Flash

Touchwood is proud to present its new website at http://www.touchwoodcreative.com. The site was developed almost exclusively with the Flex framework as an exercise and proof of concept that developers using Flex can not only build a stable application but can also provide a rich visual experience to the user.

Flex's transitions, parallels, and effects were used extensively to add the more polished elements to the presentation of the agency's capabilities and past work.

Also used was Flex's ability to take XML, parse it, and update the UI according to the XML file's contents. This allows Touchwood to update the site quickly and frequently with cool new client projects. So be sure to check it out frequently!

One of the biggest challenges of developing crossplatform applications using Flash and MDM Zinc is properly loading external assets. Typical assets include images, data (css, xml, txt etc...) and video (flv typically). The main outline of our task is as follows:

1. Determine what type of path
   we need to properly load each type of asset on each operating system. This
   is the most time consuming part.
2. Develop a method of
   determining which operating system we are on (without having to change any
   code).
3. Put together a package of
   classes that detects operating system and returns the proper path. At this
   point it is also helpful to plan on future platforms, such as the AIR
   runtime environment or running on a web server.

So without further ado, let's get on with it...