08 Aug 2004
August 3rd, was my last day of job in Tata Interactive Systems(TIS). I joined TIS in March 2003. I have enjoyed being there, did some good projects, been among some of the best designers/animators/developers/project managers. Everyone was so cooperative during this time..I must say, I loved the culture in TIS and I hope I get the same in my next company.
oops! did i say where I am joining?
I am joining Macromedia R&D Centre in Bangalore. It has been my dream to join MM and its(dream) going to come true.
I am very excited and at the same time nervous. Because, moving into a product development company from service based industry really requires indepth knowledge, i realized while interviews. I hope, I will do good there.
I have to work hard to have more in-depth knowledge of whatever I know. I have to brush up my skills in compiled programming languages, data structures, Maths etc. I hope, these would allow me to move into core-engineering in coming years.
So many new challenges to make my life exciting once again:)
28 Jul 2004
Recently, I got to know about that Microsoft has acquired Lookout, frankly speaking I never heard about Lookout until this news.
I saw the Lookout website and found that it’s a very good search plugin for MS Outlook. I downloaded it and started using, it’s damn fast and saves loads of time.
I guess, Microsoft would add more features and values to the plugin or use the algorithm in coming version of Outlook.
It can be downloaded from here.
27 Jul 2004
Macromedia today released the Flash MX 2004 updater 7.2. Flash MX 2004 had many bugs and most of them seem to be fixed in this update.
Help documentation and code samples are brilliant. EventDelegate AS2 class has also been included.
More information can be found on http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/special/7_2updater/
I hope it solves most of the problems.
22 Jul 2004
I found a very good online book on making an Accessible website. The title of book is “Dive Into Accessibility” Author has taken some real life scenarios. He has talked about different type of disablities and how can we make our content accessible for those people.
Interesting fact is that, through-out the book, examples are given on customizing a MT blog to be more accessible. That’s interesting, I am reading the book once again and hopefully customize my blog to be more accessible.
20 Jul 2004
Macromedia has released new versions of Contribute and FlashPaper.
Though Contribute is a great product but I have not played a lot with it.
But FlashPaper has been my favourite tool, I had used it when Contribute 2 was released and I published my resume from MS Word to SWF format. Having resume in swf format gives me good feeling. Why not? I am a Flash developer :)
The latest version of FlashPaper 2, which has some really interesting and cool features like:-
- Text Search
- Text Selection
- Text Copy using keyboard keys(Ctrl-C)
- PDF Export with security settings
- may be more...
More info can be found here.
FlashPaper 2 is available as standalone version as well as it also comes bundled with Contribute 3.
If you buy FlashPaper 2, it only costs $79. So price is very less, I guess, I am also going buy it.
Believe me, its very handy tool. You go and convert any document to swf and upload it. And we know flash player is available on almost all machines.
Ok, do you want to give a try before you make a decision? Why not download trial version from here and play.
05 Jul 2004
ASV - Action Script Viewer
A few days, I talked about ASV add-on tools. Lately I also tried ASV and I must say its a ‘must-have’ tool for designers or developers.
Imagine a situation, a client comes back and asks you to make some changes in his site or application you did in past. Now, if you have source files its simple but if you don’t remember where are latest files. Believe me, ASV can help you out here. It can create entire FLA for you through JSFL.
If you have lost some assets or source files from your machine and you only have swf files then ASV can extract following things for you.\
- font outlines as TTF\
- sound as WAV or MP3\
- videos as FLV\
- frames/graphics/movieclips/library symbols as SWFs\
- bitmaps as JPG/PNG\
- ofcourse all ActionScript code (scripts or class scripts)
ASV is very intuitive and user friendly to use, so anyone can easily start using without any problems. I love the timeline thingy and preview feature.
And ofcourse, if you want to study your compiled swf, ASV would help you there also. Peter Hall was able to come up with this idea while he was working in ASV.
Though some guys use ASV for wrong purpose, I would just request, please use the tool for ethically right reason. Its a nice tool made for nice purpose.
29 Jun 2004
Sometimes back I made a simple set of Flash component and JavaScript code to abstract the JavaScript-Flash-JavaScript communication. I named it JSFCommunicator Library.
It can be seen here .
I hope it helps someone...
cheers,
29 Jun 2004
ASV SOL Viewer and Editor
ASV MXP Viewer and Extractor
These are FREE add-on tools for ActionScript Viewer (ASV) by Burak.
These tools can be very useful in debugging applications or extracting data, say if you have lost your files or some information.
Interestingly, I don’t have any version of ASV except ASV 3 demo. But I can feel the potential of tools.
Hope, I will check them out soon :)
BTW! More info on tools can be found here
18 Jun 2004
I just got to know about this from Claus, yeah he is the guy behind DENG CSS/XHTML rendering engine. He was kind enough to send me an invite for GMail, thanks Claus!
Announcement: DENG Developer Chat on July 1st, co-hosted by Steven
Pemberton (chair of the W3C XHTML and XForms working groups).
Details: http://claus.packts.net/w3blog/index.php?id=109
It sounds interesting, I would try to be there in chat...
cheers..
26 May 2004
.Net or Dot Net, known among the most of the developers. I started playing with .Net back in December 2000 with its first beta sdk. I quickly, learnt things and developed some apps too. But never looked very closely after that.
Now after three years, I have once again started playing with .Net, understanding deeply its APIs, framework etc..
Hope I enjoy my journey with .Net :)