Joe Majewski

How to Create an Array of Movie Clips in ActionScript 3.0

ActionScript 3.0 is still relatively new at the moment, and as a result there appears to be a shortage of information regarding many of it’s features on the Internet. I ran into some problems when attempting to generate new Movie Clip objects on the fly during run-time.

More specifically, I wanted to be able to create an array of stars, which were Movie Clip objects in my library panel. Sure, I suppose I could have manually dragged these stars onto the stage, assigned each of them their own unique instance name, and then used ActionScript to manage them during run-time. The problem in doing it that way is that it is both inefficient and time consuming. Additionally, I would be limited to the amount of stars that I had previously created. What if I wanted another star?

I searched Google for quite some time on this topic before finally giving up and going back to re-working things myself. A rather conservative three hours later, I finally got things to work exactly how I wanted. Here’s how it’s done:

First of all, make sure you’re project is created with ActionScript 3.0; this is important. If you are still programming in AS 2.0, I highly recommend making the shift, as there are a lot of neat things you can do with this new event-driven language.

Once you’ve made your Movie Clip, go to your library panel. By default, the linkage field should be blank. What this means is that there is no class associated with it; objects must be associated with a class in order to be dynamically created through code. That is a general rule for object-oriented programming. In order for you to be able to treat a Movie Clip as an object, you must first create a class for it. Your panel should look something like this:

Notice how the linkage field for the objects are all blank. Right click the Movie Clip of your choice and choose properties. In my case I want to be able to create a class for my star object. In the properties window you’ll notice a check box titled “Export for ActionScript”, which is left blank by default. Check this box, and then give your object a class name. In my case, I kept the class name as the same name as my object.

After you fill out the properties window like in the image above, you will notice that your library panel now has a linkage value next to your Movie Clip. You can now finally create instances of these Movie Clip objects during run-time via ActionScript. Make sure your library panel looks like the image below; if it doesn’t, you must have done something wrong in the process. Try checking your properties again for that Movie Clip and make sure it matches the settings in my example.

Making new objects through ActionScript is simple; here’s a little code snippet on how I created my first dynamic star:

var stars = new Array();
stars[0] = new star();
addChild(stars[0]);

This is obviously not a very practical use of an array, as there is only a single star. You will most likely want to create a loop to initialize several new objects at once, but my goal was to figure out how to create such an array; I will put this knowledge to use when necessary.

One last thing. When you want to remove your Movie Clip from the stage, make sure to call the function removeChild(object_name). If you don’t, you will forever have that Movie Clip on the stage.

I hope that helped.

Earning PageRank 0

On this day, November 14, 2009, Google has finally given the homepage of this site a PageRank value of zero. Prior to today, none of the pages on this site had PageRank information available. Note: PageRank 0 is not the same as PageRank N/A.

It only took two weeks for me to get noticed by Googlebot, which was much shorter than I expected. PageRank 0 doesn’t seem like anything to get excited about, but this just goes to show that putting time and effort into a project can produce desired results. PR1 is the next major step forward, and it’s going to take an even greater amount of effort.

What’s the difference between PageRank N/A and PageRank 0? The difference is quite large actually, and the same goes for the difference between each step in the PR ladder. Google will put more weight on my website when it’s within the pool of results grabbed from the search query than it did before. So now, when someone searches Google for “PageRank”, I will be much closer to the front of the results. Granted, it would be a miracle if I ever actually reached the first page for such a popular keyword, but you get the point.

I have another blog with PR1. Every time I post a new article to that blog, it immediately goes to the top of the search results (or very close) for queries containing the exact title of the blog post. This is not always the case, as if I write about something very popular in the news (such as the death of Michael Jackson), my article will not make it to the first page unless I alter the query to add more of my site’s keywords. Granted, not a lot of people search Google for the exact name of the blog posts I write, but rather for more generic phrases.

Here’s to PageRank 1!

How to Increase Your Google PageRank (Part Two)

[ Part One ] [ Part Two ]

Now that we have a general understanding of Google PageRank, we can step it up a notch and begin getting into some of it’s more complex and important aspects. So how exactly does Google determine the PageRank value of a given page? The answer isn’t simple.

About the Google PageRank Algorithm
The exact algorithm that Google uses to calculate PR is constantly being enhanced, and it will more than likely forever remain a mystery. To put it simply, Google is playing their safe card; they don’t want people abusing their search engine to gain top results for irrelevant keywords. Do you remember the famous “French Military Victories” bomb, where Google’s engine would respond with “Did you mean French Military Defeats“? Many people believed that it was Google themselves that had created the prank, but that’s not the case at all.

Searching for this term now produces results regarding this historic prank.

In fact, Google is always updating their search algorithm with the attempt to create a more perfect, fool-proof system. Their technologies can detect these bombings, placing such websites into a virtual sandbox, removing their PageRank value entirely. Interestingly enough, Google has refused to manually alter these malicious results in order to honor their search engine, which gives every website an equal opportunity.

The Algorithm Defined
Every page on the Internet that is known to Google begins with just a single PageRank point. Upon achieving a certain number of these points, the PageRank of that given page will escalate to the next level. The scaling is logarithmic, meaning that the number of points needed to rise from PR1 to PR2 is much less than the amount needed to get from PR2 to PR3. With that said, please keep in mind that the Internet is always growing, meaning that the number of points needed is always on the rise.

While it may appear that I am stating the obvious, please consider this statement: The cumulative amount of points that span the entire Internet is equal to the number of pages on the Internet. Thus, PageRank is essentially constant, only increasing with the addition of new pages to Google’s index.

So how does a page gain more of these points? [ Part three is coming soon. ]

[ Part One ] [ Part Two ]

Yet Another New Website in the Works

I acquired my fifth domain name today; quite the milestone if I do say so myself. I will wait until everything is fully functional before announcing it. Right now it’s just a bare-bones install of WordPress with a couple of plug-ins.

This new domain name will be used to host my very first e-Commerce website, which I will use to sell some of the goodies that I have laying around the house. In addition to that, it will also allow me to expand my SEO knowledge, learning how to optimize traffic for websites that sell products.

Managing five concurrent sites will prove to be a difficult, but hopefully rewarding task. Creating new things is something that I tend to enjoy, but it does become stressful at times when I’m constantly compromising with myself in deciding which of my domains need the most attention. Let this blog entry serve as an introduction into a new slew of informative articles about e-Commerce websites. I will try to avoid writing articles that don’t offer any helpful information to webmasters (such as this one), but given that this blog is still relatively new, the process of setting boundaries for things I may write about is still being defined. Everyone’s got to start somewhere.

Highly Impressed with Google AdWords

I didn’t expect to post another AdWords article until my current campaign had finished, but I am so extremely satisfied with my first day’s results that I couldn’t resist.

After running my advertisement campaign for just a single day, my AdWords account brought over 60 unique visitors to my website for the price of just one dollar, which is much more than I had been expecting. This service is absolutely amazing, and it’s definitely something I intend on using in the long term.

But alas, it is far too early to make such a bold claim at this time. Perhaps I just had a bit of beginner’s luck with the service. I don’t want to give myself a negative name by judging a book by it’s cover, so for the time being you should take this article with a large grain of salt. Since I’m unsure of whether or not I’m allowed to post screen shots of my data, I will play it safe and keep that information to myself. However, if you take a look at the traffic stats (linked at the top of the site) for Monday, November 19, you will see that it was the best performing day so far in terms of unique visitors. Pow!