2005 - Page 6 of 7 - Michael Bianco

CSS Optimizer .7 Released!

After lots of hard work, I’ve finally finished CSS Optimizer V.7. Improvements in this version include: Recursive directory searching support. Specify a directory and use the -r option to optimize all the CSS files contained in the specified folder. Much better filesystem support. New -s & -n options. Better command line argument parser. Download it here. Read the readme that comes with the application for more information on how it works. All the source code is now available for download, if you compile it for windows or linux please send me the binary so i can post it on the product page. Recently, I came across Crockford.com. On his site he has an application called JSMin, which does the same thing as CSS Optimizer; just for javascript…

Embedded Pixel Fonts in Flash on OS X

Recently, while building my new version of my flash web-site I had a problem with a free pixel font i downloaded from Orgdot. Here were the symptoms of my problem: If I embedded the pixel font it would blur when used with a dynamic text field. The same pixel font would not blur if in a static text field. The pixel font would not blur in a dynamic text field that used system (A.K.A. device) fonts. Flash did not give me any errors when embedding the font. The windows version of the same font caused the Flash IDE to hang when it embedded the font (IE when the movie was published) I was following standard pixel font guidelines, sizes in multiples of 8, integer coordinates, 100% _xscale & _yscale…

AMFPHP Web-Site contest

Patrick Mineault has announced on his the AMFPHP Web-Site contest. The prizes look awesome, if I wasn’t so busy I would probably cook something up.

66 Miles

Not related to programming or web-design in any way but… Over the weekend my friend and I biked 66 miles across New Jersey, it was a blast. There was miles and miles of flat farmland, a car maybe came by once every 10 or so minutes. I’ve been in what some people would call ‘the middle of nowhere’ (upper NH), but this was seriously in the middle of nowhere, houses were spaced out a minimum of two miles away from each other. Anyway, it was a great experience and I would highly recommend doing it sometime!

Color Blender 1.0!

I’ve released my first Cocoa application, Color Blender. I wrote it because I got frustrated when i couldn’t convert a hex value to a rgb value quickly and easily, this immensely slowed down my workflow when trying to pick out a color scheme for a new web-site. Hopefully you will find it useful too. On a side note, a new version of CSS Optimizer, (renamed from Web Optimizer) which will have recursive directory searching support, and much better underlying filesystem support, among other things; is almost complete.

Xcode & Mtasc: Reloaded

I’ve devised a much better way of developing Flash with Xcode then what i previously posted. It uses the custom ‘Shell Script’ build phase in Xcode to call the Mtasc compiler. There are a number of advantages of this method over the applescript->Xmtasc->Flash Player route that was posted earlier: If their is an error in your AS code mtasc will exit with a non-zero status, the shell script will exit with an error if mtasc exits with an error…

Rebooted!

I’ve successfully finished my site for the May 1st Re-boot- almost. There are still a few loose ends I have to tie up with the site, including finishing the portfolio section & making my HTML site valitate correctly; but for the most part its done. Hopefully i’ll have more time to work on this site now, I have a bunch of stuff I have to share. On a side note, I’ve received Apples new OS- 10.4 Tiger. Quite simply, its incredible. The best feature that I’ve found so far is the speed, my mac feels like it just gained 200+Mhz, the UI and the file system are incredibly faster.

May 1st Re-Boot

I’ll be participating in the may first reboot this year, I have been working on my new site design over the last few weeks and will continue to do so to have it ready in time for may 1st; don’t expect too many new posts :).

Xcode & Mtasc

I’ve been testing out the Mtasc Compiler over the last week or so, its a incredible improvement over Macromedia Compiler. I’ve downloaded Xmtasc a wonderful GUI (although its still in beta) for Mac OS X.I code all my flash projects in Xcode using the Directions Posted On Pixelconsumption, and its works great. My favorite thing about the Xcode actionscript package is the “test movie” shortcut, cmd+enter tests the flash movie via a JSFL that is called. But now I am using Xmtasc in combination with mtasc and I dont want to compile in the Flash IDE, so I created a Applescript that will compile the top most Xmtasc project (you can grab the very simple source code for the script here)…

Web Optimizer V .5b Release

I’m almost done customizing the blog and creating this site (IE users beware, theres a few display glitches for you guys), over the next few days/weeks you’ll probably see alot of content added. I’ve been working on a small application I call ‘Web Optimizer’. Its a command line application that strips a CSS file of all uneeded characters. This reduces the file-size dramatically, 20%-60%, and also makes it very hard for someone to understand your CSS code. In addition to stripping uneeded chars from the file, the application also converts long-hand CSS properties to short-hand CSS properties. Full implementation of ‘the long-to-short’ isn’t complete, only ‘font:’ and ‘background:’ shorthand properties are supported…

Year: 2005