Flash Based Google Maps Application Delivered for PA Tourism
Wayne Helman on June 9, 2010
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PA Tourism's Roadtrip-a-Matic
Recently, we released a Flash based Google Maps application we built for Pennsylvania Tourism: Roadtrip-a-Matic. The application encourages users to enter a beginning and ending address and maps out the route through a scenic tour of Pennsylvania. There are a number of routes to choose from, each with a plethora of points of interest.
The app makes use of a number of different Google Maps API methods to invoke step-by-step directions, calculate distances and project travel time.
Hugs and kisses go out to our good friends in Philly, Red Tettemer, who drove the project and knocked it out of the park.
Quick Tip: Ever Thought About Using @Font-face for Icons?
Wayne Helman on April 24, 2010
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Nettuts
Nettus+ was kind enough to publish an article I authored on using the CSS3 @font-face declaration for purposes other than fonts. There are a number of applications and it opens up a number of different doors.
Have a read on Nettuts.
Here’s the demo. You can also download a ZIP of the demo here.
IE7 @font-face bug and fix
Wayne Helman on February 17, 2010
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This week we stumbled upon a rather odd bug in IE7 (surprise, surprise) when embedding a EOT font file using the @font-face construct. To save on bandwidth, we often edit out sets of characters from a font that we know will not be used on a site. In this particular instance, we were using this font for headers that were all composed in title case, but displayed in uppercase using the text-transform property. Logically, we saved all our font files with only the uppercase characters-we simply don’t use the lowercase. The site rendered perfectly in every browser (including IE6 and IE8) that supported the @font-face construct with the notable exception of IE7. continued…
Site Launch: Neilson® Dairy Oh!®
Wayne Helman on November 30, 2009
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Neilson® Dairy Oh®!
A51 is pleased to announce the launch of a new updated website for Saputo’s Neilson® Milk brand Dairy Oh!®. Dairy Oh!® contains DHA, an Omega-3 fatty acid, contributes to good health and normal growth and development. The focus of the campaign was to elaborate on the benefits of milk high in DHA. The overall campaign creative was developed by Clean Sheet Communications. A51 developed the “one page website” concept for the campaign, designed the creative and developed the website.
The website uses jQuery to scroll up and down a stack of books held by a young girl, displaying selected content in a callout window. Both English and French versions are available.
A big thanks goes out to Clean Sheet and their team for putting so much trust in us!
A51 & ActionScript 3 Development Task Contest #1
Phil Chertok on November 16, 2009
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On Friday I participated in the first ActionScript 3 Development Task Contest, which challenged users to divide the stage into a grid and to find all the neighbors of a given display object on that grid. The key was that the winner should implement their method in the quickest/most efficient way possible. Results would be measured using Grant Skinner’s fantastic Performance Testing Harness. continued…
Stress Testing CakePHP with Pylot
Matt Fisher on November 5, 2009
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Using Pylot to Load Test CakePHP
Since we like to use the CakePHP framework here at A51 we figured it would be great if we could find or develop a tool to load test our sites as we developed them to weed out any issues that would be caused in a high load production environment. After some research, we found a small open source application called Pylot (http://www.pylot.org) which is made for testing performance and scalability of web services. Pylot generates concurrent load (HTTP Requests), verifies server responses, and produces reports with metrics. Tests suites are executed and monitored from a GUI or shell/console. continued…
AS3 ToolTip Class
Phil Chertok on September 24, 2009
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ActionScript 3 ToolTip
One common element of many applications is the tool tip. Tool tips can be useful for clarifying interactions and giving more detailed descriptions of elements in an app. Unfortunately AS3 does not have any native tool tip class so we have had to create our own.
5 Great Web Developer Resources & More
Phil Chertok on September 8, 2009
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Five Great Developer Resources
Last week I posted 5 of my favorite resources for ActionScript development and the response was really great so this week I’ve decided to share some my preferred sites for non-flash/traditional web development.
Nettuts+: This site that is part of the Envato network of pages has new tutorials every day. From JavaScript, to CSS to PHP frameworks, this site runs the gamut when it comes to web development tutorials. With many contributors and topics, you are bound to find something you like. Add contests and freebies to the mix and it makes Nettuts+ a can’t miss site.
Trends in TV Show Sites Featured
Wayne Helman on September 4, 2009
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Trends in TV Sites
Leave it to Smashing Magazine to publish an article on trends surfacing in designing TV show sites. They’ve listed a number of sites including one we here at A51 developed for The Listener on CTV in Canada and NBC in the US. It’s actually an interesting look – many sites are structured almost identically.
We developed The Listener site using Papervision3D with a .NET C# / SQL Server backend. It’s been versioned in who knows how many languages – all text is live. Thanks to Steven Snell at DesignM.ag for including us.
5 Great ActionScript Resources
Phil Chertok on September 3, 2009
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There is no shortage of great places to get your fix of ActionScript but we thought we’d share some of our favorites.
GoToAndLearn: This is a great resource for both people starting out with ActionScript and experienced developers. Run by Adobe evangelist Lee Brimelow, the site is filled with screencasts and example code on a wide range of subjects including flex, 3D, AMF, Pixel Bender and more. The tutorials are both informative and entertaining as Lee is a great speaker who always brings something interesting to every screencast. You should also check out Lee’s Blog which features lots of insight on the Flash/Adobe world.
