Flash inside

Resizing your content with 9-slice scaling

I’ve found these days some designers and even programmers not aware of the 9-slice scaling that Flash provides, and that’s why I’d like to introduce it here for those who does not know it either.

This feature allows you to determine the way a MovieClip is scaled. Doing that you will be able to resize without unwanted results like your MovieClip is distorted.

With tablets and smart phones on the market, it’s a good idea to resize our content accordingly to the area we have available, and here is where 9-slice scaling will help you out.

Look at the picture below and notice the rounded corners it has:

Now look at the difference we get after applying an horizontal resize of the MovieClip:

As you can see with 9-slice scaling we can achieve the result we really expect.

In order to enable this feature, you just need to open the Properties panel of the MovieClip and select Enable guides for 9-slice scaling as shown in the picture below:

Then when you edit the MovieClip it will show you the guides that you can easily adjust to your needs as seen in the following picture:

This scaling mode cannot be applied to Buttons or Graphics Symbols. The same applies when we nest them inside a MovieClip. The 9-scale scaling will only be applied to the compatible content.

It would be perfect to have 9-slice scaling for Bitmaps as a built-in capability in Flash, but meanwhile Grant Skinner created a nice solution called BitmapSlice9. It allows you to break your Bitmaps in pieces and use the 9-slice scaling with a great results!

New mouse capabilities in Flash Player 11.2 and AIR 3.2

Adobe just released the beta of Flash Player 11.2 and AIR 3.2 for Desktop with brand new capabilities.

One of the great new additions is the mouse right and middle click events. That means we finally can remove completely the context menu! Focusing in games we have the mouse lock that will be available only in fullscreen mode and new relative mouse coordinates.

You can take a closer look at it in this post from Thibault Imbert.

Flash Player 11.1 and AIR 3.1 available!

Adobe just released the Flash Player 11.1 and AIR 3.1 for desktop and mobile devices. I wouldn’t wait a minute to give it a try!

You can find an article from Adobe here.

More joy for Flash enthusiasts

Adobe ceases Flash player development in mobile browsers

These past few days have been crazy after the announcement that Adobe stops the development of Flash Player for mobile browsers.

Flash always has been the technology that was able to do things that HTML couldn’t. With the big improvements the web is experimenting with HTML5, Flash has less room to be the chosen technology for all the interactive content in the World Wide Web.

I have been working recently with Flash on an Android tablet for the browser and talking about performance I have to say you have to create the content thinking on the device to get good results. I believe this is an important reason why Flash in the mobile browsers are not always welcome.

I am working on the elearning industry and this decision causes we take measures, as we need to run the content within the browser, Flash is not a good choice when we want to bring courses to tablets or mobiles.

Sad days…

Adding Flash Player 11 to Flash Pro CS5 and CS5.5

Richard Galvan from Adobe has published a great article explaining how to add Flash Player 11 to our Flash Pro CS5 or CS5.5. Especially interesting if you want to take advantage of the brand new Stage3D.

You can read the article here.