Ed test is jere to play

This post attempts to document my journey to getting video to work on those lovely iDevices – ie by using html5. I am indebited to the work of others, and clearly am only presenting the basics. But it does work. My next steps will be things like adding a poster image, and perhaps giving the player a unique look!

Getting Started…

I have add html5 video to some of my clients sites now. Previously, they had only had flash – so weren’t viewable on iPads and other mobiles. Now I use the <video> tag to add support for html5, with a fallback to flash. Much of what I did was taken from video for everybody – thanks!

Here’s the complete code:

Read more…

Update – 18th Feb 2012

I notice from google analytics that this page is still getting several hits everyday and that people are staying on it for some time.

I’d be interested to know if it was useful… or if you are just and annoying robot that takes ages to read…

Thanks

I needed to create an mp3 player from scratch for a band’s site. We decided to use a combo box at the top that would display a list of categories of music “Singles”, “Rareties”, “Name of album” etc. On selection this would then populate a list box underneath the combo box where you can press a song and listen to it. We got all this working fine, but then it was decided that we didn’t want the default formatting and we wanted to style the combo and list boxes differently. This was where the fun really began.

Here’s a screen shot of what we are after – note the different styling.

There are several different approaches, all with pros and cons. If on the stage you double click on the list box you’ll see the skins used by said list box.

Read more…

I often find that I place multiple instances on the timeline from the library of say a button, and give them all exciting instance names like “ed1″, “ed2″, “ed3″….

When I do this with action script its pretty easy to work out which one is pressed. Ands its pretty easy too with instances dragged onto the stage – I’d just forgotten – so here’s how:

ed1.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, youClicked);
ed2.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, youClicked);
ed3.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, youClicked);

function youClicked(e:Event):void{
    trace ("you clicked="+e.target.name);
}

So it turns out that the .name is the same as the instance name that you type into the box. Neat. And now you have a unique indicator for each button – meaing you can do unique stuff for each one.

Easy!

If you remember…

Recently I have begun to delve deeper into the world of jQuery. What I didn’t fully realise previously is that can do many of the jobs that we have previously used flash within our sites for!

So, slide shows, animation, flashy menus (pun intended) … all do-able using jQuery and then instantly available to those mac devices – iPad and iPhone etc that wont show flash.

Of course, there’s bound to be stuff that jQuery wont do. And users need to have javascript on. Having said that, for the few users who don’t have js on you can “gracefully degrade” so that pages wont fall apart.

You can check out some examples of jQuery in action on these sites:

Coin Street Community Builders (slide show on home page)

4eyes design – (portfolio, clients, services pages)

Like many people i have been following the recent “Developments” regarding Adobe Flash and Apple mobile platforms with considerable interest. Whilst the average user might say, “I don´t know what flash is” (as one friend of mine recently did) as sure as “Eggs is eggs” they will have used the Flash Player. Many times.

So what´s the issue?
For a long time web designers and developers have added flash elements into their sites – its great for interactivity. Videos, animations, sounds, movement, games – to name just a few of the huge range of uses. The Flash Player is perhaps one of the most ubiquitous add-ons to web browsers, I read recently that 90% of the world´s browsers have it installed.

Apple´s decision not to allow the Flash Player on the iPad (or on the iPhone either) has, in effect, censored great chunks of web content from its customers. Now anyone who uses the iPhone or the iPad has effectivly had a whole pile of web content hidden from them. If you visit a web site that has flash in it, and the site´s owners haven´t “Made provision” then those flash parts are just not there. That affects countless millions of websites.

Read more…

Well, I made the jump and have done a couple of projects with it. People I know have moaned about it – “All that code for pressing a button” they intone.

Me? I think its blooming SUPERB. A lot more logical, the display object is much easier to use, similar code for different events. GREAT