Posts filed under 'Daily thoughts'
I’ve been rather quiet lately. My spare hours have been working on recovering from an attack of spambots attacking this site, and others. My poor little Mac Mini hosts a dozen sites while holding a martini glass for any visitors that may drop by. I’ve ignored security for the past N (where N > 10) on my blogs, but that has rapidly become a thing of the past. Hopefully I’m back up and running now, preferably without scissors 🙂
While I’ve been quiet I also noticed how quiet it was on the MXNA (Macromedia XML News Aggregator). They had some issues with their server, but the site is back up with a new and improved name of Adobe Feeds. Thanks to all of those at Adobe for the feeds. The site sure is faster than it used to be! Guess they now have a bit of power behind it. I know I’ll feel better now that I can browse through it in the morning.
Stay away hackbots…stay away…please!
May 6th, 2008
Welcome to WordPress…yet again. I made quite a few behind the scene changes. Thanks to those that pointed out some things wrong on the site. I still have some changes to make, but I think I have things stabilized.
April 22nd, 2008
I’ll be honest, I still haven’t had time to play with Dir 11. Drudge work lately has been leaving me so tired when I get home that I just want to veg out, run, or drink — while avoiding computers. But while browsing around on Adobe.com and grabbing Lightroom 2.0 beta I noticed new stuff kicking around for Director.
If you want a light read drop by and download the 1245 page Director 11 Scripting Reference. That sure is a lot of lingo.
With that PDF opened I noticed the manual was authored in FrameMaker. I’m still so sad that they ditched the Mac version of that program. Maybe “a tad pissed” is more appropriate than sad. I’ve never gotten over that one…even Steve Jobs was peeved, since all Apple manuals used to be done in FrameMaker. [OK…enough of my side rant.]
To go along with installation problems that were initially reported, Adobe has released a number of technotes related to installation and computer lock up. Far more info on the Director Support Center.
April 16th, 2008
Here are a few thoughts from week 1 of the brand new Director 11. Most thoughts are from mailing lists (so I guess I can’t really call them mine)…I’ve been so busy this and last week I haven’t had time to think, and I’ve barely had time to play with it.
First, let me just say I’m very happy that Adobe is at least putting one foot forward by getting this running on MacIntel. It really would have been a sign of sure death if they’d gone with the Windows only approach. Director isn’t quite dead yet (as some of us have been saying for 5 to 8 years).
In the few minutes I’ve played with it I’ve found two “quirks.” Not sure that is so good.
The script browser is great, but as soon as I saw it I wanted more functionality. Why can’t I drag a behavior from it on to a sprite in the stage/score? Why is the only option when right/control clicking on a script icon delete? Why can’t I get a nice view of my cast like that where I could create folders and “group” things in to them (or just allow like media to show up in folders like that). This Director is like an iPhone. I see it, love the features, but I want far more.
On the Shockwave side, it took until Thursday evening (four days after release), but Adobe finally changed their redirect page that was preventing MacIntel users from grabbing Shockwave 11. As soon as they changed that our company changed ours as well. It took two years more than it should have, but Shockwave now runs on my gorgeous MacIntel at home.
Beatles are playing in the coffee shop I’m in right now. With the unbelievable amount of Apple/American Idol promotion, combined with two weeks where the Idolites were forced to destroy Beatles songs, you’d think Apple would have used all that to announce Beatles on iTunes. Alas, we’ve been waiting for that longer than Shockwave for MacIntel. [Note: this is not Director related, but hey…popped in to my mind.]
OK…now on to mailing list stuff.
The Xtra Development Kit and Xtra Packaging Kit (XDK/XPK) are available for download here.
A wealth of discussion over this release causing depression among developers. Others are happy that Director is finally moving forward once again. Future versions of Director continue to get mentioned by Allen P.
A very long post by Lutz W. on Direct-L did real world comparisons between Ageia Physics Xtra and the Havok Xtra. Ageia did rather well in some respects, needs work on other parts. It was a great read.
Adobe is trying to get the XDK mailing list reinstated. It died at some point during the Macromedia purchase. If you want to be on this list be sure to drop Allen P. a message.
Looking around for Xtras…these two sites are being updated: Dean’s Xtra Page and Mile High Table ‘o Products. Many updated Xtras were posted by Tabuleiro.
Good Things
MacIntel Director and Shockwave are here!!!!!!
Many from the Adobe Director engineering team are on the mailing lists trying to find out more about bugs.
Lots of Xtras have been updated. Other updates are on the way.
Bad Things
No publicity at all on the front page of the Adobe Site. And SW never seems worthy of a full icon. This still doesn’t seem to represent full blown support from Adobe.
Possible bugs I need to read more about: charPosToLoc, getNetText with unicode.
Text display of anti-aliasing/kerning seems to have a wealth of issues.
The documentation on new features is rather limited at this point. I think I caught a sentence that Adobe is working on getting together lots of sample stuff for a DVD (not positive where I saw that).
Most everything involved in text display/rendering is slow. In the message window if you
put the xtraList
it is very slow, but if you use
put string(the xtraList)
it is vastly faster. Putting strings is always faster in the message window. This issue is now being looked in to by Adobe.
Some Xtras will not be updated. Adobe is actually debating if they want to acquire some and include them with Director.
The GUI associated with the program has become so confusing. The first thing I do is choose the Window > Panel Sets > Director 8 option. A tremendous overhaul is needed.
March 31st, 2008
OK. Director 11 is here. I found my first bug in about five minutes of playing. Is this a quirk, bug, or “feature?” Guess that is up to interpretation. Anyway…I put a Flash Component Button on the stage. I gave the sprite a name in the Property Inspector window. In a startMovie handler I used:
sprite("aName").label = "Some text"
This used to work in startMovie, but no longer does. It also used to work in a prepareFrame in frame 1 (which occurs before startMovie). This now seems to consistently fail in both Shockwave and Authoring on MacIntel and PPCs.
Bug, feature, or quirk. Hard to say. I guess it might be good to start getting all of these bugs in one place. Suggestions? I think DOUG might have a wiki up, or maybe Dean’s new site, or Director Quirk List…will have to look around when I get a few spare moments. Massive deadline this week…and lots of QA to do with the new Shockwave.
March 25th, 2008
I had a few problems with the server this sits on during the past few days, so I’ve got to make a few changes to things. Unfortunately, I’m off in DC for a good chunk of this coming week.
This site should “mostly” function during the week, but a few things may be askew.
Since Director 11 is still rumored to be out around March 24th I’ll be sure things are nailed back in place by then 🙂
March 15th, 2008
One thing about Director is that the help files are often missing things. One key thing is time (I heard it keeps on ticking). Think about all these different things (roughly grouped) – feel free to start typing in the message window.
the ticks
_movie.ticks()
the milliseconds
_system.milliseconds
the date
the long date
_movie.date()
_system.date()
the time
the long time
_movie.time()
_system.time()
the systemDate
_movie.systemDate()
_movie.systemDate().year
_movie.systemDate().month
_movie.systemDate().day
_movie.systemDate().seconds
What are all these things? Well…some are old, some are new, some are undocumented, and some are blue (ok…maybe not). Running a little script to show each of those items you get the following:
— “2861209 = the ticks”
— “2861210 = _movie.ticks()”
— “47686843 = the milliseconds”
— “47686848 = _system.milliseconds”
— “3/2/08 = the date”
— “Sunday, March 2, 2008 = the long date”
— “3/2/08 = _movie.date()”
— “3/2/08 = _system.date()”
— “8:14 PM = the time”
— “8:14:21 PM = the long time”
— “8:14 PM = _movie.time()”
— “8:14 PM = _system.time()”
— “date( 2008, 3, 2 ) = the systemDate”
— “date( 2008, 3, 2 ) = _movie.systemDate()”
— “2008 = _movie.systemDate().year”
— “3 = _movie.systemDate().month”
— “2 = _movie.systemDate().day”
— “72861 = _movie.systemDate().seconds”
Here is the really quick explanation (as far as I know).
the ticks (or _movie.ticks) are divisions of time that are equal to approximately 1/60 of a second (slight variance on different platforms/computers). I’m not sure when they start counting (i.e. when would it show 0 ticks). the milliseconds (or _system.milliseconds) are the number of milliseconds (1/1000 of a second) that have passed since it started counting – and once again, I’m not sure when it starts counting. the date, _movie.date() and _system.date() all return the same value (at least in my case). I believe that the format of these will vary based on your international settings on your computer.
the long date provides the name of the day and the month. This is older Lingo. I’m not aware of a modern way to get this value. Does anyone know of anything such as _system.date.long() that might give the same information? The long date is rather unique (or should I say old?).
the time, _movie.time, and _system.time all provide the same value, but once again, there is the long time which includes the seconds and is unique and old. Does anyone know if there is a modern (dot syntax) version of that?
the systemDate (modern version is _system.date()) provides the date in the format of (year, month, day). This is supposed to be uniform across international systems. From this date you can easily get the year, month or day as was shown above. The most interesting part is that you can also get the seconds past midnight with the _movie.systemDate().seconds.
Between all those things you can usually come up with at least one time or date that seems interesting. Of course, if you want a bit more you could also use javascript or an actionscript object via lingo to get even more times and dates.
Some interesting resources related to this:
Director Online article
Mediamacros script
Using actionscript objects with date/time:
Director Dev Center Article
ActionScript dictionary for date objects
March 2nd, 2008
ExploreLearning won a Codie each of the past two years. This year we are finalists for a Codie in two different categories: Best Mathematics Instructional Solution and Best Science Instructional Solution for the ExploreLearning Gizmos.
Gizmos are made with Director (and have been since 1995).
Will I get my hands on two Codies this year? The two sitting on my desk are getting a bit lonely 🙂
February 13th, 2008
After more than a year, the Director Podcast has returned from the “virtual” dead. Drop over to the Magicgate Director Podcast site to listen to the podcast.
Looks like Director will be at the Games Developer Conference (as they were last year), and possibly making an announcement of the new Director on Feb 18 based on this thread over on the Adobe Director forums.
February 5th, 2008
A press release from MTV Networks’ Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group says they have committed $100 million to its online casual games business. From the press release:
Shockwave: Shockwave will become the games destination for families. Increased focus this fall on www.shockwave.com will be on the creation of innovative applications which are both fun for the user and an opportunity for prominent integrated advertising. The first new application to launch is Jigsaw Video. In addition, Shockwave will be more closely linked with family-targeted brands within Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group, like Nick-at- Nite television, to give advertisers the ability to promote their messaging across multiple platforms. Shockwave will also increase its publishing of downloadable games with Carrie the Caregiver Episode 2: Preschool, scheduled to come out later this year.
Jigsaw Video and Carrie the Caregiver (both the latter done with Director) were developed by Rob Gordon over at Article 19. I had the chance to work with Rob a few years ago, and I’m sure some of you have seen him on various mailing lists. I certainly hope he gets a slice of the pie since his games were featured. 🙂
July 19th, 2007
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