Development tidbits, struggles, revelations, and still some Flash

A buddy of mine had asked me how to make Flash scale an image to fit the entire background, but keeping the image aspect ratio. I knew it wouldn’t be hard to figure out, but I also hadn’t really done it before. I’m posting it here for his benefit and just in case I need to look back sometime in the future. I make no promises that this is the most efficient way either, but it definitely works. The real “trick” is scaling the background image movieclip to the width and height of the Stage and then checking to see which scale (xscale or yscale) is bigger and scaling the other to match.
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Flex2 Builder 2 for Mac is on labs. Get it while its hot! http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flexbuilder2/

And it appears to be a universal app too.

When AMFPHP 1.0 was released, I used it to create a simple Flash calendar for my blog. In the last two weeks, I’ve had two people email me about it. So I’ve decided to produce a little tutorial on it this week. Stay tuned.

The MGM Grand Las Vegas revamped site went live yesterday.

It was designed by Diesel in Canada. Diesel does a lot (maybe, all?) of the Cirque Du Soleil materials (print, web, etc). They did a really nice job on the MGM Grand site and made good use of Flash 8 and FLV video.

It still has some glitches, but seems to work pretty well. I’m kinda surprised they went with Flash 8 considering its install rate is still under 70%. While they are using SWFObject, it doesn’t appear they are providing alternate content and it fails most horribly if JavaScript is turned off (rare.. but still worth watching out for).

Anyhow.. I think the design is very slick and the video work done (compositing, 3d, etc) is very very cool. Even with the glitches and few issues I mentioned, I’d still give it an A because I know they will get them ironed out soon enough.

Why is it after all this time that we still run into pages that fail to check flash versions properly on mainstream browsers? Better yet, why not include a link to the content page just in case your flash checking script fails for one reason or another. I went to check out the Scion.com web page today and got greeted with a “Flash required” page and NO link to the content page. It correctly sniffs FP9 when I use IE, so most likely its an issue with their JS sniffing code.

Here’s a suggestion for everyone … always include a link to your flash content even if you think your Flash sniffer is absolutely flawless. Nothing is more aggravating than being told that I don’t have Flash installed and being unable to manually continue on.

UPDATE: The Scion.com sniffer didn’t work on OSX either — either Safari or Firefox.