Author Archives: Lex

XML “Compression” Tip

Maybe this is more common than I realize; I’m working on a Web project where the initial XML file is 420kb in size—that’ just way too big. I searched for various XML compression utilities, but a few seemed overcomplicated and many of the utilities don’t work on a Mac. In the past, I’ve imported PNG [...]
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The Year of the Kiosk

I’m officially declaring this the year of the kiosks. I just finished a couple touchscreen kiosk projects with the amazingly talented, creative and friendly team at Second Story Interactive Studios. I am also working with a new client on six other touchscreen kiosks due early next year. The Second Story project consists of three kiosks—they [...]
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Sketches and Math

I am a visual learner. This fact has made it challenging for me, and other designers, to pick up development whether it be ActionScript, JavaScript, CSS, or any language or mark up that results in a visual interactive interface. This right brain mentality is arguably why so many graphic and web designers stopped adopting ActionScript [...]
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Generative Visuals

In the last few months I’ve played with creating a number of generative visuals or generative visual interactives. This entails building a Flash application that contains a number of randomized visual creations but also allows me to have control over color, composition, and some drawing aspects. I’ve spread a few of these visuals around and [...]
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Salt & Pepper Utilizing BitmapData.fillRect();

This movie requires Flash Player 10 swfobject.embedSWF("/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/bitmapData_fillRect_animation.swf", "swfa65d1", "500", "448", "10.0.0", "", {}, {wmode: "window", menu: "false", quality: "high", bgcolor: "#000000"}, {}); I’ve had some time to experiment more with BitmapData and specifically the fillRect(); method. I hope to utilize some of this soon when creating a new site for myself. Below is another example showing how [...]
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Simple AS3 Parallax System Engine

This movie requires Flash Player 10 swfobject.embedSWF("http://www.lextalkington.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/parallax.swf", "swfa65d3", "500", "570", "10.0.0", "", {}, {wmode: "window", menu: "false", quality: "high", bgcolor: "#000000"}, {}); A recent project required me to set up a parallax system, of which I’ve done a hundred times probably, starting with AS1. However, I’d never built a class to handle this rather simple functionality. With [...]
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Generate Points Around a Circle’s Circumference

This movie requires Flash Player 10 swfobject.embedSWF("/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/CircumferencePointGenerator.swf", "swfa65d4", "500", "500", "10.0.0", "", {}, {wmode: "window", menu: "false", quality: "high", bgcolor: "#000000"}, {}); This is a simple Class, yet comes in handy for many projects. I’ve added a few extra parameters beyond only placing x amount of points around the circumference of a circle. This is a static [...]
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Industry Experiments and Supporting Quotes

I’ve been slacking on the blog posts, obviously, but I do have a few Flash-related things in the works that I’ll be posting in the coming weeks. I usually don’t push quotes (yes, I know my first post was about industry-related quotes that I believe in) – but, by that I mean, I don’t hang quote [...]
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Auto Pan Class For Panning An Image On Mouse Movement

This movie requires Flash Player 10 swfobject.embedSWF("/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AutoPan1.swf", "swfa65d5", "540", "540", "10.0.0", "", {}, {wmode: "window", menu: "false", quality: "high", bgcolor: "#000000"}, {}); I created an AS2 version of this years ago, and shared it on kirupa.com. It was a very popular small class. So, I’ve rebuilt the class in AS3. I hope some people find it useful. [...]
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Listening To Web Traffic

Traffic, in the traditional sense, is annoying. I live on a somewhat busy street, outside my office window it is the same monotonous motoring sound all day. This annoyance gave me an idea: I’m playing with my new interest in the Google Analytics export data API and trying to get Flash to respond to the [...]
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