Flex Stuff by Gilles Guillemin

This blog post is related to My LFPUG Presentation about Mate blog post.

This is the fourth of a series of gradually more complex examples on how to use Mate. If you haven’t done it yet you should have a look first at our previous examples: #1, #2 and #3.

In the previous example, we manually added four counters to a Tile component. Let’s now add/remove those counters dynamically.

But let’s have a look at the demo first (source is available by right-clicking on the demo after launching it):

#4 Counters created dynamically (click to Launch)

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This blog post is related to My LFPUG Presentation about Mate blog post.

This is the third of a series of gradually more complex examples on how to use Mate. If you haven’t done it yet you should have a look first at our first example and at our second one.

And now let’s have a look on the demo (source is available by right-clicking on the demo after launching it):

#3 Multiple Counters (click to Launch)

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This blog post is related to My LFPUG Presentation about Mate blog post.

This is the second of a series of gradually more complex examples on how to use Mate. It’s still a fairly basic one and visually it looks just the same as our previous example.

But let’s first have a look on the demo (source is available by right-clicking on the demo after launching it):

#2 Databinding and EventHandlers (click to Launch)

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This blog post is related to My LFPUG Presentation about Mate previous blog post.

This is the first of a series of gradually more complex examples on how to use Mate. It’s a fairly basic one. You’ve got 2 “counters” with 2 buttons to increase and decrease the value of 2 variables: amount (which is specific for each counter) and globalAmount (which is shared by the two counters).

But let’s first have a look on the demo (source is available by right-clicking on the demo after launching it):

#1 A very basic injectors example (click to Launch)

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Some of you might have heard of my recent difficulties, but the Show Must Go On and I’m glad to invite all the Londoners (and the others if they are willing to come around) at my little causerie for the next London Flash Platform User Group gathering. It’s called Mate Framework: The Pleasures And Pains. I wanted to call it Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Mate * But Where Afraid To Ask but apparently, according to Tink who gently invited me, it didn’t fit. What a pity.

Anyway, it’s the 30th of July, at the CosmoBar and I’ll be preceded by Matthew Press who will talk about UML for AS3. Yes indeed. So click here if you want the details and set a bookmark in your agenda if you want to come to see me make a fool of myself.

Ok, now let’s start thinking about what I really am going to speak about…

Today, a moment of self promotion in FlexStuff.co.uk. After all, what is the point of working like crazy 7 days a week and being able to only write a short post every couple of weeks if all this hard work remains unknown? (at least on this side of the pond, those ads being designed for the US market).

As already stated here and there in this blog, I’m currently employed by a London based company named Tailgate Technologies as their lead Flash Platform programmer. And believe me, it’s no easy task to work for a start-up when the global economy has decided at the same time to go deep down the sink. And the recent news about our main competitor surely do not help either (hey, we also had our own TechCrunch article!).

Anyway, we try at Tailgate to create a new type of online ads that actually try to be (at least a little bit) helpful and informative and not just some random stroke inducing stroboscopic animations as most of online ads have turned to be nowadays. It seems sometimes that “creatives” just took Flash only for its sole name and thought that flashing was somehow its one and only function.

The result of this? Nobody seems to give a bloody crap anymore (to quote the locals ) about ads. And I’m just talking here about the most open minded, the others have already long activated some ad blocker, just to avoid what has become an annoyance.

And that’s when we arrive (drums and trumpets here, please) to save you all from boredom!

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A little while ago, I was asked to develop a little Pong game in AS3 to gauge my AS3 skills (I’ll explain why another time. Or will I?). My first move was to ask my friend Google what others might have done around the same subject (no need to reinvent the wheel, mostly since I was already crazy busy on some urgent project to finish up for the next hour or so). That’s how I found Jackson Dunstan’s own Pong.

That was something interesting to begin with but a little bit dull. So I decided to have some fun and to improve the thing with additional technologies. Some that I already knew pretty well (like Flex of course, but Degrafa as well even if its use here is pretty discreet…), some others I wanted to explore a little bit more (Mate) and finally one I wanted to give a try without any particular purpose (Away3D). I had been playing a lot lately with Papervision3D for a new version of Doug McCune’s Coverflow component (which shall be the subject of another post, pretty soon hopefully) and I wanted to give a try to at least another 3D engine. I kinda really liked a lot fooling around with that 3D stuff!

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