Hi,

i going to talk about something that even after several years in this web/programming stuff just now i’m really doing in a effective way, the management/completion of projects.

i know that are a lots of articles on the web talking about freelance techniques, how to not be a lazy developer, how to work with clients etc.. this not pretend to be something like that, is just some personal opinion/tips that i realized based on my experience. also, don’t mean that articles like that are bad, indeed all are helpful in most of the cases but you just know to identify what going to work for yourself and try it.

Dont Waste time, just do it !

Is simply like that, all the people have ideas, maybe are great, maybe other are horrible, but till you try it, you don’t going to know it. the worst thing you can do is to drop an idea before you even started. it happened to my several times, and i learned from that when i see the same idea implemented by other guy and having a great success . if you idea is a web/software project, usually only take time and if you need to invest, you maybe need to put some bucks for a designer or for technical resources (as servers, domain etc..) so the risk is minimum if the idea don’t get successful (always talking from the side that you are a developer and you can program the project/idea of course). other times that happened to me a lot, is to never finish/continue the project i started, of course that the project for clients i always complete it, i’m not lazy at work, but i’m talking about personal projects.

Manage the flow of your time

at the beginning, i always see that i losted almost all the day and i didn’t completed anything, that usually happened why i get ditracted doing other things. a great aplication that helped me with this was WorkRave. basically let you set period of time to work and force you to rest  after each round of time. personally i have configured it with rounds of 40 minutes and rest of 5 in each, why rounds of 25 minutes and rest of 15 don’t wasn’t enough

The social media need to be a tool, not a distraction

when i started using the social media (like facebook, twitter, forums etc..), more than anything to know it how it work and use it in my benefit, they consume a lot of time, was a distraction why every notification i followed  to know what happened, commented etc.. if you use facebook/twitter as a enjoyment and a media tool, try to use it in your free time and try to put a limit of time per day/week so you don’t waste too much time and can use it in your projects.

You can be a nice person and say NO anyway

when i started to join in forums, more than anything to meet people who know more than me and learn from them and get more knowledge about programing and the web, was a nice decision, but also i meet people that know less than me, and that finally converted in a problem. i always been pro-active to help the people. i always tried to cheer them up when something get wrong, trying to solve code problems etc.. but i realized that help other people (and i even made work for free for them, yes i know, i’m a asshole ) take a lot of your time and you don’t get anything in return. for that i decided to focus that time in this blogs and do not help “personally” anymore, writing useful posts so i can reach more people, be more helpful and waste less of my time. maybe this sound some egoist, but is the truth

i hope this tips will help in some way, they are made from the pain of my ass after years working at this

Regards,

Shadow.

Hi,

today in this post i going to explain how to use this helpful class that have the purpose to call and receive the return of javascript functions from the flash enviorment.

Basically the function that make the trick is call(), this static function let you call any existent javascript function in the current document and get the returned value if exist.

in an example:

Flash side:

import flash.external.ExternalInterface;

var result:String=ExternalInterface.call(“alertFunction”,”Hello World”);

trace(result);

Javascript Side:

function alertFunction(message){

if(alert(message)){

return true;

}else{

return false;

}

}

As you see, in the flash part we are calling statically the call functions and passing as first parameter the name of the javascript function and secondly and string, that are the parameter required by the javascript function. there is no limit in the amount of parameter that can be passed to the call function and going to be passed to the javscript function when is called. also as you see, we are storing the value returned by the javascript function in a variable also to use it later.

it’s useful method to manipulate html info or elements from the flash using this function as a bridge.

as far as i know, it work also on actionscript 2 but i’m not sure. also this work on the major browser that have javascript supported but again, i’m not sure if it work in all (example: IE6, IE7 etc..)

i hope it help you to use this function and if you need more reference, just look at the adode docs

Regards,

Shadow.

Fotos de la EVA 2009