Last week I stumbled across Support Details – which is a simple, single serving site by Imulus that tells the user the operating system, screen resolution, web browser, browser size, ip address, color depth, if JavaScript is enabled, the version of Flash installed, and if cookies are enabled on a user’s computer. The site even allows the user to take their results and export a PDF, export a CSV or email their results to a desired recipient.

It shouldn’t be hard to see how a service like this can be particularly useful when attempting to debug issues with less computer-savvy clients who are unsure how to acquire any of this information. If you find yourself attempting to address a similar issue with a client, I’d recommend using Support Details.

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When I first learned that Rob Ford from The FWA edited a book entitled Guidelines for Online Success, I immediately went out and purchased it. After all, I’m a Flash developer and I avidly check what’s on The FWA – naturally, I’m curious to know what they would recommend as “guidelines for online success.”

The chapters are arranged by subject (interface & design, marketing & communication, technology & programming, technical advice, content/content management and e-commerce), each with an introduction from an experienced member of the industry. For the most part these intros give you a nice bit of insight into the mindsets of some of the bigger names in web design. The intro by Martin Hughes and Jordan Stone of WEFAIL was particularly good.

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If you haven’t already done so, check out Big Spaceship’s Pretty Loaded.

Pretty Loaded is an archive of preloaders, created and curated by Big Spaceship. So far it looks like Big Spaceship, Firstborn, Odopod and AgencyNet are the only agencies on the site, but it’s all top-notch work and warrants a look. You can definitely spend a lot of time appreciating the amount of detail that goes into all of the work showcased on the site.

If you’re a Flash developer and would like to learning how to create a preloader of your own, Jamie Kosoy (Big Spaceship’s Senior Developer) has a great article on Adobe’s site on creating a preloader with ActionScript 3.0.

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Initially, having already read the ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook, I wasn’t planning on reading another book focusing on introductory ActionScript 3, but then I started to hear more and more about Learning ActionScript 3.0 by Rich Shupe and Zevan Rosser. Lee Brimelow is quoted on the cover calling it “The best ActionScript book ever written.” How can you argue with that recommendation?

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Earlier this month Peter Elst posted on his blog about the FlaCC Project. In a nutshell, FlaCC is a way to compile C and C++ libraries to ActionScript bytecode, making code written in the C/C++ languages accessible to Flash. Interpreters for various scripting languages are actually written in C/C++ so this could allow you to port Ruby, PHP or Python into your AIR applications.

This video from Adobe MAX Chicago is enough to entice your imagination:

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Being a predominately self-taught web developer, I’ve slowly migrated towards object oriented programming and, to my credit, made some applications that work but, at the same time, those apps definitely could have been made better and more efficiently.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns by Joey Lott and Danny Patterson and found it quite helpful. Now knowing what the MVC, singleton, proxy, iterator, composite, decorator, command, memento and state patterns are I can better utilize them in my Flash projects and ultimately make better coded apps than I could before.

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Today, Aaron Simpson at Cold Hard Flash posted a few videos demonstrating the new Bone Tool and Inverse Kinematics features of Flash CS4.

The Bone Tool basically allows you to group objects together as a flexible jointed object similar to how you’d rig a skeleton in a 3D application. Definitely a welcomed addition for anyone using Flash specifically for character animation.

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In order to help my migration to Flash 9, I went ahead and read the ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook by Joey Lott, Darron Schall and Keith Peters.

Overall, I would say that it was helpful and recommend it, but even though my copy was a first edition, it did seem like the book contained way too may typos (both grammatical and in the ActionScript itself). Typos aside, the chapters on the Display List and XML were both extremely concise and informative. If you’re unfamiliar with either, I’d recommend giving them a look.

Like the other books in O’Reilly’s Cookbook series, the ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook works as a quick reference to commonly encountered problems. Focusing on the end results, their problem/solution approach to education works well when you’re already somewhat familiar with their subject.

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