ScottKing.com.au

Today Sony launched their new Playstation 3 web site which I was responisble for creating. I built this for some of the talented people over at Tequila, design by Craig Brooks, downloadable widget by Danny McGillick.

This site presented a few unique challenges. First of all it was to feature a pseudo-3D transition for the load screen but was asked not to use an propitiatory 3D software such as Papervision. The next challenge was to create a flowing navigational menu that is fed from a dynamic XML feed with random positioning of the nav items. The site also needed to feature a “Favorites” system that allowed user to add their favorites sites to a “bookmark” style menu on the site, however due to technical restraints I was not to use a database, this meant storing the “Favorites” in browser cookies and writing a quick interface to access the cookies. Finally the site was built on top of the Kohana PHP framework and an alternate HTML only version developed by the brilliant Luke Schreur. The site features 9 different “Skins”, refresh on the landing page to get a new random skin.

Head on over to http://www.playstation3.com.au to check it out.

I dont understand why Apple can make the best hardware in the world, and then proceed to create the worst software to put on it. Safari (like iTunes) is full of bugs, one of the most obivously yet most poorly documented is the problem that causes Safari to block pop-up windows from Flash even after a user has clicked to intiate the popup.

Here’s the fix:

ActionScript:

import flash.net.*;

...

mybutton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, openPopup);

function openPopup(event:Event) {
	var jsPopFunc:String = "popupWin";
	var _winURL:String = "http://www.rivastakeout.com/staging/stake-your-claim/form.php";
	var _winTarget:String = "_self";
	var _winWidth:Integer = 600;
	var _winHeight:Integer = 400;
	var _winName:String = "popup";
	var _winParams:String = "location=0,status=0,scrollbars=1";;

	var result:Boolean;
	if (ExternalInterface.available) {
		result=Boolean(ExternalInterface.call(jsPopFunc , _winURL, _winTarget, _winWidth, _winHeight, _winName, _winParams));
	}
	if (!result) {
		var request:URLRequest=new URLRequest(_winURL);
		try {
			navigateToURL(request, _popupWin);
		} catch (e:Error) {
			trace("Error occurred!");
		}
	}
}

JavaScript:

  function popupWin(winURL, width, height, name, params){
	var left = Math.floor((screen.width - width)/2);
	var top = Math.floor((screen.height - height)/2);
	var winParms = "top=" + top + ",left=" + left + ",height=" + height + ",width=" + width;

	if(!name){
		name = "newWin";
	}
	if(!params){
		params = "location=0,status=0,scrollbars=0";
	}
	if (params){
		winParms += "," + params;
	}

	var newWin = window.open(winURL, name, winParms);
	if (newWin) {
		return true;
	}
	else{
		return false;
	}
  }

Further reading:
http://www.ultrashock.com/forums/actionscript/popups-from-flash-solution-92036.html

Some Flash banners for a full a page take over of Cnet Australia that I created for Panasonic’s new High Definition Blu Ray recorder, quite a cool campaign running on TV and various media at the moment. Design by Nathan Willdig of Rhodes Wingrove.

Take a look at:

http://www.cnet.com.au