Mike Garcia’s Blog

Works damn good if you ask me. Was able to setup and write this in under 5 minutes.

Nothing can ever prepare you for the news of a loved ones death.  Monday evening, news was delivered that Ricky Nelson, my sisters husband, was killed in Iraq during his second tour of duty in Iraq.  Ricky was a loving husband and an honorable man.  He will be missed and his sacrifice will NEVER be forgotten.

Never try to launch a rocket without fuel.

I’ve been testing (with a mild level of success) whether there are easier ways to handle external data in Flash.  Each person’s situation is different and completely dependent on the resources they have available to them but what if such a method existed?

The best solutions for handling data in Flash all come down to the amount of work put in at the planning stages of a project.  For instance, when I began my Flash IMS (Image Management System), one of the first classes I wrote was a file handling class.  In the early stages, I was positively sure that I would be using this class repeatedly to get all of my image data into Flash.  Turns out…I was WAY wrong.

After sitting down and building out a rough draft of the database structure (in mySQL), I realized that most of the functions which originally encompassed the SD_FileHandler class weren’t necessary at all and after clean-up I was left with one solitary function.  The functions only responsibility is to crawl through a directory looking for a specific image type (the default is jpg) and is only used by the admins to administer the site.  I ended up writing an entire second class that pulled content per the area of the site it was needed and even this class doesn’t use the SD_FileHandler class or its solitar function “fileFilesOfType”.

function findFilesOfType($dir, $type=’.jpg’){
  $jpgs = array();
 
  $dirHand = opendir(SD_BASE_PATH . SD_CUSTOMER_URL . $dir . “/” . SD_PCIMAGES_DIR);
  while($file = readdir($dirHand)){
   if(substr(strtolower($file), -4) == $type)
   {
    $jpgs[] = $file;
   }
  }
  
  sort($jpgs);
  
  return $jpgs;
 }

Because my final approach to handling the data was a mySQL database, there really aren’t any files which require php file handling at this level so my original class is really quite defunct.  In the final System, Flash simply calls a PHP file which in turn calls the IMS classes and loads the data specific to the situation.  Ironic if you ask me.

The point is this, whenever you start a project, always make the extra effort during the planning stages.  It will prevent more headaches than it will cause, hours of debugging and in the end, provides a clean, simple approach to handling the task at hand.

Hey everyone.  I decided since I’m mobile, to provide a means for everyone to reach me.  I now have Google’s IM service on my Blackberry.  If you have questions or comments and have Google IM, send a message to sddmike@gmail.com (note, you can also e-mail me at this address).

All very good!  Tiring…but definitely good.  I’ve updated the site again and gone back to a simple blog system again.  I found I simply don’t have enough time for much more than a blurb here and a blurb there.

When I’m not busy at work, I’m busy at home building an IMS (Image Management System).  The principles behind it are very similar to those of a CMS but I’ve added an interesting little twist…

I’ve always been in pursuit of a truly dynamic way to handle image content in Flash.  Traditional methods require that you push content into Flash from text files or XML files.  For the traditional developers and site managers out there, this isn’t much of an issue. 

Let’s say however that a client wants/needs to be able to edit image content inside their Flash site and your client isn’t HTML saavy or have staff on site who can manage the content for them once the site is complete.  What then?  I have recently run into this problem.

The past 5 years, I worked for a small photography studio in a Chicago suburb.  Late last year, I moved to Texas.  Prior to the move, a website change only required a call down to my office (in the crypt…j/k) and I would be able to update the site in minutes.  Now that I am in Texas, when a site change is required, it often entails conference calls, e-mail correspondence and attachments and because I work 100 miles away from home and my labtop, it is almost always hours before I can make any physical change for them.

My solution was to create an OO CMS/IMS coded completely in PHP5 that would run from a MySQL database and give them the ability to change the content inside their site (completely Flash based) without needing to call me for the “simple” stuff.  What I’ve was able to achieve was a uniquely simple admin panel that gives them the ability to edit not only their text based content but also their image content on the fly in the easiest way possible.

Now, instead of Flash having to make a ridiculous number of URLRequests for each image, remembering the entire site structure etc, I’m able to use a single URLRequest inside a custom AS3 Class to bring an array of mySQL stored and PHP generated data back into Flash.  The result was a cleaner, simpler method for handling and controlling what data Flash would recieve and when.

As a result, I’ve also been able to make subtle, appealing visual changes that simply weren’t possible before because of all the content that needed to be stored to render out each menu, gallery or text blurb that were already hammering the system to its peaks.  For instance, the senior menu which contains 7 different galleries, 150+ images (plus their thumbnails) and over 30 plus text blurbs, couldn’t afford much in the way of visual stimuli prior to removing all of these calls and classes from Flash that are responsible for displaying thumbnails, cycling timers, etc.

I’m putting the finishing touches on the system now and plan to bring it online by mid-April when I update the Fedler Studio site.  Once the site goes live, I’ll be back to posting on my blog on a regular basis and hopefully providing insight into what I did as well as the lessons I learned.

Later!

The last few months have been hectic. Everything has gone well with the move and my wife and I have settled into the new area well. I found a job working with lifeBLue media as an application developer…an awesome group if I do say so myself. The experience has been an awesome one for me and I look forward to learning all that I can.

I was recently informed that my tutorials on as3 preloading techniques have managed to earn themselves a spot on top of google and the other major search engines.

Needless to say, I never expected that but would like to thank all of the people in the community that clicked through and read my articles and found them useful.

As has always been my policy, feel free to email me with your comments and concerns and anything else… I am always open to suggestion.

All I can say is that if you aren’t familiar with this yet, you are missing out.  Everything I’ve worked on lately with it has just impressed me.  Check out the 2007 Chicago Auto Show Photogallery I put up on my site to see what I mean.

As many people know, I’ve been working hard on the sd-dezign website.  I’ve been adding content throughout the last week or so and more content is coming.

 I’ve been getting a mass flux of e-mails the past two weeks concerning the old tutorial files which I hosted from my dev blog.  These files are being updated and worked through to make them much more user friendly but like anything, it is taking me time.  I still have the old zip files, and I’m willing to e-mail them to anyone in need.  All you need to do is e-mail me directly and ask for them.  When you are e-mailing, please provide the name of the files you need and whether you need the AS3 or AS2 version (as contact form tutorial).  This will make it much easier to get you the files you need.

As always,
Enjoy!

Guitar Hero III is out for the XBOX360 now and so out of pure curiousity, I did a search to find the hardest song to finish on expert.  Here is the music video for Dragonforce’s Through The Fire And Flame as well a video of a coop battle on expert of the song in Guitar Hero III….can anyone say insane???

 Through The Fire and Flame

• music video
• guitar hero III video

I’ve been working on my portfolio since I finished unpacking/repacking/storing everything after the move.  Everything went well and I am pretty much back to 100% (minus the un-employed part). 

I finished restructuring the backend this evening which was immediately followed with server back-ups and a really quick sync from inside Dreamweaver CS3.  As a result, a few of the links on my dev blog are down and you may see a broken image or link here and there.

I disabled my pdf resume and my AIR based Vana’diel Timer.  These will both come back online shortly but will be part of the new portfolio section.

I added a community button to the gateway.  While I was going through the different things I wanted to put into my portfolio, I realized there were a lot of files for all these different things I’ve coded to help show certain principles or theory about Flash.  I’m going to make these files available but as is the case with anything, I’ll need to make sure everything works with the new site structure and server (some of these rely on ASP which I no longer use and my current server doesn’t even support).

 I have been an active member of the Flash community for years (8 to be exact) but until recently, I wasn’t really a “heavy” programmer.  I did what needed to be done using a minimalistic approach to the coding wherever possible.  Now, I often find myself coding the AS for a given project WAY before I ever even get to the design phase (my portfolio being no exception). 

Anyone who has coded in the Flash GUI using the Actionscript editor knows that it simply doesn’t cut it for a true developer.  If you are serious about coding in Actionscript, one of the first things you should do is find yourself an external AS editor like SE|PY (my personal favorite and the one I use daily).

SE|PY has been a huge god-send the last week as I’ve had to open/edit/delete AS from hundreds of files, packages, libraries.  It is a simple text editor at its core so it is also able to open XML/PHP….you name it and you can probably open it, edit it, etc.

Anyways, back to the portfolio…