Wow—what a past few days. I'm so happy to announce that DestroyFlickr won in the Designer/Developer Collaboration category at the Adobe Design Achievement Awards last night. It was an incredible time spent with unbelievably talented people. My roommate at the New Yorker Hotel, Dong-Joo Seo also won in Illustration with his entry, Empty Space. He's easily one of the most talented and most inspiring persons I've ever met. I'm really excited to see his future work.

One of the highlights of the days spent in New York City was the studio tours of Pentagram, Mucca Design, and The Barbarian Group. All three studios were very impressive, but I can best see myself fitting in pretty well at The Barbarian Group. We both share a clear emphasis on experimentation and fresh projects. Hopefully I'll be speaking with Keith Butters again.

There's a whole lot more to tell about. For now, I wanted to keep it brief and get at least something up. I'll definitely extend upon my trip within the next few days.

In anticipation of the Adobe Design Achievement Awards this Thursday, I decided to spruce up the site a bit. A feature I've been meaning to add for the past few months is comments. All posts have comment links below them which lead to the comment form on the post's page. Eventually, I'll have it so you can comment without leaving the front page. I also took my portfolio off the sidebar and gave it its own page with descriptions of each website. Lastly, I've added a form on the contact page so you can keep in touch on any computer. Also, you'll notice that the comment and contact forms utilize AJAX. This is my first time dabbling in it and I've got to admit, it makes forms and input validation so much less of a chore.

I'm working on DestroyFlickr a bit before the ceremony, so expect an update soon. I think you'll get a kick out of the new features.

I've noticed over the years that Actionscript has many tiny bugs and obstacles that can keep a project from looking or working perfectly. With each problem, however, there is a way around it. Starting today, I'll be writing a series of workarounds for Actionscript.

Let's begin with the dreaded autoSize issue. When dealing with type weight, Flash treats certain colors differently. If you have something like white on a dark background or black on a white background, you'll have play around with the thickness and sharpness to make everything look crisp. What if you had a highlight color for links? Now, you're in a pickle. You can adjust the weight of the whole textfield, but if you have a mid-tone color on a dark background and adjust the weight for the white, your mid-tone type will be incredibly thin. This issue has yet to be fixed by Adobe, but an issue that is a result of this can be fixed with a few extra lines of code.

For some odd reason, links that are colored different from the body text don't play well with the TextField class's multiline autoSize feature. The text above to the left shows what I'm talking about. Hovering the link will correct the problem, but when you take your cursor off the link, it returns. Above, on the right is a textfield using the workaround I developed. This only occurs for textfields with autoSize on.

The key is keeping the autoSize property on only when you change the text. Then, switch it off when you're finished. Start by creating a string property that is always set to the autoSize value you want, so if autoSize is on, the string will be set to "left," etc. Now, create an override function for both "set text" and "set htmlText." Turn on the textfield's autoSize, record the textfield's height, revert the textfield's autoSize to off, and change the textfield's height to the recorded height.

This is a quick and easy solution for the autoSize bug. Hopefully Adobe will acknowledge this issue in the next release of Flash Player. Either way, consider it fixed.

I'm back. Finally. It was a solid time away from everything and I really think I needed it. On the other hand, I'm really glad I'm back. Part of me missed the routine I have in Baltimore. Now that vacation is over, I'll be returning to more consistent posts and updates. For the next week or so, I'll be focusing on re-working Destroy Today. It won't be a redesign by any means, but rather a revision. It will be done in Flex and include a few new features that only Flex can provide. I'll also be posting useful workarounds with Actionscript. Everyone knows it has its shortcomings, but most of the issues can be avoided—and in unusual ways. It feels good to be back.

I finally made the transition from GoDaddy and couldn't be happier. Destroy Today is now hosted by Dreamhost. I honestly don't know how I went this long without them. For the same price that I paid for Godaddy, I'm getting 500 gigs storage, 5 terabytes bandwidth and a free domain for life. I'll try not to sound like a car salesman, but I just can't get over what they offer. You have full control over everything. This means: SFTP, Shell access, Webdav, CVS, SVN, IMAP... everything. And just for the hell of it, storage space increases by 2 gigs and bandwidth by 10 gigs each week!

Now, this next feature is just the deal maker for me—the referral program. If you get someone to sign up and they refer you, you receive $97. Then, for each person they refer, you get $5. With less than ten referrals, you can pay for ten years of hosting. With that being said, if you are interested in signing up with Dreamhost, I have created a promotional code that will pay for your first month of hosting. When signing up, enter "destroytoday" as the promo code and you're set.

My calendar screensaver has been a big hit lately. Unfortunately, Luke notified me of a bug that could possibly freeze the screensaver on the 31st. I forgot to add a one in the days, so each month starts at zero. I fixed it right away and bought the pro version of SWF2Saver so all of you PC users can be happy. I'm all about releasing my work for free, but if you feel compelled to donate a few dollars, I'll be so thankful.

I'm pleased to announce that DestroyFlickr has over 5,000 authenticated users as of today. Thanks to everyone who's helped me out whether it be through feedback or feature requests. Let's hope it's been enough to pull off a win in NYC.

For an update on all other things, I spent this past weekend hovering over my Arduino. Unfortunately, he fell into a coma. I fried the processor somehow, forcing me to place an order for a new one. I just hope this next one doesn't have the same issue.

I'll be away on vacation next week without any internet (gasp!), so there won't be anything new. Hopefully I'll have something to post before I leave.

Today marks the release of DestroyFlickr 1.0.7.0. There has been a lot of requests coming in and I'm knocking things off the list whenever I have free time. One of the most requested features this time around was multiple pages for contacts' photos. Now, Flickr's API restricts the number of contacts' photos to fifty, so the most pages you'll see is three. Nevertheless, it's much better than just one. Speaking of contacts' photos, the Profile canvas now displays one photo for each contact, so there's no chance of a single contact taking up all five photos. Another feature of interest is advanced searching. You can now specify content type, date, and sorting.

Onto bugs, I've fixed three with this update. For Windows users, the bug that keeps DestroyFlickr open in the background after quitting it is now fixed. Apparently, the About and Upload windows were keeping it open—go figure. I noticed that in the Contacts canvas, when resizing to fullscreen, the recycled contacts were showing up on the edge. That's now fixed as well. Lastly, I realized my updater was programmed to handle only three-digit version numbers, but with the last release being 1.0.6.1, this needed to be improved. Today's release must be named 1.0.7.0 for the previous updater to recognize it. From now on, however, I'll be returning to three-digit version numbers—unless I come across an urgent issue requiring a quick fix, of course.

That's all for now. Take a look, and as always, let me know what you think.

It's been a few days since my last post, but I have good reasons—I'll post about them later this week. In the meantime, I was able to whip up this new study, Tracking. I was flipping through an old notepad and came across a list of things to do. On that list was Trackable. I found the need for a class that records property values in real-time and saves them in an array. I thought I'd spend an hour and take that off the list. In doing so, I managed to develop this lab that records the mouse coordinates when the mouse is down, then replays the coordinates in a loop of circles. Each circle's radius is determined by the distance between the current and previous mouse coordinate. Play around with it and let me know what you think.

I realized that certain goodies I posted to download aren't being seen because they're on the next page of posts. As a result, there is now a Downloads page where you can find those goodies. At the moment, there's only the Calendar screensaver, but I'm sure there will be more up later. Also, I might put the most recent project releases there. In any case, check it out and if you benefit greatly from my applications, show you care.