Useful Flash Tracer Class

Let’s be honest, Flash’s trace functionality is pretty substandard. It provides no useful information besides what you’ve asked it to output. Unlike something like HaXe, you cannot extend it or extract anything from it that really helps you debug your code and when you’ve got a lot of traces in your application or project, it becomes messy and incredibly hard to manage. A while back I created and we’ve since been using a utility class that makes tracing much more user friendly and provides some additional information and functionality that would seem obvious to have in the first place. Additionally, it was important to me to have something that is lightweight and easy to use, with no need to install anything extra – just a class/swc for inclusion in your project, and no additional dependencies.

Firstly, you are able to toggle all of your traces on or off in a single line of code – no need for additional compiler settings. Secondly, the traces that are output include both the name of the class that has made the trace call as well as the line number it happened. This is hugely beneficial, particularly when you are working on a big project with a lot of traces dotted throughout your code. You’ll immediately be able to distinguish your different trace statements and can head to the exact line that you made the call, and if you want to remove the trace statement, you know exactly where to find it. Third, it provides the option of adding in a timestamp to your traces. This aids in keeping track of when things happen and what amount of time has elapsed between different calls to the trace function. Lastly, the traces can be toggled on and off at runtime, which can be very useful when you need to deploy a debug version to a live environment, but don’t want your traces showing up to inspectors like Flash Tracer and the like, unless you’ve specified it to do so.

The class is very easy to use. To initialise it, simply call its static function “init” (most likely in your document or preloader class), and specify whether you want traces on/off, an optional timestamp flag, and optionally set the stage for keyboard capture:

Tracer.init(true, true, stage);

After this, you can just make calls to the static method ‘out’ to output trace statements:

Tracer.out("This is a trace");

If you have specified the third parameter, stage, in the init function, you can toggle the debug mode on and off by pressing the keys of the word “debug”.

Source code and SWC can be got here.

Branded Platforms

Branded platforms  have been the buzzword ever since the success of Nike+. Unfortunately, as is often the case with buzzwords, not many people understand how or why branded platforms work.

Here at Stonewall we’ve done research into these platforms to find the recipe for success and to distill the core essence of theoretic platform building.

Firstly, platforms are built around a brand truth. These brand truths are identified using the general brand positioning. The various brand truths (for example in the case of Nike+ the brand truth identified is that Nikes assist you in running) identified are listed as potential cores for the platform ideas.

The next step is to identify consumer truths out of these brand truths; as consumer truths are the natural extension of the brand truth showing the consumer perception and interest in the brand truth.

Thirdly, platform concepts are then discerned from the consumer truths. These are specifically fleshed out in relation to central universal touch points that can be used in various formats. The central platform concept needs to be standalone with either utility or long term entertainment value. The platform concept should also be of such a nature that it can run independently without any activation or force fed marketing.

Once the platform concept is up and running, it is always helpful to organise decentralized targeted activation points around it. These still need to tie back into the central platform concept but can have specific twists to allow for unique consumer segmented insights for further relevance. Secondary core insights or sub concepts can also be tied into the various activation elements. These are normally relating to CSI or other specific elements.

And there you have it, branded platforms in a few easy steps.

Facebook – 6 Brand Basics

In the last few months quite a few brands have started rolling out brand fan pages with the help of their agencies. Unfortunately it seems that many of these are missing some key elements. So we decided to make an easy list of 6 basic things that shouldn’t be missed on any fan page roll out.

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We have Bookmarks

We received our Bookmark Pixels yesterday. Here they are sitting on our Award mantelpiece.

Hoping to add a whole lot more over coming months!

Andy’s Lexus IS-F Experience

Our creative team went up to Joburg this week to get the experience of the new Lexus IS-F for a new upcoming campaign. This car is a beast. Here’s a clip of our great and industrious Creative Director Andy Ellis giving it a go.