Peekaboo Paperie.com - Adobe Site of the Day Award 9-19-2008

Recognition rocks, so to give credit where credit is due:

Peekaboo Paperie is the combined effort of PXL Designs, LLC and CAB Design. Christine Grippaldi did the site design, and yours truly created the Custom Announcement Creator in Adobe Flex 3.

It also makes use of a number of popular open source Flex components like Doug McCune's CoverFlow based on the PaperVision 3D and Tweener open source libraries, Dustin Andrew's File Upload component, and Marc Hughes' ObjectHandles component.

Nice work, and big thanks to everyone's code contributions, designs, and advice pulling this project together!

Technorati Tags: adobe site of the day award, cab design, cs3, flex, Peekaboo Paperie, pxl designs

Peekaboo Paperie.com Home Page

Peekaboo Paperie makes baby announcements with personality, and the coolest part of the site is that it uses Adobe Flex to allow customers to check out their baby's pictures in the announcement before they purchase.

This project was a joint effort between CAB Design, PXL Designs, LLC and Peekaboo Paperie. Jill Haydinger is the owner of Peekaboo Paperie as well as the designer of the baby announcements.

Site and Flash design was done by Christine Grippaldi at CAB Design, programming was done by yours truly at PXL and the announcements and other graphics were done by Jill at Peekaboo Paperie.

The site makes use of a few popular open source Flex components like Doug McCune's CoverFlow based on the PaperVision 3D and Tweener open source libraries, Dustin Andrew's File Upload component, and Marc Hughes' ObjectHandles component.

Baby Announcements

Upon picking an announcement you'll be able to create an account, upload your baby's photos and drag/drop them, scale, rotate, fit them just how you like. The site/app use PayPal for customer's orders, and once an order is placed the application creates a snapshot of the custom design for Jill's reference when she creates the print version for proofing.

Creating custom announcements

So if you're currently expecting, and looking for a kick butt baby announcement that far surpasses the typical run-of-the-mill designs to welcome your new bundle of joy, take a look at Peekaboo Paperie and Flex it up!

Technorati Tags: baby announcements, cards, custom announcements, Peekaboo Paperie

This is a very cool update for me, because I always preferred Photobucket over Flickr. In the last release, I had worked in the Flickr api using the Flickr AS3 lib on Google Code. After that, I looked around to see if an ActionScript library project was in the works for the Photobucket api, but didn't see one. So a few other developers were interested in starting up a project for it, but then I got a link from Luke Swanson at Photobucket that they already had it covered! That's some kind of timing So here is the Photobucket AS3 lib project on Google Code.

An extra thanks to Michael Clark, Luke Swanson and the rest of the team at Photobucket who were an immense help! They were there to help me out quicker than I could blink. The AS3 lib itself was insanely easy to integrate, I worked the same functionality I did for the Flickr api, and it was up and running in less than an hour. Great job to the guys who put together the Photobucket AS3 lib and the api itself!

MyStylez uses limited calls to the api, because it only needs a few really, and I didn't want to overkill the app, or the apis etc. For example, there's no deleting images inside MyStylez once a user uploads. For the full functionality of Photobucket and Flickr, users should visit their sites. Any feature enhancements or request for the future though, and I'm all ears. This is a fun project to work on!

Technorati Tags: adobe air, flickr, google code, myspace, mystylez, photobucket, photobucket as3 lib

I have to agree with some of the users, I like PB more than Flickr but there's no accounting for taste. So I had literally an hour or so to spare over the Memorial Day weekend and used it to slap in PB again. If anyone hears about an AS3 Photobucket API project in the works, give a hollar. I know two people who would jump in on it. I'd start it myself if I can find the time, but I haven't been able to figure out how to go without sleep yet so I can pack more work into a given day. Argh!

Technorati Tags: adobe air, flickr, myspace layouts, mystylez 1.2, photobucket

After some googling, I saw the guys on AS3Flickr project already had it covered, I just had a missing patch to the code. Nothing a little Tortoise SVN checkout couldn't fix ok so I was pretty tired working on this one all night, but without further adieu, I present MyStylez + Flickr for your Flickr-ific pleasure!

MyStylez now allows you to access all your Flickr photos and drag and drop them on the left side modules to build your MySpace layout with your own custom Flickr photos. You can also upload new photos, with drag and drop if you're just so inclined, to uplod to your Flickr account.

For Flickr's purpose in MyStylez, I decided to leave out deleting photos because it seemed unnecessary for now. The only purpose I wanted was to access Flickr, grab all the original sized photos only and allow the user to drag and drop them into their template....cake!

Ran into a bunch of bugs along the way, like the old upload not working on the Mac, but smacked them down one by one to create this nifty new version of MyStylez. AIR is totally cool to work with! I'm just looking for the next API to work into this project and make the app cooler. Any ideas?

Technorati Tags: actionscript, adobe air, as3 flickr, flex, myspace, mystylez 1.1

The first time I call service.photos.getSizes() (to get the original urls) works great, I fill up a tile list with all my photos. The only thing MyStylez is concerned about is grabbing all the original photos to use for a layout with simple drag and drop. Problem is, after I upload new photos and call photos.getSizes() again I don't get my newest upload.

I was convinced it was a timing issue, like I was making the server call to quickly, but even after slowing down the process I still don't get my nifty new picture ARGHHHhh!!! Tried wiping out the ArrayCollection after a new upload with AC.source = new Array(), tried setting it to null and populating it again, tried AC.refresh()....this bug is driving me batty.

Anyone have similar problems out there? I've read about a few Flex bugs with AC's not refreshing, and some issues with the Flickr API, but I can't put my finger on it yet. I'm still kind of convinced that it must be user error, I overlooked something because I didn't have any beer tonight.....that must be it.

Anyway, the new release will go live soon, it's pretty cool. Once you give MyStylez permission to access Flickr, it grabs and displays all photos and you can just drag and drop them while building (er, excuse me) while watching your 17 year old build her MySpace layout Surprisingly though, most of the people using MyStylez so far are late twenties and older, so that's cool. I'll make sure not to put up any glitter graphics because that might make me cringe.

Technorati Tags: actionscript, Adobe Flex, air, as3 flickr, flickr api

So hopefully, it's not too much of a pain to switch to the new rss feed if you're a current PXL Blog reader, but believe me, I saved us all a lot of grief by moving to WordPress

Anyway, welcome! All old posts, comments (and hopefully trackbacks) were imported successfully, after many an agonizing hour of combing through mysql databases and php scripts - whew! It's an awesome day outside and I think it's the bosses duty to take sunny Friday afternoons off to drink copious amounts of beer.

Actually, first I have to go update a zillion broken links but besides being tedious, not a bad trade off for getting WordPress up and running. For once, I may actually be able to post permalinks, use trackbacks (besides the ones from such sites that mention girls who love wild bison, or midgets in lingerie) I mean REAL trackbacks so enjoy, hopefully nothing got entirely broken.

I contacted the guys at MXNA to ask them to switch over to the new feed. In the meantime, avid readers can grab the swell new rss feed above.

Technorati Tags: adobe solution partner, mxna, pxl blog, pxl designs, ria

Gareth Arch
Clearwater, FL - USA
flexfusion.archfamily.com

Maciek Maliborski
Third rock from the Sun
http://maliboo.pl

R. Jon MacDonald
Portland, OR - USA
http://www.jonnymac.com/blog

Hassan Elousami
The Netherlands
h DOT elousami AT uvt DOT nl

Nice work! All four of whom answered within minutes of my posting the contest They each emailed the correct answers to the previous post's questions for the contest:

Answers:

1. internal

2. Paris, Texas!!!

3. True

All 4 winners responded with the correct answers very quickly, but since two responded at almost exactly the same time I added another winner I hate technicalities, and wouldn't like to tell someone they missed out by a nano second, that would stink! Plus they were the only four responders who got all 3 questions correct, so it works out nicely.

Anyway, this contest was too much fun, I figured we'll hold some more in the near future for those who didn't get the correct answers. In the meantime, imagine how the winners feel? They busted their butts to answer some Flex 2 programming questions quickly and correctly and for that they won software to help them study for a hard certification exam - ha! Do I know how to give out prizes or what?

But in all seriousness, you guys keep me posted on how you do on the real Flex 2 certification exam. I haven't heard from anyone yet who studied with Attest and didn't pass with a high score the first time. So good luck, enjoy, and thanks for participating!

Technorati Tags: adobe, attest, certification, exam, flex 2, practice, pxl designs

How can it be? Adobe recertification exams my friend For any current ACE's holding the Flex 2 certification, the price is $50 for 30-60 multiple choice questions on only the new product features, you can take it via the web and get your Flex 3 Developer cert when it becomes available. In fact, you must successfully complete the recert exam within 90 days of the Flex 3 exam's release to keep your ACE status current.

So rumor has it that the Flex 3 exam won't be ready for many months to come. Here's what I'm thinking, why not grab the Flex 2 certification if you haven't already? There's so much material available to help you pass, this time last year there wasn't a ton. Flex 3 is brand new and by the time that exam is available there will be more study/practice material but in the meantime, wouldn't it be easier to study for Flex 2 while the exam's still available and just take the recert in a few months time? Indeed it would!

That brings me to my next idea. I've been hearing great things from people who have used Attest to study for the Flex 2 certification. Not only are they passing, but they're getting incredible scores! Does my heart good that it was a worthwhile project, I had my doubts at first, but Attest seems to have fulfilled it's purpose.

************************************************************
UPDATE: The contest is over, we found our winners! Nice work! I'll post their names in a new post, and the answers are in the comments section
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To celebrate Attest's success, I figured I'd run a little mini contest, shouldn't be tough But for the first 3 responders who email the correct answers to these 3 questions win a free copy of Attest!

NOTE: Please don't write the answers in the comments as that defeats the purpose for the next guy, but if you're a smarty pants and/or you're a whiz at whipping through LiveDocs, send the answers to me at customersupport AT pxldesigns DOT com The first 3 to respond with the correct answers get a nifty manual activation for Attest free, and you can start studying to grab that Flex 2 cert so you can sip your coffee at your computer when the recert is available.

I will post again here with the results. First 3 responders, don't forget, email me, don't write the answers here in the comments as it doesn't make a whole ton of sense much more sensible to email them.

************************************************************
UPDATE: The contest is over, we found our winners! Nice work! I'll post their names in a new post, and the answers are in the comments section
************************************************************

Ready? Set? Livedocs!

Questions:
1. Which of the following namespace attributes makes a property visible to references inside the same package, AND is also the default for ActionScript 3? Choose one.
public
private
protected
internal

2. Given the ActionScript 3 code below, what is the output of the following trace statement? Choose one.
var str:String = "Hello from Paris, Texas!!!";
trace(str.substr(11,15));
Paris
Paris, Texas!!!
Texas!!!
Pari

3. Concerning CSS styles, if you call the setStyle() method on a component instance, that method takes precedence over all style settings, including inline.
True
False

Technorati Tags: Adobe Flex, attest, certification, contest, practice exam, pxl designs

Screen shot of the filter/sorting feature:

I'm actually thinking up some nutty things to add to MyStylez in the future, because it's been taking off like crazy. There's thousands of users already making their MySpace pages that much less ugly, and saving the eyes of countless internet surfers from much pain. Way to make the world, and the internet, a better place!

If you currently use MyStylez, let me know of any cool ideas to make it kick some butt! I've been adding about 99% of what users have asked for so far just as quick as my nimble fingers can type, but it's tough to find the time I'd really like to put into it.

MyStylez 1.0.9 runs on the PC and Mac and can be downloaded here. Enjoy! Go make something less ugly on your MySpace

Technorati Tags: adobe air, codes, editor, layouts, myspace, mystylez, styles