Social : service on Adobe Labs

Social is a service that lets you integrate social networks in your Flash and Flex applications. It provides a single unified abstraction layer for multiple social network APIs. The service is powered by Gigya , makers of the Gigya Socialize Technology. There are settings to configure and integrate Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Yahoo apps and support for OpenID with a promise to add more in future.

Download: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/social.html

Developer’s guide: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FPS/Social/1.0/WS58a04a822e3e5010514cd17d123be4341a6-8000.html

API reference : http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FPS/Social/1.0/WS58a04a822e3e5010-1012c7a1123be457886-8000.html

Examples :
Flash AS3 : http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FPS/Social/1.0/WSc4727564e6331f43-290356a4123e910c0ce-8000.html
Flex AS3 : http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FPS/Social/1.0/WSc4727564e6331f431836d7512408233f6d-7fff.html

Tools for testing Browser compatibilty of web pages

If you are in need of tools to check how your web pages will look in the numerous browser variants, here are some.

Litmus allows you to test your pages on all major browsers and versions. A free account entitles you to test on IE 7 and Firefox 2 with a limit of 5o pages/ month.

IE Netrenderer is a free service that allows you to test your pages on IE 7, 6 and 5.5 .

Adobe WorkflowLab

Adobe WorkflowLab is Adobe’s offering to provide designers, developers and project managers with a common way to share information on specific project types including tasks, applications and instructions. It is an AIR application based on Adobe’s Flash Platform and is currently in Alpha.

Download Adobe WorkflowLab (Alpha ) from http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/workflowlab/

Degrafa : open source declarative graphics framework

Degrafa www.degrafa.org is an open source declarative framework for flex 2 and 3.

The need to write actionscript code (using the Drawing API) in order to draw visual elements on screen is highly minimised as you can do similar things with mxml declarations when using Degarafa framework.

Degrafa also facilitates data binding in these visual elements making it easy to produce visuals that change based on dynamic data.

Download: http://www.degrafa.org/code/
Samples : http://www.degrafa.org/samples/
Blog : http://www.degrafa.org/blog/

Flex 4 will have similar features with the use of MXML 2009 / FXG but if you are stuck with Flex 3, Degrafa makes your life a lot easier.

Show Hand Cursor on Flash AS3 Sprite , MovieClip

To show Hand Cursor on a Flash MovieClip or Sprite that listens for MouseOver events, add the following code:

mClip.buttonMode=true;

where mClip is the Sprite or MovieClip that listens for MouseOver events.
If mClip contains a TextField within it, add this line :

mClip.mouseChildren=false;

To try out the example code below, copy and paste the code in your Flash IDE.

var mc:Sprite=new Sprite();
mc.graphics.beginFill(0xffff00,1);
mc.graphics.drawRect(0,0,100,30);
mc.graphics.endFill();
var t:TextField=new TextField();
t.text="Text inside Sprite";
mc.addChild(t);
mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER,Over);
mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT,Out);
addChild(mc);
mc.x=100;
mc.y=100;
mc.buttonMode=true;
// mc.mouseChildren=false; // Uncomment this line to display HandCursor
function Over(e:MouseEvent):void
{
//handle event
}
function Out(e:MouseEvent):void
{
//handle event
}