Hiding Text on Form Submit Button

I wanted to have CSS replace a submit button for one of the forms on my site. So I decided to style it with a background image and set a text-indent to hide the text. It worked nice but in Internet Explorer, the text wouldn't go away.

I found a strange way to make the text disappear even in Explorer. Just use this bit of CSS for the submit button.

{

color: transparent;

text-transform: capitalize;

}

That should do the trick!

Mute Streaming Audio in Flash

Muting sounds that are streaming in Flash isn't as simple as changing the volume of an object via a "mute" button. But it is surprisingly EASY! I can't believe I didn't see it. AND the movie continues to play and unmuting just brings the sound back in.... duh!

Well, I searched and searched and finally found something. Thanks (http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?t=32982)! I made some simple modifications.

This is my code. I made a MC with 2 frames and buttons in it. In frame 1, a button that calls "mute();" here's the button code for the one that's in frame 1.

on (release) {
nextFrame();
this._parent.mute();
}

And frame 2 has this:

on(release) {
prevFrame();
this._parent.unmute();
}

And here's the code in the root. I could easily make a volume slider that sets the "level" variable, and would then set. But for most stuff, we simply need the sound to be either there... or not.

level = 100;
globalSound = new Sound();
globalSound.setVolume(level);

function mute() {
trace("mute");
//previewaudio.stop();
globalSound.setVolume(0);
}
function unmute() {
trace("unmute");
globalSound.setVolume(100);
}

Enjoy!

Vertical Ticker Scroll with jQuery

Ever wanted to make those cool vertical scroll things? Here is a great light weight way to accomplish it:

Create A Vertical Scrolling News Ticker with jQuery and jCarousel Lite

Kern dynamic text is Flash Actionscript

I've always needed to know how to kern dynamic text is Flash Actionscript, and I knew there had to be a way. Well, here it is. I discovered this somewhere, made some tweeks, good stuff.

function kernText(myTextField, kerning) {
myTextField.html = true;
var newFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
newFormat.letterSpacing = kerning;
//newFormat.font = "Arial"; // Add now whatever format needs you have.
myTextField.setTextFormat(newFormat);
}

Flash right-click menu

I've always been looking for a nice and easy Flash right-click menu builder. This one seems extremely straight-foward and EASY!



function calledFunction1() {
trace("calledFunction1");
}

function calledFunction2(){
trace("calledFunction2");
}
MENU = new ContextMenu();
MENU.hideBuiltInItems();
insertAfter = new ContextMenuItem("Call function 1", calledFunction1);
insertBefore = new ContextMenuItem("Call function 2", calledFunction2);

MENU.customItems.push(calledFunction1);
MENU.customItems.push(calledFunction2);
_root.menu = MENU;

Easy way to Parse RSS in PHP

Here is some simple code for parsing RSS 2 in PHP. It's so easy, I can't believe it.

<?php

     $doc = new DOMDocument();

   $doc->load('http://www.softarea51.com/rss/windows/Web_Development/XML_CSS_Utilities.xml');

   $arrFeeds = array();

   foreach ($doc->getElementsByTagName('item') as $node) {

    $itemRSS = array (

      'title' => $node->getElementsByTagName('title')->item(0)->nodeValue,

     'desc' => $node->getElementsByTagName('description')->item(0)->nodeValue,

     'link' => $node->getElementsByTagName('link')->item(0)->nodeValue,

     'date' => $node->getElementsByTagName('pubDate')->item(0)->nodeValue

     );

    array_push($arrFeeds, $itemRSS);

   }

?>  

Thanks to: How to parse RSS feeds with PHP

CSS Image Replacement for Buttons

Yes, you could just use the input type="image" but if you want to replace buttons with images purely with CSS, this is a great method.

http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/image-button.html

A quick note, this won't work in IE6 unless you set your button as a BUTTON not an INPUT. This is a very important point.