I just got this error this morning and thought I’d share my fix for it with everyone in case you are having the same issue.  I had been working on an Air app, went to do another build of it and upon trying to install the new version I got the following error.

“This application cannot be installed because this installer has been mis-configured. Please contact the application author for assistance.”

The biggest example is simply the deployment and server environment.  For me this is often one of the largest and most painful hurdles to creating any sort of web app that I want to share with the outside world.  The fact that I get free, high performance hosting with one click deployment is just astonishing.

I want to get good at this, because google is getting rid of the excuses not to create something cool for the world.

The new interface is great.  I’m so used to years of working with the Flash IDE and seeing little to know improvement in the scripting tools from version to version(I did hear the CS5 at least made a strong attempt this year).  The changes between 3 and 4 aren’t mind blowing, but it shows a steady improvement that is satisfying.  I still don’t understand why they can’t get autoComplete for state names working.  It is easier to glance at them though now that they are defined in a concise block.

So I was working on a Flex app at work, and another at home.  For now my home app will be put on hold while I attempt to get a google apps engine framework running for my backend.  Once that is complete, or at least marginally functional I’ll start jumping into the flex side of things again.

Ah so many things to learn, not enough time.

I’ve spent the last couple years trying to do well planned and architected frameworks with Flash.  This is mainly due to the constraints of my current projects and the hand offs that must occur between myself and the designers.  It’s a constant battle to keep the code and the design separate, and and even bigger battle to negotiate all the pitfalls associated with design structures with flash like frames.

Moving to Flex is like breathing fresh air.  I no longer have to use an external editor to suite my coding needs. Everything is all rolled into one fairly nice interface.  Automatic code hinting and package inclusion really help cut down on simple errors and function definition lookups.  Not a huge thing, but it’s kinda the sum of the parts that really becomes something very significant.

As this is a just getting started post I’ll reserve several future posts for their own topic and leave this as is. From now on I’ll probably be detailing my frustrations with hitting walls and hopefully my ladders for those walls.

Here is the fix which is pretty much spelled out in the calls, but in case you want to know.

go to /site/vendor/plugins/active_scaffold/lib/active_scaffold/helpers/show_column_helpers.rb

search for these 2 lines

if override_show_column_ui?(column.column.type)
send(override_show_column_ui(column.column.type), column, record)

in both of those lines change the “type” in red to “class”, your new lines should look like this

if override_show_column_ui?(column.column.class)
send(override_show_column_ui(column.column.class), column, record)

that did the trick for me, now everybody is happy!

I doubt anyone will read this, but I have one other post that I didn’t think anyone would read and it seems to have helped several people.

When working with large multi-tiered animations I often find it tedious to use TweenMax, especially if you need to pull out or add animations in the beginning or middle of a set after the fact.  Sure you can use TimelineMax to create a huge set of animations that start one after each other, which is great, but often times I have 2 or more animations in the middle of a sequence that need to fire at the same time.  You can work with TweenMax, TweenGroup, or TimelineMax to get this to work, but it often requires managing a bunch of delays that become very tedious.  There are other methods but they require writing too much code for something I think should be simple.

After several attempts at a solution I finally decided that I would extend the TimelineMax class.  This is still in beta, but the tweenMax guys have said that they’ll be deprecating TweenGroup so I figured I’d build for the future. One advantage of extending the class is that you still get all the functional goodness of the original class with one new function.

Below is a code example:

var anim1 = new TweenSequence();
anim1.add(clip1,1,{y:300},”set1″);
anim1.add(clip2,1,{y:300},”set2″);
anim1.add(clip1,1,{y:0},”set3″);
anim1.add(clip2,1,{y:0},”set3″);
anim1.play();

Hopefully this is pretty straightforward, but this is how it works.  You now can use your TweenSequence object just like a TimelineMax object, but with the new “add” function.

TweenSequence.add(object,duration,{TweenMax paramaters object},setName);

The additional setName should be the only thing looking unfamiliar to those of you used to TweenMax.  What TweenSequence does is keep track of sets in the order that you define them.  The name of the set is unimportant, only the order of the first defined animation assigned to that set.  It then runs all animations of each set to begin at the same time, and then all animations of the next set will begin at the end of the first animation of the previous set.

Ok, that probably sounds a bit confusing, so lets just show an example.

anim1.add(clip1,3,{y:300},”set1″);
anim1.add(clip2,5,{y:300},”set1″);
anim1.add(clip1,5,{x:300},”set2″);
anim1.add(clip2,3,{x:300},”set2″);
anim1.add(clip1,3,{y:0},”set3″);
anim1.add(clip2,3,{y:0},”set1″);

In this example the first set of animations that will run will be set1.  This even includes the very last animation added in the code as it’s still defined as belonging to set1.  All of the set1 animations will begin at the same time.  Next up is set2 which will begin 3 seconds after set1 starts.  At this point you might ask why doesn’t set2 start 5 seconds later as the second animation in set1 will overlap into set2. The answer is simply personal preference.  This is the way I like it to work, and it’s easily fixible by just defining your longest animation of a set first.  By using this method you are able to avoid or allow overlap at your discretion.  Finally set3 will run 5 seconds after set2 starts as the first set2 defined animation is 5 seconds long.

So that’s it, pretty simple, but a handy and concise way to create a complex multi-tiered animation.  If it seems limited just remember it’s still a TimlineMax object that uses TweenMax tweens, so you can use the power of those to take this well beyond simple tiered animation.

This is a AS3 class, would be simple enough to make it a AS2 class but I really have no need for it right now.

It also could probably use some polish or be compacted, but again those aren’t things I’m concerned with.  I’m going to try and submit this to Jack over at GreenSock and see if he’d think the concept was useful for a future release.

In the meantime enjoy.

Download the code here http://hilleman.net/TweenSequence.as

Before using this make sure you have the TweenMax v11 beta, otherwise it’s not going to work.

UPDATE: After sending this over to Greensock(Jack), it looks like he’s going to implement an improved method into a near future release of his TimelineMax system.  It will be an improvement over my idea, fit into the existing syntax, and be more flexible, win for everyone.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:  Jack over at greensocks let me know that newest version of the beta now has the functionality built in.  This is the way it works.

var myAnim:TimelineMax = new TimelineMax()

myAnim.insert(TweenMax.to(blahblah),”set1″)

myAnim.insert(TweenMax.to(moreblah),”set2″)

etc..

The basic way it’s setup is if you insert a tween at a yet undefined set id then it will automatically create a new set at the current duration.  This is great because it’s less code, intuitive, and flexible as it allows you to use tweenMax or TweenLight

Now many people are probably thinking that I’m just being a negative Nancy about all this, and maybe I am.  I don’t want all my movies looking the same.  So that pretty much leaves me with 6 movies I can apply a theme to if I want, and then I’m out of themes.  I guess I wish there was more customization available for the themes.  They’ve obviously had to put a great deal of time into them to have them work so well, so why not give them some legs to be more flexible.  I also realize that making something editable can be a huge undertaking, and I imagine that’s the case here.

In the end I think that I was mostly disapointed with the amount of attention they were given in the promo pieces. This was obviously done because they make great eye candy for the product and you can’t blame them for showing off the pretty side of thing.  I suppose I felt with that attention there would be more behind it.

It’s no big deal breaker, I’m still enjoying iMovie thoroughly and would recommend it to anyone.  I’ll just have to wait longer for my custom amazon comic book theme.

I then went through a few of the commercial options and ended up choosing smartfoxserver.  It’s socket server for flash among other interfaces that allows messages and data to be transferred to clients.  It supports zones/rooms a buddy system and several other chat community type features. One of the major advantages was that is has an OSX server, which makes developing much easier on my mac.  Getting things up and running has been pretty smooth.  If you are using the AS3 then you might find everything but the API docs to be kinda useless.  So far there seems to be much more support for AS2, but once you figure out how everything works it’s no big deal.

So far I’ve found the server to be stable and easy to monitor.  It comes with a handy flash admin interface with nice visuals, looks much better than most server admin interfaces.  I have found some issues with sending large objects, mainly a byteArray representing a user pic, but I got around it using a method my friend used by converting the byte array to a base64 encoded string.  I haven’t flushed out that whole issue yet, but I’m assuming there was some limit on the object size and that by encoding it I was able to get it under the ceiling.

So for right now smartfoxserver has served me well and I look forward to continuing to work with it.

Prior to this version I had used both iMovie HD and 08.  I wasn’t into doing much video editing before 08 came out so that was my first iMovie experience.  Before that I had used a variety of PC programs and thouroughly hated them all.  They were sluggish, difficult, and just plain buggy.  I loved the the 08 interface, it just seemed to be very straightforward and easy to use.  I know some hated it, but I loved it’s clean simple nature.  At first I thought it was going to turn me into a movie editing maniac, and I jumped right in.  After creating a couple videos I started realizing it’s limitations.  The more I did, the more I wanted to do, and it seemed like there just weren’t many things to do in 08 besides slam a few clips together with some transitions.  I then started mucking with HD as it seemed to have many of the simple effects that I wanted, but it lacked other features like the ken burns effect etc that I commonly used in 08.  In the end I became frustrated with the 2 programs, between them there seemed to be all I needed, but jumping back and forth seemed way too annoying for me.

When I heard about 09 I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.  The initial features apple announced made me very excited, and the more I heard the more I liked.  So now to my actual experience.  09′s interface is very similar to 08, a big plus in my book at least.  The drag and drop and moving around functionality is all there, but what’s better is that there is the optional precision editor which takes you back to a more HD like interface for fine tuning.  It’s like the best of both worlds.  The ability to extend one clips sound track beyond the video and into the next scene is fantastic for multiple angle shots, or when splicing something in the middle of a section.  The camera stabilization, green screen support and other overlay techniques are very very cool, still trying to get my green screen room and lighting perfected, but just having the option is great.  The new text animations are incredible, this doesn’t look like a home movie anymore, it’s cinema quality.  One thing that seems to be a little worse is performance, I’m not a 100% sure on this but so far it seems to bit a bit chunkier than than 08.  To be fair I’m using some larger clips in my first full video which I know will hurt the performance, but I just remember 08 feeling smoother overall.

As far as features go I think 09 has everything that I wanted save 1 not so minor feature, an audio rubberband.  I really don’t understand why there is no rubberband, HD had one, and they support complicated stuff like auto ducking.  Why not give us a rubberband, it would be so useful!  If I want to fade out the audio at the end of a track I get at most 2 seconds to do it in, and that is horribly limiting.  Luckily most of the audio leveling that I want to do pertains to soundtracks so I guess I can go throw them in garageband and handle it there, it’s just more of a pain

I’ll probably post more once I get through a couple projects and really get a feel for more of the features, but as for right now I’m lovin it, and not in a McDonalds breakfast kind of way.