Tutorials:

• AS3 XML Slideshow
• AS3 Masking

WebSite of The Month – June 2009:

• NalinDesign

Misc:

• ROC Sponsor: Wix.com

Republic of Code’s Website of the Month Award for July 2009 goes to Soytuaire. An amazing blend between music, art and animation by Labuat Studios. View the website via this link.

(You can submit your website to win the Republic of Code Website of the Month Award via this link.)

Learn how to create an image slideshow using ActionScript 3.0 and XML. All contents of the tutorial can be updated through XML. You can view this tutorial here.

Adobe announced today that the first Android device to be shipped with the Flash plug-in is the HTC Hero. Though not clearly expressed anywhere in the announcement, this device supports Flash Lite 3.1 and not the previously announced full Flash Player 10. This means that ActionScript 3.0 is not supported, and only up to Flash Player 9 movies made in AS2 will be playable. Adobe claims that this means that up to 85% of Flash on the Internet will be supported.

As seen from the announcement video, the integration of Flash in the player is excellent, the user could double click any Flash object to have that object displayed in full screen landscape mode. This makes viewing Flash video nice and makes playing games comparable to standalone applications.

There is no doubt that this is a great development for Flash, however, the fact that Flash Lite 3.1 does not support AS3 will be a barrier for entry for many developers.

There are no updates on whether Flash will ever be seen on the iPhone, but the other recent competitor, the Palm Pre, is expected to have the full Flash Player 10 sometime next year.

You can learn more about Flash on Android at the Flash Mobile Blog and Adobe.

Masks can be used to create a number of fun effects and transitions. Learn how to apply them dynamically using ActionScript 3.0 by reviewing our new tutorial on this topic.

A drawback in using Flash websites instead of HTML websites is that it is hard to track the path in which the user follows in a website in order to analyse and assess the effectiveness of that website. “Use It Better” hopes to solve this problem by introducing an analysis service for tracking events and mouse movement in Flash websites. The service will store the data on the servers of Use It Better to allow developer to view stats or even replay whole sessions as navigated through by end users.

Use It Better seems like a very promising project, implementing it in actual websites is supposed be a process that involves simply including the Use It Better class in a Flash project. The service works with both AS2 and AS3.

It is not clear how much the service could affect the performance of Flash websites using it as it could potentially be used to track and record all sorts of information from mouse movement to caching of SharedObject data and XML files. The service could also potentially have privacy considerations as personal data might be recorded in the process (e.g. XML data containing personal information).

Use It Better is currently in private beta. You can sign up to receive an invitation by using the form here.

[via .swfGeek]

 Electric Rain released today the new version of Swift3D, the 3D modeling and animation tool of choice for Flash designers. The new Swif3d v6 features new boolean operations for merging and punching objects out of each other, enhanced speed and performance, support for Papervision3D 2.0 to create real time 3D Flash graphics, and other new features.

I was personally not impressed at all with the implementation of Papervision3D in the previous version of Swif3D, so I hope the implementation of Papervision3D 2.0 is better.

v6 is instantly available for purchase for both the Mac and Windows at the price of $250. Trial versions are not out yet. You can learn more about Swift3D from the official website of Electric Rain.

 We would like to thank Wix.com for sponsoring Republic of Code a number of times. Wix is a powerful online Flash-based application for creating Flash websites without using any ActionScript. Using this tool you can create simple Flash websites, widgets, and galleries by simply dragging and dropping various elements from a clip art collection or by directly uploading them from your desktop.

If you are interested in quickly putting up a Flash website or gallery make sure you check out Wix.

Adobe recently release a public preview of BrowserLab - its upcoming online tool for testing websites on multiple browsers and platforms. Using the tool you can simply input the URL of any website to view the way that webpage would appear on a number of browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari on Windows and Mac.

The screenshots of the webpage take a short while to be generated, and then they can compared on side by side preview or an ‘onion skin view’ for which two versions of the page can be directly placed over each other.

The tool could also be used on Dreamweaver CS4 after installing a number of BrowserLab Extensions to test local and active content before publishing it on the web.

This service should be helpful to web developers as the difference in rendering between browsers could be massive. The list of supported browsers does not currently include Chrome, but as Chrome is based on the WebKit rendering engine it should have a very similar output to Safari.

This service will probably not be of great importance to Flash developers as the display of Flash content is not affected by the type of browser or its version as long as the same Flash Player version is installed.

You can test this service free of charge now by visiting its online portal.

Adobe released yesterday the public betas for Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst. Flash Builder 4 is the new version of Flex Builder which got renamed as Flash Builder recently, it is the tool to use to create rich internet applications using MXML and ActionScript.

Flash Catalyst on the hand is a new tool aimed at designers to allow them to transform Photoshop and Illustrator file documents into rich internet applications using a number of actions and user interface elements.

You can download both betas from Adobe Labs. You can get a quick start with these tools by checking the introductory tutorials for Flash Builder 4 from Adobe and the new video tutorials on both Catalyst and Builder from gotoAndLearn.