Whenever the site detects a user using Internet Explorer 6, they will be redirected to the Fatal Exception Error page.

This change will only affect around 13% of actual Internet users, but I think these users need to know that Internet Explorer 6 should never be used!

An example of the dPanel is shown below. To show the dPanel you need to press the ‘transition key’, which for this example has been set to the grave accent key (this key is typically underneath the ‘Esc’ key on Windows keyboards and to the left of the ‘Z’ key on Mac keyboards). Pressing this will slide the dPanel into view. Press the grave accent key again to slide the dPanel out of view.

There are three functions publically available:

init() - you call this method once to initialize the class with your desired settings
addSection() - adds a new section to the dPanel
update() - updates the specified section

Simple Usage

Using the dPanel is very easy.

1. All you have to set things up is make a call to dPanel.init(), passing to it a reference to the stage.
2. You then call dPanel.addSection() passing to it a name for the new section and if desired, the colour of the text shown in that section.
3. When you want to update that section, you simply call dPanel.update(), passing to it the name of the section you want to update and the value you want to update it to.

Here is example code which uses the dPanel to constantly show the mouse position:

import com.dVyper.utils.dPanel;
import flash.events.Event;
//	INITIALIZE dPanel
dPanel.init(stage);
//	ADD A NEW SECTION
dPanel.addSection("mousePosition");
//	UPDATE THE dPanel EVERY FRAME TO DISPLAY MOUSE COORDINATES
stage.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, updateDebugPanel);
function updateDebugPanel(event:Event):void {
	dPanel.update("mousePosition", "x:"+stage.mouseX+" y:"+stage.mouseY);
}

And that is all there is to it! The dPanel is very easy to setup and use and I’m sure will prove very useful to you!

Advanced Usage

Here is more detailed information on the init() and addSection() functions:

dPanel.init(stageReference:Stage, transitionKey:int, colour:int, alpha:Number);

stageReference:Stage - this has to be a reference to the stage
transitionKey:int (96) - this is the character code of the key that you want to use to show/hide the dPanel
colour:int (0×000000) - the colour of the dPanel
alpha:Number (0.8) - the alpha of the dPanel

//	CREATES A dPanel WHERE YOU PRESS 'Delete' TO SHOW THE dPanel
dPanel.init(stage, 127);

dPanel.addSection(sectionName:String, colour:int);

sectionName:String - the name of the new section
colour:int (0xFFFFFF) - the colour of the text and border for the new section

//	CREATES A GREEN SECTION CALLED 'currentTime'
dPanel.addSection('currentTime', 0x00FF00);

Please let me know if you’ve found this useful or if you have any ideas for improvements

Download dPanel.as
Download dPanel Example source files

Enjoy!

The ‘with’ statement can be used in your code to help make the code easier to read. Examples of how useful it can be can be found in the documentation.

I’ve never actually used the ‘with’ statement in any of my personal projects however after reading an article which mentioned it I decided to see whether or not there was a speed increase to be gained from using the ‘with’ statement. I created a small test which attempts to determine this which you can try out below.

How to use the test is self explanatory. When you start a test, 500 MovieClips are created. On every frame, the position, dimensions, alpha and rotation of each MovieClip is altered to a random value. You can view how long it takes for each frame to render in the dPanel by pressing the grave accent key (the ‘dPanel’ is a class I have created for debug purposes - I will make it available in the near future).

I presumed that the ‘with’ statement would be faster because there are less reference calls but you can see for yourself that the ‘with’ statement is actually a little slower.

With Statement Test source files.

And so I’ve now updated my Flash Alert Dialog class, a class which enables you to display a modal dialog message box with AS3 very much like the built in Alert for Flex. Here is an example showing how the Alert can be used:

Using the Alert class is very easy. After importing the class you simply need to ‘initialise’ the class with a call to the function Alert.init() passing as a parameter a reference to the stage like so:

import com.dVyper.utils.Alert;
Alert.init(stage);

Once this function has been called you can call Alert.show() to display a modal prompt at any time and from any class file.

What this means, is that you can use the Alert class extensively throughout your project, and instead of having to comment out all of the lines which have a call to Alert.show() (which is what you have to do if you use for example the trace() command), you simply have to comment out the call to Alert.init(). All calls to Alert.show() are ignored if Alert.init() is not called.

Here is more information on how you can use the Alert class:

Alert.show(Text:String, options:Object);

Parameters

Text:String - [optional] The text that appears in the Alert control.
options:Object - [optional] An object containing values of the properties of the Alert

The parameters that can be included in the ‘options’ Object are:

background:String - The type of background.

There are four background types to choose from:

• “none” - invisible background
• “nonenotmodal” - no background and make the area behind the Alert prompt focusable
• “simple” - simple colour background
• “blur” - blurred background

The “simple” style is used if a background type is not specified

Alert.show("Made by dVyper", {background:"blur"});

buttons:Array - An array (maximum of 3) containing the Strings of the buttons to be shown in the Alert prompt

Alert.show("Loading image.", {buttons:["OK"]});
Alert.show("Cannot load image!", {buttons:["Abort", "Retry", "Fail"]});

callback:Function - The function to be called when a button on the Alert prompt has been clicked. When the function is called the name of the button that was clicked will be passed to that function as a String.

Alert.show("Do you want to save your changes?", {buttons:["Yes", "No"], callback:handleResponse});
function handleResponse(response:String):void {
	if (response == "Yes") {
		saveChanges();
	} else {
		exitWithoutSaving();
	}
}

colour:int - Main colour for the Alert

Alert.show("Here is a nice golden alert!", {colour:0xff9900});

promptAlpha:Number - Alpha of the Alert prompt. Only the prompt’s background is affected - the Alert background and the prompt’s text and buttons will be unaffected

Alert.show("Can you see through me?", {promptAlpha:0.4});

textColour:int - Colour of the text shown in the Alert prompt

Alert.show("I love white text", {colour:0x000099, textColour:0xFFFFFF});

position:Point - Position of the Alert prompt

Alert.show("Made by dVyper", {position:new Point(123, 456)});

If anyone would like me to include more functionality or has done so themselves, please let me know at info {at] fatal-exception [dot} co {dot] uk

Alert.as
Alert example source files

This information can also be viewed in the articles section.

Enjoy!

You can view it either on flashgamelicense or here.

After a careless mistake by myself, all of the database data containing previous blog posts and comments (and spam) have been lost. Nooo! All of the explanations of my experiments and classes, gone! But all was not lost; thanks to the ultimateness that is Google, all of the important posts were still alive in the Google cache! I was able to get all of the text I needed from the relevent posts with no problems!

Instead of trying to repost them all I have instead created an ‘Articles’ section of the website which will house all of the past and future experiments and classes that I have created. I’ll be posting to that section as time progresses. The first one which deals with graphics rendering has already been made available.

Hopefully my new design will be visually appealing - I hope you enjoy the site!