Recently I was tasked with creating a Flash Chart Application for Pollster.com. One of the challenges in building this app involved allowing the user to turn on and off specific types of poll data, ie. live phone, automated, internet or mail based polls. Sounds simple enough, right? It was. The challenge camewith giving the user the ability to filter out specific pollsters within each category or “mode”. The reason this was a challenge was due to the fact that each category had a pollster associated with multiple data points within the chart, therefore, the list consisted of many repeat listings of the same pollster name.
Being that I already had an array created from the data feed, which was used to place the data points, I figured I could pull my list of pollsters from that array to create my new “pollster” array. Now, there are a ton of ways to accomplish such a task, but I want to focus on one specific method that I used. The every() method of the Array class. I’ve read a lot about people using splice(), slice(), pop(), shift(), etc., but nothing about every(). Nothing at all. Ever . So I figured I’d use it to accomplish the task at hand.
Basically, every() “executes a test function on each item in the array until an item is reached that returns false for the specified function” – Adobe LiveDocs. So let’s get on with some sample code… (more…)
Not really. But I did design and develop the new chart application for Pollster.com. It features plenty of user customization capabilities, allowing you to add/take out specific choices (otherwise known as candidates), filter “pollsters”, set smoothing sensitivity, date and percentage ranges and turn on/off specific interface elements from the grid to points and trend lines and choose whether points display over top of trend lines, etc. It also gives the user the ability to save the url to their customized chart for later viewing or you can get the embed code (as seen above) to place on your own page or blog.
To see the fully functioning app, click on the stage of the chart above and it will take you directly to the page with the National Poll results for US President. Quite a handy tool, me thinks.
I’ll be posting some bits of code that I think you may find useful for your own projects shortly (shortly could mean a few hours or days).
I’ve just launched version 3.0 of my dev/design studio website. No more gloss and a much more usable design overall. This version was fully developed with AS3. Version 3.1 will introduce a bitof SEO (search engine optimization) and “deep linking” amongst other things. Check it out.
As well, feel free to leave any comments, feedback, critiques, bugs, etc.
Wow! The past month or so has been extremely busy! There are currently lots of new projects in the works, and an update coming to the Technorganix website which will bring it to version 3.0.
As for new project launches, there’s an audio/video player developed for the new Swell Season website. Developed with Flash ActionScript 3, this player seamlessly switches between audio and video playback based on its filetype so the admin only has to worry about adding title, artist, file and image paths. The site itself was designed by Hazen Creative. Be sure to check it out. There’s also Tidal TV which I had the privilege of developing the prototype for last summer in collaboration with No|Inc. It’s now in the beta stages.
That’s about it for now. I’ll be posting again soon.
As I mentioned in my previous post, here are the files for the AS3 version of my Box class and its companions. For those of you who downloaded the AS2 version and are either curious about or transitioning into the realm of AS3, you’ll notice a pretty big difference in the way things are done. You’ll also notice that the code is much cleaner and a bit shorter. That’s because I was a bit less lazy with the formatting and since I use Coda for all of my dev work, I have templates set up for my AS2 & AS3 class files.
The other interesting thing you’ll notice is the difference in the way the box is drawn. AS3 adds the ability to draw a more complex rectangle which allows you to specify the ’roundness’ of each corner. To do this, you simple call ‘your_shape_name.graphics.drawRoundRectComplex’ and fill in the necessary parameters. So why is my class still needed, you ask? Well, for the most part, it’s still a nice and simplified way to create boxes with rounded corners and at the same time, apply a gradient and/or stroke to your shape and it still adds the scale9Grid for you, which automagically determines the largest rounded corner before applying. Download it and give it a try.
As well, If you haven’t already, I encourage you to download this cheat sheet which is extremely helpful in understanding the differences when moving from AS2 to AS3. As always, be sure to leave any questions, comments or suggestions.