Some pretty awesome practical and useful plugins for Illustrator from Graffix. Check them out.

Plugins
Concatenate
Nudge Palette
Square-Up
Select
Alien Palette
Cutting Tools
Trackplan Tools
Proof Block
Isometric Line Tool
Arrowheads

If you like to customize (skinning) the look of your menu tree component in flash please take a look at the following examples of the properties you can change.

public var myTree:Tree;

myTree.setStyle(”fontSize”, “10″);
myTree.setStyle(”fontFamily”, “Verdana”);
myTree.setStyle(”backgroundColor”, “0xEBEBEB”);
myTree.setStyle(”borderStyle”, “none”);
myTree.setStyle(”color”, “0×666666″);
myTree.setStyle(”rollOverColor”, “0xE3E3E3″);
myTree.setStyle(”selectionColor”, “0xE3E3E3″);
myTree.setStyle(”textRollOverColor”, “0×666666″);
myTree.setStyle(”textSelectedColor”, “0×666666″);

If you want to customize the icons in your tree component you can by creating your own icon. Convert your icon to a movie clip symbol and it’s important that you give it a unique Linkage Identifier name. You can do this by clicking on the Advanced button in the Symbol Properties box. If you don’t you will not be able to customize the look of your icons. These are the 5 icons you can customize.

myTree.setStyle(”defaultLeafIcon”, “LinkageIdentiferName”);
myTree.setStyle(”folderClosedIcon”, “LinkageIdentiferName”);
myTree.setStyle(”folderOpenIcon”, “LinkageIdentiferName”);
myTree.setStyle(”disclosureOpenIcon”, “LinkageIdentiferName”);
myTree.setStyle(”disclosureClosedIcon”, “LinkageIdentiferName”);

For more infomation on customizing the tree component in flash click here.

Check out and please buy my first two istockphoto.com contributions. More to come!

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=2875711

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=2875668

My friend Eric sent me this great link for creating CSS speech bubbles with rounded corners and all!

Click here to check out the link.

Last night I found this great PDF on how to create seamless patterns in Illustrator.

Click here to download the PDF instructions

And stay tune for my RetroPattern Series coming to istockphoto.com soon.

I needed to create a simple banner for a client where text would fade in and slide in from the left. So here’s a simple way to rotate text in a textfield. Now it’s easy to update text later down the road and you don’t have to manually tween every text box. I’ve added a nice fade in and slide transition to make it more pretty.

On your timeline window be sure to create a movieclip called “mc_instancename“. In the movieclip “mc_instancename” create a textbox called “txt_instancename”. Adjust the x and y coordinates and alpha amounts yourself in the tween class. Please note that this does not loop. But you can easily adjust the code to have it loop.

function tweenText() {

new mx.transitions.Tween(mc_instancename, “_alpha”, mx.transitions.easing.Regular.easeOut, 0, 100, 2, true);
new mx.transitions.Tween(mc_instancename, “_x”, mx.transitions.easing.Regular.easeOut, 533, 276, 1, true);

}

var intervalId:Number;
var count:Number = 0;
var maxCount:Number = 6;
var duration:Number = 5000;

var rotatingtext:Array = new Array();
rotatingtext[0] = “Place text here”;
rotatingtext[1] = “Place text here“;
rotatingtext[2] = “Place text here“;
rotatingtext[3] = “Place text here”;
rotatingtext[4] = “Place text here“;
rotatingtext[5] = “Place text here“;
rotatingtext[6] = “Place text here“;

function rotateText(param:String) {

tweenText();
mc_instancename.txt_instancename.htmlText = param;
clearInterval(intervalId);

if (count<maxCount) {

count++;
intervalId = setInterval(this, “rotateText“, duration, rotatingtext[[count]);

} else if (count=maxCount) {

clearInterval(intervalId);

}

}
if (intervalId != null) {

clearInterval(intervalId);

}
intervalId = setInterval(this, “rotateText“, 0, rotatingtext[count]);

Mike sent me this sexy Overview on Adobe’s Apollo. Apollo will aparently let you create desktop applications using Flash, Flex, Actionscript, HTML, and more. Looks very cool.

Check out the sexy pdf “Understanding Apollo”

A couple of weekends ago I went and saw Pan’s Labyrinth with a couple of friends. I wasn’t kind sure what I was getting myself into when I walked in to the theatre. I had seen the trailer and assumed it was a light fantasy type movie. You know light and not very intense. Was I ever wrong and I think a few people in the theatre were a little surprised as well.

www.panslabyrinth.com

If you work in an cold office, like me, then you definately need one of these. The USB Warmer Mouse II! Keeps your hand warm while your hard at work!

Check it out here!

I’ve been wanting to see this movie for a while now given my interest in the royal family. Yes I am a sucker for the royals ever since I was little. I had some problems getting any of my friends to see it with me and even my mother was like “Oh Suzan, I can’t watch that movie. It will only make me upset that I’m no longer living in London thanks to your bastard father moving us to Canada.” Sigh.

So I finally managed to see The Queen. I really thought it was going to be a very dry and serious film/documentary about the royals relationship with Diana and the days following her death.

But I found the movie really brings out the dysfunctional relationships in the royal family in a rather amusing and comical way which was good. The movie I think takes a look at Family vs. Procedures & Protocoles. Helen Mirren is really quite good and really humanmizes the role of Queen Elizabeth.

However I don’t think it’s going to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Maybe Best Actress.

Next week I’m going to see The Last Ling of Scotland. I’ve been dying to see this movie based on the 1970s Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.