Wordpress' Shortcode API is a really cool thing, and since I'm working on a Drupal site these days I've been looking for something similar. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything... There are some implementations out there but the ones I found and tested always come pre-bundled with specific tags and don't always provide an extensible and stable logic.
It's an interesting thing to see how Google is working on its Chrome OS, in an OpenSource fashion, letting everyone know where they are going and how all this will/may look like. As a UI nerd I find it absolutely lovely to be able to sneak a peek at what's coming next, and have techy details on it, such as hexadecimal values and gradient stops...
So the other day I had an hour to waste, I decided to learn how to use MooTools classes and, as the best way to learn something is to play with it, I played with it.
About 30 minutes after, I had something running. Dirty and buggy but still, looking cool. It took me an extra 30 minutes to clean that up, make sure it was working on most browsers, add the Google Analytics tracker, push it online and add it to the projects page...
You probably guessed it already, I'm talking about the Scroll Clock. Well this hour might be the least wasted one of my life. Think I'm radical? Read on! › Continue reading...
This class will come in handy every time you work with synchronous SQLite databases in an AIR project. It's a real-world implementation of the Dynam.ize utility I presented earlier... I will show you an example of how to work with it, with simple sub-classes. Let's go! › Continue reading...
Still while working on this app I was talking about earlier I realized I was quite used to working with PHP classes' Magic Methods, and more precisely the way it handles overloading. Those lovely __get, __set and __call methods are called whenever you try to access a property/method that is not explicitly defined, making your class dynamic. Of course you don't need this all the time, and it might even be dangerous, but it some cases that's simply perfect.
You can do that with AS3 if you extend flash.utils.Proxy, cool. But wait, no! Not cool! What if I wanted to extend something else? Nah, let's find something else... › Continue reading...
If you've ever wondered whether it's possible to apply a gradient on a Flex Label, well it is ; but that's not very straight forward... As I'm working on a app that requires this kind of glitter I decided to try and see what could be done.
I started with a basic ActionScript project (no Flex involved) and came up with this. Quite functional, could probably be optimized but my goal was actually a Flex component and I knew that was technically feasible. I then simply extended Flex's Label class and basically copied/pasted the logic into it. Just had to figure out which event to listen to and I was good to go...
I wanted to try Flex 4 with a "real life" project so I wrote this little thing. Rough draft.
The app will allow you to monitor files changes: select a text file and you'll be prompted when it's updated. Basic. By the way, did I say "rough draft" before?