How to fix FDT (or any other Eclipse-based IDE) after Mac OS X 10.6.3 upgrade

Posted on 2nd April 2010 in Developer tools, Eclipse, Flash | 5 Comments »

FDTThe most recent Mac OS X update to version 10.6.3 may break your Eclipse Galileo installation and everything that’s built upon it. It just fails to start and closes down right after it has reached the splash screen.

The problem relies in the corrupt font cache of Snow Leopard and the fix is rather trivial – font cache needs to be cleared using the font registration system utility on command line. Following steps will make it happen: Read the rest of this entry »

Embed system fonts with Flex SDK

Posted on 6th March 2010 in ActionScript | 1 Comment »

This little ActionScript 3 snippet will convert the system font to a SWF font instance that you can use in your AS3 project. Read the rest of this entry »

Enhance the ugly Eclipse icon on your Dock

Posted on 4th March 2010 in Developer tools, Eclipse, Mac OS | 2 Comments »

It’s pretty certain that an average Flash/RIA developer cares about how the dev tools look. If a piece of software looks ugly, it’s unlikely to be used.

Eclipse in that matter is one such tool. On Mac OS X its Dock icon looks ugly and the splash screen isn’t any better either. To improve this unbearable ugliness on the Dock, here’s a way to

swap this Eclipse original icon for this Eclipse cobranail icon
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Enable Quick Look of ActionScript and Flex files on Snow Leopard

Posted on 4th February 2010 in ActionScript, Developer tools | 3 Comments »

Having Adobe CS4 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard both installed is very likely to mess up Quick Look of Flash ActionScript (.as) and Flex (.mxml) files. Most inconvenient for those used to browsing through the files and looking into them by just hitting the Space key. Read the rest of this entry »

Making sense of Flash compile-time and run-time errors

Posted on 29th January 2010 in Flash | 2 Comments »

ActionScriptEvery new version of ActionScript has had its impact on the compiler and error handling. Since ActionScript 1, that had loose typing and was suited well for small-scale scripting projects, things have changed considerably. Read the rest of this entry »

Flash Platform is at a crossroads

Posted on 17th January 2010 in Flash | 3 Comments »

Flash Platform is actually open sourceSince Flash CS5 was announced last year, community has became passionate about pretty much everything Adobe has to say, recently in regard to dumped CS5 beta and the new Flash Player 10.1. Some sceptics even go as far as suggesting dumping the ActionScript codebase in favour of JavaScript over speed, an absurd idea.
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How to enable Caps Lock on iPhone

Posted on 4th December 2009 in iPhone | No Comments »

A quick doube-tap on Shift does the trick on iPhoneThose of you wondering on how to enable Caps Lock feature on iPhone, here’s a quick rundown: Read the rest of this entry »

Flash CS4 graphics importer lacks precision

Posted on 18th November 2009 in Developer tools, Flash | 1 Comment »

Importing graphics from Adobe Illustrator to Flash is a nightmare when it comes to precision graphics. Incredibly enough, an utterly fine graphic in Illustrator may turn up all shoddy in Flash. Read the rest of this entry »

First impressions on Flash Player 10.1 prerelease and AIR 2 beta

Posted on 17th November 2009 in Flash | 2 Comments »

Adobe - Flash onAdobe announced 2 great releases today: Adobe AIR 2 beta and Flash Player 10.1 prerelease, both aiming high with Flash Player 10.1 being the first runtime release of the Open Screen Project and AIR 2 offering a significant performance boost with compelling features.

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ActionScript 3 Array constructor vs Array literals benchmark

Posted on 16th November 2009 in ActionScript | No Comments »

By the latest Coding Convention of ActionScript 3, the usage of the Array constructor is only encouraged for size allocation, e.g. var myArr:Array = new Array(2); for an array with 2 elements in it. In all other cases literals should be used, e.g. var myArr:Array = [];

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