After a departure a year ago, I began to use Netvibes again lately. It was very nice to see the new Netvibes providing much more customisable features from what I used to remember. I found myself wanting to spend more time in it, customise my interface and personalise it so that my digital life will have a home.

It felt like my digital home!

Netvibes

Yesterday, when Google announced that they rolled out themes for Gmail, again I was elated! Without realising, I spent the next hour, sacrificing my precious bedtime, to look through all the details of the themes and design, savouring them for what they’re worth. These are still presets; I can’t imagine how much time I will spend if I can get my hands onto the finest details.

And yes I know that the labs feature in Gmail have been there very long, but yup, I just tried them out yesterday too. The level of customisation that I did to my Gmail has made me an even happier user to their already great service. Frankly, I would even just pop by my mailbox just to look at _my_ new interface. *loL~*

Gmail Themes

So what’s the point that I’m driving? I think there’s a certain level of importance in bringing customisability to your product/service. After building your great product/service, the next step that you cannot overlook is allowing your users/customers to personalise the environment.

Once they feel at home, it’s unlikely they will leave for another product/service. It’s that sense of human touch that makes you happy while using it.

On a separate note, I should be writing an article on how to personalise your FDT environment very soon. For the sake of whetting, here’s how your FDT environment might look like.

Watch out for it.

I knew I want it, so I got mine. Here’s how to get your own. Do hurry though, it’s a *limited 14 days* offer only.

Stop wondering.

Keith Peters (bit-101) has come up with this fun competition that you can participate today, without the usual months of your time to participate.

The 25-Line ActionScript Contest is as simple as its name suggests, writing 25 lines of ActionScript! Of course, there are rules that you have to adhere to, but I’m sure they won’t limit your creativity.

With the competition comes a very attractive top prize, so why don’t you get your hands dirty in the next few days? The current contest had already started on Saturday (bummer for me), and will end on 12:00 midnight of Friday, November 28, 2008 EST.

This competition brings reminiscence of a not-too-distant past, when I participated in the ActionScript Awards 2004 in Singapore when I was still a student. Try out my entry in the black box that you see on the landing page!

Those were the AS1 days, and I have been craving for competitions like these ever since. Real awesome that Keith Peters came up with this 25-Line ActionScript Contest now. Happy coding people!

With a little patience, I’m sure you will be able to get your hands on something useful or fun to whatever that you want to do.

This shortcut has already worked its way into my daily work flow and I can no longer code the same way as I did before, not with FlashDeveloper, not with Flex Builder. Nothing else comes close to what FDT offers.

Combined with the formatting shortcut, you’ll now be a true formatting king!

Back when I was using FlashDevelop, I was very conscious about writing beautifully formatted code. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m still exercising this, just that FDT made my life so much simpler now. The difference between now and then is that I had no choice but to code them properly so that they are pleasant to my eyes.

To each his own gripes, well for me is code formatting. Nightmare strikes whenever I have to take over a project from someone else who has no sense of formatting their codes. Trying to figure out those codes are just a plain waste of time.

FDT comes to the rescue by offering a way to auto format your code. What I love is the level of intricacy that FDT allows you to go into! Here’s the place to customise your preferences:
Window -> Preferences… -> FDT -> Code Style -> Formatter

After setting your preferences, you can now format your codes either by Source -> Format or Ctrl-Shift-F

For those obsessed with their own formatting style who can’t live to see other styles (like me? *loL~*), you can _even_ format the generated codes from SWCs!

Head over to Window -> Preferences… -> FDT -> Misc, and check the “Enable formatting of SWC code” option.

The details are finally announced, so if you are ready to explore more about what the OpenSocial API offers, take a look at the contest page and how to get yourself started. If you have any more questions, they have a FAQ for you.

Some important dates to mark on your calendar if you are participating:

• November 15, 2008 - Registration Open
• January 10, 2009 - Registration Close
• January 15, 2009 - Judging Begins
• January 23, 2009 - Winners Notified
• February 6, 2009 - Winners Announced

First click on the little arrow down icon, and click on “Select Working Set…”

By default, you should have no working sets, so let’s create one by clicking on “New…”

I haven’t tried what other types of working sets will provide, but really, we are more focused on managing our flash explorer at the moment aye?
Click on “Flash” and then “Next >”

Over here in this view, is the place where you specify what you want to show in your working set. If your project used some open source frameworks, it’s best to “turn them off” since you’re never going to use them directly. Basically, it all boils down to what you want to get shown.

*A very important note* that I want to highlight is that there are three types of checkboxes as you can see from the above screenshot: empty, tick, and square.

Empty and tick types are common, but what’s square? Square means that some folders or files in it are selected, while others are not. And because of this, you have to note that if you add new files or folders into these “squared” folders, you have to *manually update* these new folders or files.

This brings me back to my previous tip, knowing how to configure your build path. If your .swf files are in the root folder, each time you have a new file, you have to update your working set. Placing them all in the “bin” folder will always keep them updated. Sweet!

Once you have created your working set, don’t forget to check it before clicking “OK”. If you have multiple working sets, you can even check several of them to view them in your flash explorer all at the same time.

Viola, your flash explorer is now so much cleaner!

Do spend some time to play around more with working sets, because after a while, you’ll start to realise the power that it offers, allowing you to switch between projects very efficiently.

Let’s us now go through how to set up your own build path in FDT.

Here’s a screen capture of the dialog box when you create a new flash project.
Click on the second Configure defaults… as shown.

Which will bring you to the Build Path preferences.

Most people will usually name the output folder name as “bin” which stands for “binaries”, but hey, feel free to name it anything you want! When you compile your project now, the compiled .swf file will be placed into this output folder rather than the root of your folder structure if your default is empty.

It was really awesome meeting the guys from Powerflasher when they came down to The ActionScript Conference. Not only did I learn a lot more about FDT, I never imagined that our meeting would spin off an opportunity such as this! *w00ts~*

Thanks for the opportunity guys, to be a FDT Official Technology Evangelist!