I’m a great believer that if you’re going to be good at something you should understand it a the lowest level possible. Every ActionScript developer I talk to at the moment is migrating to AS3 and mostly we talk about all the high level differences it has with AS2; the API, the event mechanism and so forth. But let’s not forget the little things. It’s often complacency toward the smallest components that cause the most trouble. It seems like an odd situation to know how to flip a cube around in 3D space, but not really know the difference between null and undefined. This is a real situation though, and it can mean bugs deep in complex layers of code just waiting to ruin everything. Continue reading…
Category Archives: General
Job board spam
I do marvel at the ingenuity of spammers sometimes. Despite being crap programmers, they do have a knack for coming up with new ways to deliver their poisonous junk. It’s almost enough to make me consider life of crime.
After placing a job advert on Gumtree, we (my current employer and I) received a touching email from someone intersted in our junior developer role. Clicking their portfolio link took us to a spammer’s “search” portal complete with gambling site pop-ups.
I Feel
My brother just launched a new personal project of his, consisting of two web sites; ifeellondon.com and ifeelnyc.com. The idea, in a nutshell, is that you browse for activities in your home city by how you feel, rather than what you might want to do, or where you might want to go.
JavaScript Obfuscator and Minifier
This tool is based on a full JavaScript parser that is part of a much bigger plan. I won’t go into that just yet, but along the way I’m going to be releasing useful tools like this as they come about. It’s useful to have some short term goals to keep up morale and ensure that the framework is working well.
> Try it here: Obfuscate and minify your JavaScript code
Continue reading…
JParser now with Unicode support
I’ve updated my JavaScript parser to include full Unicode support.
Check out the test interfaces for:
» Full parser;
» Code highlighting.
JavaScript Syntax Nuances
If you learn a programming language it is unlikely that you will read the formal language specification that defines all the laws of the syntax. You may never read it at all. It is more useful to learn by example, or at least topic-by-topic. However, a mere ten years after writing my first few lines of JavaScript, I read the ECMAScript standard and it threw up some things I did not know.
There are many things that you can write in JavaScript that are perfectly valid syntax, but that you probably never will write. Here are a few that raised an eyebrow or two.
MTV Best Show Ever
Publicreative have just launched a new version of MTV’s Best Show Ever website. It’s largely a user-contributed video site, with the added attraction that your clip could wind up on MTV.
I was heavily involved in this project as a back end developer and “web master” (for want of a better word). I may write about this project in more depth later, but for now there it is – Check it out!
Disinformation Technology
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
I recently watched the internet film, Zeitgeist. After which I was burning to write my opinions here, but unfortunately that’s not really what my blog is about, so instead I turn my attention to the internet as Information Technology. At least this is what IT stood for when I was at school, but ironically this was a time when I was much more likely to turn to books for information. More to the point, I was likely to go to much greater lengths to find out facts than doing a quick Google.
JParser now with Automatic Semicolon Insertion
I finally found a spare few hours to implement Automatic Semicolon Insertion into my JavaScript Parser.
Check out the test interface here.
Flash Media Server & FLVPlayback nightmare
I am pretty new to Flash Media Server, but on my current project I have been charged with setting it up. Today, I ran into a thoroughly unpleasant problem, possibly a bug, which I thought I would share.