A More Interactive Portfolio

I think a portfolio is something that should be very interactive and intuitive. Check out what that has led to: circlecube’s interactive pog portfolio. I’ve been toying with trying to get something that was fun to look at, but also showed some work. Here is a first look at my Interactive portfolio of work which includes physics simulations and many options to play with the presentation of the body of work. Showing it to a friend he said it made him think of pogs (since the thumbnails are round and moving everywhere).

Well, enough, I’ll let you see what you see… Interactive POG Portfolio

The details

Well, if you’re interested, this is the same portfolio that is listed statically on my website. That’s because I’m using amfphp to read my wordpress database and get the custom post type of portfolio and access all the tags, images and details of each portfolio item. I’m using TweenNano from greensock for some of the motion but all the physics is coded in as3. I’m using the slider and switch from Nick Jonas.

Enjoy playing with the settings!

Now I’m thinking of other ways to implement it: specifically hooking into API services like last.fm, dribbble or twitter. Or rebuild it with jQuery and html5!

Video Player 4 introduces interactive playlists, social sharing and more

video player 4 hero shotI’ve been busy hardening and improving my video player lately and had so many updates for it I decided to upload it to activeden as a new file altogether. After some final bug fixes and testing it’s been approved for sale. I think it’s a huge improvement over the last video player. The video playing part is mainly the same (with a few small adjustments for better usability), but I’ve added tons to this update. It’s online at activeden for live preview and purchase.

An extensively customizable yet simple video player. Create and manage play lists for you video delivery as well as allow viewers to share and socially bookmark the video. Integrate the video into your user experience with javascript integration as well as Google Analytics tracking on the video interaction! Control functionality, layout and colors of the player easily! Plus don’t sweat the embed codes – an embed code generator included!

Check out the legend graphic for some views of the player and the different panes. There is the full video view, the playlist, share and detail panes. You can also view them all in fullscreen mode.

circlecube video player 4 legend

This new player has the following updates:

  • Includes an embed script generator built specifically for this video player! Embed script generator with a Live Preview!
  • Use an external xml playlist or set playlist values in flashvars settings. (No need for xml if you don’t want it)
  • Social Bookmarking with facebook, twitter, delicious, google buzz & linkedin
  • Send emails through the player to share the video with friends
  • Google Analytics Integration (event tracking) – Uses your analytics account on a per video setting in flashvars.
  • All colors fully customizable in flashvars or xml
  • Display video title and description – html content (may contain links) in the detail pane.
  • Video controls also in context menu (right-click menu)
  • Loop the video once, twice however many times you wish and even infinitely!
  • Disable tooltips completely if you wish
  • Keyboard shortcut integration! Press the space bar to pause/play the video just like in most video playback programs.
  • Volume setting cached across sessions for a better user experience
  • Double click video for fullscreen

As well as all that made version 3 video player great as well:

  • Supports flv, f4v and any container format using H.264: mp4, m4a, mov, mp4v, 3GP, 3G2.
  • All images and video loaded externally
  • Run this player without additional files, just pass in the flv path.
  • Supports most image file types: jpg, gif, png.
  • Google Analytics Integration (event tracking) – Uses your analytics account on a per video setting in flashvars.
  • Load any dimension video. Completely resizable
  • Set player width and height
  • Set video width and height
  • Full screen capabilities
  • All colors fully customizable
  • Use a preview/thumbnail image.
  • Auto play option
  • Auto load option – in case you had a bunch of video on one page you wouldn’t want them all to auto load.
  • Video scale/stretching options: none, exact, uniform, fill.
  • Javascript callback functions for loading video and finishing video playback.
  • Show/hide a big play button over the video option
  • Show/hide “vcr” video player controls or have them auto-hide
  • Advanced volume controls, click to mute or drag to desired volume. Volume fades rather than cuts.
  • Support for a logo
  • Controls auto-hide
  • Time code display in current time or elapsed time. click to toggle
  • Tooltips for controls
  • Send video files to player dynamically with javascript integration (with an html link on a page send a video to play)
  • Replay video after complete
  • Progressive play and load displays. Watch as the video loads and see the scrub bar update as you watch.
  • Scrub bar is interactive click and drag. Tooltip to display hovered time.
  • Animated play controls.
  • Buttons states & tooltips.
  • All player graphics are vector shapes and very small in size.
  • Fully rearrange player controls
  • Option to disable fullscreen
  • Display video title and description – html content (may contain links)

Here’s a screenshot of the embed code generator:

embed generator preview

Tutorial to Create a Responsive Image Scroller in ActionScript 3.0

responsive-images-scroller-as3-thumb

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!

[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”dynamic” fversion=”9.0.0″ movie=”https://circlecube.com/circlecube/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2009/07/image-scroller-example.swf” width=”550″ height=”137″ targetclass=”flashmovie”]

Get Adobe Flash player

[/kml_flashembed]

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

sourcedemomilestone

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

Forthcoming Actionscript Image Scroller Tutorial

image-scroller-thumbnail

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!

[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”dynamic” fversion=”9.0.0″ movie=”https://circlecube.com/circlecube/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2009/07/image-scroller-example.swf” width=”550″ height=”137″ targetclass=”flashmovie”]

Get Adobe Flash player

[/kml_flashembed]

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

Voters Aide | Prioritize the Issues this Election | Interactive Flash App

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.

Interactive Image Viewer v1 @ FlashDen

I’ve re-purposed an old project of mine, the interactive pog portfolio viewer, to activeden. 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!

pog portfolio image

View Details here at activeden

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:
[cc lang=”xml” tab_size=”2″ lines=”40″]


Random Gear

Random gear photograph from activeden assets.

random_gear.jpg


random_gear.jpg

http://activeden.net


Photo|Industrial

[/cc]

Download source at activeden

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Circlecube Flash Items on activeden

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APB Website | Before and After

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:

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

Vs

New:

speaker_pages_w_player1
These are the mock ups, all html/css and the we pushed it into drupal for content management.
apb-relaunchAPB 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.

XML and Flash Actionscript made Easy | Parse XML to Object | Tutorial

XML and flash is something that always seemed to be more complicated than it needed to be. Then I had an idea to parse the xml nodes into actionscript as objects, that would make working with xml tons easier for me, I could just parse it once and then forget about the xml, I could refer to something with the familiar dot syntax rather than worry about firstChild and nextChild and so forth…

This is for AS2. (AS3 has similar functionality built-in via E4X!)

And then I found someone who’d already done that with XML2Object.as, here it is:

[email protected] Class

Actionscript Class:
[cc lang=”actionscript” tab_size=”2″ lines=”40″]
//////////////////
// – Derived from code written by Alessandro Crugnola – http://www.sephiroth.it/file_detail.php?id=129#
// – Refactored and documented by Phil Powell – http://www.sillydomainname.com
// – 25 July 2006 – Added helper method to sanitize Windows line breaks.
//////////////////
// Convert an XML object to an object with nested properties.
//
// Example usage:
//
// import net.produxion.util.XML2Object;
// var contentObj:Object;
// var xml:XML = new XML();
// var xmlLoaded = function( success:Boolean )
// {
// if( success )
// {
// contentObj = XML2Object.deserialize( this );
// this[‘timeline’].play();
// }
// }
//
// xml.ignoreWhite = true;
// xml[‘timeline’] = this;
// xml.onLoad = xmlLoaded;
// xml.load( ‘some.xml’ );
//
/////////////////
// What do you get back?
//
//
//My Title
// // Here be links!
//http://somewhere.com //http://somewhere-else.com //
//

//
// Becomes:
//
// contentObj.content.title.data => “My Title”
// contentObj.content.links.title.data => “Here be links!”
// contentObj.content.links.link => [Array]
// contentObj.content.links.link[0].data => “http://somewhere.com”
// contentObj.content.attributes.created => “22-May-2006”
/////////////////
class XML2Object {private var _result:Object;
private var _xml:XML;
private var _path:Object;
private static var xml2object:XML2Object;public function XML2Object()
{
this._result = new Object();
}

public static function deserialize( xml:XML ):Object
{
xml2object = new XML2Object();
xml2object.xml = xml;
return xml2object.nodesToProperties();
}

public function get xml():XML
{
return _xml;
}

public function set xml( xml:XML ):Void
{
this._xml = xml;
}

private function nodesToProperties( parent:XMLNode, path:Object, name:String, position:Number ):Object
{
var nodes:Array;
var node:XMLNode;

path == undefined ? path = this._result : path = path[name];
if( parent == undefined) parent = XMLNode( this._xml );

if( parent.hasChildNodes() )
{
nodes = parent.childNodes;
if (position != undefined) path = path[position];

while( nodes.length > 0 )
{
node = XMLNode( nodes.shift() );

if ( node.nodeName != undefined )
{
var obj = new Object();
obj.attributes = node.attributes;
obj.data = sanitizeLineBreaks( node.firstChild.nodeValue );

if( path[node.nodeName] != undefined )
{

if( path[node.nodeName].__proto__ == Array.prototype )
{
path[node.nodeName].push( obj );
}
else
{
var copyObj = path[node.nodeName];
delete path[node.nodeName];
path[node.nodeName] = new Array();
path[node.nodeName].push( copyObj );
path[node.nodeName].push( obj );
}
position = path[node.nodeName].length – 1;
}
else
{
path[node.nodeName] = obj;
position = undefined;
}
name = node.nodeName;
}

if( node.hasChildNodes() )
{
this.nodesToProperties( node, path, name, position );
}
}

}
return this._result;
}

private function sanitizeLineBreaks( raw:String )
{
if( raw.indexOf( “\r\n” ) > -1 )
{
return raw.split( “\r\n” ).join( “\n” );
}
return raw;
}
}
[/cc]

Example:

[kml_flashembed fversion=”9.0.0″ movie=”https://circlecube.com/circlecube/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2008/04/xmltoobject.swf” targetclass=”flashmovie” publishmethod=”dynamic” width=”500″ height=”400″]

Get Adobe Flash player

[/kml_flashembed]

Source:

Here is my example file. But since you cant really see Objects in the code on the stage, I’ve included a recursive trace function to loop through the object and print the data.
[cc lang=”actionscript” tab_size=”2″ lines=”40″]
import XML2Object;

var xmlObject:Object;
var xml:XML = new XML();

var xmlLoaded = function( success:Boolean ){
if( success ) {
xmlObject = XML2Object.deserialize( this );
this[‘timeline’].play();
recurseTrace(xmlObject, ” “);
myTrace(“\n\n”)
myTrace(“xmlObject.catagories.catagory[10].name.data = “+xmlObject.catagories.catagory[10].name.data);
}
}

xml.ignoreWhite = true;
xml.onLoad = xmlLoaded;
xml.load( ‘sampleXML.xml’ );

function recurseTrace(info:Object, indent:String) {
for (var i in info) {
if (info[i] == null){}
else if (typeof info[i] == “object”) {
myTrace(indent + i + ” -“);
recurseTrace(info[i], indent);
}
else {
myTrace(indent + i + ” = ” + info[i] +”, “);
}
}
}

function myTrace(myLine:String){
feedback.text += “|”+myLine;
trace(myLine);
}
[/cc]

And here’s my sample xml file: (it’s the same one I use in my Dynamic Flash Scrolling Link List files)
[cc lang=”xml” tab_size=”2″ lines=”40″]


3D
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/3d/


abstract
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/abstract/


actionscript
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/actionscript/


animation
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/animation/


blog
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/blog/


book
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/book/


CG
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/cg/


charcoal
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/charcoal/


circle cube
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/circle-cube/


collage
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/collage/


color
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/color/


css
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/css/


drawing
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/drawing/


dreamweaver
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/dreamweaver/


experiment
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/experiment/


film
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/film/


final cut
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/final-cut/


flash
https://circlecube.com/circlecube/tag/flash/


[/cc]

Download:

Here’s the XML2Object.as class: XML2Object.as class

 

Here’s a zip containing everything and the working example: xmlToObject.zip

Custom Flash Video Player @ FreeIQ and StomperNet

squambido_1
The flash video player designed and developed for Free IQ and StomperNet. Plays video and audio content for a user. I implemented 85% of the actionscript, creating intuitive interactivity and functionality. External xml plsylist, author biography display, content details, share by email, social bookmarking, get embed codes, and more. Sleek design for maximum intuitive user engagement including navigable playlist, author biography, video detail, embedding, email, social bookmarking, volume control, full screen, multiple size options, etc.
squambido_2squambido_4squambido_5squambido_6squambido_7squambido_8

More About Squambido

squambido_3

Dynamic Flash Scrolling Link List XML driven Component on FlashDen

Go get the file at ActiveDen

Dynamic Scrolling Link List XML driven (No Wrap)

An interactive link list. Vertically scrolling list of links or just text. Could be used for a nav menu or a link list, or even just a scrolling list. Scroll speed calculated dynamically from mouse position to give not only scrolling control, but also speed control. Reads an external XML file containing just titles and url paths and creates this interactive click-able link list! On click the link is highlighted and on release loads the url either in a blank window or not (configurable). On rollover the list item grows with animation and is highlighted (all configurable, size speed etc). Once end of list is reached scrolling stops, another version is available with a wrap-around feature: Dynamic Scrolling Link List XML driven Auto wrapping

[kml_flashembed fversion=”9.0.0″ movie=” https://circlecube.com/circlecube/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2008/03/LinkListNoWrap.swf” targetclass=”flashmovie” publishmethod=”dynamic” width=”550″ height=”250″]

Get Adobe Flash player

[/kml_flashembed]

Circlecube Flash Items at ActiveDen

21075 24687 45713 45893 22018