I’ve found out today, that there is no longer FlashDen.net, but instead there is new site in Envato network called ActiveDen. It’s same site, but Adobe has asked Envato to change the name because “Flash” is registered trademark of Adobe. And there are also Flex files on ActiveDen, so there are no more just pure Flash files, so it’s maybe better name now.

Goodbye FlashDen, hello ActiveDen

Recently I have used inverse mask in my project – a mask that hides everything beneath it, keeping everything outside visible. I knew there is no direct support for inverse masking in Flash, but such effect can be achieved by using blend modes.

To my surprise when you google the term “flash inverse mask” all top ten or so results claim that this is not possible in Flash(!). People either suggest to “invert the mask” or “duplicate the background layer and put it on the top of the layer stack, mask that”. Some more advanced coders even do some magic with BitmapData.treshold and ColorTransforms. This may work but the solution is way much easier.

Simply set the blend mode of masking object to BlendMode.ERASE place it above the object you want to mask and set the blend mode of their parent to BlendMode.LAYER (this is essential). And that’s it! You can get similar effect when your mask is transparent and you project it’s transparency to underlying object by setting BlendMode.ALPHA.

It is a pity that such valuable functionality remains almost unknown and unused and I think Adobe is the one to blame here. The documentation on blending modes is really poor, if not confusing. Especially the LAYER mode is confusing, stating “This is done automatically if …is display object container with at least one child object with a blendMode setting other than BlendMode.NORMAL.” while the ERASE mode reads “This requires the blendMode of the parent display object to be set to BlendMode.LAYER” (manually). I have also noticed that adding shadow to the parent object has the same effect here as setting the blend mode to LAYER. In addition, there are some nice pictures on how different blend modes work, but you won’t find them (nor a reference) in a Applying blending modes chapter, nor in BlendMode class documentation but only in DisplayObject class documentation. To shame Adobe even more, blend modes are available since “ActionScript 1.0; Flash Player 8″

If this article was of any help to you please lave me a comment

Download source FLA here.

Table of contents for flex-tips

1. FlexTips
2. FlexTip: mx:Text vs. mx:TextArea
3. FlexTip: XMLSocket connect() after disconnect from server
4. FlexTip: Problem with masks and scalable Flash
5. FlexTips: How to add Bitmap to UIComponent
6. FlexTip – Stop displaying Focus
7. FlexTip: Preventing CheckBox selection with Key.SPACE
8. FlexTip: WordWrap for mx:Text
9. FlexTip: Add Thumbs to Mx:Slider programatically
10. AS3 Conditional Breakpoint – enterDebugger()

I have to confess I didn’t know about great function enterDebugger() in flash.debugger package. If you ever want to have conditional breakpoint you can do it programatically. Just add this statement to your code and debuger will stop as it there would be normal breakpoint. So you can use it in IF statement and call it just when some conditions are met. I think I will use this function a lot from now on

Enjoy

Yesterday, I’ve posted about interesting AS3 Class InteractivePNG, and now I’m adding new addition for solving other problem with transparent Bitmaps. If you have transparent bitmap with whitespace around image and you want to crop whitespace around “real” image, you can use this function…

public static function getBitmapCroppedOutWhitespace(bd:BitmapData):Bitmap
{
	var bmd:BitmapData = new BitmapData(bd.width, bd.height, true, 0x00000000);
	bmd.draw(bd);
 
	var rect:Rectangle = bmd.getColorBoundsRect(0xFFFFFF, 0x00000000, false);
	var bmd2:BitmapData = new BitmapData(rect.width, rect.height, true, 0x00000000);
	bmd2.draw(bmd, new Matrix(1,0,0,1, -rect.x, -rect.y));
 
	var bmp:Bitmap = new Bitmap(bmd2);
 
	return bmp;
}

From BitmapData it creates Bitmap without whitespace. It will find whitespace automaticaly and removes it. If you want to insert Bitmap data instead of BitmapData, just edit this function slightly. This is just idea how to do such cropping. Enjoy, I hope it will be useful for someone.

I’m working on some game editors for my old game engine (not finished) to show people something what I have done and let people convince me maybe to continue (fallenswordsgame.com). There are lot of PNG assets used. If there are many PNG images on stage, there is problem with selection of correct one, because in AS3 there are MouseEvent events even on transparent pixels and that’s problem. I have tried search if someone did great job on some workaround and I have found really great AS3 class called InteractivePNG. You can set even alphaTolerance to tell class if your MouseEvent event should be catched on semitransparent pixels or just opaque pixels. Check it out InteractivePNG demo. It really helps me, so I hope it can help you as well. Great job, Moses.

WTF? I don’t know what’s wrong, and if this is a bug or anything, but I came across interesting issue. Let me first tell, that it seems it’s bug on Windows, or maybe just my Windows really do not know, I need you to help me. I need your test to let me find out what is the problem, because it seems that it works on my friend’ Mac. I’ve tried Flash Player 9.0.115 and 9.0.124.

Problems is in getting KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN for multiple keys. I’m working on some sport game in AS3 and I need to check for key kombination like Right Arrow + Down Arrow + Space, but it’s never fired up on my Windows. I thought it’s some logic what’s wrong in my game, so I’ve created simple pure AS3 example and there is problem as well. There is strange Woodoo, some combinations work, some do not I really do not see the logic. Here is example, just press and multiple Arrows and Space in same time. You can try simple key strokes, you will see red keys when key is pressed (KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN was received). When you release key, it just come back to its grey state. So please play and let me know your results. I need to know OS, Player version (included in example) and if you have same problems as me, or what does not work for you. (Click to movie, to gain focus)

And here is my Woodoo, I simply can not do this combinations

• SPACE + LEFT ARROW + UP ARROW
• SPACE + LEFT ARROW + DOWN ARROW
• SPACE + RIGHT ARROW + DOWN ARROW
• SPACE + RIGHT ARROW + UP ARROW – ATTENTION!!! I can do this combination

Next example, press and hold SPACE + LEFT ARROW, now press DOWN ARROW, KEY_DOWN event is not fired, just release SPACE while DONW ARROW is still pressed, and now KEY_DOWN event for DOWN ARROW is fired up. WTF ?

Please can you confirm my Woodoo. I need to find out, if this is Flash Player Bug, or maybe something else? Please post your result to comments. Thank you.

If you want stay updated with result or similar tips & tricks, or any other stuff I think it’s interested and important, please consider subscribe to my Franto.com Tips & Tricks.

If you are going on FlashOnTheBeach to Brighton this year, you can meet me there and say hello. Maybe beer will be good at the evening If you will look for Flexets guys (t-shirt with Flexets logo) I know you will find me. It’s always great to see my readers and subscribers. I’m looking forward to meet my Franto.com Tips & Tricks subscribers, we can talk about stuff you want to see inside newsletter.

Say hello in Brighton in few days.

Finally I’ve found good WordPress plugin for syntax highligting of ActionScript 3 and MXML. Syntax is very easy (who would tell that ) with only 2 settings: lang, line (from which line should code starts). So from today I can support both my favourite languages on my blog (i’ve changed already my last 3 posts)

WP Syntax

It supports many other languages as well

abap, actionscript, actionscript3, ada, apache, applescript, aptsources, asm, asp, autoit, bash, blitzbasic, bnf, boo, c, cmac, caddcl, cadlisp, cil, cfdg, cfm, cobol, cpp-qt, cpp, csharp, css, d, delphi, diff, div, dos, dot, eiffel, fortran, freebasic, genero, gettext, glsl, gml, bnuplot, groovy, haskell, html4strict, idl, ini, inno, io, java, java5, javascript, kixtart, klonec, klonecpp, latex, lisp, lotusformulas, lotusscript, lua, m68k, matlab, mirc, mpasm, mxml, mysql, nsis, objc, ocaml-brief, ocaml, oobas, oracle8, pascal, per, pic16, perl, php-brief, php, plsql, povray, powershell, progress, python, qbasic, rails, reg, robots, ruby, sas, scala, scheme, sdlbasic, smalltalk, smarty, sql, tcl, text, thinbasic, tsql, typoscript, vb, vbnet, verilog, vhdl, visualfoxpro, winbatch, xml, xorg_conf, xpp, z80

I’m not PHP or MySQL guru, but from time to time I need test some product which I will use on live server and till now on the best 1-click installation of Apache, PHP and MySQL for me is WampServer. Installation takes few moments and that’s all. You can just start all services with one click and your localhost is ready. (only 1 little problem is, that you have to stop Skype when you are about to start WampServer services. After starting services, you can start Skype again). From system tray you can start many Apache modules or PHP extensions and configure your localhost as you need. This is fast and easy solution for Apache + PHP + MySQL installation on y our localhost.

If you are prefer any other solution, which is probable better, let me know.

In my latest project I need generate Excel .xls file from Flex. Because in Flex or Flash there is no support for such generation, I’ve to do it manually and I want to share this knowledge with all of you in this new tutorial serie. Because content of Excel file can vary this will be serie of posts. And this information is for all developers not only for Flash or Flex coders, because this is general information about generating .xls Excel file, only some parts can contain some ActionScript code.

Different ways of generating .xls file

There is many ways for generating .xls file, I will not write about all ways, just about ways, which were suitable for my Flex project. As probably all of you know .xls is binary file, but it’s not always true. I will write about this later.

How to start with generating .xls Excel file

Maybe best thing at the start is make test .xls file and save it and look at source code. As I told .xls has binary data format, but you have possibilities to save file as Webpage or XML file, and that’s what we want. So we got 2 text formats available:

• HTML
• XML

So SUPER SECRET is simple:

Save your html or xml file as .xls file – Excel will do the rest.

In next part I will show you some simple generation of .xls Ecel file with some styling. Stay tuned and subcribe to my RSS Feed or Follow me at Twitter