Avatar Core Development Stall

For the moment, not much work is being done with Avatar Core. There are two main reasons 1) Busy with my day job (really busy) and 2) I'm not entirely sure where I want to go with the API.

The API is particularly important as JavaScript comes into play. There's two sides of Avatar Core with JavaScript. One side is the ability to provide a JavaScript API for talking with Avatar Core in SWF form (as seen in My Avatar Editor). The other side is being able to port the entire Avatar Core framework to JavaScript allowing for it to be used without the Flash dependency. And really, in general, it is good to have a solid, simple API for working with frameworks like this. The question is, how good is it now, and can it be "down-ported" to a less-capable environment gracefully. At the moment, I'm not sure, which is why I'm going to think about API direction for a bit before movin forward much more with improvements and other fixes, particularly what it means in terms of having a JavaScript implementation.

Avatar Core 0.0.5 Beta

A new release of Avatar Core is now available. This release is 0.0.5 beta. I figured it's far enough along now to take it out of alpha and bring it into beta, though I'll have to admit that kind of identification is fairly arbitrary (just look at how long Google tools remain in beta...).



For anyone wanting to keep track of project updates, I'd suggest not following this blog but instead keeping an eye on the Avatar Core project feeds of which there are a number to keep an eye on. I'll probably only update this blog moving forward with major releases or otherwise notably important news.

Next on my things to do is work on documentation. The API has already been updated, but I want to include better descriptions and getting started information on the wiki. Currently, a lot of the content there is no longer accurate.

Avatar Core 0.0.3

Avatar Core 0.0.3 is now available from the Avatar Core Project Page. The same structure of the framework remains mostly the same, though a lot of the API has changed. A lot of this is a result from the increased focus on allowing Avatar's to be able to be self-contained, without needing a library to link to. Currently, this does introduce a problem with some features of the framework (which will have to be figured out in the next release), but I think overall it's for the best.

The live demo has also been updated (and can be downloaded, with the framework, from the downloads page).

More information about this release can be found in the release notes.

Avatar Core API Docs

API Documentation is now available for the Avatar Core framework.

Avatar Core 0.0.2 Download Update

For anyone not wanting to mess with SVN on google code, I've added a download of the demo in the downloads page that includes the demo with the full framework source code. This will give you the necessary files to compile the sample right out of the box, or at least get you the full framework source code in one download without SVN.

FYI, the demo was created with Flash CS4. However, all source code is in external .as files, so you could easily recreate the FLA files in CS3 if you have that using the AS files as document classes for their respective FLAs. You can see a live demo here.

Keep in mind its still early, and changes may yet be made to the framework resulting in changes in functionality and/or API.

Avatar Core 0.0.2

Avatar Core 0.0.2 source code has been uploaded to the project on google code. More information on the changes can be found in the release notes. I'll try to get some more info on the wiki and a sample application in the downloads section a little later.

Avatar Core Design Basics

I've updated the wiki for the Avatar Core framework with the basic design of the framework. Source code is available now, but I'm already making some changes to it that I'll probably upload within the next couple of days. I hope to spend a lot more time working with this next week when I have some more free time available.