Flex Multiple Select List with FloatLayout

I thought I’d share a couple small classes that I had to put together recently for a project.

The goal was to create a list of toggle buttons but that would be laid side by side and then wrap at the end of the line. This allows for a really nice multiple selection component in contrast with having just a long list of checkboxes.

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Validate CheckBox and ComboBox in Flex

One of these days I had to create a a dynamic form and validate some of its fields which could be TextInput, TextArea, CheckBox or ComboBox and I thought of using Validators do accomplish this but although for TextInput and TextArea you can easily just use the StringValidator for CheckBox and ComboBox is not so easy to choose which one to use.

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FDT 4 Review

I’m really excited to be reviewing FDT4! I’ll try not to be influenced by the fact that I simply love this software so I hope I can keep this as neutral as possible. I will actually point out other options, their pros and cons as well as the pros and cons of FDT4. Bare in mind that I’m by no means an expert in all of these editors and I will probably miss a lot of features and not be accurate about all editors, I count on help from comments to point out any mistakes which I will promptly correct.

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Kindisoft SecureSWF Review

Everyone that uses Flash and specially for distributed applications or games knows that their files can be torn apart, rebranded and redistributed on other machines or domains. This is a big problem for anyone that worked hard to make something unique and even profit from their expertise.

There is no way to 100% protect SWF files, however there are other companies that try to do the opposite by encrypting and obfuscating your compiles SWF’s so that the resulting decompiled files are virtually unusable, some might even crash the decompiler software if not run by a second software that successfully decrypts it.

I’ll be reviewing the Professional edition of Kindisoft SecureSWF because it is the only one that inspired some level of protection for me.

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AS3 Optimization Tips

Recently I finished coding a game and all ran smooth on my iMac 3Ghz but then I tested it on a 2.6Ghz macbook and I noticed the movement of the player was not as smooth and even jumped here and there so I started thinking about optimization and how it is so much more important in games then websites or applications.

While searching for answers and tips about problems with actionscript3 and how to optimize it I ran into several good articles and comments so I thought it would be a good idea to make a post compiling all of them and also showing a summary of the most important topics.

First of all, if you’re using the AS port of Box2D previous to version 2.1 you might want to consider a few times to optimize it or downloading the new version (I heard it had some optimization done but not all code will be compatible by the way). One of those where I really saw a big difference was the number of calls that Box2D.Common.Math receives just to calculate max and min. Use Find and Replace on the Box2D classes to locate b2Max and b2Min calls and then replace them for inline calculation which is nothing more then a simple (a > b) ? a : b; and (a < b) ? a : b;

But anyway lets get on with AS3 optimization in general, keep in mind that some of these tips might be more or less important depending on which version of the player you have, if its the debugger player, in what environment you test it (Flash IDE, Standalone, Browser) and under which Operating System but most should remain true.

For these tests I’ll be using Flash Player 10.1.52.14 version running in MacOs X 10.6, I won’t be doing the code tests myself (no need to re-invent the wheel) but rather the Grant Skinner’s Quick as a Flash set of tests so you can see a summary here but full free to test them yourself, specially because there’s a lot more stuff in there then what I will test here.

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