I recently updated my flex SDK to 4.1, (from 3.x) just to find that all my embedded fonts were missing.
This was the scenario:
* Embedding fonts using the [Embed] meta tag
* Applying font using TextFormat (don’t know what happens if you use CSS, my guess is that it won’t work either)
Quick fix: note the “embedAsCFF”
[Embed(source="font.ttf", fontFamily="x", mimeType="application/x-font", embedAsCFF="false")]
public var FontClass:Class;
What is this?
I used the Font.enumerateFonts() to get an array of my embedded fonts (my font was there, but still not visible in my textfield).
Check the fontType-property. Here I found that it was “embeddedCFF” instead of “embedded”. What is the difference?
“embeddedCFF” is a bit more lightweight, but can only be used with the new text engine (flash.text.engine.*). “embedded” is an embedded font, but can only be used with the older flash.text.TextField.
Since the SDK 4.1 it seems like fonts are embedded as CFF by default, which breaks all the fonts in TextFields if you have coded with an earlier SDK before.
People who knows me know I’m a big fan of Sonic The Hedgehog. I still remember very clearly exactly how I felt the first time I saw Sonic the hedgehog on my friends tv screen. I was eleven years old and the graphics was like nothing I’ve ever seen before, it was crisp like a cartoon.
And now I’m excited again. I have just learned that some of the songs, especially “Star Light Zone” – one of my favorite Sonic level songs of all time – is actually based on a song by a Japanese pop group named “Dreams Come True”. This was totally new information for me, and hearing my old favorite tune with lyrics just gives me the biggest smile =D
So I just thought I should share my new joyous discovery! You can read more about the connection between Dreams Come True and Sonic in this article: http://info.sonicretro.org/DREAMS_COME_TRUE or watch the youtube clip right below! Enjoy!!
/Tommy
On April 1 Youtube added a new mode called TEXTp – where their videos could be viewed as ASCII-art.
I really loved that feature, and was very disappointed when they removed it the next day, but ever since then I have been researching about ASCII art generation in flash.
To achieve the ASCII-effect they used the Adobe Pixel Bender Toolkit – a tool for programming your own custom filters, which can then be imported into Flash, Photoshop or After Effects. Googling the subject seems to prove me right about this.
Pixel Bender is free, and it is very powerful since it performs image calculations way faster than runtime actionscript is capable of (reading and writing pixels in a bitmapdata object is pretty slow). However I find that it’s a bit hard to get started since I didn’t find any really good Pixel Bender tutorials out there.
If you are looking for a good place to start learning Pixel Bender I highly recommend chapter 9 in Keith Peters book Advanced Actionscript Animation (I love all his books).
Now there are also a few limitations when writing a Pixel Bender filter for flash. You cannot use loops and you cannot define your own functions. However, there are still ways to achieve some really cool stuff!
So, after learning the basics of Pixel Bender, we’ll need to start researching about how to generate ASCII art from a picture. This – together with the “limits” mentioned above – is where the real challenge lies!
I have been able to pull off some cool workarounds this far, and as soon as I have something to show I will post about it here. I will probably write a short tutorial about it if it turns out nice.
Get ready for more posts on the subject!
This is a new video player made by Isotop for the Swedish video blog network Videofyme.
You can check out the player yourself by heading over to their site.
