OpenFlash

Firefox creating a new profile on each start

2009-10-13T20:56:00.001-07:00

So I was having a problem with Firefox. First, the problem was it wouldn't open. Every time I tried to open it, it said, only one instance can be running at a time. Or something like that. However, Firefox wasn't running.

Being lazy, I took my machine to IT and let them deal with it.

Don't get me wrong, IT has a hard hard job. troubleshoot my system. and god knows what i've installed or what settings i've changed, or what system properties i've mucked up. but i'm sure you'll figure it out.

so, this is not an IT sucks post.

So anyhow, they told me something about profiles being corrupted. At which point my eyes glazed over and i stopped listening.

So, turns out the "fix" for this was to delete my profiles.ini file.

So, now, my problem was different. Firefox would open, woo hoo! But victory was declared too soon. Each time, a new profile was created. So what? you lose your bookmarks, boo hoo. Also, you eat up your memory pretty quickly. And that is what forced me to fix the problem. It was non-trival to solve blindly, but easy once you know what to do. So, I'll share it with you.

1. run the profile manager. open a terminal window and run this:
/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -ProfileManager

Create a new profile. Remember the name you used. I used my name, to differentiate it from "Default User".

Make sure the folder used for this is
/Users/<user name>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles

if that dir doesn't exist, create it. That was part of my problem. It should have existed, but did not.

Once you create your profile. Start firefox. Then exit fire fox. Go into the Profiles dir, and delete every profile except this one. this step may not be necessary. But I did it for clarity.

2. Make sure you have a Profiles.ini file.

On the mac, this should be in /Users/<user name>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/

if you don't have it, make it.

this file should look like this:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=0
[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/qioxtndq.default

change the Name and Path to match the profile you just created.

More details on this can be found on these pages.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profiles.ini_file
http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?comments_parentId=420023&forumId=1
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Backing+up+your+information

save the file.

you might need to chmod 755 this file. I did it, but I'm not sure if it's a necessary step.

3. Now, run the profile manager again.
/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -ProfileManager

you should see your profile. choose that one and open fire fox. You can open firefox normally after that.

another flash killer?

2009-09-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

first, before you start a company to take a hit out on flash, check to make sure someone will hire you, and pay you, to take out said hit. someone other than microsoft.

call me a skeptic, call me a hater, but i'm not sure that i'm buying the premise of this company

now i will admit. i've missed the boat with frameworks and their popularity. i'm a roll your own javascripter. mainly because i started doing it back in 1999 when your choice of editors was pretty much frontpage or notepad. mainly because i did it in the hard days when browers had little incentive to adhere to standards. so i remember the days when it was hard. now it is easy. and, i've trained myself to effectivley debug using charles, firebug and everyone's favorite, the alert. it's become second nature. so i'm not looking for a way to make javascript eaiser. 10 years later, it is easy.

so, i was a late and begrudging adopter of frameworks like jquery or even yui. talk about not eating my own dogfood. they are great tools, and very useful, but like i said, i like to nerd out and roll my own javascript.

so anyhoo...back to this company. they are aiming to take a hit out on flash. one small problem. for every flash hater, there are two flash lovers. that love it with an intense burning passion and remember the glory days of 2001 when it snatched the web back from hard core nerds and gave an entry point into coding to visually minded folks who had no interest in writing applets. no one missed the grey boxes did they?

so anyhow, while frameworks and things to make html and javascript easier are interesting, flash killers are not. it can't be killed. it won't be killed. it's too useful. try creating curved animation in javascript. it's totally possible. but ffs, why do it? or runtime graphic effects. until the browsers integrate this functionality, flash will continue to enjoy it's run as queen of web animation.

so next time, i'll discuss what i see as potential competition for flash. standards based video widgets. and why i think firefox 3.5 and silverlight will get it wrong as long as they don't play nicely together.

RSS Blogroll - AS2

2009-07-02T20:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time...but i've got more for you...

This is done in AS2. It's a modified RSS Reader. What it does is, it pulls in the latest story from multiple feeds (as many as you like), and then cycles through them. You can see an example of this on my personal blog at www.aliseya.com

Enjoy!

download

MP3 Player - AS3 Version

2008-10-22T18:22:00.001-07:00

Okay, I've updated the MP3 player. it's in AS3 now.

the functionality is pretty much the same, although I did change how the EQ bars work.

As before, I haven't included any sample MP3 files, so you'll have to put some in a "tracks" directory and update the XML file with the path to your songs.

Download

RSS Reader - AS3

2008-10-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

Here's an RSS reader that displays the first item in the feed.

You can extend it show more items. All of the text is written out in action script, so you can change the size of the textFields as well as the colors used.

~~You can see it in action on the homepage of my blog~~ A modified AS2 version is on my blog (www.aliseya.com). It's on the lefthand side, underneath "Latest Post on OpenFlashForum.com". It gets the RSS feed from OpenFlashForum.com, but you can replace it with any feed you like.

Download

Enjoy!

Slider Puzzle

2008-10-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

New Source has finally been added.

Okay, it's been a while since I put up some new code but here's a slider game, that demonstrates how to copy an image at runtime (that's how the individual pieces are made), using Bitmap.draw() and Matrix.translate()

So while the game is not really that interesting, once you're aware of using Bitmap.draw() to copy sections of the screen, you can use this knowledge to manipulate your images in other ways...

Also, you can swap out the image with your own, or if you're familiar with file uploads, you can build an application to take user supplied files.

At some point, I'll put up and AS3 version...but no promises about when

Download

Tutorial: Loading and Resizing images

2007-11-08T16:39:00.001-08:00

Knowing how to dynamically load, resize and position images in Flash is the key to making a good flash slide show. I'll show you how to do it here. For free even.

For this tutorial, I'm not going to cover how to get the URL to the image into flash. I'll put it in a variable to keep things simple. If you want to see how to load URLs to multiple images from an XML file, check out the source for my Flash Photo Album here.

Step 1 - Load the images
First let's create a MovieClip to hold the image, and then load the image into it. We're going to use a MovieClipLoader for this so that we can add a listener later.

//create the MovieClipLoader
var mcLoader:MovieClipLoader = new MovieClipLoader();

//create the MovieClip to hold the image
var photoHolder:MovieClip = _root.createEmptyMovieClip("photoHolder", 1);

//load the image
var nextPhoto:String = "Photos/photo1.jpg";
mcLoader.loadClip(nextPhoto, photoHolder);

Step 2 - Add a listener object to the MovieClipLoader
Next, we're going to add a listener object to the MovieClipLoader, so that we can be notified when the image has loaded. In this case, we are going to listen for the onLoadInit event.

//create the listener object
var loadListener:Object = new Object();

//create a function that will be called when the onLoadInit event is fired
loadListener.onLoadInit = function(mc:MovieClip){
//resize code will go here
}

//add the listener to the MovieClipLoader
var mcLoader:MovieClipLoader = new MovieClipLoader();
mcLoader.addListener(loadListener);

Step 3 - Resize and Center the image
Now lets add the code to resize and center the image.

//make the image half the width of the Stage
mc._width = Stage.width/2;
//keep the proportions the same
mc._yscale = mc._xscale;

//center the image
mc._x = (Stage.width/2) - (mc._width/2);
mc._y = (Stage.height/2) - (mc._height/2);

Step 4 - Putting it all together.
Now that we've gone through all of the steps, here is what all of the code looks like together. As an extension, you may want to add a Tween so that the image fades in, or resizes slowly, or slides in from the side!

----------------------------------------------------------

var loadListener:Object = new Object();
loadListener.onLoadInit = function(mc:MovieClip){

mc._width = Stage.width/2;
mc._yscale = mc._xscale;

mc._x = (Stage.width/2) - (mc._width/2);
mc._y = (Stage.height/2) - (mc._height/2);

};

var mcLoader:MovieClipLoader = new MovieClipLoader();
mcLoader.addListener(loadListener);

var nextPhoto:String = "Photos/photo1.jpg";
var photoHolder:MovieClip = _root.createEmptyMovieClip("photoHolder", 1);
mcLoader.loadClip(nextPhoto, photoHolder);

Great Flash Developer Forums

2007-11-01T14:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a short list of flash developer forums that I like. It's by no means a comprehensive list, so if you have others that you like, add a link to it in the comments!

www.OpenFlashForum.com
www.kirupa.com
www.actionscript.org
www.flashmove.com

Photo Album 1

2007-10-31T16:54:00.000-07:00

This photo viewer is like a slide show. You can change out the background image to be whatever you want. You can also add a mask so that only part of the photo is displayed.

If you've got some basic actionscripting skills you can resize the images or change the transition effects. I'll post a variation on this in a few days that will let you select the photo that you want to view in addition to watching the automatic slide show.

**note** Photos are not included with the download, so you have to add some of your own to the Photos directory and update the xml file

Download

Flash MP3 Player

2007-10-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

This component is skinnable, so that you can modify it to match your site. Just edit the existing buttons, or create your own.

The playlist is XML driven, so you can easily update the songs. Or if you're an advanced user, you can have the playlist created dynamically by a server side script.

This MP3 player can be used on it's own, or loaded into an existing flash movie.

**note** MP3 files are not included with the download, so you have to add some of your own to the tracks directory and update the xml file

enjoy!

Download