Neurofuzzy released some sourcecode for treemaps the other day. He uses PHP to build them with DIVs in HTML. Having built my own treemap implementation in Flash, it’s interesting to see an alternative approach.
Being an almost-daily reader of Slashdot, I’m glad I didn’t miss Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda’s announcement of the Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest. I can’t pass up the chance to win a new MacBook Pro, so I’m going to see what my design skills can cook up. I’ll take a nice progressive approach and share my thoughts and results here over the next couple weeks. Comment on the designs if you want. You can tell me I suck or give encouragement. I’m game for any sort of feedback. So, without further ado… here’s my first Photoshop mockup:
Obviously, it isn’t overly ambitious. I wanted to start small. I kept the same general layout, but I polished things up all around. CmdrTaco specifically stated that he’d like the logo’s font and the site’s base color (#006060) to stay the same if possible. A little depth and shine to the logo makes a big difference. Likewise, the slightest shift in color makes things look better. Some gradients help a little too.
I’d like to change more. CSS is pretty powerful, and I could do quite a bit with the existing content. Look at the Zen Garden if you want proof of flexibility. I think for my next draft, I’m going to try changing a lot more. Then, I’ll take ideas from both drafts to determine the final result. Once I’m happy with the look, I’ll dive into the actual CSS and produce what will hopefully be the winning entry. 
Friday, April 28th, 2006
I noticed an awesome hack on Flashcoders today. David from Robots w/Lasers shows off a way to dynamically generate sounds in AS3. He actually builds a SWF in a ByteArray at runtime and passes it into a Loader object. With a little work to refine this approach, ambitious Flash developers could put together some sort of music sequencer. A full game soundtrack would be pretty cool. The sounds have a nice retro feel that would go well with many of the Flash games out there. It reminds me of my days playing with BASIC or Assembly. I’m sure there are hundreds of other possibilities.
If you’ve got some time, David is interested in seeing any improvements that can be made. I might take a look at his code later this weekend. It seems like a fun little project.
Friday, April 21st, 2006
The HelpPanel plugin for FlashDevelop is getting complex enough that I feel I need to do a beta release this time around. I’m excited about this release because it’s my first public version that is powered by Apache Lucene. Lucene is the search system that powers Eclipse, among other things.
What does this mean for you, the ambitious FlashDevelop user? Well, thanks to Lucene, searches complete almost instantaneously. If you blink, you’ll miss it! This great speed improvement comes from Lucene’s indexing features. Lucene analyzes your help files and saves certain information about each one. Instead of using the old method of actually reading all the help files for every search, Lucene uses the single index file and a little black magic to spit out results for you.
Why is this a beta release? Well, honestly, it’s because I’d like feedback. I’m pretty sure I’ve stabilized my codebase, but I’m not entirely sure about the user interface implementation. Right now, when you run your first search in a default source (Flash’s help files), it will automatically create the index and show a simple progress dialog. Should I include a message that says this process will only need to happen once? Where would be a good place for it? I’d rather not create a message box specifically for this message. Perhaps it will be best if I placed it on the indexing dialog.
I’m also unsure if the behavior for adding a new source is the best choice. Instead of waiting for the first search to create the new index, I do it right away when the Help Source Manager is closed. I felt it would be good to do it so that you don’t have to wait for it during your first search. Yet, I wonder if it would be better to make the behavior match that of the default sources?
Please let me know what you think of this beta version. Also, if you have any thoughts about other things I can do to improve the HelpPanel, I’d be happy to hear them. You can download the HelpPanel plugin from the FlashDevelop plugins page.
Tuesday, April 11th, 2006
