Martijn van Beek

Flash and iPhone OS

2010-04-20T10:13:49+01:00

Let me also spill my opinion about section 3.3.1 of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, which states before:

3.3.1 - Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.

And became as of iPhone SDK 4.0 Beta:

3.3.1 - Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

Studio Devigner joins Twisted Colours

2010-03-30T08:07:40+01:00

Studio Devigner joines the Twisted Colours (the new logo is not yet up there) project and will fulfill the position as Webdesigners and Webdevelopers within the project. And to start Studio Devigner's influence we present the new logo, designed by Studio Devigner:

Presenting: Studio Devigner

2010-03-26T09:11:38+01:00

I would like to present our new company that my wife (Kristel van Beek) and me has started a few weeks ago. Studio Devigner is it's name and with the new logo I'm very proud to show Studio Devigner to the world. Unfortunately our new website is not finished yet but you can view our portfolio.

Flash on Mac Faster

2010-02-09T04:09:44+01:00

"In Flash Player 10.1 we are moving to Core Animation, which will further reduce CPU usage and, we believe, will get us to the point where Mac will be faster than Windows for graphics rendering."

On Cnet

Historic moment (somehow), Microsoft names Devigner in an article.

2009-12-14T02:22:20+01:00

My company's name Devigner pops-up here and then. But today Kris discovered the term on a non-blog website. Even better it is used by Microsoft, check it out.

Universal filesystem

2009-12-07T09:02:28+01:00

I want to suggest that we should work towards an open standard regarding filesystems. The problem is of course very obvious, windows filesystems are not really accessible by Mac of by Linux and that counts also for Mac and Linux. Since I switched to Mac I bumped into his issue more

FAT32 is readable by everyone (as far as I know) but lacks big file support and case insensitive. NTFS is not case sensitive and is not 100% writable by *nix systems. Another filesystem is not that wide spread but I think we need a filesystem that should be a standard on media centers and mp3 players.

Projects get a home

2009-11-17T07:33:56+01:00

All my projects have a steady homepage: projects.devigner.com. I will make the website more attractive and more informative.

I also added a new project: Apache Manager, my Flex 4 exploring project build with DAO's (like Flash Builder 4 generates). But also a PHP DAO generating tool. It's totally Alpha or even worse :p so don't expect it to work.

I'm a daddy from now on, her name is Julia

2009-10-14T03:16:46+01:00

Yesterday 13 October 2009 at 12:55 my daughter was born. Her name is Julia.

My projects moved to GitHub

2009-10-08T08:09:53+01:00

As version control system I'm using Git for the last 2 months and I'm very happy with the system. Therefor I've moved my open source projects to github.

Currently I have 2 projects on github:

UIModifier
Renamer (previously unreleased)

I'm considering more projects but I first have to determine if I want to release those and if they are worth it :p.

SWFLoader fails where Loader succeeds

2009-10-02T03:26:03+01:00

The SWFLoader (Flex framework) class has a new method for Flash Player 10 called "unloadAndStop()". You would assume (I did) that it utilizes the same method of the Loader (Flash Player native) class. But unfortunately it is not!

The livedocs aren't mentioning it: docs of Loader, docs of SWFLoader.

I always have some trouble with the SWFLoader but this one does it.

Note to self: Ant Java heap space on Mac OS

2009-09-09T03:49:42+01:00

When compiling a Flex application with Ant once in a while you can get this error:

Error: Java heap space

The solution is simple, just add fork="true" maxmemory="256m" to the mxmlc tag of the ant build.xml.

More on this:
http://blog.criticalpile.com/2009/01/22/eclipse-ant-compiling-flex-heap-esplode/

Flash Player Bitmap Limits Again

2009-08-01T09:29:07+01:00

My struggle with the Flash Bitmap limitations continues (images bigger than 8191x2048 or 2048x8191 aren’t displayed by the Flash Player) because my previous solution didn’t account for masks and the project I was working on did require masks eventually. The solution that I came up with before was simply cut the big image in little pieces (1000x1000) and melt them together and position and rotate the complete component. Like this image shows, the image is shown here with the tiling and depth positioning:

Sloppy code

2009-05-21T08:02:37+01:00

Ever since I became interested in programming I stumbled upon bad formatted code. The reason someone writes such code is because he is sloppy and fails to see the importance of clean written code.

Flash CS4 IDE navigateToURL bug on the Mac

2009-04-23T08:34:01+01:00

The internal Flash Player of Adobe Flash CS4 on the Mac (Intel, I couldn't test it with the PowerPC version) has a bug regarding navigateToURL. Using this code:

navigateToURL ( new URLRequest ( "http://martijnvanbeek.net" ) );

Will navigate your default browser to "http://martijnvanbeek.net%00". Strangely this only happens inside the IDE but can be very frustrating (I was searching for a bug in my own code for an hour).

Flex Builder Gumbo expired

2009-04-01T10:55:08+01:00

Today my Flex Builder Gumbo expired and I have to switch back to good old Flex Builder 3. I was so getting used to the new features presented in Gumbo that switching back will be tough. Was the initial roadmap for a new beta of Gumbo planned for this moment? Is so sadly Adobe hasn't met the deadline.

Dear Steve II: The files problem

2009-03-22T10:52:53+01:00

The dot files problem:
Since I own a mac I’m bothered with the fact that the Finder places a .DS_Store file in every folder you visit. Although I won’t mind it on the local harddrive, it’s a pain on a network.

Dear Steve I: The support problem

2009-03-20T10:47:42+01:00

Recently my dear MacBook Pro 4.1 had trouble with the internal keyboard and trackpad. It randomly failed to work after a period of uptime in MacOS and Windows XP.

Because Apple has the policy to deliver support via Authorised Dealers I had to miss my Mac for 4.5 weeks. I don’t have AppleCare but the computer was still in it’s one year warranty period.

Flash Player Bitmap Limits

2009-01-14T09:53:53+01:00

Update: Look at the "Flash Player Bitmap Limits continue" topic for an update.

The last few weeks I have spend most of my time creating workarounds for limits within the Flash Player regarding BitmapData.

In the Flash Player 9 era things where "simple" a bitmap bigger than 2880x2880 fails to render when using BitmapData/Mask or Filters. Just loading an image had also a limit, which was something like 8191x8191.

Google Chrome and why I use it for Flex debugging

2008-12-23T09:53:44+01:00

Google Chrome on Windows is my new default browser at work (I use Mac at home, Windows at work). It is perfect for debugging my Flex apps because since Flex Builder 3.0.2 update debugging is working not perfect. Flex builder freezes my complete system trying to get a connection with the debug player. 40% of the time it failes :(

UIModifier, release 0.0.1

2008-11-01T04:18:50+01:00

Hereby I launch a little project I've been working on. The UIModifier is a Flex component to modify properties of a DisplayObject. It mimics the working of the modifier found in the Flash IDE. It can modify the width, height, x, y and rotation with a custom pivot point. It is not finished yet, but the basic functionality is ready.