I’ve been evaluating using javascript to dynamically resize a flash movie on demand. This technique can be very useful in instances where you would have a large amount of vertical content you want to layout in flash, such as blogs and e-commerce product lists.

There are downloadable examples of javascript resizing available on the web, such as those provided by Mustard Lab and Eduardo Ramos. You can see javascript resizing on Fantasy Interactive, they use this technique extensively on their site to do long HTML style page layouts.

This technique should not be confused with “full bleed flash”, where the flash movie takes up the entire frame of the browser. With full bleed flash, the flash movie changes size with the size of the browser, but this size is not dictated by the flash itself. This style of resizing can be accomplished by viewing the flash movie directly in the browser or, more commonly, simply setting the width and height of the flash movie and it’s containers to 100%. At the time of this writing, this technique is in use on sites such as Jumpman23 and Puma.

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I’ve recently added a page which collects the flash demos I’ve currently placed on this site into one location. You can reach it here and through the main navigation. You’ll need Flash Player 8 to view it.

Adding the various experiments I’ve done to this site has been a much slower process than I had originally hoped. It seems a lot of my older experiments are in less presentable shape than they should be, so they need extensive clean up before getting posted. However, the sandbox now includes a small collection of illustrations I did last year in addition to the previously seen content on this site. I’ve also made a few visual touch ups to the “Gaslights” demo and a functional change so it doesn’t stay lost if you toss it off screen.

The Flash Player has featured an express install option for quite a while now. I assumed that most developers were not taking advantage of it because Flash 7 didn’t offer many compelling reasons to force an end user to upgrade from Flash 6. With the release of Flash 8, I thought the Flash Player Express Install would catch on like wildfire. It hasn’t, and after recently incorporating it into a major site I’ve worked on, I’ve come up with a few reasons as to why it may not be as popular as it should.

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I picked up a Nintendo DS yesterday to play Mario Kart against some of my co-workers. I’ve been impressed with the fine list of games coming out for the DS, from those which use the stylus to create a new gaming experience (e.g., Trauma Center: Under the Knife, Kirby Canvas Curse, Pac-Pix), to those which take advantage of the recently unveiled wifi service (e.g., Mario Kart, Animal Crossing).

However, upon opening the box, I was forced to come to grips with the clunky design of the device itself. While I applaud Nintendo for their focus on innovative gameplay, it certainly came at the expense of good industrial design with the DS. Nintendo can look to their own product line for ideas on how to better design a portable device. The main issue with the DS is it’s awkward size. It’s both overly wide and fairly thick. It’s a step backwards compared to the Gameboy SP. The SP not only improved on the Gameboy by including a rechargeable battery and built in light, but it had incredibly clean lines and featured a clam shell design which protected the screen. And most importantly, the SP reduced the overall size of the device as well, making it much more pocket friendly.

The DS is a whole different beast. It’s big. It’s got weird curves, hinges and holes all over the place. The plastic feels thick, cheap and hollow. The screens are nice, but they don’t generate the same awe factor that it’s competitor, the PSP, does. In general, you can’t help but look at the PSP and wonder why the DS doesn’t have half it’s looks. Despite this, the DS has one big thing going for it, a focus on games and innovative game design. The PSP, for it’s great design, and great game visuals, has been kind of a dud as far as giving it’s base a set of games to get excited about.

A list of what I would like Sony and Nintendo to keep in mind for their next outing of game devices:

• Make sure it fits comfortably in my pocket. This means small and clean. The PSP is better than the DS in this regard, but the SP really nailed it, even if it’s small size cramps my hands a little. I like the clamshell design because it means a set of keys in my pocket won’t destroy the screen, but quality removeable faceplates like the Gameboy Micro are nice as well.
• Make sure the single player games let me save whenever I want. I would look to Fire Emblem for the Gameboy in this regard. I know it’s turn based and that makes it a bit easier, but portable games need this feature. Portable devices are not always played from the comfort of a living room, they are often played on a bus or train. The player does not always have the option of playing until they reach a save point, usually the player’s environment will dictate when they stop playing.
• Make it look nice. I try not to be self conscious about how I look in public, but I can’t help feeling like a dumb ass playing my giant red DS on the subway.
• Make sure it has decent battery life. I shouldn’t have to recharge everyday.
• Make it easy to get online and play. Nintendo has done an okay job of this, but the friend code system leaves much to be desired. It’s neither easy or fun.
• And as my purchase of the DS despite it’s shortcomings confirms: it’s all about the gameplay.

I’ve been playing around with spring simulations recently in the hopes of building an interactive network diagram with behavior similar to the visual thesaurus. However, after numerous iterations of different experiments, I was unable to create a simulation which would remain stable as you played with it. In general, they would start out okay, but if you excited them, they would gyrate out of control and break. At first I thought there was something wrong with the way I was using my spring-damper equation, but eventually I came to the realization that it wasn’t the equation itself, but the way I was applying it. I was simply adding up the forces on every frame, calculating the acceleration and velocity and updating the positions on the stage. This method has worked fine for me in the past, but it really fell short when it came to spring interactions in which the force changes which occured between frames became very important.

A little surfing led me to Erik Neumann’s terrific website, MyPhysicsLab. Mr. Neumann provides a collection of demos, a brief explanation of how they work, and some sample source code you can sift through. I’ve adapted Erik’s implementation of the Runge-Kutta method and used it to power the flash demo below. I’m pleased with the initial results and hope to take advantage of this method in my network diagram project.

A couple years back I sent out a flash based party invite that featured a parallax snowflake effect that I was pretty pleased with at the time. Over this summer I was playing around with some 3D code in flash and did an improved version of my original snowflake animation, which you can see below. You can look around by moving your mouse. Kirupa has some great 3D tutorials for those of you wishing to learn more on this topic. I originally delved into this in the hopes of creating an anaglyph 3D game, but I couldn’t come up with any results with which I was happy. This was mainly because I couldn’t composite the two views in a satisfactory manner. When Flash 8 is released with different layer blending effects, I think I’ll try to ressurect that project and post some demo’s here.