I seem to have an addiction when it comes to finding the best bug tracker out there - I’ve never been really been satisfied with the ones I’ve used in the past, and I’m just too lazy to write my own. As a result, I’ve ended up playing and installing a bunch of different apps, trying to find the bug tracker I like the most.

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With the recent release of Safari 3.1, I was curious to see a before and after comparison of how Safari 3.0 and 3.1 would render the Acid 3 test. For those who don’t know, the Acid tests are designed to determine how well a browser follows various web standards. Currently, no browsers pass the Acid3 test with 100%, but they are getting closer.

Once I checked out the two versions of Safari, I got curious to see how well some other browsers performed. And so here are the results of my completely unscientific testing, sorted by the respective scores of each browser. Now, on to the results!

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We’ve recently begun upgrading our phone system at the office to a new VOIP setup. We’ve been setting everyone up with some nice Linksys phones. These things are pretty nice, with lots of neat features for a desk phone. One of these features is the ability to check a phone’s status over the network - you can see if someone is available to take a call, if the line is busy, stuff like that. Good stuff to know if you need to transfer a client to someone - you can check if they’re available or not before trying to transfer them.

Now for the reason I mention Spry, and think it rocks: John setup a mini web service that checks our VOIP server and returns some XML that gives the status of everyone’s phone. I then built a Dashboard Widget that pings this service and displays everyone’s phone status in the Dashboard. I decided to give Spry a go, and it was slick.

I spent more time playing with the design and layout of the widget than I did actually writing the JavaScript that parses the XML to display the phone info. It was a little tricky at first, as I couldn’t find any documentation on what methods were available, but once I found what I needed, the actual code took about 15 minutes.

If you haven’t checked out Spry, I suggest you do:

Spry framework for Ajax

Debugging can sometimes be fun, or a nightmare. This usually depends on the project, your current mood, and the types of bugs you’re trying to resolve.

Often, fixing a bug means that you read through your code, follow the logic involved, spot the error and fix it. Other times, a bug may only be killed by means of voodoo rituals, and the throwing of a virgin into a volcano. At least it seems that way at times.

A few new articles appeared in the Adobe Developer Center this afternoon, and one of them was a good primer on debugging in Flash by David Stiller. It covers the basics such as using trace () statements, and looping through your objects, then moves on to using the Debugger Panel and debugging your swfs in a browser.

There’s some good info here; for those just starting in development, or who don’t do much development, you might learn something new - for those more experienced, it can a nice little refresher on some basics.

One of the nicest features of the article is that it explains how to actually use the Debugger Panel. Using this thing is a bit of black art to some, as the documentation hasn’t always been as clear as it could be. Many of the Flash developers I know that use it have learned to use it by means of repeated trial and error. The article also mentions some of the third-party debugging tools such as X-Ray.

So, if you’re new to debugging, or just want to read up a little, check it out:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/debugging_actionscript.html

With all the hot new Web 2.0 apps being released these days, it’s nice to see some launch every now and then without the (Beta) tag thrown onto the end of the name.

My buddy Jac just posted about why he and the MyStickies team had decided to release their application without the beta tag:

If there is nothing wrong with a free beta, why did we change it? We didn’t want people to think we were not taking responsibility for it. We wanted MyStickies to be successful, and we thought people would listen to Jason and not use it if it said “Beta” on it. Were we right? Don’t know. People seem to use Gmail even though it has Beta on it’s logo.

It’s a quick read, but it’s got some interesting thoughts, and some good links.

Links:

• Writing (Beta)
• The Difference Between Web 1.0 & Web 2.0 (Not from his post, but still applicable.)

Update: Thanks Colin!

I just received my free IconBuffet delivery of the Tower Grove Wedding set. I’ve got five deliveries of it I can give out. If you’d like it, let me know.

I’m still looking for the Modena Simbolo set, so anyone who wants to trade that one, will get priority. I’ve also still got some deliveries I can make of the following:

• Dresden Tournament
• Durango Research
• Marseilles Cafe
• Tower Grove Promenade
• Modena Simbolo

Just send me an email: josh at joshbuhler.com,  or use the contact form on my blog.

Many times when you’re working on a project, you need to keep track of the time that you spend on a particular project or task, either for billing, or to see how many hours you’ve wasted getting that idea or experiment of yours working.

I’ve looked for a good, cheap timer that I could use to track my projects, and have been using TimeLog for a while now. It works out pretty nicely, and does what I need it to, and it was cheap.

However, sometimes you don’t need all the charting and graphing, printing, or extra features that come with the timers you pay for. Lots of times, you just need to know how much time you’ve spent on something, and that’s it. At mediaRAIN, we use a time tracking system that handles the client info and report generating, so really all I need there is something that keeps a clock running for me, then I can transfer those hours into our tracker. TimeLog is great for doing contract work, but at the office, I just need the time and that’s it. Jac’s timer is great for that.

Jac needed a quick and easy to use timer as well, so he just built his own. It’s built in Flash, and wrapped with mProjector so you can run it as a standalone executable. He has both Mac and Windows versions available.

Download: Jac Wright’s Project Timer

As a side note, what methods or applications do you use to track your project time?

The other day I was discussing with some co-workers some of the new possibilities that AS 3.0 and Flash Player 8.5 offer, when one of them asked me what I thought was an interesting question: “Is Flash 8 really worth learning, when 8.5 will be out in a few months?”

This person, whom I’ll now refer to as “Bob” felt that with FP 8.5 coming so shortly after 8.0, that 8.0 wasn’t really worth investing too much time into learning the new classes or features available. Bob also felt that with the differences in coding from AS 2.0 to 3.0, it would be more worthwhile to devote time to learning AS 3.0.

Now, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, so here’s mine, and I’d like to hear yours. Just leave it in the comments if you like.
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If you use Flash on the Mac, you may have come across this issue once or twice. You receive a .fla, and when you try to open it, you don’t have the right fonts. No big deal. Get the font from the designer, install it, then re-launch Flash. Flash still can’t find the font, and it doesn’t appear in the font listing for the Text tool either. So, you then check some other apps, and sure enough, they can find the font and use it no problem. It’s just Flash that has the issue.

I honestly don’t know why this happens, because it doesn’t always happen. Just when I seem to have a deadline coming up. I think it may have something to do with the OSX Font Cache. Anyways, I think I may have found a solution, or at least something you can try if you’re having the same issue. I’ve used this on both Macs I use, and it seems to work pretty good.

1. Close Flash.
2. Install the font
3. Close whatever font manager you use. Flash doesn’t seem to like having having a font app open when it launches. (I just use OSX’s default Font Book, so that may be part of my problem there, instead of some fancy font app like Suitcase
4. Launch Flash, and use the Text tool to see if the font is available in Flash. If so, you’re good to go. Otherwise, keep reading.
5. Close Flash.
6. Open your font manager, then disable the font, and close the font app.
7. Launch Flash while the fonts are disabled, then close it.
8. Open the font manager, re-enable the font, and close it.
9. Launch Flash one more time, and then that font should now be available.

There may be a better solution than this, and if so, I’d like to hear it. Leave a note in the comments if you have one.

If you’re using Xcode for your ActionScript work, you really should be checking out the Xcode section of OSFlash. There’s some pretty cool stuff showing up there. It’s where I found XASH, and Sam Robbins’ Actionscript code highlighter plugin can be found there as well.

If you’re using that plugin, it adds some language definition files to Xcode for AS code completion. Michael Bianco has created a new set of definition files that you can copy into Xcode that updates the code completion for Flash 8, as well as adding code completion. As much as I like Xcode for writing AS, I really missed the code completion that you get with the Flash IDE or with SEPY. It’s nice getting the completion of the function names, but what I really missed was the parameter suggestions. Seems like no matter how many times I use setInterval(), I always manage to forget what order the parameters are entered in.

Pretty awesome, huh? Now if we can get the Class Modeller to work…

Links:

• OS Flash - Xcode/AS Integration
• Updated AS Definition Files