Why is WinZip so slow?

Date: Friday 12th June 2009
Time: 16:04
Category: General
Views: 40
Comments: No comments

You might have noticed Winzip has started to run very slowly ever since you installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 or started to use Windows Vista. It’ll crawl along, taking about a second to extract each each file in an archive. What is going on?

The explanation is on WinZip’s site. It’s to do with Windows’ Attachment Manager assigning security threat levels to files. This really isn’t acceptable though, because it will slow down your work so much.

The suggested solution is to “unblock” each file on a file for file basis, but this again is not ideal. We are not aware of a permanent solution to this issue (i.e. a way of turning off the hyper-vigilant Attachment Manager). A better solution is perhaps to turn to 7-Zip.

7-Zip is freeware which is faster than Winzip, integrates into the shell and can handle at least as many compression formats. We’re using it, and at the time of writing it seems to be the best solution for the problem with WinZip.

localToGlobal() in AS3 not working

Date: Wednesday 13th May 2009
Time: 17:06
Category: ActionScript 3.0
Views: 62
Comments: No comments

localToGlobal() not working? The LiveDocs on this potentially very useful method, along with its partner globalToLocal() are not actually very helpful.

What they don’t make clear is that you need to be sure to overwrite your point when using it:

// WRONG:
var pt:Point = new Point(target.x, target.y);
target.parent.localToGlobal(pt);
parent.globalToLocal(pt);

// RIGHT:
var pt:Point = new Point(target.x, target.y);
pt = target.parent.localToGlobal(pt);
pt = parent.globalToLocal(pt);

Simply running a localToGlobal() method on a point in a given scope is not enough. You need to write the result back into the point. You might be forgiven for not seeing this, because it was not necessary for the equivalent method in AS2!

localToGlobal() and globalToLocal() can the source of considerable frustration, especially as this differences such as this are not mentioned by Adobe. But properly understood these methods are not complicated. We hope this post has helped you.

AS3 course in July

Date: Thursday 7th May 2009
Time: 16:59
Category: ActionScript 3.0
Views: 25
Comments: No comments

Our next Applied ActionScript 3.0 course will more than likely be scheduled for early July, 2009.

The course is limited to only 5 delegates. If you would like to reserve a place please let us know – we’d be happy to have you there.

Error #1007: Instantiation attempted on a non-constructor with APE

Date: Friday 1st May 2009
Time: 11:40
Category: ActionScript 3.0
Views: 59
Comments: No comments

We’re using APE – the ActionScript Physics Engine – for our current project.

If you run into the TypeError:

Error #1007: Instantiation attempted on a non-constructor

..when compiling with Flash CS4, the reason is that APE defines a class called Vector, which clashes with a new class, of a different kind, in Flash 10, also called Vector.

The solution is to either avoid publishing for Flash 10, if you don’t need it, or replace all references to Vector throughout the APE code with the fully qualified reference org.cove.ape.Vector.

TypeError: Error #1006: value is not a function

Date: Monday 20th April 2009
Time: 23:06
Category: ActionScript 3.0
Views: 46
Comments: No comments

Another tip: if you get this error, one possible explanation is that you have tried to declare a variable with the same name as an already declared function – perhaps one which has been inherited from a superclass.