Use embeds!

I started using a generic static class to add all my embeds for a project and then you can easily draw them from there.

The static class:

public class HomePageAssets {
[Embed(source="../../../bin-debug/assets/loader/bar.png")]

public static var BrandBar : Class;
[Embed(source="../../../bin-debug/assets/loader/dude_again.png")]

public static var DudeAgain : Class;
[Embed(source="../../../bin-debug/assets/loader/logoType.png")]

public static var LogoType : Class;
... 

And in any class:

addChild(new HomePageAssets[myAssetVar]);      // e.g. "BrandBar"

Njoy!

So far I am using two types as I would describe them:

1) property based: where I defined property get-setters for everything I want to store (mainly strings) some even constants, so a very non-depth storage object

2) list based: where I need a storage for many of the same kind of objects and search functionality and add and delete function basically this is a searchable fancy array which is static and therefore available everywhere. Neat.

I like the simplicity of those classes. They are framework, nearly language independent or sorts. Now if anyone out there knows how secure it is to have global code flying about , please comment.

Watch it here

On a windows machine, the file is fond easily, on a Mac less so.

Right-click on the FDT app (or Eclipse) and choose ‘Show package contents’ then click into that folder to find the eclipse.ini file.

I needed to replace the -Xmx512m line with -Xmx768m to get the app going.

Hope that helped.

Get the main install start here at Gizmodo. But you will have to do a bit more just to polish a few things:

Swapping keys:

You will notice that the Apple command(windows logo) and the alt key are swapped in terms of functionality. Just go to the keyboard settings in system prefs and click on Modifier keys at the bottom of the page.

Repair Disk Permissions:

- do this after install, to increase performance and to check everything is in order.

I had an odd permission setting going on where I had to set my account as admin on the main partition otherwise it gave me read-only permissions.

Non-functional Fxx keys:

Use the Fn key in combination and you will have that working. Easier than any other solution, which might disable your brightness and volume.

Touchpad:

You will have to setup the touchpad in the best possible way. The buttons on the pad are a pain to use, so I set the left and right mouse button to be single and two-fingered taps on the pad. This will make your work life much easier.

There you go, much better, no?

That is, if you use uint, which I like doing when using for…loops. Yet if you use uint instead of int and do your loop i–, you might find yourself confronted with i=4294967295. What happens here is, that uint ranges from 0 to 4294967295, meaning if you go 0–, it will go round to 4294967295. Good to know if you want a loop like that, but rather creating unexpected effects in most scenarios.

So if you use a for…loop with i–, use var i:int !!!!

google: download flash debug player and you will get a list of players (standalone, plug-in) at Adobe that you can download for your OS. also here

How to install into FDT:

After downloading and installing the latest debug flash player from Adobe, tell FDT where it is by opening FDT and change the Preferences at:

Preferences > FDT > Tools > Flash Player

Browse to the player in the Flash folder or wherever you have placed your Flash Player.app(mac)

Reset your Debug or Run settings so that they use Adobe Flash Player.

This should get you started playing the swf in the Adobe Player.

Now this will still result in sandbox problem if you want to load xml files, etc. locally.

If you want to fix this, look up this blog entry.

Original setup: FDT 3 on macbook pro, snow leopard, with a CVSDude/Codesion account.

CVSDude/Codesion:

- set up an account for our project. there is plenty of discussion on having multiple projects per repository, I so far tend to separate them to have a single on for each project.

- add the subversion service (New)

- add a user or group with the appropriate privileges to the project under the ‘People’ section. If you are the admin of your subversion account, your name will already be added as default.

- copy the URL in the service list under Project Quickview next to Subversion

FDT

- in FDT go to the View/Perspective icon (top right) and if not already in the list, click on Other… and choose the SVN Repository Exploring perspective

- go to the window on the SVN Repositories window and right-click to add a New repository location

- paste your project Subversion URL into the URL field, enter your username and password in Authentication, click finish.

Now for some reason, sometimes the pasting adds the URL twice in two lines and you will receive an error. Just repeat the process above, choose the faulty URL from the dropdown this time and delete the additional URL from the textfield and connect again, it should let you in this time.

- add a ‘trunk’ and ‘tags’ folder to your repository, they will automatically recognized as special folders

- Go to the Flash FDT perspective

- create a Flash project

- Go to Team >Share Project

- Choose the project repository you ant to use for this project

- On the Specify Location screen in Simple Mode browse to the repository’s trunk to choose as location

- Finish

- On the first commit screen, tick off all files, that you don’t want to version control. E.g. for simplicity reasons, don’t commit anything with a ‘.’ in it’s name (e.g.  .settings).

- After this first commit, go to all your files and folders that you want to snv:ignore for the future. Right-click > Team > Add to svn:ignore   Most likely all not-dealt-with files will have a small question mark on them. After you set them to ignore, it will dissappear.

- Add a ‘lib’ folder to your flash project structure, it’s the place I put my swc’s. Right-click >Source Folder>Add to ClassPath  and it will show the appropriate icon.

- commit the ‘lib’ folder by right-click>Team>Commit

- to finalize, Team>Update the whole flash project

- Now you can add other flash files by dragging them onto your src or lib folder and dont forget you Main.as, which I tend to place outside the src folder by creating a new class file and copy pasting or writing whatever needs to go in there. Most other existing class files can be added by drag drop on ‘src’

- Done

Hope that helped.

!!! Important: if you like to drag and drop your code files into a new flash project and youhave been using them in another subversed project be careful! SVN puts little hidden svn files in every folder. Use TinkerTool or something similar to show hidden files on your system and clean all those up otherwise they will mess with the SVN.