Background

For projects that include mapping data geographically it’s an excellent choice to use the ModestMaps library. Modest Maps provides a great setup for displaying dynamic map data using some popular map providers like Yahoo Maps, the BlueMarbel Project or the OpenStreetMap Project. ModestMaps official website describes the thoughts behind ModestMaps as follows:

“Our intent is to provide a minimal, extensible, customizable, and free display library for discriminating designers and developers who want to use interactive maps in their own projects. Modest Maps provides a core set of features in a tight, clean package, with plenty of hooks for additional functionality.”

We use and love the library, but starting a new visualization we found ourselfs writing the same code over and over again. So we thought about creating a basic setup and wrapping it in a simple package for a more elegant way to start with a MM project in AS3. Having a base application let’s you get quickly to a first visual result and you don’t have to rewrite basic functionalities you most of the time need to include in your apps.

Features

• ModestMaps & Stamen’s Twisted libraries
• TweenLite library
• DocumentClass with the initial code to create:
  • TweenMap
  • Method to colorize the map
  • “Waiter” textfield
  • XML loader
  • Keyboard navigation
  • DoubleClick to zoom in
  • Fullscreen mode
• GUI class
• Marker class (for overlaying the map with points)
• Layer class (for overlaying the map with layers)
• XML with location examples
• SWFObject publishing setup
• Fullbrowser publishing setup

Download

The code is hosted on GITHub.com. Please remember when downloading it that it evolved from a personal need, thus some features won’t be relevant for everybody as well as the coding structure might not suit your taste. Feel free to participate in the developement by forking the repository. We’re looking foreward to review any patches you may provide and hopefully integrate them in the master. Drop us a line if you need advice on implementing or modifying it to fulfill your needs. Download the code (zip / 164kb)

Acknowledgement

Please note that only the DocumentClass.as and everything in the ch.datavisualization package is licensed under the GNU license. IMPORTANT: Please see the documentation of the external packages (com.stamen, com.modestmaps and gs.TweenLite) for their seperate licensing policy.
Some code was inspired by the superb work of Nathan from FlowingData.com.

Description

The swf-console helps you to output information about an object. It displays a small textfield utility with basic functionalities. Scroll, drag & drop and resize to be exact. It delivers two API methods to output data. It is intended to be used when you haven’t the native trace-window available (in-browser developement for example).

The console uses the analyze() function which is also available as the var_dump for AS3 snippet

Installation

1. Import the package
   import console.Console;

2. Create the console
   private var console:Console = new Console(this);

3. Add the console to the DisplayObjectContainer
   this.addChild(console);

4. Call one of the api methods in your code
   console.analyze(this);
console.print(this);

5. Display the console by pressing the space-bar
   customize this interaction by changing the key-code at Console.as #249

Download

The project is hosted on gitHub – feel free to participate and help improve the code or just let me hear your thoughts.
Download the SWF-Console ZIP here.

The var_dump for AS3 is a code snipped i use on a regularly basis to get information about an object when developping with AS3 in Adobe Flash. It contains two functions: analyze() and write(). The first is a recursive function that analyzes a given object. It uses the second function to trace out the gathered infromation. If you want to output the information elsewhere you can simply customize the write() function.

The code snippet is hosted on snipplr.com and I would be glad to receive feedback and suggestion on how to improve the code.