Siu Lun

I’ve been reading various news stories about IE8 on Ajaxian. So I know IE8 is in development, somehow I didn’t quite catched the news that IE8 beta is actually out! until I was looking at some google anayltics stats on browsers today and found some people coming on my sites using IE8…

Well now I’ve installed IE8 on a VM. My first reaction after I’ve installed it, is simply jaw-droppingly-remarkable. I look in horror as all the sites that I’ve made failed under IE8.

Everybody has been touting IE8′s ability to be truely standards compliant. Which adds to an even more deepened sense of depression when I realise the sites I’ve been making – the css techniques and experiences that I’ve gathered in the past 7 years… have failed me.

I admit – I never actually sat down and look through the HTML and CSS specs, that doesn’t mean I’m clueless – in fact, I’ve been pretty good at keeping just 1 stylesheet across all browsers – didn’t even have to use browser specific stylesheets. All these gained through trial and error, experimentations and experience.

So have I really got to go now to read through the standards documents and specs?

Luckily I won’t have to as I can simply tell IE8 to render as IE7.
Here is the official link from MS: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(VS.85).aspx

I won’t get too depressed, until I see the release candidate, as not suprisingly, pretty much every site I’ve come across on the internet doesn’t look correct under IE8. Can we hope that it is simply a matter of time these issues are addressed?

Or is MS’s IE8 plan simply to make it strictly standards compliant and not implement any backwards and additional compatibility that has existed in all previous versions and competitor’s browser just to “please”/”aggrevate” the whiny standards compliancy developer crowd? – If that’s the case – IE8 is a lost cause – which will simply function as IE7 for most sites and the standards compliancy that it has been boosting is simply a comeback at the critics of MS.

Still a new version is better than stalling on IE7, as we developers really need people to upgrade from IE6. The introduction of a newer version would hopefully shift the balance and we can begin to see IE6 being phased out just as IE5.5 has.

Later.

I’ve finally discovered the joy of programming AS3… I can do everything the designer has done in Flash with a couple of lines of code!!

Last time I played with Flash was Flash 4 or 5, I didn’t use AS at all back then, relying on the timeline. It was interesting, but it simply took too long to do anything interesting back then!

Today AS3 seems to have given Flash a new lease of life. Now, comparing js coding to AS3 coding it is very similar and the advantage of js vs AS3 is enourmous! Particularly when we’re talking about performance and the ability to control graphically what happens.

I (heart) flash! Shame it isn’t as “accessible” as it could be. This is one big reason why I cannot use Flash in commercial business sites in the UK!

I’m not going to go and argue about Flash vs js, all I’m going to say is, I cannot see how js browser implementations can catch up to Flash in terms of the amount of power it gives us! Simply put, if I have to compare Flash with anything (other than silverlight). Flash apps is closer to Java web apps than js.

Anyhoos… Flash has definitely got a future if Adobe can first and foremost make it as accessible as it could possibly be! (i.e. make it screenreader compatible for Macs and Linux – not just those on specific software in Windows! and also give us developers more control over accessible content and be a bit more “smart” about automatic accessible contents!)

Been digging around PV3D, looks awesome, then got reminded about “Adobe” Director, I just can’t figure out what Adobe is trying to do – I think they’re very confused themselves what to do with so many packages that are now coming together in different ways. (Flash & Flex)…. why oh why are you splitting these apart! I know you’re doing it for the money, but lets be realistic, if us developers have to buy 3 different packages that in the end comes together as a single site. I would very much think of other alternatives…. (silverlight – thank god there is competition – albeit from another monopoly!)

This concludes this session of Flash ramblings. Later.

If you’re a noob in Flash, looking for z-index in AS3. well, there isn’t one.

There used to be a property called depth. But now it has become an index of the array object.

So for example, you add a dynamic object into Flash MainTimeLine at runtime. your “z-index” is your index within the MainTimeLine’s object array.

To set the index. Use setChildIndex(childObject, i); where childObject is the object in question, i is an integer. This would add the child into that index and move the “original occupant” and everything above that up by 1.