Saleh Blog

won before
 use Tel:
 easy

I have written this article before like 4 years ago in arabic and I won 2nd place on a compitition of best articles on the forum of http://www.ce4arab.com . the article was about making a phone call using flash on your pocket pc.

The idea was simple, you can make a phone call through internet explorer using Tel: NUMBER. For example, you want to call 33344422, simply you type on the internet explorer of your pocket pc “Tel: 33344422” and it will make the call. Well, I don’t know the command which will hang up the phone, but you can just press cancel when you placing a call. Anyone good enough in ActionScript will be able to do that without any trouble.

 To implement that on flash, first you have to make 10 buttons for number. Each time you click a button you add that number as a string to your variable, lets call that variable callNumber. For example when you click button five you add the character value 5 to your variable callNumber.

on (release) {
   _root.callNumber = callNumber + “5”;
}

You do that to all the number buttons. However, be sure to deal with the variable as string not as number which will do addition operation. We cannot use callNumber without defining the variable “callNumber”, we want to make it a timeline variable. To make it a timeline variable, go to the current frame and declare a variable with type String:

var callNumber:String = “”;

We gave it the initial value empty.

On the call button you add the string “Tel: ” and callNumber to your getURL command. Therefore, the call button actionscript will be as the following:

on (release)
{
   getURL(“Tel: ” + callNumber);
{

Simple isn’t it? I guess it is, or atleast so far.
We can add a digital LCD to the flash movie, so you can see what you are dialing like real pocket pc phone program. We add a dynamic text field to the stage and give it the var name “callNumber”. Its so simple and easy even for flash newbies.

The way to do it is simple and easy, but the idea that “Tel: number” on PPC internet explorer was unknown by most of you I’m guess. I can’t remember where I learned about the “Tel” command of the internet explorer.

This doesn’t need any explaination!

SWX is a project developed by Aran Balkan one of the best flashers on the web. SWX concept is similiar to AMFPHP concept which is retriving data in real time by Remote Precedure Calling (RPC) to be able to make real time web application like AJAX but in flash. But the difference, in SWX you retrive information from an SWF file rather than PHP file, and the information retrived from the SWF is a variable and we deal with it as an Object Class (AS way of defining a movie clip). In flash you manipulate with the variable recieved to suite our implementation. Just imagine the coolnest of those idea and what you can do with flash!

Yes, I’m trying my best to practice for that coming compitition. I’m tired of losing all compititions I have been participating. From high school’s International Olympiad in Informatics 2002-2003 to International Computer Programming Contest 2006-2007. I always get bad results on the compitition.

I got few online judges and problem sets websites I’m practicing on. One of them is UVA online judge which has thousands of problems. The other one is USACO TRAINING PROGRAM GATEWAY. I bought a programming trainning book made especially for ICPC and IOI to train my self. I also downloded the Art of Programming Contest book from UVA website.

With all those facilities available on the giant web some people would says that it is enough to get a good rank or even the first place. However, I am sure that most of the competitors, if not all, are using almost the same facilities to train. Therefore, there should be other factors helps the compititors to get better. I think one of the factors and important factor is the support of the coach and professors in the intitution. Another factor is to provide a good environment to train us for the compitition.

In the other hand, in my university, Kuwait university, there is no support AT ALL. We didn’t have any training nor much interest from the head of the college. How do they expect us to win the compitition if they don’t even give us trainning or atleast make a team early enough to have time so the team will coordinate and do some trainning in their own, IN THEIR OWN…

In 2007 ICPC for the arab region, my university’s 2 teams participation was cancelled by the college or university administration just 1 week before we travel!. I don’t know the details, but that let us down and shows us how much NOT interested the administration are for us to praticipate in the compitition. But in last 3 days, 2 girls from the other team (thanks to them) payed a visit to the university’s president and explain the situation. The university’s president then did the required paper works to make the trip possible.

Okay I didn’t know that was an april’s fool. Today while browsing keyframer’s blog I notice a post about TiSP, it totally slipped my mind that one day I saw that service announced as BETA on main page of google’s website. It is a joke which I didn’t pay attention to it. Here is the page of that joke.

Flash Magazine made a good review of the new Adobe Flash CS3. Take a look at it and feeeel it!