Flassari.is

I just recently upgraded my wordpress system, and now it does not show my embedded flash at all. I would be surprised, but this isn’t the first time this happens.
The last time I upgraded I found a blog post on how to fix it, but it’s been a while and I just can’t find that post any more, so I’m writing my own.

So this is the deal: I always embed my flash using the html code that SWFobject recommends:

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="780" height="420">
  <param name="movie" value="myContent.swf" />
  <!--[if !IE]>-->
  <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="myContent.swf" width="780" height="420">
  <!--<![endif]-->
    <p>Alternative content</p>
  <!--[if !IE]>-->
  </object>
  <!--<![endif]-->
</object>

After the upgrade, instead of my pretty flash objects I get this funky arrow in my posts:

–>

And if I look at the source, it now looks like this:

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="780" height="420">
  <param name="movie" value="myContent.swf" />
  <!--[if !IE]>&#8211;>
  <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="myContent.swf" width="780" height="420">
  <!--<![endif]-->
    <p>Alternative content</p>
  <!--[if !IE]>&#8211;>
  </object>
  <!--<![endif]-->
</object>

Apparently wordpress replaces
<!–[if !IE]>—>
with
<!–[if !IE]>&#8211;>, but when I look into my post to edit it, it still looks fine there.

The reason is that wordpress is trying to make your writing prettier, even if you don’t use the wysiwyg editor. To stop wordpress from doing that, go into your wordpress directory and edit the file wp-includes/formatting.php. On lines 55 and 56 (for version 2.8.5) you should see this text:

$static_characters = array_merge(array('---', ' -- ', '--', ' - ', 'xn–', '...', '``', ''s', '''', ' (tm)'), $cockney);
$static_replacements = array_merge(array('—', ' — ', '–', ' – ', 'xn--', '…', $opening_quote, '’s', $closing_quote, ' ™'), 

If not, just look for it, it should be in the top page or two.
Now all you have to do is comment out the array elements you don’t want wordpress to replace. My lines look like this:

$static_characters = array_merge(array(/*'---', ' -- ', '--', ' - ', */'xn–', '...', '``', ''s', '''', ' (tm)'), $cockney);
$static_replacements = array_merge(array(/*'—', ' — ', '–', ' – ', */'xn--', '…', $opening_quote, '’s', $closing_quote, ' ™'), 

Hope this helps.

I’m working on a big project and was having some problems with memory leaks. After some google-ing around I found this great video on AdobeTV by Jun Heider where he shows you how to profile both the memory and performance of your AS3 or Flex application.
It’s pretty thorough and it is little over one hour in length.

Here’s a short number format function I wrote to easily paste in your code when needed. It’s really handy for currency formatting.
The first parameter (number:*) can be a Number, int, uint or a String class instance.
The last parameter (siStyle:Boolean) specifies whether to use the International System of Units or not. SI units have points between the thousands and a comma for the seperator (123.456.789,01). Putting siStyle as false reverses that behaviour (123,456,789.01).

It’s really ugly by design since I wanted it to be a single, tiny function. There’s loads of prettier/faster code samples out there.

function numberFormat(number:*, maxDecimals:int = 2, forceDecimals:Boolean = false, siStyle:Boolean = false):String {
    var i:int = 0, inc:Number = Math.pow(10, maxDecimals), str:String = String(Math.round(inc * Number(number))/inc);
    var hasSep:Boolean = str.indexOf(".") == -1, sep:int = hasSep ? str.length : str.indexOf(".");
    var ret:String = (hasSep && !forceDecimals ? "" : (siStyle ? "," : ".")) + str.substr(sep+1);
    if (forceDecimals) for (var j:int = 0; j <= maxDecimals - (str.length - (hasSep ? sep-1 : sep)); j++) ret += "0";
    while (i + 3 < (str.substr(0, 1) == "-" ? sep-1 : sep)) ret = (siStyle ? "." : ",") + str.substr(sep - (i += 3), 3) + ret;
    return str.substr(0, sep - i) + ret;
}

Sometimes you want to be able to keep your fonts in a seperate swf file, a “font library” if you will, that you can load dynamically on runtime. Here’s how to do that in AS3:

The first thing you have to do is create a new flash file to store the font(s). Then, right click the library and select “New Font…”.

Choose the font you want to embed and give it a name. Any name will do here, as this is only the library name and will not affect our code in any way. I prefer to name the font with the same name as the linkage name I plan to give it.

Click ok, and then right click the font in the library and select “Linkage…”. Check the “Export for ActionScript” and “Export in first frame” options, give your font the linkage name of your own liking and click OK.

And now you’re ready. Export the file to swf and there’s your font resource file.

If you want to use that font, you first have to load it into the application domain, and then register it on the global font list using the Font.registerFont function. The textfield can’t display it until it has the embedFonts property set to true and the font name in its textformat.
You can see an example in the following code, ready to be pasted into your frame:

var l:Loader = new Loader();
l.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onLoaded);
l.load(new URLRequest("MyFont.swf"), new LoaderContext(false, ApplicationDomain.currentDomain));

function onLoaded(e:Event):void {
	// Register the font to the global font list
	Font.registerFont( Class( ApplicationDomain.currentDomain.getDefinition("MyFont")));
	
	myTextField.embedFonts = true;
	// instantiate the font just to get the real font name, or if you know the name before hand you can just hard-code it in here
	var fontName:String = new (ApplicationDomain.currentDomain.getDefinition("MyFont"))().fontName;
	var tf:TextFormat = new TextFormat(fontName);
	// Set the text format for the text already in the text field
	myTextField.setTextFormat(tf);
	// and for future changes
	myTextField.defaultTextFormat = tf;
}

I found a bug in my old Line-Line Intersection in C++ post, and after I fixed it I thought it would be a good idea to port it to AS3:

function intersection(p1:Point, p2:Point, p3:Point, p4:Point):Point {
    var x1:Number = p1.x, x2:Number = p2.x, x3:Number = p3.x, x4:Number = p4.x;
    var y1:Number = p1.y, y2:Number = p2.y, y3:Number = p3.y, y4:Number = p4.y;
	var z1:Number= (x1 -x2), z2:Number = (x3 - x4), z3:Number = (y1 - y2), z4:Number = (y3 - y4);
    var d:Number = z1 * z4 - z3 * z2;
	
    // If d is zero, there is no intersection
    if (d == 0) return null;

	// Get the x and y
    var pre:Number = (x1*y2 - y1*x2), post:Number = (x3*y4 - y3*x4);
    var x:Number = ( pre * z2 - z1 * post ) / d;
    var y:Number = ( pre * z4 - z3 * post ) / d;
    
    // Check if the x and y coordinates are within both lines
    if ( x < Math.min(x1, x2) || x > Math.max(x1, x2) ||
        x < Math.min(x3, x4) || x > Math.max(x3, x4) ) return null;
    if ( y < Math.min(y1, y2) || y > Math.max(y1, y2) ||
        y < Math.min(y3, y4) || y > Math.max(y3, y4) ) return null;
 
    // Return the point of intersection
    return new Point(x, y);
}

You can try it here:

Adobe has just updated their flash penetration statistics, and flash player 10 has reached 75.3% in Europe.

Soon it will be time to make 10 the default version in my publish settings =)

There are a lot of ways to shuffle an array in AS3, ranging from swapping repeatedly the elements to using the sort function with a random sorter, but the most convenient way I’ve found was to simply splice a random element from the former array to the new shuffled array while the former array has elements.

DaveOnCode has a nice implementation of this method, pasted here:

var arr2:Array = [];

while (arr.length > 0) {
    arr2.push(arr.splice(Math.round(Math.random() * (arr.length - 1)), 1)[0]);
}

Edit: Although small and convenient, this method is not the fastest way of shuffling an array, check out the comments for more info.