ADDED_TO_STAGE

I learned today that the ADDED_TO_STAGE event constant was not added until flash player 9.0.28.0. 

This can typically cause the error TypeError: Error #2007: Parameter type must be non-null. at flash.events::EventDispatcher/addEventListener() for people with flash player 9 prior to 9.0.28, for instance flash player 9.0.16. (Yes, I have added the versions to help google find this post.)

I hope this post can help someone find the problem :-)

A fundraiser for the Church of Sweden

The last few weeks I have been working on a site for a fundraising campaign by the Swedish Church. The theme of the campaign is water. You can create your own fund, invite you friends to help you fill the buckets with water, and all funds are part of the big campaign fund.

The main challange of the production was making the payment methods run smoothly. Contributions can be made in to ways: using credit cards and direct bank payments through PayEx, or they can be made by sms. The PayEx system transaction requires the visitor to leave the campaign site, enter their credentials at the PayEx site, and then return to the campaign site. Data persistance and maintaing state is obviously an issue that needs to be handled throughout the transaction. I think we came up with a pretty good solution.

I also created an AS3 package with a complete set of classes for using PayEx, I will post that on the web somewere if someone is interested. (PayEx only supplies java, .net and php versions.)

http://www.svenskakyrkan.se/vatten/

TIWC # 1: A swf remote controller in AIR

You know those things that would be really useful to have in most projects, but is not really part of the actual project, thus there is no time to develop them? In this "Things I want to create" series, I will outline a few such ideas. It would be nice to make them into open source projects, and I will if I ever find the time.

Some features on a website requires the swf to be embedded in html, and displayed in a browser. For instance resizing the whole swf, swfaddress navigation, cookies etc. But when you are developing, it can be convenient to run the site within the authoring environment, i.e. not in an html container. It is also quite common that the html container is created much later in some cms that you don't really care about.

The idea is to create an AIR utility that can reside in the mac menu bar or the windows toolbar. The site swf then communicates with the utility through local connection. The utility would have a minimal interface allowing you to control certain parameters and actions on the swf. An api for the swf would of course need to be created as well.

Features I would like to have are:

• Sound on/off (when testing, you don't want the sound to play, but you don't want to forget to set the default sound to on either)
• Goto swfaddress deeplink (and default startlink). Preferably a drop down of available urls, populated from the swf. (If more than one developer is working on different parts of a site that shares the same swf, settings the default deeplink could be very useful)
• Set flashvars

Buy a used Volvo

Just before christmas we launched a new site for Volvo sweden, where you can search for a used car. The site is a flash front connected to the swedish site bytbil.com backend.

The design might not be spectacular, but if you compare the flow of interaction when searching and tweaking parameters to the native interface of bytbil.com, I believe we did a pretty good job.

Flash-wise, the site is a textbook example of the benefits of using the PureMVC AS3 framework

Volvo used cars

XC60 campaign featured as campaign of the month in New Media Age, UK

The Volvo XC60 launch which has occupied several members of the LBi Göteborg flash team for most of 2008 was featured in New Media Age, UK as "Campaign of the month". 

The prelaunch campaign included a site where a new section was revealed almost every month during the spring/summer, and then the launch site was released in the fall.

You can check out the sites here:

Pre-launch site

Launch site