This Flickr viewer uses Flash CS3, ActionScript 3 and the Flickr API to display public photos from a selected user's Flickr account. I've created it because I've got a few project ideas where you will need to select a photo from Flickr. I've been impressed with the improved object orientedness of ActionScript 3 and this has let me build this in a way where all the different bits can be re-used very easily.
This has been a nice project to get my head round some of the new features in ActionScript 3. I've been particularly impressed with the new way of loading and using XML. It's so much easier and just makes sense. The event model has also been much improved.
I'm also very impressed with the Flickr API. It's great to be able to take the wealth of content they've got and play about with it. In the future I hope to play about with some other APIs. I love how sites are offering APIs and letting people extend and join up their services. I think the joined up web offers some amazing possibilities.
PaperVision is an open source project to make 3D in Flash much easier than it has been.
I've only had a very quick play, but I was able to create this lovely photo cube very quickly.
It's based on an example on The Flash Blog. I can see a lot of potential for including this in my future flash work. 3D can make things look more impressive, but a sense of space can also make things easier to use.
Doing validation well and being able to get it done quickly is a recurring problem in any web project. When I first started using ASP.NET I thought the built in validation controls would be the answer.
They were really easy to add to a page, but they didn't do everything I wanted them to and I found some of the code they produced a bit strange.
I set about making my own controls that would be just as easy to add to a page, but do everything I wanted them to.
My main requirements were:
- Easy to reuse and add to new forms
- Validate on server and client
- Client side validation to use ajax
- Visual feedback to user as form is being filled in
- Easy to unit test
I've created a number of validation controls that are very easy to add to a page. You just add the controls, tell them the validation rules to use and everything else is done for you. It only takes a few minutes and this used to take hours.
The controls will always validate on the server, but if they will also validate with JavaScript (if available) and only submit to the server when the validation passes.
The visual feedback was difficult to get right and I had to test out several options on willing volunteers till I found what worked best.
I've centralised all the validation rules I use and written unit tests for them. This means that I'm much more confident that the validation validates what it is supposed to.
You can see them in action on my contact page and the register page of this blog.
However, I'm still not sure they're perfect and I'm going to keep on refining them. The great thing about creating controls to do this, is that they'll continue to get better, and all my projects past and present will benefit from it.
Adding a search engine to a site used to be a difficult business. It could be expensive, difficult and quite often not very good.
A while ago Google launched Google Co-Op. It lets you create your own site search engine using all the power of the main Google search engine.
It's perfect for a small blog like this, so I decided to try it out to see what the pros and conns were.
Here they are:
Pros
- Easy to set up
- Free
- Good results
- Familiar to everyone
- You can link the advertising to your own Adsence Account
- URL exclude filters
- Simple stats on number of searches and popular search queries
Cons
- You need to show adverts unless you are a charity or non-profit organisation
- Can be slow to index new pages
- Completely dependent on JavaScript
- Search result code is not W3C compliant
For me the pros outweigh the cons, so I'm going to keep the search page for this blog. However, if I was a larger organisation having to show ads could be a show stopper.