Blog is outdated :(

Short notice:

this blog is due to lack of time ‘outdated’…

I know many files are already deleted from the hosting space, and that I did not reply on comments … But there is a big time issue atm

I would kindy redirect you guys to Creative-Geeks , where I will check more often on comments and be more of a help in case it’s needed …

(info@creative-geeks.com)

IPinfodb ActionScript 3.0 API

Are you looking for the geographical location of an IP address?

IPinfodb offers a you that service, for FREE!

I just ported the service to an ActionScript 3.0 API to open it up for other Flash and Flex developers …

Get your SWC library here. Online documentation for the API.

Add the .SWC file to the libs folder of your flex project.

Calling the API functions, can easily be done.

Download the Flex project.

For a sample and more information , please visit my original post on the other blog.

Degrafa – Declarative Graphics Framework for Flex 2 & 3

What is Degrafa?

Degrafa is an open source declarative graphics framework for Flex used by some of the industry’s top designers and developers. The framework can be used for a wide variety of purposes, ranging from rich user interfaces to intense graphics editing. Degrafa wants to enable the developers to create dynamic , runtime graphics with MXML , it’s like creating custom MXML components but then with graphics. The MXML code can hold different attributes like fills , strokes , shapes and others to define the graphic element. With their way of thinking they will eventually enable all the designers to create interactive graphical applications without having to go through the hassle of learning ActionScript.

Features?

• A library of pre-composed shapes for you to use as well as the ability to create your own.
• Use SVG path data to create complete reusable shapes. • Flexible options for fills and strokes.
• Binding of properties for Fills, Strokes and Geometry.
• Advanced CSS support for layered backgrounds, complex border control and background image positioning based on CSS 3.
• Productive features like derivatives, composition reuse, shape libraries, repeaters, and other utilities that allow you to do more with less code.
• Light weight model-based architecture.
• Compatibility with Flex 2 and Flex 3.

Make sure to check out their website , were you can find starting information and nice and usefull tutorials!

Read more technical information about Degrafa at the insideria blog , or more information at http://creative-geeks.com/

Happy MXML’ing!

Google Analytics On A Custom WordPress Blog

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a great, free for all, tool for a detailed tracking of the website visits. It certainly boosts up your knowledge off the visitors and enables you to get a full , detailed report about your website.

The main features this analytic tool offers

Advanced Segmentation

With this option the administrator can filter the site traffic into different segments. They can filter on example : “Paid traffic” or “Direct traffic” . Or they can easliy make their own custom segment. This way enables the admins to look closer to the personal interests of the visitors.

Motion Charts

The motion charts are a visual way to look at the traffic generated via your website. These charts enable the admin a multi-dimensional analysis to the Google Analytics report. It lets you create relationships with traffic data that are difficult to see in the text-based reports.

Custom Reports

Present the information in a nice editable and saveable report , so you can easliy organize all the different information the way you want. With an easy drag and drop interface you are able to make your own report , with multiple levels of sub-reports. These reports are saved for as long you want.

Fast Implementation

Implementation can be achieved in no – time , and is very easily done. You don’t need to have much knowledge of web programming. Google does everything for you.

Keyword and Campaign Comparison

Track and compare all your ads, email newsletters, affiliate campaigns, referrals, paid links, and keywords on Google and other search engines.

Custom Dashboards

Create widgets that hold all the interesting information you want , and have the option to mail these widgets to yourself.

AdWords Integration

Buy keywords on Google AdWords and use Google Analytics to learn which keywords are most profitable to your business.

Internal Site Search

Find out how your visitors search your site, what they look for, and where they end up.

Funnel Visualization

Find out which pages result in lost conversions and where your would-be customers go.

Site Overlay

See traffic and conversion information for every link as you browse your site. This is a great tool, get a personal insight of the visitors behaviour.

GeoTargeting

The most fun parts of tracking visits , is to know where the visitors are from. Get a nice visual overview where the pageviews are requested from.

How to implents Google Analytics with WordPress?

The integrated WordPress stats function is a great tool for tracking general traffic of your blog, but why would you track it on a basic way if there are better options for the same price?

I use Google Analytics for some time already and i must say , it’s great! It gives me a full detailed report on what people are interested in on my blog , and where the visitors come from. It gives me the chanche to change the content of the blog depending on what people want.

So in order to track WordPress blog traffic , you will need to register with Google Analytics , doe that here.

After the sign up , you will have to add a new Website Profile.

When this new profile is added , Google Analytics will return a Web Property ID , that will be needed for tracking the blogs traffic.

Once you have this information it’s time to install the Google Analyticator plugin for your wordpress blog.

1. Upload the google-analyticator folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.

3. Configure your tracking settings through the ‘Settings’ > ‘Google Analytics’ menu in WordPress and add your personal Web Property ID.
4. Watch Google Analytics for excellent traffic information.

This is basically the 4 magic steps to a excellent , detailed and genius overview of your WordPress blog traffic!

Just note that between the actual recording of the traffic and creation of the Google analytics account , there can be a black hole of maximum 24 hours! After this time the status of your tracking will be “active” and data will start to be collected!

Axiis : Data Visualisation Toolkit For Flex

What is Axiis?

Axiis is an open source data visualization framework designed for beginner and expert developers alike.

Whether you are building elegant charts for executive briefings or exploring the boundaries of advanced data visualization research, Axiis has something for you.

Axiis provides both pre-built visualization components as well as abstract layout patterns and rendering classes that allow you to create your own unique visualizations.

Axiis is built upon the Degrafa graphics framework and Adobe Flex 3.

The Axiis website offers a great list of tutorials , documentation and support.
Example?

If you wanna get inspired by Axiis , be sure to check out their example page. But this is what you can expect from this Toolkit.

Object-Orientated Programming in Flash Lite 2.x

In this post i will show how you can use custom classes while developing your mobile application in Flash Lite 2.x with the ActionScript 2.0 code.

As many of you already know how to do this in ActionScript 3.0 there are some slight differences while using Flash Lite 2.x.

Why use the Object – Orientated approach?

In my understanding , it is very usefull when working with a larger amount of data. With this approach we can just make Objects with the different properties , and when making these new objects we just assign the matching values to its constructor.

Example: imagine we are working with a XML-file containing thse records

You can see that we the image , id , name and adress fields are re-used with every item. So in this case we can define those properties in 1 Object , and every time a new item is made/loaded we can just assign those new values to its constructor and store them in a array. It’s a better and more structural of working , and you don’t need to push every single item into a new array.

Making a new Object – Class

Importing and Using these custom Object Classes

Conclusion

If you look at the output screen , you will see the traces when creating a new object , and the traces when looping the location array.

This way of working is very interesting for any Flash Lite developer , no need of making different arrays for the properties when we can just create an Object with these properties and push that Object into 1 single array.

Yamla – Preview

Yamla – Yahoo Maps Location Albums , is a Adobe AIR application that make users able to share cool world spots with other users around the world ….

I’m still working on it … But below some previews of the actual application … I will update frequently …

Any ideas , comments or … anything do tell me!

Motion Graphics – Ipod Nano Chromatic Commercial

Another project I completed a while back , is this Motion Graphics commercial for the new Apple Ipod Nano Chromatic series …

Multi-Mania ’09 Information Application

For my Multi-Media project, I had to make a information application for the new edition of Multi-Mania ’09 , the biggest free Multi-Media festival in Belgium , this year it’s totally Rock ‘n’ Roll ….

Official website : http://www.multi-mania.be/2008/

Yahoo! Map custom markers in Flash CS.3

I already posted a small tutorial on how to implement a Yahoo! map into your Flash Actionscript project, if you did not read it check it here.

In this post i will show you briefly on how you can change the standard map marker into any custom marker. Basically we can just send a movieclip to the map marker manager to attach as marker.

Standard Marker

Below is the Actionscript code you can use to achieve a custom marker , this is just a movieclip that is attached to the SimpleMarker and can be used to make the map more interactive by example including buttons or other components inside this movieclip …

Custom Marker Clip with linkage name : markerClip

Following the code above, the outcome would be something like this , but than with your custom image as marker

Final Outcome

3D Room Screencaps

For my end of term exams , option: 3D i had to model my room with real life textures … I kind of wanted to model something impressive , so i made a 2 room model …

After spending approx. 100hours modeling and texturing , I was pretty pleased with the outcome.

I will bring some models online in a short time notice.

Pool Balls

Flower

Working Desk

Chillout Room

Pool Stick

Pool Table Overlook

Pool Table Front

Pool Table Front

TV Close UP

TV Table

YAMLA – Beta Release Soon!

In a couple of weeks , i hope so … I will have my new application up and running for beta …

I’am still very busy finetuning the application , while another force has joined my side , his prime mission will be developing the yamla website where users can registrate for Beta tester, submit bugs , submit ideas and folow the develop process of Yamla! …

I’am still backhold about the whole concept … You’ll See for yourself in a couple of weeks  …

Upload Multiple Files in Flash CS3

In this little tutorial i will show you how we can upload one or more file(s) using the FileReferenceList in Flash CS3.

We will use amfphp to upload the image to a location on our server … if you do not have amfphp installed, check out my prevouis post …

We will begin by declaring a new FileReferenceList object … after that we will set the object to show the browse window to select the files that need to be uploaded.

We also need to listen for the select event , this event is triggerd whenever enter is pressed, or the select button is clicked from the upload component.

Creating a new FileReferenceList

Now we specify the upload destination location, hereby i use a php file that uploads the file from the uploadReferenceList to the location specified in the php file (a directory on our amfphp server).

Upload Script PHP

Now having than that, we now specify the location of this file in Flash.

Upload Script Location

Now , this is what the fileSelectHandler looks like, we will loop through the fileList of the FileReference (so all the files we selected for upload), and push them into a custom function uploadSingleFile….

Select Handler

Here we just upload the file that was passed into the function to the php file on our amfphp server …

We also add a complete handler , so can trigger an action for the upload complete event.

Upload Single File

Upload Complete Handler

Flash Remoting for PHP – Part 2 – Creating my own Service in amfphp (getting data)

After we got the installation working of amfphp we are now going one step further …if you missed it, find it here!

What will we need?

- correct installation of the amfphp service (0n webservice or locally)

- a php editor (personal using Adobe Dreamweaver)

- if using a amfphp installation on a online webserver, a ftp program (using FileZilla)

What is a amfphp service?

Well an amfphp service, is actually a php class that contains one or more function that handle the retrieval of database data

Example files

For a good understanding and following of this tutorial i created folowing database: designz_labs_amfphp with one table: books

Database and Table structure

for this tutorial I recommend using a local verison of amfphp using Mamp (Mac) of Wamp (Windows).

You can download the database file here , so you can follow along with the same information.

Creating the BookService

Now we will create a service that will retrieve all the books in the tabel books

Different steps:

- importing the database and creating a new database user with the right right

- opening the php editor and creating a new php file

- creating a new class BookService

- creating a basic constructor holding the connection details

- creating a new function (method) : getBooks

- calling the php function inside flash using amfPHP

Importing and User creation

importing : on the phpMyAdmin main page you will be able to import a database, do this and according to the .zip file download from above link.

user creation: on the same main page , go to Rights or Privileges and create a new user (user: books , password: books , Host:localhost) and make sure that the user has select and insert rights. This account information will be needed to have the tight privileges on the database table.

Creating a new class: BookService

open up a php editor and create a new php file.

Now create a new class: BookService

Creating the BookService

Creating the basic constructor with database connection data

Now we will add a basic constructor, where we will set connection data (telling the php that we are connection to localhost, with user: books having the password: books) and select database: designz_labs_amfphp for connection.

Creating the Basic Constructor

Creating a new function getBooks

In this peace of php we will add a new function “getBooks” , we select every record in the table “books” , and add all these records to an array … after completion the array will be returned to the amfphp , which will be called in Flash.

Finally save this php file into the amfphp service directory… Now we are ready to call this function from flash and process the results!

getBooks Service

Calling the getBooks function from Flash Actionscript

Calling the getBooks function

We just make a new netconnection and a new responder (that will cary the answer = the database result data) with the answer function when completed.

Via the netconnection we connect to the url of our amfphp (this can be local or on the network), than we call the php file BookService and the function getBooks in that php file … giving it the responder as paramater.

When the function is called with result , the getBooksResult will be called , here we loop through each object in the result array, in this case all the titles of the books ….

Download the source fla here…!

Enjoy … the next tutorial on amfphp will be calling database action combined with custom parameters !

Date and Time Calculations – Flash Actionscript 3.0

I you ever wanted to calculate the minutes , hours , days … years between 2 different dates : this is how!

What will we need?

1. first of all download the source file we will need to make these calculations in no time
2. unzip the zip file and save those files into the project directory

Little information about the Date variable type

Constructor Parameters

Creating a new Date variable in flash can be done using the new Date function followed with setting the properties.

Blanc Date Constructor

Leaving the constructor blanc will create a new Date variable according to the current Date / Time of the local machine

Calculations with Dates

Calculations With Dates

Different calculation types of the DateUtilities

Calculation Types