IFBIN - Great Software By Example

In an effort to support MMUG's around the world, IFBIN will provide all Macromedia® User Groups membership in the IFBIN affilliate program and will provide 20% of sales and discounts to assist these vital organizations.

I learned allot about Flash® by attending MMUG meetings and I feel strongly about supporting them. These organizations are important and provide a base of support for Macromedia® tools, technology and technical learning. In an effort to support these groups, IFBIN is providing membership in its affiliate program and providing an offer of 20% of sale made through the any official MMUG.

Here is how the program works:

1. Obtain a Paypal account for your MMUG.

2. MMUG Managers, send an email to mmug@ifbin.com from your MMUG Paypal email address.

3. IFBIN will provide a "Discount Code" for your MMUG.

4. All sales made using the "Discount Code" will receive 20% of sales paid monthly. The discount code will also provide monthly specials for IFBIN products.

What your MMUG does with the funds is your choice. Ideally this effort is about supporting groups that support technical learning in the community.

I look forward to working with MMUG Managers and supporting these vital organizations.

More to come,

Theodore Patrick
IFBIN Founder and CEO

Keith Peters(Bit-101) posted his IFBIN Hello World example for Flash® By Example. The example uses a force to repel characters of "Hello World" from the mouse cursor.



Not only is this example addictive to play with but the source code is a great read. You will walk away seeing Flash® development from Keith's perspective. Cheers to Keith for contributing this example into Flash® By Example.

Hello World examples are free to download, just install the IFBIN Service and with one click, the source is securly installed on your machine.

More to come.

Ted ;)

Special thanks to Wes for catching a dll error in the 1.0.0 release. It look as though when we updated a component, we overlooked a DLL within the installer in testing. The service codebase was modified only in version number.

Download IFBIN Service Version 1.0.1

Changes:

- Add "msvcr71.dll" into installer
- Modified Service version number to 1.0.1

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Regards,

Ted Patrick

Starting today Flash® By Example is available for licensing. Flash® by Example is a software subscription service licensed annually. It provides examples from 20 of the leading Flash® developers in the world under a common source code license.

For the next 2 weeks we are providing a discount of $100 off Flash® By Example. Within the product, simply enter fbelaunch or use the following link:

Purchase 1 FBE Annual License

What you get with an annual license:

1. Source code rights to a library of top quality Flash® examples.
2. Right to use the source code within commercial projects with modification.
3. Example requests developed on a priority basis.
4. Access to Flash® by Example for 12 months.
5. Evergreen - Our team will be adding examples ongoing.
6. Secure 1-Click installation and configuration through IFBIN Service 1.0.0.
7. Every example will compile on the first try.

Examples range in size and scope. We provide small usage examples, applications, frameworks, server integration, and even a Socket Server (SYNC). Best of all as a licensee you have priority access to shape the direction of development within Flash® by Example. By proposing examples for development, Flash® by Example will cater to your development needs over time. As several of our early licensees discovered, there is a very high return on investment on a Flash® By Example License.

We look forward to supporting you as customer.

Welcome to Flash® By Example!

Regards,

Theodore Patrick
IFBIN Founder/CEO

Today marks the release of the IFBIN Service Version 1.0.0 for Windows. I would like to thank everyone who provided feedback on the beta. We listened and made the changes that were needed for 1.0.&

IFBIN Service version 1.0.0 for Windows Download

The "IFBIN Service" is desktop service (HTTP Server) that allows IFBIN Networks to securely distribute and install software examples through Flash® by Example, Flex™ by Example, and future products.

Features:

- Secure 1-Click installation of software examples to your local machine.
- File encryption and File verification for all examples.
- Flex™ user interface.
- Integration into Flash® 8, Flex™ Builder, Eclipse, and Browsers.
- 2MB download
- Tray Icon and TaskBar support
- Server based Licensing based on COLA for all products.
- Compatible with Windows™ 95, Windows™ 98, Windows™ 2000, Windows™ XP, Windows™ Server 2003

We look forward to your feedback on this release of the service. If you have any trouble with installation or running the service, please send an email to support@ifbin.com, we will be happy to help.

For all you OSX users, we will be beta testing the OSX version within a week.

Regards,

Theodore Patrick
IFBIN Founder / CEO

This morning I approved the 100th example for the Flash® by Example subscription service. Darron Schall provided an excellent Flash® 8 example using flash.filters.DropShadow posted below.&

I would like to thank all of the IFBIN author/partners for their hard work in providing top quality, well-documented examples for the Flash® by Example service. Throughout Flash® by Example development, I have learned so many new techniques and perspectives on Flash®. Having reached 100 this morning all I can say is "Thank You". I am truly excited about the next 100 examples as we become customer driven in our example development.

Here is the 100th example for Flash® by Example. Congratulations!


The authors who contribute to IFBIN Networks are full partners. Authors receive 50% of revenue based on their contribution. IFBIN Networks handles all costs of operation and pays royalties on a monthly basis. We could not have reached 100 examples at this level of quality without a real partnership.

Congratulations to the FBE Team on reaching 100 examples!

Theodore Patrick
IFBIN Founder/CEO

Flash® 8 contains a new intrinsic class called flash.geom.Transform that allows you to directly manipulate the view of any MovieClip at runtime. In the following example, we will use the flash.geom.Transform and flash.geom.Matrix to manipulate the IFBIN logo with some slider controls.



The sliders correspond to the "a", "b", "c", "d", "tx", "ty" properties of the flash.geom.Matrix class. When a slider is moved it creates a new Matrix and sets the value within the Transform class that is pointing to the logo MovieClip. The Transform class is very similar in functionality to the Color class in that it has an internal target as follows:

myTrans = new flash.geom.Transform( logo )

Once this is done, we can manipulate the Transform instance and the MovieClip will have its view modified. To set a new Matrix on the Transform you would do this:

myTrans.matrix = new flash.geom.Matrix(1,0,0,1,0,0)

The above matrix is set to zero manipulation and will return any MovieClip to the view contained within the Library. With those 6 points you can distort a clip to any feasible position. I will do a follow-up exploring the other aspects of Transform and Matrix.

This example will ship with full source and documentation within Flash® by Example.

Big IFBIN news on Monday! :)

Have a great weekend.

Ted ;)

In Flash® 8, the MovieClip class supports a new property called "blendMode". Using "blendMode" you can control how MovieClips are merged together or blended. In this example I use a V2 ComboBox to modify the "blendMode" property of the IFBIN Logo against a gradient.



There are 14 supported blendModes (1-14) and they all create wildly different effects when combined with one another. Here are the complete set of supported blendModes:

BlendModes for Flash 8:

1 - "normal"
2 - "layer"
3 - "multiply"
4 - "screen"
5 - "lighten" >> Looks like neon over a gradient!
6 - "darken"
7 - "difference"
8 - "add"
9 - "subtract"
10 - "invert"
11 - "alpha"
12 - "erase" >> Great for masking content
13 - "overlay"
14 - "hardlight"

These values can be set as a number or a string as follows:

//the following lines do the exact same thing.

myClip.blendMode = 3

myClip.blendMode = "multiply"

In Flash® by Example we have 14 examples covering each different "blendMode" as each is important to understand given its unique and subtle effect/differences. This example will ship with full source and documentation within Flash® by Example.

More to come,

Ted ;)

As a Sudoku addict, I wrote this game so that I could play Sudoku on the DC metro on my Nokia 6680 phone. This example ships with gameboard and Sudoku logic running on Flash® Lite 1.1 Player. This was build using Flash® 8 Professional and the new Mobile authoring tools.


This example highlights mobile content authoring and exports to Flash 4 format. In an update, I will be adding support for loadable and saveable Sudoku puzzles with puzzle licensing via the IME# of the phone. As with all examples in Flash® by Example, all code is versioned and subscribers have access to all releases. On several projects we will provide releases progressively to allow you to watch as we develop over time and reach completion. This example will ship with full source and documentation within Flash® by Example.

More to come.

Ted :)

Creating ID badges with a photo is not easy and licensing software for custom badge creation can run into the thousands of dollars. In this example, I created an Identification Badge System for IFBIN Authors. It requires Flash® Player 7 and makes use of the Video support.



This example presents a WYSIWYG interface to creating Identification Badges and can be easily modified for corporate use. It allows anyone to create a badge with just a webcam and a color printer. The output format for this example supports most printers and can be adjusted to support custom printers of all varieties.

As this example ships with full source, Flash® by Example customers can modify the design for consulting clients or for their own company. Flash® by Example licensing supports "commercial reuse" allowing you to use IFBIN examples within commercial products with no additional licensing cost.

More to come.

Ted ;)

Flash® 8 supports a new MovieClip property call cacheAsBitmap. By using cacheAsBitmap, the Flash vector renderer only redraws "dirty" areas of the screen. In this example, Guy Watson uses an isometric image to show the performance gains in using cacheAsBitmap.



Guy's example is able to obtain high frames per second with cacheAsBitmap enabled. As the blocks are only moved using _x and _y the MovieClip is never dirtied and remains a Bitmap in memory. As the Flash® renderer does not have to redraw these complex areas every frame, the performance of the Flash Player is dramatically faster. In this case, the player is well over 50 times faster than when cacheAsBitmap is set to false.

This example will ship with full source and documentation within Flash® by Example.

More to come!

Ted ;)

Flash® 8 supports a new intrinsic object called flash.net.FileReferenceList. In this example, I will select multiple files with FileReferenceList.browse and write the data to a DataGrid.



The flash.net.FileReferenceList has a property fileList that is an array. It is very easy to use this as a dataProvider. The key to this code is just assigning the DataGrid.dataProvider property to the FileReferenceList.fileList with some small changes for compatibility.

This example will ship with full source and documentation within Flash® by Example.

Have a great weekend, More to come on Monday!

Ted ;)

MovieClips in Flash® Player 8 support a new property called scrollRect. When set to an instance of a flash.geom.Rectangle class, it sizes the clip for scrolling and masks content outside the scrollRect boundaries. The example requires Flash® 8 Beta Player.


One of Turkey's Amazing Beaches. Drag the image around.

First off, scrollRect might be one of my favorite features in Flash® 8. It solves so many issues with using MovieClips as containers. The scrollRect property allows you to set the visible area of a MovieClip by assigning a flash.geom.Rectangle instance. The Rectangle is set as follows:

mc.scrollRect = new flash.geom.Rectangle(0,0,100,100)

The arguments are xOffset, yOffset, Width, and Height. Starting at the 0,0 orgin of the MovieClip, the above code will create a rectangle from 0,0 to 100,100. If I did this:

mc.scrollRect = new flash.geom.Rectangle(20,30,100,100)

the rectangle created would cover from 20,30 to 120,130 of the target MovieClip. Remember the last two arguments are not coordinates but width and height. This is a very easy mistake to make and the new Rectangle Class is used with a lot of the new features. Put this in your back pocket, you will need it later on, trust me.

In the example the dragging of the clip is an illusion. I am actually setting the scrollRect value as you drag the mouse around. In this case I have not changed the _x, _y of the clip but rather modified the scrollRect to look like I did. This is extremely useful for container creation and makes masking or scrolling content much simpler. As a technique, it is orthogonal and allows you to manipulate the view without requiring nested MovieClips or many of the old school techniques. It is a revolution in how you can manipulate content visually.

Remember scrollRect, it is your new best friend when manipulating a container's view. This example will ship with full source and documentation within Flash® by Example.


More to come,

Ted ;)

MovieClips in Flash® Player 8 support a new property called opaqueBackground. When set to a numeric value, it turns the background of the MovieClip to an opaque color. The example requires Flash® 8 Beta Player.


Set the TextField to a hex value to change the opaqueBackground color.

Prior to this you needed to add another MovieClip as a child and resize it to provided a background color for any clip. This is very useful when you want to provide a background color to a clip being used as a container. Combined with the new scrollRect property, this is a powerful combination for sizing and coloring containers in component applications.

This example will ship with full source and documentation within Flash® by Example.

More to come,

Ted ;)

Flash® 8 supports a new feature for scaling MovieClips called Scale9. The feature is a property that enables customized scaling of any MovieClip asset. Below is an SWF example of Scale9 working, you will need the Flash® 8 beta player to see this.

By default the file below has Scale9 disabled. Simply click anywhere to switch the scales MovieClip to use Scale9. This feature is especially useful for component creation as you can create skins with a single MovieClip rather than 9 separate peices.


Press any Key to switch the MovieClip Scaled.

On any MovieClip you can set the scale9Grid property to a flash.geom.Rectangle instance. The Rectangle defined the inner square to be scaled. Using this defined Rectangle object, the player slices up the MovieClip into 9 parts and scales it appropriately.

Here is the code setting the scale9Grid property:

mc.scale9Grid = new flash.geom.Rectangle(10, 10, 10, 10);

This example will be included within Flash® by Example when Flash® 8 ships with full source and documentation.

Move to come,

Ted ;)

Darron Schall completed a custom projector in C# wrapping Flash® Player 8 for Flash® by Example. Flash® 8 supports a new data exchange model called External Interface to allow for synchronous exchange of data.&

External Interface allows you to call functions in external applications (browser, JavaScript, VBScript, C#) and synchronously receive the returned data into Flash®. Likewise you can call functions within a SWF file from an external application.



In this example, Darron enabled External Interface to exchange data with C#. The example reads file data from a local drive and renders it into a V2 Tree control. Clicking on a directory in the v2 tree will display a file listing of the directory into a V2 DataGrid. Also when the C# app detects loss of focus, it disables the controls within the SWF.

The example is quite impressive and provides the base code for a custom projector shell. The example includes full C# and FLA source code.

This example will be added to Flash(R) by Example when Macromedia® Flash® 8 ships.

More to come,

Ted :)

Flash® by Example and Flex™ by Example will ship with the SYNC Socket Server Framework. SYNC allows you to create a multi-user server with a custom protocol tuned to your application.&

I have used SYNC on 8 consulting projects with a high level of success. SYNC is written in Python and provides a very high level framework for creating servers for use with Macromedia® Flash® and Macromedia® Flex™. SYNC uses the Twisted networking library and allows you to build all sorts of client and server applications with a single SYNC class. The IFBIN Service is actually a SYNC application running a customized HTTP protocol.

I will be posting several complete application built with SYNC as follows:

1. SYNC Echo - Echo server
2. SYNC Chat - Room based chat with ActionScript API
3. SYNC IM - Instant messaging client and server
4. SYNC Mail - Server for POP3/IMAP mail integration
5. SYNC Report - Server for DB Reporting
6. SYNC Letters - Fridge magnets game

More to come,

Ted ;)

The IFBIN Service Beta 2 installer has been posted for Windows. This version fixes over 35 bugs and compatibility issues. The new beta adds a Flex™ RIA for exploring IFBIN products.

IFBIN Service Beta 2 Installer (release 6)

What is the IFBIN Service?
The IFBIN Service provides installation and licensing services for IFBIN subscription content. All the content in Flash(R) by Example and Flex(R) by Example is installed through the IFBIN Service.

The IFBIN Service is an HTTP Server that uses a proprietary archive format for installation, download, and verification of example content. We created our own archive format to provide additional security for end users of our products. The archive format requires a digital signature to enable decryption of the file contents on a per user basis. This unique signature allows the IFBIN Service to authenticate the contents of each file prior to installation. If one byte is out of place, the content will not install on your machine and will lock-down the example on the network.

Currently the Flash® by Example product provides access to all "Hello World" examples and to several free examples. We are planning to launch the Flash® by Example in the next 2 weeks. We had a delay due to beta 1 but we are back on track with this release.

I look forward to your feedback. Please email all issues and questions to me directly at ted@ifbin.com.

Much more to come!

Ted Patrick
IFBIN - Founder

Flash® 8 Professional contains a new video codec and new video components. The video codec is based on ON2 VP6 and is amazing compared to the Sorenson codec. The example is 60 seconds of VP6 video of my cat Marley fetching a mouse.

The video was recorded from a Canon digital camera and encoded the lowest level prior to pixelization of the video. The video shows my cat Marley playing fetch with his favorite toy mouse. There is a new video component that ships with Flash® Professional 8 that makes deploying video really easy. Just encode the video and select from a range of skins. The example below uses the "Clear Over" skin but there are many to choose from and they are externally loadable as SWF files.



The VP6 video is 1.6MB in size for 60 seconds. Compared to the Sorenson codec this video is 60% smaller with much higher visual quality. I will encode some higher quality video and post a more comprehensive test.

Flash® by Example will ship with many Flash(R) 8 examples. We will be posting them here and will deploy them onto Flash® by Example when Studio 8 ships. Special thanks to Macromedia for allowing developers to post Flash® 8 examples in advance of the product shipment.

Having created over 150+ examples with Flash® 8 Professional myself, this is the best release of Flash® ever. Kudos to the Authoring team and the Player team for creating such an amazing toolset.

More to come,

Ted :)

IFBIN News is live! We will be blogging the examples in Flash® by Example and Flex™ by Example and posting IFBIN news here.

Also be on the lookout for other IFBIN Authors posting here. You never know who might show up and post some code.

Much more to come! Go IFBIN, GO!

Cheers,

Ted Patrick