for the MacBook Pro's. At least Apple is being "egalitarian" and spreading out the good stuff to both consumers and power users.
Want to replicate Apple's OS X Spaces and Expose in Windows XP? Well, Microsoft has a free tool released as part of their "Power Tools" that lets you have up to four separate workspaces/desktops and installs buttons in your toolbar to control them. It works as promised and will allow you to switch between all four workspaces with ease.
Here is what it adds to your toolbar for control:
Similar functionality as Spaces and Expose, without all the style!
Download along with several other cool utilities for XP, here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
Mike Chambers posted a video taken at the MAX conference last week of Chris Brichford's "Leveraging HTML and Javascript in Apollo" session on Google Video. Besides being extremely informative, it is also exciting to see how far they have come (or maybe just willing to talk about?) since FlashForward.
If you are short on time, the key point is that WebKit is being used as the HTML renderer, which is the same code base as Apple's Safari. So in theory _anything_ that flies in Safari should fly in Apollo. If you are really pressed for time, be sure to jump to the 32:00 mark to see a cool application that includes Google Maps and dragging and dropping from an address book.
View the video here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1551903488172905143
Read Mike's full blog post here.
Apollo details from Adobe here.
Do you use SWFObject? If not, there is now even more reason why you should be. Today I came across a project called SWFAddress, which describes itself as such:
SWFAddress is a small script that sits on top of SWFObject and provides deep linking for Flash websites and applications. In other words it enables the Back, Forward and Refresh buttons of the browser and creates unique URLs with page titles that can be sent over email or IM.
Their samples work amazingly well, and it is extremely simple to implement -- they even provide AS2 and AS3 classes to use. It supports all major browsers including IE 6/7, FireFox 1.5/2, Safari 2.04+ and Opera 9.02. Finally, this may be the end of one of the largest usability gripes about Flash!
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