I’ve written a tutorial which is published over at flash.tutsplus. This tutorial demonstrates how to create a horizontally scrolling image viewer and covers xml parsing, loading and resizing external images, and creating intuitive and responsive scrolling!

So check out the Tutorial to Create a Responsive Image Scroller in ActionScript 3.0 over at flash.tutsplus.com!

You’ll find full source code available for download as well as the demo files and step by step milestones all throughout the tutorial.

Here is a preview of a file I’m writing a tutorial for. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it deals with many normal tasks and will show my process a bit. This tutorial will show how to create a horizontally scrolling image viewer. It will cover xml loading & parsing, loading & resizing external images to fit into a scrollable container, and creating intuitive and responsive scrolling!

Let me know what you think, and if there’s anything you want specifically mentioned/explained in it I’ll do my best! Or if you have any ideas of how this could be improved.

Update: The article/tutorial has now been published follow the link to theTutorial to Create a Responsive Image Scroller in ActionScript 3.0

To accompany the last presidential debate, I ask a question:

Who to vote for?

It’s not just about what party you’re affiliated with, who you agree with more on an issue or which candidate you understand better… it’s a combination of them all. It’s more important how a candidate can handle the different issues facing us today than how they perform in a debate or advertisement.
There should be somewhere to assign a weight to each issue on the table and then issue by issue see which candidate I agree more with. Then it would calculate and tell me who I really support according to how I prioritize the issues. So if I think the only issue worth voting about is Iraq or the economy and I agree more with Barrack Obama or John McCain on those issues it will be reflect in the results.
It’s pretty hard to explain the whole idea, without building it myself, so that’s just what I did… while I couldn’t stop thinking about it I coded it.

Check it out, and I hope it helps! Cause we’re gonna need all the help we can get on this one! It can help you decide or just test yourself and see if you really support that candidate as much as you think.

Go try it here!

I pulled info from CNN’s election center mostly because all the info was gathered for me already, each of the big issues, descriptions and the candidates position. I have a slider for each issue where users select how imortant it is to them (on a scale of 0 to 100 percent). Then users compare their own position on the issues with each candidate (on a scale of 0 to 100 toward each candidate). This is all considered while your support is calculated. Each issue’s importance as a percentage is multiplied by the amount you agree with each candidates position. These are all added up and totaled to give a final percentage. This is innovative in that it’s not just who you agree with mpre, it’s who you agree with more on the isues that you think are more important! Let me know what you think about this and let the candidates know what you think about their positions.

Voters Aide the flash app to help you decide who you support by letting you prioritize the issues and choose which candidate you lean towards on each issue and see the overall results.

I’ve re-purposed an old project of mine, the interactive pog portfolio viewer, to FlashDen. I call it the pog portfolio because each work is represented by a circle, or pog, and you play ith it in the “bay” with different interactive physics configurations. When you click a pog you can view a close up image of that item and more details. The whole file has been cleaned up (code and graphics) and documented for easy customizations.It is a small file size as well, under 36kb swf!

This is mainly an image viewer, stay tuned for any updates, like video support etc.

INTERACTIVE IMAGE VIEWER WITH PHYSICS AND ANIMATION EXAMPLE!

View Details here at FlashDen

Works and configuration loaded in through a single xml file. Select works from the bay to view title, description image and a link (if applicable). Organize works with the tags or select all and choose the physics of the bay for interactivity control (gravity, spring, grid and friction).

It is fully customizable and fully driven by xml. The xml file contains values for configuring the swf, and also all the information about each work to be included in the portfolio.

Each work is loaded into the “bay�? as a round thumbnail or “pog�?. These pogs are animated with the interaction options (gravity, friction, spring and grid). The pogs are sortable by tags (parsed in from the xml).

The whole color scheme of the image viewer is configurable, or can even be set to random! Have a different color scheme every time your image viewer loads!

Clicking a pog in the interactive bay sends that thumb to the holding area and loads the close up into the focus window for that work. It also loads the details about that work into the detail box (to the right of the focus box). Each works needs a 50×50 thumbnail and a close up (max 375px x 270px) image. Focus images are all loaded in with an informative preloader and fade is once loaded.

Site easily integrates with Google Analytics to track user interactions within this flash portfolio!

All works in the portfolio are passed in through an external xml file, here is a sample work node from xml:

Download source at FlashDen

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Circlecube Files on FlashDen

APB are the guys who organize public speakers, whoever you saw speaking at the last graduation or other ceremony was probably done through the American Program Bureau. They have connections! Many many people, from movie stars, to famous writers, to nobel peace prize winers! So for your next party, give them a try. They had a really old website from about 1999 or so. I was involved with rebuilding it! I did most of the html/css design and flash/actionscript. They just launched the site this week, so I’m just celebrating with this post!

See before and after images below:

Old:

The original site was hard to navigate and horrible to look at…

Vs

New:

These are the mock ups, all html/css and the we pushed it into drupal for content management.
APB had the final say on the finishing touches. It came together, although I was suprised that they opted to put so much movement on the page. We set it all up so all speakers have images and videos on their page all in the custom player we built for them… but then they go and embed a youtube video on their homepage… go figure. It came a long way though. Go Web 2.0! Visit American Program Bureau.