It’s easy to store images in an array, and loop through that array to access those images. The code is very clean, and easy to manage. My concept is to try and load images from an array by looping through the array, and reusing one loader method multiple times. I would instantiate a new loader instance each iteration through the loop, and then load the image. The problem, however, is by the time the image is actually loaded, the for loop is complete, and my call addChild(l) is referring to the last time Loader was instantiated, so all of the images loaded were the last one in the array.

I’ve found an elegant solution to this (in my opinion) by creating an object for each image, and to store information about the image in that object, including an instance of the loader. Let me show you.

Example

//counter to keep track of unique items in the array
var counter:Number = 0;

//base array with paths to the images
var images:Array = ["img1.jpg", "img2.jpg", "img3.jpg", "img4.jpg"];

//blank array which will be filled with objects that contain image data
var imageObjectArray = [];

for(var i:uint = 0; i < images.length; i++) {

	//create blank object with appropriate properties
	var imgMeta:Object = {imgPath: null, holder:null, loaderInst: null};

	//push the object into imageObjectArray so we can access it later
	imgObjectArray.push(imgMeta);

	//set the properties we know
	imgMeta.imgPath = images[i];
	var imgHolder:Sprite = new Sprite();
	imgMeta.holder = imgHolder;	

	//load the image here
	var l:loader = new Loader();
	l.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onDoneLoading);
	l.load(new URLRequest(imgMeta.imgPath));
}

//function called when each image is done loading
function onLoadComplete(e:Event) {

	//use counter here to make sure we're getting the correct imageObject
	//we need to call each unique loaderInst here, so each image is unique
	addChild(imgObjectArray[counter].loaderInst);
	counter++;
}

This of course can be classed out and abstracted, but the basic principal here is being able to reuse the loader code each time through the for loop, and displaying each unique image when it’s done being loaded.

An additional benefit to this is being able to use the object again anywhere in your code, since all the information for all of the images is stored in imgObjectArray.

On a project we have in development now, we’re deploying a site that must work across mobile devices.  Not just iPhone, but Android, Nokia, Blackberry, and Palm.  Rather than purchasing a bunch of test devices, you can install emulators for each platform and then run the phone’s web browser.  Here’s some places to look and some instructions about how to build up your own testing suite.  These are instructions are for Mac.  Except for where they’re not.

On a project we’re working on now, we need to place “pins” on a map. There are some advantages for us not implementing the map with Flash. Namely, the project has a Facebook app component and Facebook requires users to click to activate Flash on profile tabs. I was curious to see how many pins I could instantiate in the DOM before there was noticeable chug. I made a test script that creates a bunch of img elements in the DOM. You can try it out here: DOM Capacity Test.

Through some not very scientific testing, I found that 100-300 DOM elements is my sweet spot (though IE really needs it towards the low end of that range). Any higher and the browser noticeably chugs during rendering. I was surprised that once rendered, the browser didn’t seem to perform any worse during scrolling or resizing. Another thing I noticed was that Firefox visually added each element to the page iteratively (taking much more time), whereas all other browsers immediately showed all of them after the initial CPU churn.

This subject matter is far from new, but quality typography on the web is such an important issue that it deserves attention. There many resources and tutorials out there, but I rarely come across a top-level view of all the typography-related techniques. Therefore, I’ve compiled a roundup of the most popular methods for rendering high-quality typography on the screen.

Images

using images for custom typography doesn’t necessarily have a negative impact on a site’s performance and search engine optimization. If file size is carefully considered, and the proper alt text is used, typographic images can be a good solution. Of course, this technique should only be used for short bits of text, like page headings, pull quotes, and drop caps. I will argue that there are better options available today, but at the end of the day, images are a perfectly valid option.

Flash

The value of embedding fonts in your SWF files cannot be overlooked. Although it would be considered bad practice to utilize flash for only this purpose, if Flash is going to be used anyways, one of it’s major benefits is the cross-browser pixel perfection and ability to embed dynamic type.

Web Safe Fonts & the Font Matrix

The list of “web-safe” fonts is very limited. Normally, most web designers don’t stray too far away from Helvetica, Verdana, and Georgia. This list from 24 Ways helps expand that list to fonts that are common across many computers, operating systems, and installed software. Used correctly in font stacks, developers can target most computers that have software like Office and Creative Suite. Check out the list, you might be surprised by how many fonts are available.

sIFR

It’s worth mentioning sIFR here, although many developers have abandoned this technology in favor of Cufon, which I will talk about later. sIFR (which stands for Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) is a flash replacement technology. The philosophy here is creating the ability to bring rich typography to web pages without compromising accessibility or semantics. Additionally, one of the great advantages of sIFR was it’s fallback to plain text if Flash is not supported. Although it’s been criticized as hard to implement and somewhat buggy, this was the first real jump forward for web typography, and is still very popular to this day. sIFR laid the foundation for many great resources for custom web typography.

Cufon

The best way to describe Cufon is a next generation sIFR which is built with Javascript rather than Flash. This method has it’s benefits like not requiring the Flash plugin – good news for Apple devices. It’s also extremely easy to implement, and has very good performance, even for large amounts of text. You upload font files (with the proper licensing) through the Cufon site, and convert’s the file to SVG format. Then, the SVG file is converted to JSON which can be added to your site through simple Javascript. One downside to using Cufon is that many custom font licenses do not permit usage on web pages, so check the license or use a great free or open source typeface. There are many good ones out there.

If you’re looking for some high quality free fonts, Smashing Magazine is a great place to start your search.

Font-Face

This is by far the easiest method to integrate custom typography on the web. Using the @font-face property allows you to access fonts via CSS, and host the files on your web server. Of course, the same licensing issues remain, so make sure to chose a good typeface with no constraints. From there, you can use @font-face to access that font file for use with any CSS property. Add the font name on the top of your font stacks, and that’s it. There are a few hoops to jump through, mainly to accommodate Internet Explorer. IE requires a .eot file (Embed-able Open Type) to render custom fonts. Luckily, there are a few good online converters that will take common font files (.ttf and .oft) and convert the fonts to .eot. On a side note, I wrote a recent blog post about getting @font-face to work correctly in all major browsers.

TypeKit

TypeKit aims to take all of the hassle out of setting up @font-face, and they do a killer job at it. For as little as $25 per year, you can use fully-licensed fonts which are hosted on TypeKit. All of the licensing issues as well as the compatability woes are taken care of, and in turn you get an incredibly easy-to-use and extremely large font library at your fingertips. It’s definitely work a second look.

Google Font API & Font Directory (beta)

In the same veins as TypeKit, Google recently introduced their font API and font directory. Google hosts fonts that are licensed and ready to go, you just have to target these fonts on your site, and Google will do the rest. Their library is currently very conservative, but hopefully this will grow in the near future.

In this post I’d like to review how we use Google calendar, iCal, Basecamp, and Unfuddled to help manage projects across our computers and iphones. As with many tools, the challenge is not finding one, but combining them in a way so the result becomes greater than the sum of the parts. Specifically I’ll cover three use cases – managing individual schedules for team members, day-to-day tasks, and project milestones. Then I’ll review how to create this setup by syncing Google Calendar, Basecamp, and iCal so everything lives on the cloud. With this setup anyone can access the granular details of a project, or easily see a comprehensive overview from either their computer or iPhone.

Google Calendar for scheduling projects:

At the heart of our scheduling setup is Google Calendar. Each employee at BKWLD has a calendar, and this is where we assign people to a project for each day of the week. The point here is to provide a broad overview of every employee’s week, not to provide granular details of specific milestones or todos. Each Friday Dan and I cover who is working on what for the following week and input it in GC on that employees calendar. We keep it high level, listing only the project name, and one or two words of what employee is working on, such as  ”Project name, flash dev.” If someone is out for vacation, it goes here too. In order to have access to coworker’s calendar’s just add them on your GC homepage under “add a coworker’s calendar” by entering their email address. Here is a screenshot of GC settings tab. You can sell the coworker’s calendars that I have access to edit, and other that I can only view. :

Google Calendar for day-to-day tasks

As producer, I’ll also use Google calendar to schedule internal meetings, client calls, or events outside of work for all us Buk folk, such as Ignite Seattle, the NW Pinball Show, or our upcoming Paintball outing. I know some producers prefer to use iCal for scheduling meetings, but I like Google Calendar because everyone invited can see the relevant info directly on the invitation, instead of having to open the invite in iCal to view the time, location, call-in number, ect. I’ve found that many clients don’t use iCal so it’s nice to have a tool that’s browser based.

Managing project milestones in Basecamp

At BWKLD we use Basecamp for most of our projects. At kickoff a producer will add the milestones from a project schedule to BC. From there, everyone assigned to the project can view the milestones and have visibility to both their portion of the project, and the overall scope. We also assign milestones directly to employees in bc. This is important because both Google calendar and basecamp milestones, as well as Unfuddled milestones, sync to iCal. To subscribe to a milestone calendar in basecamp, just go to the milestones tab, and click on the “subscribe to iCalendar” in red. You can subscribe to a global iCalendar where you’ll see all the milestones for each project, but I prefer to subscribe to each project individually. The advantage to subscribing to individual iCalendars is that iCal allows you to color code each project’s iCalendar different. This is really helpful if you are working on multiple projects concurrently. Check out this link for more info:

Using calDav within iCal to sync it all together

Now you can sync google calendars and basecamp to iCal. Consequently, by looking at iCal you will have ONE place to look to see the following:

a) events from your own google cal (meeting invites and your schedule on a daily level)

b) calendar of other people you have access to on google calendar (helpful if you are ever making a schedule or want to see who is working on what)

c) all milestones from any basecamp projects you’ve subscribe to. If the dates are ever changed in basecamp, just refresh iCal and you’ll see new dates updated.

It’s great to have one place to look to see how the project milestones from basecamp are lining up with individual employees schedule. To set this up, follow the steps here for syncing using calDAV on iCal Desktop by following this link and clicking on “Enable Google Calendar in Apple’s iCal”:

Recap:

Below is a screenshot of how your iCal will look after you’ve done all the setup:

On the top you’ll see Dave.Brown@bkwld.com – this is my BKWLD google calendar only. This is where I’ll see my meeting invites, and receive pop-up reminders throughout the day for upcoming meetings.

Next down is Gmail – this is a personal calendar, so by checking this box I’ll see anything personal. Helpful when I’m checking to see how a travel schedule lines up with  my personal life. I also add my wife’s calendar so we’re all synced up too.

Next down is Delegates. This is the list of all the people you’ve added on Google calendar under “add coworker’s calendars.” If you want to add/modify these settings directly in iCal, go to preferences>Accounts>Delegation.

Finally is Subscriptions – this is the list of projects subscribed to on basecamp. We’ve also be using Unfuddled at BKWLD recently and you can also subscribe to individual calendars through Unfuddled.

Now you’ll have complete access to all the info you’ll need for any project, easily accessible for a project. If someone asks you “who is assigned to x project and can I move them help on project y” you can easily see who is working on each project, look at when the next milestone is due, and see who else may be available to help based off of current workload.

Syncing with iPhone

You can also setup calDAV on your iphone so you will be able to keep your iCal and iphone calendars kept in sync wirelessly. You’ll be able to add/modify event made in Google Calendar on either you iCal desktop or iCal on iPhone without having to do a physical sync. Here’s how to setup CalDav on your iPhone:

Regarding seeing your Basecamp milestones on your iPhone the best option is simply periodically doing a physical sync between iTunes and your iPhone. Within iTunes you can choose which calendars you want to sync by going to the info tab> Sync iCal Calendars and selecting them there. This works for me because I often do a physical sync daily to update my podcasts and other content. Frankly we don’t move milestone dates around that often, so doing a physical sync every few days works out fine.

My favorite thing about this setup is that everyone involved in a project has the info they need. All devs and designers know when the next milestone is due for each of their projects. As Mr. Dan Fields would say, “Project Managed.”

Here at BKWLD we like to keep things such as our everyday work flow and culture as transparent as possible. I thought it would be a fun idea for everyone whom wanted to take part to list their top 5 or so most used apps.

Some of the apps listed are pretty standard and some not so much. We are always interested in exploring new apps so, please recommend away!

Jeff Toll – Creative Director

Photoshop - “Open and running every day, all day.”
TextEdit – “I get grief for using this but it’s lightweight and simple, simple, simple. I’ll start using a more robust text editor sometime soon. I use it for writing quick storyboards and concept explanation etc. ʻPagesʼ is upon the horizon…”
xScope- “Covers my ass for screen resolution guides at the very least.”
iChat- “Communicating with our Seattle office and random jackasses.”
iCal -“I’ve been getting better and better with my organization.

Robert Reinhard- CTO & Partner

Pages - “I haven’t touched MS Word in over 2 years and haven’t looked back. I love how it handles styles, it’s like easy CSS in a word processor.”
OmniOutliner - “For taking notes on conference calls.”
MAMP Pro - “Powers My LAMP dev environment. Makes it easy to setup additional testing vhosts (test dev rather than local host).”
TextMate – “When is 2.0 gonna come out?! I’ve been flirting with switching to Coda, but I miss some of the hotkeys.”
Socialite -“Aggregates feeds from Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, and Digg all in one place, plus allows me to post comments/tweets.”

Scott Thiessen – Flash Developer

Safari -“The Activity Window and Web Inspector alone are enough to make me feel like the king of the Internet.”
TextMate - “Lots of power for so little toolbar.”
Sequel Pro – “This is phpMyAdmin’s gorgeous, sophisticated sister. Unbelievable that this app is free!”
Spot Color + Developer Color Picker - “Slick way to grab colors from the screen, tweak them in your favorite gamut, and spit out hexadecimals.”
Quick Look - “Not really a stand-alone app, but I’ve definitely forgotten what it’s like to use a computer without it.”

Matt Aebersold – Flash Developer

Flash + AS3 - “Although thereʼs a steep learning curve, learning object-oriented AS3 has opened up so many doors, and is such an intricate and expansive programming language. Itʼs allowed me to create some kick-ass web designs.”
Coda – “Once a site project is completely set up, the complete integration is incredible, and so intuitive. Once I made the switch I’ve never looked back.”
MAMP - “Helped me do PHP dev on my local machine. Extremely helpful in every way.”
Things - “Awesome to-do app. Easy to set up and manage. So simple, and It’s what’s not included that makes it great. plus syncing over dropbox has make this invaluable. That said…”
DropBox – “Awesome cloud storage. If I point my apps there, than they sync on all my computers (iTunes, Things, etc…). Plus online file recovery is very easy.”

Sean Monahan – Flex Developer

Eclipse w/Flash Builder 4 Plugin - “Paraphrasing a Josh Reddin-ism, ʻItʼs a text editor for fully grown men.ʼ Upgraded from Flex Builder 3 stand alone and my opinion of Eclipse has greatly increased. Eclipse also has plugins for PHP dev, Unfuddle (our ticket tracking software) and Ant (for oneclick builds)- all this allows for a one-step development environment for Elastic.
Calculator -  “Boring, I know, but good for doing quick math. I use this a lot when programming Uls. Bonus: it has a “programmer” view for doing fancy binary math.”
Last.fm – “I like its music picks better than Pandora and the artist bios and photo streams are freaking sweet.”
Photoshop – “What doesnʼt it do?”
Adium - “A slick IM client that supports just about every IM service in existence.”

Aaron Egaas – Web Applications Lead

Chromium - “Browser of choice, nightly version of web inspector is as good as firebug without the performance hit.”
TextMate - “Code keeps me paid, and TextMate keeps me sane.”
iChat - “Remote communication, PM requests.”
MailPlane - “Multiple Gmail accounts? Like to keep ‘em separate? Notifications? Native web app feel with label and everything? Gets me into GCal, too.”
Terminal - “I gotta ssh into servers to push code, so I use some sweet aliases to keep it all organized.”

Dave Brown – Senior Interactive Producer

Adium
OmniOutliner - “Great for taking notes.”
FontLab Studio - “Converting fonts.”
Justinmind Prototyper - “Havenʼt really used this yet, but Iʼve heard great things.”
Adobe Media Player - “Checking/watching native flv.”

George Plendl – Front End Developer

Linkinus - “Best IRC client for a mac. irc.freenode.net, #jquery is a great place to learn and ask questions.”
Alfred - “Quicklaunch application for which aims to save you time in searching your local computer and the web. Replaced ancient Quicksilver app!”
Snippley - “Basic text and organization app.”
Beyond Compare - “Easily compare files, folders, images, anything. Itʼs great!”
TextMate - “The best text editor for Mac and a powerful abbreviation engine for HTML and CSS. Saves hours!”

Shelby White – Design Intern

DropBox - “Best app for managing projects between projects. I also use it for freelance in getting assets.”
Adium/iChat - “Adium manages contacts better but iChat actually sends files.”
Coda - “My favorite app with FTP for html/css.”
Wordpress - “ Where I’ve spent most of my last year and a half.”
TweetDeck - “Nice for managing my tweets…”

Joe Leoni – Producer

TweetDeck - “Best way to stay informed of Chad Ochocincoʼs daily workouts or Snoop Doggʼs ʻbreakfast activitiesʼ.”
iChat - “Instant messaging: extreme convenience and extreme inconvenience all wrapped up into one.”
Garageband - “Now anyone can be a MC, and youʼll probably be better than 99% of radio hip-hop.”
Pages - “Iʼd rather be using Word, but close enough.”
Solitaire - “The best way to play with yourself.”

Veronica Skarshaug – Administrative Assistant

Stickies - “Nice way to save on physical sticky pads, and info that I need on a daily basis is easily accessible.”
TaskMate - “Great for keeping my to-do’s in order.”
Numbers - “I like to make spreadsheets, I’m a total nerd.”
Preview - “Makes things easy, easy, lemon squeezy.”
iChat - “Because, duh.”

The Hit List – “Awesome and free GTD app to keep my days/life organized.”
Transmit – “Gorgeous UI and experience to easily upload my files.”
Adium – “My favorite chat client especially when used with the iPhone message style.”
Cicero – “Dashboard widget that fulfills my Lorem Ipsum needs. Used and abused daily.”
Photoshop – “There is a light on under this icon all day. Content aware fill has come in handy on more than 1 occasion.”

Here’s what I did to get MAMP Pro working so I could test the HTTPS pages of the site I’m working on.

1) Follow these instructions from Rocket Theme to the letter.  I didn’t need to deal with any of the “Possible Issues” section.
2) Go into “/Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/ssl.conf” and add a new vhost within the <IfDefine> blocks at the end of the page.  This vhost will mirror the settings of the vhost you would have already setup in MAMP:

<VirtualHost test.dev:443>
DocumentRoot "/Path/to/document/root"
ServerName test.dev
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/ssl_crt/server.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/ssl_key/server.key
<Directory "/Path/to/document/root">
Options All
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

3) That’s really it.  Restart MAMP and you’re good to go.

Thanks Greg Patterson of ground(ctrl) for putting this together.  Game time in a couple hours!

Update:

BKWLD Wins!  It was a great day and a close game.  Ground(ctrl) led with an early lead that they kept through most of the innings but BKWLD gradually wore away at it, eking out a victory in the last inning thanks to Shelby.

Central Park

Yummy Dinners

Racking up loads of frequent flyer miles for personal use…..

All sweet  perks of tireless travel, however the insights gained and personal bonds created with my clients far out way the value of my deep and diverse Gowalla passport!

Over the past three years BKWLD has cultivated a fairly rich stable of retail clients; challenger brands that need to create a one on one relationship with consumers through a truly “branded” web experience in order to grow market share and earn relevance in saturated vertical categories.  A brand website, not to be confused with a B2C e-store (even though they can work in cohesion) in the one chance brands have to, truly tell a story especially when we are dealing with minimal media dollars  limited to aspirational life-style shots and cheesy headlines for half page ad in the typical industry pubs. To truly look  and the DNA of the brand, the common thread of products sold and the motivation of the consumers purchase decision is a healthy and sometimes eye-opening exercise I enjoy conducting at our now custom and mandatory brand discovery kick-off meetings.

So now myself, the assigned CD, PM and often times CEO Ryan Vanni (he picks great restaurants) all shlep out to: Boulder or Carlsbad or MorrisTown New Jersey to meet with our new clients and learn everything there is now know about these brands and why people actually pay full retail for the stuff they sell.  We start out asking what we think are pretty simple questions: Who is your target,what does your brand stand for, what other brands do they wish to emulate etc. Often to blank stares and confused looks around the table!  Not only is this shocking but exciting as we begin to peel back the layers of what really makes these brands special.  This exercise had lead to some of our best work and would have never happened had we not got off our ass, and pushed these brands to think a little.

Currently we are “getting personal”  with Gregory packs on some product launch strategies, Smartwool on a new brand site, and Chobani Greek yogurt on a new social media platform, that being said my next three weeks are booked with face to face meetings that will lead to  some new Discovery Gold!

My Two Favs:

Gravis http://www.gravisfootwear.com/
Status Quo: T&A, Tats and killer tubs.
Discovery:  Gravis is smart, stylish and interesting to people who just like to be rad.
Results: an award winning brand site that makes the killer product the star, not the killer backside 720 the sponsored athlete can boost.

Red Ledge: http://www.redledge.com/
Outdoor Industry: Beards, Fleece, and snoot bubbles as we climb K2
Discovery: Red Ledge is real, honest, functional and funny as hell!
Results: a site the pokes fun of the industry and speaks to the real consumer, and a tagline that says it all: “Functional, Affordable Clothing – For Those Who Exist in Reality.”