The 360Flex day conference is tomorrow morning. I’m going to grab breakfast at IHOP ( Gmaps ) about 4 minutes away from where the conference will be held ( directions ). I plan on being there around 8:30am. Hope to see you there.

Please comment if you know of a better place in the area to grab breakfast. The best way to reach me between now and then is to DM me on Twitter: polyGeek or email me.

If you are playing long videos – like more than 20 minutes or so – using xmoov.php then you may notice a small problem, such as the videos not playing. If so then the solution is very simple. You just need to increase the amount of memory that PHP can access.

I’m using WAMP and by default the PHP.ini file gives it 128MB to work with. I upped that to 1028MB and now I can play videos that are in the 90 minute range.

In WAMP you can change the memory limit by opening the PHP.ini file – locate it by clicking on the WAMP server icon in the system tray -> PHP -> php.ini.

Now search for “memory_limit”. Change the max amount of memory a script my consume and you should be good to go.

Addendum
In the comments below a user – Mike – suggested that the problem lies with the last line of code in the xmoov.php file.

print(fread($fh, filesize($file)));

change it to something like:

print(fread($fh, 8192));

That could help as well.

I just learned about ConstraintRow/ConstraintColumn today from the book Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0 by Juan Sanchez and Andy McIntosh. I wish I’d know about this sooner because it would have really simplified some of my layouts. Below is a little app that I created to explore some of the various settings. ( Details after the example. )

Turns out it is pretty easy to use  ConstraintRow/ConstraintColumn. The basic layout would be as such inside of a container with absolute positioning.

<mx:constraintColumns>
<mx:ConstraintColumn id="col1" width="100" />
<mx:ConstraintColumn id="col2" width="200" />
</mx:constraintColumns>

<mx:constraintRows>
<mx:ConstraintRow id="row1" height="50" />
<mx:ConstraintRow id="row2" height="100" />
</mx:constraintRows>

Now you can position a component relative to any one of the row/cols by setting the left/right or top/bottom like so:

<mx:VRule
    right="column1:0" height="100%" />

<mx:VRule
    right="column2:0" height="100%" />

<mx:HRule
    bottom="row1:0" width="100%" />

<mx:HRule
    bottom="row2:0" width="100%" />

Just for funnzies I wanted to create a component that could change its alignment. I could see lots of uses for this. If you really wanted to you could animate your row/cols and use that to replace <States>.

The only thing that I found a little confusing about this layout is that, for instance, applying a left=”col2:0″ will place the component’s left border up against the right of col1. Which made since after I played around with it for a while.

Now, will we be able to place a constraintRow/Col in z-space with Flash 10? That would be cool. Note: I just checked and there’s no property like depth on a ConstraintColumn so probably not. :(

I made a few improvements to my Zongy class. Roll your mouse over the <Button>, <Image> and <Label> here to see what it does. It is easy to use Zongy. Just check out the source code of the simple example to see what I’m talking about.

The Zongy Explorer below will help you choose which settings to pass to create your effects. While you can pass practically any value to Zongy the range that really makes sense is pretty small. For instance you can make an effect that will bog down your computer in a hurry. That’s because of the expanding bitmap and blurring/alpha that is applied.

If you really want to see something cool then roll your mouse in a circle over the buttons/icons/labels in the Explorer below. Better yet click really fast on the image of the Enterprise. Neato eh?

Here’s the basics of how to use Zongy:

1-Declare your zongyEffects as Application variables:

private var _zongyOverEffect:Zongy;

2-Instantiate your variables in the init/creationComplete handler

_zongyOverEffect = new Zongy( 1.02, 1.2, 250 );

3-Create a callback for each varable that you can call from your components

private function applyZongyOver( e:Event ):void {
_zongyOverEffect.start( e.currentTarget as UIComponent );
}

4-Call the callback function from your component declaration

<mx:Button
label="Zongy Button"
rollOver="applyZongyOver( event );" />

That’s about all there is to it. You can poke around in the Zongy and ZongyDTO clases if you want to see what’s going on internally. It has something to do with Bitmaps, BitmapData, UIComponent, Filters, Timers and stuff like that.

In the Business section of the The Miami Herald there’s an article about the high demand of Flash Developers. I’m only mentioning it because I haven’t found Flash or Flash developers making the news outside of technical magazines and websites very often.

I like the slant that the article took by picking to highlight a developer who came to the field without a technical background – like so many of us. It’s a story that many people might read and think, “Why not me?”

Times are hard and lots of people have lost their jobs.  Just today Motorola cut 4,000 jobs. Many of them will need to find new careers. Flash Platform developers/designers get good wages and benefits. And the best part is that you can do it all on your own.  All someone would need to do is get the software, grab a few books, watch a few videos and start learning. It’s easy to do when you enjoy it. I know it’s possible because many of the people in this field did it just that way. Case in point: my degree is in philosophy and history, like that has anything to do with programming.

I feel that the demand for Flash Platform Developers/Designers is so great that the industry is being held back by the scarcity of people who can do the work. And if you think the demand is high now just wait a few years when, hopefully, the economy is picking up again.