Today I ran into a problem with IE7 where I could view the source of a webpage. It was not working when I would right click the page > View Source, or by going to Page > View Source.

After doing a couple of google searches, it turns out you have to delete your cache by going to Tools > Delete Browsing History > Delete All. You must then refresh your page in order to view the source. I really didn’t spend much time researching how or why this happens, but hopefully this will save someone a few minutes and a headache.

Yet another reason to stay as far away from this browser as possible…

I admit, this post will be useless for most readers of this blog. But if you happen to be an Actionscript programmer… I had a minor epiphany today from which you might benefit.

Since I started writing AS3 code, I’ve generally viewed the mouseChildren and mouseEnabled properties of the InteractiveObject class (and by extension the Sprite class) as relatively superfluous. They existed as little more than a recourse for when something accidentally got ‘in between’ the mouse and a button that needed to be pressed. And in a sense that is true. But I realized today that those crafty AS3 creators had bestowed upon me a much more substantial tool than I’d first realized.

Fundamentally, these two properties are straightforward. Setting a Sprite’s mouseEnabled property to false tells that Sprite to not bother interacting with the mouse. In other words, to stop dispatching MouseEvents such as MouseEvent.CLICK. Likewise, setting a Sprite’s mouseChildren property to false tells the children of that Sprite to stop dispatching MouseEvents. By default, both properties are set to true.

The magic comes by virtue of the fact that these two properties work independently of each other. If a Sprite has children, setting that Sprite’s mouseEnabled to false does not prevent the Sprite’s children from dispatching MouseEvents. Similarly, setting the Sprite’s mouseChildren to false doesn’t prevent the sprite itself from dispatching MouseEvents. Why is this cool? Let me count the reasons:

• Sprite ‘flattening’. It used to drive me nuts that that a button made of multiple sub-elements (label, hilight, border, icon, etc) would have an indeterminate MouseEvent ‘originator’. That is, the target property of the MouseEvent would be ‘label’ or ‘highlight’ or whatever depending on the exact pixel over which the mouse rested, rather than simply ‘myButton’. I found myself putting invisible ‘mousetrap’ layers in my buttons to sit on top of everything to fix this. It turns out I don’t need to. By setting myButton.mouseChildren = false all the button parts become a single unit, collectively dispatching MouseEvents with a target of ‘myButton’.
• Group disabling. Need to disable a whole group of buttons? Make them siblings and set the parent Sprite’s mouseChildren to false.
• Event-bubbling simplification. By setting a container Sprite’s mouseEnabled = false but leaving mouseChildren = true, you prevent the ‘middleman’ from sending unnecessary MouseEvents to high-level MouseEvent handlers. Imagine a calculator, with multiple keys, a display screen, a surrounding ‘case’, a nice little Texas Instruments logo, whatever. If I add a MouseEvent.CLICK listener to the high-level calculator object, I will receive all of the various key clicks, but I will also receive events from the other child elements… the display, the case, the logo. Even if I set those elements to mouseEnabled = false, the calculator Sprite itself will still trigger its own MouseEvents when I roll over them. By following up with calculator.mouseEnabled = false, the high-level listener will now only receive events from the children that matter, and will not be encumbered with ‘false positives’.

Given this greater understanding, I almost wonder why the AS3 creators chose to set the default of mouseEnabled to true. After all… aren’t there generally far more ‘passive’ display objects on the stage than interactive ones? I’m sure they had a reason, and it’s probably one that I could find by Googling around a bit… but enough is enough. Hardcore geek session over.

I like to peruse the blogs over at U.S. News & World Report from time to time, and I came across something today that I think is really interesting and directly related to what we’re often trying to communicate to our clients. In a post today, one of USN’s career bloggers, GL Hoffman, says that HR departments generally give your resume 20 seconds to grab their attention. He follows up with some advice on how to be sure yours stands out, but what is really interesting is the little bit of info he tacked on to the bottom:

I did an experiment over at WhatWouldDadSay.com, where I asked readers to create a SIX-WORD résumé for themselves. Given the widespread fascination with Twitter and its 140-character limitation, I thought it would showcase good writing discipline. Not that you have to make your own six-word résumé, but notice how effective some of the (personal or otherwise) entries were:

• “As I live, so does Apple.”—Steve Jobs
• “Solving complex problems efficiently and elegantly.”—A personal entry
• Another personal entry: “I stand alone, next to me.”
• “Fire it up. Ready to go.”—Barack Obama
• From a real estate staging person: “Staging it better. Selling it faster.”
• Here is one of my favorites that combines two movie characters: “Now reverse in aging am I.”—Yoda Button

This may seem to be a worthless exercise—and it is certainly silly—but it’s not worthless if it only makes you realize that a lot can be said in a few well-chosen words.

That last paragraph there really hits it on the head. In my opinion, in the majority of instances- and almost always when you’re talking about web or ad copy- quality trumps quantity.

That said, anybody want to take a crack at their own six word resume?

Hey Everybody!

Just wanted to let you all know that the Extreme Home Makeover St. Louis edition will be airing this Sunday at 7pm on abc. Thanks for everyones help in getting their site up and going!

I found this article and it made me feel not as bad for using the smiley face so much in my correspondence.

 http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=12007147

You all know I’m always up for finding a good way to translate an idea/argument/principle into words, but sometimes there really is no better way to do that than through an interactive application. Case in point: taxes.

Obama Tax Calculator

Taxes are complicated. Taxes are boring. Taxes are different for everyone, so they’re hard to effectively explain. What the Obama team’s done here is an excellent example of how an interactive application can cut right through all of that. Simply and easily, it takes a complicated proposal and breaks it down in a way that speaks to people on a personal and direct level while demonstrating the stark difference between the candidate and his competition on this issue. Doesn’t get better than that!

And no “official” answers! Be honest.

I may be a little late in hearing this as it was approved 3 days ago, but ICANN decided to allow for thousands of new TLD’s so companies can have their own custom TLD such as .ebay, .pepsi or .tpi

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jienXKDbIYHNPcywgq84IqyHtbPw

I’m sure the domainers out there partied all weekend. This could have an impact on SEO too.