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The perfect 40th Birthday Gift

On April the 26th, I turned 40. Hurray! I decided not to throw a party this time, and instead do what I love the most: Go alpine skiing. So, a couple of days before my birthday, I packed my bags and headed up into the mountains, to a place called Hemsedal. Long story made short: I had a blast! Got two full days of perfect skiing conditions and warm (spring) weather. And yes - a little bit of sunshine too :) Now to the great surprise: Th... read more

onAIR tour Europe

The Adobe onAIR tour has landed in Europe this spring, and I have registered for the Stockholm session on June 2nd. The tour is visiting eleven European cities in total. I was hoping they would come to Oslo, but Stockholm was the only Scandinavian city to make the bill. I hope they have booked a big venue! Quoting the onAir blog "...the entire first leg of the on AIR Tour in Europe is sold out", and i'm predicting the second leg is going to be sold out pretty soon too. I hope this will give Adobe a hint that they need to come talk to us Europeans more often in the future :)... read more

Flex/AIR Pre-Release Tour: Oslo

Man I'm looking forward to this :) January 31st, the Adobe Flex/AIR pre-release tour makes a stop in Oslo. The tour is fronted by Mike Downey, Stephanie Sullivan, Greg Rewis and Jason Levine, who will be giving us a full day seminar in two sessions. 1. Unlocking Modern Web Workflows Morning Session (09.00 - 13.00) Workshops on Creative Suite 3 Master Collection: Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Soundbooth and Adobe Flash. Agenda and Topics Prototyping and Preparing Web Content with Photoshop and Fireworks - Greg Rewis Building Standards-based sites with CSS - Stephanie Sullivan Break with sandwich and coffe Progressive Enhancements using the Spry Framework for AJAX - Greg Rewi... read more

Papervision3D Test

Ok, so I got bit too! Papervision3D is really addictive. I started playing around with it a couple of weeks ago, thinking I might be able to use some 3D in a recent job. Unfortunately I had to give up on it due to pixel limitations, but I immediately brought the files back up when the job was done. These are my first results! Basically just playing around with something based on some solar system stuff, with the sun in the middle and the planets spaced out. Because the planets are so tiny, I added some cubes in the first example just to see how many things could animate simultaneously. Also experimented with some cubes and materials. Next: Collada :) Links: Solar 001 Solar 002 ... read more

Designing Wika Media

Just started designing the new graphic identity profile for Wika Media, which is my own personal little web company. I've decided to give myself a challenge this time, and do all the design work inside Flash CS3. Since the release of Flash 8 - and the addition of bitmap filters and blendmodes, there really isn't much you can't do in Flash. So, there will be no Photoshopping on this one :)... read more

Flash on the Beach '07

Flash on the Beach '07 is coming up, and I've decided to go. Didn't plan on it, but it's been a long time since I've tried those Old English Beer Holes! Think it must have been around 1987, so I guess it's about time. Oh - and they have got together a pretty nifty collection of speakers too... Got my ticket and flight booked a couple of days back, and I'm now doing some heavy research into the Brighton Hotel scene. Never been to the place before, so I'm kind of lost as to what to look for. There seems to be a lot of smaller family-driven B&B's around the Brighton sea front, as well as the more extravagant places like The Grand. We'll see!... read more

Linpro wins NUUG Award

Congrats to Linpro who got this years NUUG Award from the Norwegian Unix User Group. They got the award for their outstanding work in the field of Free Software, in which Linpro is a clear leader. The reason I'm writing about this, is because Linpro was one of my first brand-id customers. Back in 1998 I designed their company logo. It's nice to see that the logo is still there, and it's my impression that it has become a very recognizable logo over the years. Recently they added some kind of L-shaped symbol to it, which I did not fancy very much. I basically think it looks like a "splat of blood", and it takes away the clean modern look of the logo-types. Oh well... But anyways: B... read more

SWFMouseWheel (alpha)

I've been working on getting a few samples of SWFMouseWheel ready, including sourcefiles. In case you wonder: SWFMouseWheel is an open source cross-platform solution for using the mousewheel in Flash, and it's currently in alpha mode. I will make a stand alone version of it, as well as an add-on version to Geoff Stearns SWFObject. A beta release of SWFMouseWheel is planned for late 2007. Link: http://oysteinwika.com/swfmousewheel/... read more

Flash Player gets H.264 support

Finally(!), and probably thanks to YouTube's latest attempt to play along with Apple TV, Adobe has decided to implement support for H.264 video compression in the Flash Player. This means publishers can now distribute video using the more widely adopted MPEG-4 compression line (.mp4, .m4a, .m4p, .mp4v, .m4v, .3gp, .3g2) for streaming, instead of FLV only. Application developers will also have a field day with this, since they now can tap into the entire Media Player market for real. The only drawback I can see this far, is the decision to lock streaming capabilities to the Flash Media Server only. So if you are a publisher you'll need the FMS to do real streaming to the Flash Player. But on the other side, many publishers only use progressive streaming (where users can play while downloading), so it may not be so much of a problem in most scenarios.... read more

Flash Business Logic

One of the difficulties you face as a Flash Platform Developer in Norway is that there is virtually no business environment for Flash work here. Landing projects based around the Flash Platform has been almost impossible up until now, because it's simply not there. The industry is pretty much avoiding Flash. Well, maybe it has gotten a little better recently, especially if you do Flex work. But for an Old School Flash Developer like me, the whole Flex-wave feels kind of ironic. For years I've been kicking and screaming to get people to realize just how much better their web applications really could be, if they were to use Flash to its fullest. But no, nada! Then, here comes Flex: Oh, applications... Cool... Gotta have it! But, but... Hello?! So for me, the recent growth in, and interest for the Flash Platform is a bittersweet one, seeing that Flex gets all the cake :( Don't get me wrong here, I like Flex, and I'm not claiming that Norwegian Flex developers are suddenly roll... read more

Oslo Flash Platform User Group

Update: The group is now active! See: Flash User Group Norway A couple of years back I attended a Macromedia User Group (MMUG) meeting here in Oslo. The meeting was great, but as a Flash person I felt a little off, as the majority of the people there seemed to relate more to the CF/DW category, and so I never went back. Instead, I've been following their activities via the website from time to time, and noticed that the activity level of the group has been decreasing steadily for a while. Last time I checked in, the group had changed the name to Adobe User Group (tp reflect the Adobe takeover), but it didn't look like they have had any meetings for well over a year. So this had me thinking: Considering the difficulties of landing Flash work in Oslo, maybe it's time we tried to get a user group started and really push the Flash Platform here in Oslo?! I for one think we need to join forces if we're going to get the wheels rolling. For starter... read more

AIR Chat - Live from Dallas

Just wanted to post a note about the new AIR Chat app from Ted Patrick. When opened it connects you to the Live on AIR Video Feed. When writing this post, I'm viewing the live show from Dallas on it and chatting with the guys there. Very cool, and a nice example of what you can do with AIR :) The application is kind of basic, but hey - I guess this is a work in progress. So far it's one video pluss chat. It will show you a count of users, but it doesn't have a list-view of who these users are, so you have to continually follow the chat to see who is online. I get an echo-feedback if I hide/view the video, so there's probably some bugs in there. But all this is just fine of course. I also think it's very interesting that the app is utilizing the Amazon EC2 web services platform for developers. AWS is something I'll be looking into very soon. ... read more

I got Pownce Invites

Hey, I got my Pownce invites yesterday. Send me an email if you want one. If you haven't heard, Pownce is the latest social networking blip on the 2.0 horizon, created by the guys behind DIGG. Pownce is kind of an instant messenger service, where you can send files and links and such... A pro-account cost $20 a year, so it's quite obvious what they are trying to accomplish through this app. However, one of the things I find most interesting with Pownce, is the fact that they have made an AIR app out of it, so you'll be able to run it on your desktop. I haven't had the time to test this out yet, but I'll definitely come back with some views on this later.... read more

Adobe onAIR Bus Tour Summer '07

The Adobe onAIR Bus Tour Summer '07 is soon hitting the road. They have been marketing the event for quite some time now, and it seems to be a real 2.0 kind of theme over the whole thing. Lee Brimelow did a video walk-through of the design process for the tour, together with the guys from Frog Design. Adobe RIA Evangelist Ryan Stewart claims he will be blogging his face off, keeping up to four blogs spinning at the same time! Well, if there's anyone who can pull that off - it's gonna be Ryan :) Mashing it up: Tour Syndication, Data Feeds and APIs Looks like there will be a lot of stuff for people who want to keep up with the tour online (or possibly mash it up). Here's the list: Bus Tour Image APIs and Feeds. Official on AIR Bus Tour Group RSS Feed. RSS Feed for latest images uploaded to the on AIR Bus Tour Flickr g... read more

New Project: CTRL7.com

Posting about another pre-launch today, but this time it's only to get the domain name into bots-circulation. The site is named CTRL7 and will be the main outlet for all my Flash Tutorials and ActionScript How-To's. My ambition is to establish the site as a First Aid Kit for ActionScript. The name doesn't mean no nothing. I was literally looking at my keyboard when I tried to think up a name, accidentally hitting the Ctrl-key instead of the Shift-key to enter a slash-character (which is uppercase 7 on my keyboard). So of course it had to be CTRL7! But back to the important stuff: Site functionality and content! The idea is to multi publish tutorials to both text and video, where the textual content will be based on a transcribed version of the video voice-overs. The transcript is then split into keyword-specific "pages/anchors" following the qu... read more

Web Media Player

Just launched a new development project called Web Media Player. The player will let you play online FLV and MP3 files/streams, in addition to files you might have stored in your local file system. Why? As Flash video has become the dominant video format online, we now need a new breed of desktop players that makes it easy to take back control over the viewing experience. We're building Web Media Player to give people that control. And of course, because it's fun :) URL: http://www.wmp.com... read more

New Book from Adobe: Adobe Integrated Runtime for JavaScript Developers Pocketguide

Adobe has a new book out called Adobe Integrated Runtime for JavaScript Developers Pocketguide, written by Danny Dura, Kevin Hoyt and Mike Chambers. The book is released under a Creative Commons license and can be downloaded as a PDF from a post on Ajaxian, or be purchased in paper-form from Amazon. The target audience is, like the title may hint, JavaScript developers - which judging from the comments on Ajaxian, really could need some clearification on the different aspects of the AIR technology :) Not only for JavaScript developers Now, there might be a thing or two for Flash developers too in there. With AIR, Flash developers has a much wider pallet for reaching other parts of the application, like better bridging with JavaScript and the WebKit DOM. And so, this book is definitely going on my ... read more

MIDI to Flash

UPDATE Jul 1. 2007: I'm seeing heaps of log entries to this post with the search keywords "midi to flash". I realize my post doesn't give much meat to the bone, so I have decided to do some more research on the topic, and include it in the post. So please check back later if you are interested. Also feel free to post a comment if you are sitting on some important info. Thanks! In the meantime: Check out John Grden's drum demo from FITC Hollywood 2006, or his original home demo. In the demo he's playing back to a Dream Theater montage track, mapping MIDI from his midi-drum-kit through the Red5 media server, and out to a flash-application that displays a visual representation of his playing.This is awesome stuff! ... read more

AIR Beta

The Adobe AIR Beta 1, formerly code-named Apollo, was released on Adobe Labs today. I have just got the SDK up and running, and am re-building my apps with the new command line tools. Had some problems getting it installed correctly (forgot I needed the JRE to run the ADT command line tool), so I'm posting some links here, mostly for my own memory shortcomings. Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) download AIR SDK download FLEX/AIR SDK documentation AIR:Developer FAQ Java Runtime Environment ... read more

Creating a Killer Flash Site - Update 9: Browser Zoom and Flash

One of the biggest challenges developing Flash applications has always been getting Flash to correspond with the internal browser navigation. Deep linking, back button, bookmarking, resizing and scrolling, just to name a few. In the resent years we have been able to solve almost all of these issues. One issue that has not yet received much focus is how Flash corresponds with browser text size/resizing and the more recent addition of browser zoom. Zooming Normally, if a SWF file is published without any browser adaptations, the movie will zoom in/out when ctrl + mousewheel/+/-/0 are triggered. This is just fine in some cases, but is problematic if you have an application with its own internal scrolling-logic. Why? Because the browser adds its own scrollbars when the zoom is above 100%, and you'll end up with a double set of scrollbars. Not good! In this application (my website), and as I've ... read more

Creating a Killer Flash Site - Update 8: Changelog

Lot of stuff going on here now. It's kind of exciting releasing while building, but I like it. I'm deep into the the code now, about 1200 lines written, and I guess halfway before I call it a 0.1 release (currently at: 0.0.5.64). Trying to get as many bugs fixed as possible as we go, but new bugs allways seem to appear out of the blue. How peculiar..?! However, I'm trying my best to have a running version online at all times, so a few bugs shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Here's a short changelog so far: Added scrollbar position memory implemented using Local SharedObject. This makes it possible to restore specific scrollbar positions, while moving forward/back between pages. Added right column menues with a few different menuItemTypes. Internal and external links. Added statusbar reflection of LinkURLs. I think I scratched my head for two hours before I finally noticed that Rostislav had allready implemented this functionality into... read more

Creating a Killer Flash Site - Update 7: Bitmap Caching

Using cacheAsBitmap we can get much faster screenanimation, which is important for creating smooth scrolling etc. Large textareas was a nightmare to deal with in the pre 'Flash Player 8' days, especially on MacOS. With cacheAsBitmap this is no longer a problem. ActionScript: // container with a textField that we want to cache /// stageContainer.mainTextArea.htmlText = "text text text"; stageContainer.cacheAsBitmap = true; However, I've discovered a small issue, where the cacheAsBitmap function make different results on Windows and MacOS, and that is when making a bitmap of htmlText using non-embedded fonts. On windows the fonts looses the aliasing, and becomes pixel clear, but on Mac they keep the aliasing. If you embed the fonts - they appear aliased on both systems. Strange?! In this application, I didn't want to use embedded fonts (to keep it as small as possible), so I needed to find a solution. Luckily Windows systems don't see... read more

Creating a Killer Flash Site - Update 6: Form Caching

One thing I find problematic with forms, is that they don't usually cache my input. Lets say you were writing a comment on some blog, and your browser crash or hangs - your comment is gone! You will have to write the whole thing over again, if you still can remember it that is... With the actionscripts Local SharedObject we can make a cache function to store user input continually. So if the browser crash, or the user accidently leaves the page, we now have a backup that we can use to restore the user input. Supercool! I first used this type of cache back in 2004, when I developed an application for The National Tests in Mathematics here in Norway. ... read more

Creating a Killer Flash Site - Update 5: MouseWheel Support

Update [September 30. 2007]:I've now set up a dedicated page for SWFMouseWheel.See: http://oysteinwika.com/swfmousewheel/-- Update [June 2. 2007]:Found another crossDomain problem that only seem to affect mac systems. Inserted the line 'Security.allowDomain("http://oysteinwika.com/");' in my constructor, which took care of it.-- Update [June 2. 2007]:Found that mac scrollwheels may produce a NO DATA script error in mousewheeel.js, which will hang the flash application. Implemented a small if test, to check if _delta is in fact a number beetwen -50 and 50. Seems to be working.-- Update [June 2. 2007]:Mac support is back up! Might be buggy. Please report to webmaster_email if you notice any problems. Thanks!-- Update [June 2. 2007]:Mac support is down! Need to work some more on this thing - so until then...-- I ... read more

Creating a Killer Flash Site - Update 4: ExternalInterface Bugs

It's come to my attention that the Opera browser does not live well with ExternalInterface, so Opera surfers might experience som quirks here and there on this site. The problem: Basically clicking forward/back button on the browser reload the entire flash app, which is not what we want to do. In addition, and after Opera reloads the page, SWFAddress stops working. I need to check more into the ExternalInterface implementation and Opera, to see if something can be done with this, allthough it's probably out of our (flash developers) hands. If anyone has some information to share, please do. More on this later! ... read more

Creating a Killer Flash Site - Update 3: The Add Comment Form

Comments are up and running. Comments does not appear before you do a manual reload, or until the cache is updated. This will of course be changed later, so that comments appear on page in a more dynamic way. Now I'm working on the Add Comment object.... read more

Creating a Killer Flash Site - Update 2: Crossdomain Security

Ok, I just figuered out that the crossdomain security was causing some remoting trouble when accessing the domain without the www. The solution was to remove the static URL 'http://www.oysteinwika.com' from the ServiceProxy path. ActionScript 3.0 Code: // now with relative path /// public function loadDoc(_type:String, _file:String):void { proxy = new ServiceProxy("/services/gateway.php", "com.oysteinwika.LoadDoc"); proxy.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT, onResult, false, 0, true); proxy.addEventListener(FaultEvent.FAULT, onFault, false, 0, true); proxy.addEventListener(FaultEvent.CONNECTION_ERROR, onConnectionError, false, 0, true); proxy.getData(_type, _file); } ... read more

Creating a Killer Flash Site - Update 1: Init()

Ok, so I'm building my new full Flash site from the ground up, all in ActionScript 3.0. First up is connecting it to a new simple blog engine that I'm developing in PHP/MySQL. I'll be documenting the whole process as we go. Application goals, overview, todo, specs: Flash frontend coded in AS3 Basic functionality just like any "regular" HTML page XHTML 1.0 Strict! validation Simple backend, database driven, PHP/MySQL Unique URLs, SEO using SWFAddress ScrollWheel functionality, Win/Linux/Mac Advanced page caching using Local SharedObject Added multimedia, inline videoplayer etc. Total frontend app size: < 100 KB ... read more

Sneak Preview: Adobe Media Player

Deeje Cooley and Mike Chambers gives us a sneak preview of Adobe Media Player (codename Philo). The player, which is built on top of Apollo, is expected for release in the fall of 2007. I first saw Philo demoed by Kevin Lynch at Adobe MAX 2006 [see webcast]. I think this application looks very promising, and it will definitely help Adobe give the Apollo framework a flying start.... read more

Photoshop Tutorial: HDR

As a new DSLR camera owner it didn't take long before I stumbled upon the term HDR, short for High Dynamic Range. In this Photoshop tutorial you will learn how easy it is to produce your own HDR images! [Click here to see a larger image] HDR vs LDR HDR images are images with a wider dynamic range than what is possible to view on computer screens and other digital equipment limited to 8 bit RGB. When working with 32 Bits HDR images in Photoshop, you have full access to this higher dynamic range, making it possible to fine tune the exposure and compress the image down to a lower bit-range. This way, withe the help of Photoshop, we can pick up the best parts of several exposures, and merge them to an optimized version of the sceene. This HDR image can them be downsampled to a normal 8 Bit ima... read more

Set White Point Preview for HDR

You will find a how-to set white point preview in my Photoshop Tutorial: HDR post.... read more

Lightning over Oslo

Anyone that has tried to shoot lightning, knows it can be quite tricky. Last night we had a big lightning storm over Oslo, and tricky it got: [Lightning large version] As the amateur I am - a good half hour was spent just watching the inferno - before it finally dawned on me (!) that I probably should get my camera out and try to capture a lightning. Eh..! I need a ref After getting the camera on the tripod I started snapping away, just wanting to capture a first lightning for a reference shot. I neede... read more

National Tests in Mathematics II

The past two years I've been involved in the development of an application for online assessment in mathematics. The project is led and financed by the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training in collaboration with Matematikksenteret/NTNU, and is called National tests in mathematics (Nasjonale prøver i matematikk). The entire frontend application is developed in Flash, with PHP/MySQL running on the backend. Link: http://pilot.matematikksenteret.no/... read more

National Tests in Mathematics I

We have just released the Flash based application for the voluntary national tests in mathematics (Nasjonale prøver i matematikk). This web-application marks a huge step forward in the development of automated math assessment applications. It paves the way for more interactive test-objects, moving away from simple multiple-choice tests and quizes. Application features include: dynamic content delivery asynchronous client interaction client based logics client based memory and state-keeping server backup and restautration of client based memory Dynamic content The content is served via a DB, but from reaching the client it lives on the client. This means: No page refresh is necessary to update or fetch user data. If the... read more

Kjell Bjørgeengen

We have just finished a new flashweb for the Norwegian video artist Kjell Bjorgeengen. The entire User Interface is built in Flash, and features browser back button functionality, deep linking and a solution for bookmarking. The site is fully DB-driven and generates XHTML content to bots, making it indexable for searchengines. Link: http://www.kjellbjorgeengen.com/... read more

Ballectro

The application is located under 'Research documentation' at: http://www.intermedia.uio.no/ballectro/ R&D Project The work was commissioned by InterMedia at The University of Oslo, as part of a new media research and development programme they have going down there. The programming was mostly done in Flash 5, but as soon as I saw that the new Flash MX finally had video implemented, I exported the whole thing to MX in one night. The whole application took about three weeks to complete. All data is loaded from a simple XML-document, which was a definite requirement for this project. Idea being that the documentational research material will be easy accessible for another, or possibly several more applications in the future. Prototype... read more

Flash Back Button

Using LocalConnection and a hidden frame with a history.swf, we can get the browser back button working on Flash Web Applications. Update [June 5. 2006]:Back in May 2001, Robert Penner was the first to publish a working back button solution for Flash Web Sites, using only a little JavaScript and a hidden historyframe. I still have vivid memories of the many complaints from certain besserwissers on this topic, so it really was a huge thing when Robert solved it. My localConnection solution, kind of a mod on Roberts solution, was first posted on Were-Here, the main Flash community forum back in the day. However, it didn't receive much hoopla. Oh well :) ... read more

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