Android for ActionScript developers, part 2: Events and listeners

The first thing that made me pause when working with Java is discovering that it doesn’t have event listeners – at least not in the sense that I’ve come to expect based on my ActionScript experience. In ActionScript 3, you attach an event to an object like so: myObject.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, onMouseDown); protected function onMouseDown(e:Event): void { […]

Continue reading →

A mobile AIR application post-mortem

With Kana Mind released (even if still in beta form), I figured I’d talk a little bit about the experience of writing a mobile application using Flash (and Adobe AIR) as a platform (there’s also the weird timing of Adobe announcing they won’t be updating the Flash plugin for mobile devices anymore, focusing instead on AIR apps). The […]

Continue reading →

Using StageText for AIR applications

Adobe AIR 3 includes a great new feature: StageText. Using the normal TextField for text input works just fine, but this new TextField-like class allows you to control your text input more closely (especially on mobile devices) with many options like auto capitalization, software keyboard type, and more. It has its caveats (it’s a separate class, […]

Continue reading →

The developer’s guide to browser adoption rates

Just posted a new article on NetMagazine: the developer’s guide to browser adoption rates. It analyzes the speed of adoption of new browser versions and compare them to each other, and to the Flash Player plugin adoption. Much like my old Flash video playback benchmark, this is one of those things that started with an […]

Continue reading →

Farewell Hell’s Kitchen

About 20 years ago, I was reading a Daredevil comic book story and it mentioned the neighborhood where most of the story takes place. It was called Hell’s Kitchen, and it translates to “Cozinha do Inferno” in Brazilian Portuguese (the language of the comic I was reading it in). I thought that was a funny name and had […]

Continue reading →

Eye tracking testing

Recently, in one of our work pitches at Firstborn, we were asked whether we could create a web-based application that could use your webcam to track the position of your eyes. We didn’t know for sure that would be possible (or to which level of accuracy) so we decided to spend a few days creating […]

Continue reading →