GeekSpeak is a Flash-PHP-MySQL based online chat system, which can be used by the users visiting a site to chat among themselves. The application is developed fully using Flash MX 2004 and takes advantage of the V2 Component architecture. The application configuration is very simple and just takes 2 minutes to setup including the database and the middle-end. I was searching for such an application for a long time and fumbled across a lot of free chat-servers like Jabber and some others, but almost all of them demanded the chat server to run on a separate server. I decided to go for a rather simple system and found a similar example in the book "Advanced PHP for Flash" by Friends of ED. But, sorry to say that the code example was not working and when the code was migrated to MX2004 it didn’t work at all. I cleaned up the code and added some PHP code to the existing version and tweaked up some of the ActionScript to fit the MX2004 behaviors. Thanks to the people at Friends of ED for the excellent example.The current version has only the very basic functionality of a chat system and doesn’t have features like emoticons and chat rooms.
You can have a look at it here : GeekSpeak v1.0
Planned Enhancements:
1) Support for emoticons.
2) Category based rooms.
3) Advanced text formatting.
4) Instant Messenger Environments.
5) Standalone version (Desktop Edition).
6) Sound options and alerter.
I have tested this version on most of the Windows + IE combinations.
If anyone of you have access to other Browser + OS combinations please drop me a comment, if everything looks fine there.
As always, comments, suggestions and bug reports are welcome.
September 12, 2004
MX2004 Easter Egg
Today I was just feeling blank and was generally exploring the Macromedia MX 2004 install directory to see what all files are stored in there. I came across the Libraries folder and was curious as to what it had and started opening the three files in it and when I opened the Classes.fla file I found there were some text fields in it with some text with white set as the font color. When I changed the color to black I found a lot of proverbs!?! about Classes. I dont know if this is really a easter egg or not :)
Try it yourself :
1)Open the folder Macromedia\Flash MX 2004\en\First Run\Libraries in the folder where you have installed Flash MX 2004. (Usually C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Flash MX 2004\en\First Run\Libraries)
2) When the file is open press Ctrl+A (Select All) and the change the text color to black.
Now you know what Macromedia feels about Classes ;)
September 10, 2004
Flash Pollz v1.0 released for Public Preview
After a very long time I found some time to work on MX2004. In parallel I was searching for a poll application and barely found a good PHP-Flash based poll system, which met my requirement. I came across some Flash based poll system's but most of the good ones were heavily priced. I finally decided to create a poll system on my own using Flash and PHP. And here is the end product. I have not tested the application completely so bear with any obvious bugs in the application for sometime.
The v1.0 of Flash Pollz can be found here.
Please feel free to comment on any bugs you come across. You can also request for new features you would like added to it. I will release the package for public use once Iam done with the bug fixing and the enhancement you guys request for.
Some known issues with this version:
1) Data is not automatically refreshed after submitting the poll.
2) Uses text files (Though this is not an issue I am planning to release a version with database integration or XML)
3) PHP file name is hard-coded in source
4) Number of poll options is limited
5) No preloader
Planned Enhancements:
1) More graph and chart types
2) UI Improvement
3) Skinning feature
4) Dynamic assignment of PHP files and file names
5) Integrating pre-loader
Add more...
I think this time no-one claims that they taught me how to create Flash Polls ;)
September 09, 2004
Off-topic : 5 Gmail invites
Please, don’t curse me for another entry on a Flash Blog about gmail. I have been using gmail for about two months now and its really amazing. No other free mail service has such speed and features. I have 5 gmail invites with me now. Anyone interested can add a comment here and I will randomly choose 5 users and send invites.