What the..? Internet Explorer 9 might be good?

Mike — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:20:38 +0000

When I woke up today, I knew a few things would happen for sure, people would read too much into something minor on Apple’s site, Google would announce something that should be big but wouldn’t be and Microsoft would stay a year behind on everything. And what happened? Apple changed the availability date of some iPad accessories, which of course leads to speculation about when the iPad is coming out. Google unlocked the Nexus One, making it available in places like Canada. And Microsoft demoed Internet Explorer 9. Oh, and it has full HTML5 support and a bunch of CSS3 support. Wait, what?

Yes, it’s true. Microsoft is 100% about HTML5 with IE9. And I’ve been saying for a while, the future of the web won’t get here until Microsoft supports it. Well, it looks like 2011 is going to be the year we developers can really begin showing what HTML5 and, to a lesser extent, CSS3 can do. I never thought I would say this, but we should all be excited for IE9. If Microsoft actually brings out IE9 with all the features they demoed, HTML5 video will take off and I’m really interested in the SVG stuff they demoed. In the MIX10 session, they kept comparing IE9 to Chrome, so I think we know who Microsoft sees as the big threat right now. And I know it has zero practical value, but when they showed IE9 running TWO HTML5 HD videos running at the same time on the same page without dropping frames or destroying the processor, I was impressed. Is it enough to make me want to switch, probably not, but I won’t look down on people that use IE anymore. OK, yeah I will, but I’m a snob.

Internet Explorer 9 isn’t out until the end of the year, but you can download a preview version at ietestdrive.com. Get excited, get ready, the stuff we are going to be able to make now is going to be amazing.

A simple external file loader for ActionScript 3

Mike — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:11:17 +0000

One of the big mistakes that beginners make when they’re making their first Flash projects is importing all the graphics and making movieclips with tons of frames, resulting in a Flash file that is huge. The bigger the .swf, the longer it will take to load. The simplest way to fix this is to load larger files externally. Loading files is pretty easy in ActionScript 3 so I’m not going to show you how, I’ve just made this ExternalLoader class that does the job and I use it a lot at work. And to use it is the same as loading anything else in AS3. Just download the zip file and put the class wherever you save your custom classes.

Download the .zip file

To use it, you just need three lines of code:

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import com.atomicrobot.ExternalLoader;

var image:ExternalLoader = new ExternalLoader("externalfile.blah");

addChild(image);

And you’re good to go. You can use it as many times as you need in your project and it will help keep down your file size.

Atomic Robot Design » download

What the..? Internet Explorer 9 might be good?

A simple external file loader for ActionScript 3