Accessibility
Hands-on Session: Game Development for Flash Lite

Macromedia

 

Created:
22 August 2005
User Level:
All
Products:
Max2005

A Preview of MAX 2005 Sessions

At MAX 2005 in Anaheim, California, from October 16-19, designers and developers will attend sessions and workshops to learn from Macromedia experts. In sneak peek at a few sessions on Macromedia Flash, Dreamweaver, ColdFusion, Flex, and Mobile and Devices. Read the "Top 10 Reasons to Attend MAX 2005."

Register before August 26 to save $200 and get the best session selection. Register now ›

Game Development for Flash Lite

Paul Lamonby
www.blueskynorth.com

In this hands-on workshop you will learn advanced techniques and scripting workarounds for creating Flash Lite games. BlueskyNorth has been working on a number of game-based Flash Lite projects with major clients, so this session will provide you with a professional real-world perspective.

You will be working on several focused ActionScript examples, each within a different game, that demonstrate the common principles of developing games for Flash Lite 1.1.

Learn how planning a game thoroughly will help you to visualize the structure in the Flash environment. Discover advanced ActionScript techniques and workarounds to generate dynamic MovieClips, navigate around a game, duplicate random enemies, simulate hitTest and create timing systems for your games.

Here are some screen shots of the games you’ll create during my session.

A screen shot of the memory game you will build during the session

Figure 1. A screen shot of the memory game you will build during the session

A screen shot of the snooker game you will build during the session

Figure 2. A screen shot of the snooker game you will build during the session

About the Presenter

Paul has worked as a multimedia designer for the past 6 years, specializing in Flash and incorporating PHP and MySql to create dynamic web and multimedia content. Paul has also lectured at Newcastle College of Art and Design for 2 years, teaching Flash ActionScript and Flash design principles to the 2nd year Multimedia course. As joint founder and Technical Director of BlueskyNorth Ltd, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Paul has moved his expertise into developing Flash Lite content for the new and exciting mobile and devices sector. Learn more about Paul’s hands-on session, Game Development for Flash Lite.

Dreamweaver Killer Tips

Angela Buraglia
www.dwkillertips.com

I'll cover a wide variety of topics with Dreamweaver 8 for all skill levels, including tips on customizing your workspace, hand-coding, CSS, and more. My session will be energetic with a lot of demos that enforce the slides. I won't let you fall asleep in my session, even if you stayed up too late the night before!

Anytime I present a Dreamweaver Killer Tips session at a conference it varies. I keep the favorite topics, and then toss in a few that I've not presented before so that I can keep it fresh. So if you came to last year's presentation, there will be a few new tips and some that I have to share again because they're just too good to exclude. Many of the tips I'll share can't be found in our book (Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips by Joseph Lowery and Angela Buraglia, published by New Riders) either.

It’s amazing how much more productive you can be if your workspace works for you and not against you. Look closely at the following screenshot.

Customizing the Dreamweaver workspace

Figure 3. Customizing the Dreamweaver workspace

(+) View larger

Can you spot the differences between your workspace and this one? You'll learn how to customize your workspace to fit your workflow.

I can't say much more without giving too much away. Just know that whether you're new to Dreamweaver or you've used it for years, it’s my goal to teach you something new. If you can truthfully tell me that I didn't meet my goal for you during the session, I'll gladly spend a few minutes afterwards trying!

Want to learn more? Read the entire sneak peek here.

About the Presenter

Angela C. Buraglia used to be a makeup artist for independent film, but she needed a career that would allow her to work from home and raise her son. Although she intended only to be a web developer, life's path has led her to become that and more. She is perhaps best known as the founder of DreamweaverFAQ.com, a site dedicated to serving the Dreamweaver community and which she continues to run today with Daniel Short. In addition to this book, she is the co-author of Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic and contributing author to the previous edition (New Riders), the lead technical editor for the Dreamweaver MX Bible (Wiley Publishing, formerly Hungry Minds), a contributing author to The ColdFusion MX Web Application Construction Kit (Macromedia Press).

Angela’s future plans are to continue developing DreamweaverFAQ.com, to build and sell Dreamweaver extensions, and to continue her involvement in Cartweaver. Long gone are the days of applying makeup; now Angela applies behaviors and CSS to web sites— and most importantly—is home with her little boy. Learn more about Angela’s session, Dreamweaver Killer Tips.

Integrating Video into Your Flash Content

Eric Anderson
www.macromedia.com

Great digital experiences on the Internet today mean interative applications and video.  The ubiquity of Macromedia Flash and optimized video codecs make it a great technology for delivering video on the web.  From simple 10-second snippets of video to live streaming content, Flash provides a number of ways to integrate video to make your existing Flash content more compelling.  This session will focus on the end-to-end process for integrating video into your Flash content.  Learn how to take a section of digital video and encode it for playback by the Flash player.  Also learn the key Flash video delivery systems and how to choose the right delivery system for your application’s needs.  We will demystify digital video and make it easy to integrate video into your Flash content.

About the Presenter

Eric is a principal engineer in the Macromedia Product Support organization. He's helped hundreds of customers around the world diagnose and correct Java performance problems. Currently he spends his time between his offices in Newton, Massachusetts and Tokyo. Learn more about Eric's session, Integrating Video into your Flash Content.

Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Printing and Reporting

Dean Harmon
www.macromedia.com

When Macromedia released ColdFusion MX 7, there was a lot of hype (and rightly so) about the new tags, cfdocument and cfreport. With ColdFusion MX 7, you can now create printable content on the fly without jumping through hoops to register your CFX tags or properly set up your class paths; your hosting provider can no longer tell you that that this is not possible. We wanted to make sure you could create content for two separate, distinct, and frequently-requested categories: I already have content I just want to make it printable (cfdocument), and, I need to create highly structured reports such as invoices, sales reports, or bills of sale (cfreport). Ironically, with simplicity comes complexity.

In my session, Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Printing and Reporting, I cover a variety of topics for the cfdocument and cfreport tags. Specifically, I will address common challenges and questions such as:

  • How to use CSS with cfdocument
  • Why doesn’t cfdocument do what I what I think it should?
  • How to use multiple headers and footers with the cfdocument tag
  • Using cfreport functions
  • Using cfreport to create presentable Excel files
  • Using expressions versus tags with cfreport

About the Presenter

Dean Harmon has been with Macromedia since 2001. Originally he was on the Visual Tools team developing HomeSite before transitioning to ColdFusion. He enjoys creating and playing video games and spending time with his wife and three children. Learn more about Dean’s session, Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Printing and Reporting.

Integrating Rich Flash Content into Flex Applications

Waldo Smeets
www.macromedia.com

This session answers two questions:

  • Do you really have to create separate Flash content for your Flex applications?
  • How do I integrate rich Flash content into my Flex applications?

In this session, you'll learn how to identify appropriate integration scenarios and then how to build and package Flash content for use in Flex. Specifically, learn when to use SWF vs. SWC files, and how to create events, properties, and methods for a SWC that are visible and that your Flex application can use.

About the Presenter

Waldo is the technical sales manager in Macromedia Netherlands at Macromedia Benelux. In his blog, he writes about creating Rich Internet Applications using Macromedia Flex, ColdFusion, Flash, Flash Remoting and Dreamweaver. For more information about Macromedia Benelux visit www.macromedia.com/nl. Learn more about Waldo's session, Integrating Rich Flash Content into Flex Applications.

Using the Power of XML with Dreamweaver

Alexandru Costin
www.interaktonline.com

XML is everywhere, and you will have to master it sooner or later in order to stay ahead of your competitors. Dreamweaver 8 has just been announced, and one of the hottest features is the improved XML and visual XSL support. I’m glad to see that Macromedia embarked on the endeavor of creating an intuitive and visual XSL editor that suits both designers and developers. In this MAX session, I’m planning to showcase how to edit and how to transform XML documents using XSL style sheets. I will teach you how to perform both client-side and server-side transformations, and help you understand the difference between the two.

Here is a brief overview of the XML/XSL features in Dreamweaver. These will be covered in greater detail in the hands-on session at MAX, where you'll get a chance to try them out:

  • Improved XML editing, with automatic closing tag completion
  • DTD validation for XML documents and code-completion for XML tags
  • Linking XSL style sheets to XML datasources (both local and remote)
  • Data bindings with drag and drop functionality
  • Repeat regions and conditional regions on XML trees
  • Server-side and client-side XSL transformations
  • Improved XSL code-completion and reference

Want to learn more? Take a look at the full sneak peek of this session here.

About the Presenter

Alexandru is President of Products Division with InterAKT Online, an Adobe Certified Partner company and producer of Dreamweaver extensions. He is proficient in several web programming languages, including Java, PHP and ColdFusion, and led several consulting projects to success. For Macromedia, he was in charge with the development of the ColdFusion MX 7 and the PHP5 support in Dreamweaver. Alexandru was also involved in designing PHAkt, the first PHP server model for Ultradev 4. Currently, he is in charge with researching and designing the new line of software products for InterAKT Online, and defining the company's philosophy. MX Kollection 3, a professional suite of Dreamweaver extensions, is his most recent success in the attempt to improve the way developers and designers develop web applications. Alexandru is an active contributor to Dreamweaver forums and other developer communities and is a writer for the MXDJ and CFDJ magazines, and he keeps a blog with InterAKT insights and tales from web conferences. Learn more about Alexandru’s session, Using the Power of XML with Dreamweaver.

 

About the author

This content was authored by Macromedia, Inc.