flashalisious

So I have been at Adobe MAX 2007 in Chicago all week. The whole experience has been really great. What was even better than that was a sneak peek at a new application that Adobe says that it will be releasing sometime in 2008 - code name “Thermo”.

I can not tell you how excited I was about this app. What is Thermo you ask? Well let me tell you from my perspective what Thermo is….

Just a week before MAX I was finally wanting to write my first project completely in Flex Builder. This was a really really frustrating thing from a design standpoint. I would be what the industry is referring to as a “Devigner” Half Designer / Half Developer. I can write some code when it comes down to it and I really enjoy figuring out the functionality of an app but I have always done all my sites or apps in the Flash IDE and laid them out in Photoshop before I move everything over to Flash for animation and coding.

When it comes to doing a project by setting up your design in Photoshop and then getting that design into Flex Builder….. well …. let’s just say it. IT IS A PAIN IN THE ASS! As far as I am concerned.

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About a week or so ago I launched the new Bluf web site. If you have not heard of this band Bluf you should really check them out. Bluf writes their own original music and the bottom line is ….. they know how to rock for sure!

The guys relied on there myspace page for a log time as for their web site, and still maintain a large following on that site. Now that the bad is looking ahead and there needs grew the felt that a flash based web site was the way to go. This gives them the ability to post there music, videos and also have a really interactive site.

On this site they wanted a look that stuck with the theme they had be using on there myspace page, but after getting to know the guys and seeing them play I felt they where edgier than that. I felt that it was important to take the new site a few steps further. Using a lot of distressed textures and elements I was able to design and implement the site in a way that was simple, unique to the Band, and also really show the fans who Bluf really is. From what I could tell the guys where really excited about the look of the new site and seamed to think that I totally nailed the look and feel they where wanting. Of course I had a little help from the guys. They supplied there logo, some pictures and the red tree element was all Bluf’s doing. The red tree and lighter white background was the starting point and as we moved forward it was clear what the site needed. Hop on over and check out the new Bluf Site and shoot the guys an email and let them know what you think. blufmusic.com

Read on to hear more about Bluf.

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Launched in August of 07 is the new Siren Studio Photography site. This was a great project for my development company to be a part of and believe it or not was my first project to use full browser flash. For you who don’t know you can design a site with flash in a way that the site will scale with the browser as you resize the window.

Kristina Krug of Siren Studio came straight out of the design industry years ago and is now a extremely talented photographer. We used really heigh quality images so the images will continue to look really good even if you are looking at the site on a 24 or 30 inch screen.

I was really proud to be a part of this project. To be associated with that type of talent is always a plus!
You should check out the site when you get a chance. There is plenty of images on her site and it really shows you a wide range of her work. Learn More about Kristina and the companies she has worked with on a regular bases on the next page.

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I am totally not a coding guru just yet, but I have my eyes on the prise and I hope to one day know my stuff, but for now I will admit that I have a little trouble understanding some simple tasks that most programmers would not have any trouble with. We all know and love Textmate. The great text editor for the Mac. Heck I even use it to write my blog posts. You have to check out the blogging bundle if you have not used it for that it is great.

As soon as I got Textmate I started using it for all my actionscript. At the time the bundle was only for AS2. Now that I am starting to dig into AS3 and Flex it would be great to start coding using this editor. It launches way faster than Flex Builder or Eclips. There are some draw backs. The biggest being that you do not get the code hinting quite as much as you do with Flex Builder, but still it is a great tool to work in. In the next few steps I will show you how to install SVN (subversion) client for your Mac so you can utilize all the bundles and updates that are currently being developed for Textmate and most importantly there is an AS3 / Flex bundle that you can download.

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FatFreeCart is the free shopping cart widget. It works inside your website, your blog and will even work from your MySpace page. It is simply a copy-paste cart and does not require you to register with us or install anything. It works with PayPal and Google Checkout. It supports product variations, shipping, handling and sales tax.

Now, I know, I know, this is a site about flash. Well I feel that it is important to expand beyond flash sometimes and let people know about cool new free tools like this. I have a lot of customers come to me that have a need for a simple way to take payment over the internet but do not have a tone of products to offer. This is a fast simple way to run a shopping cart on your site. It will make your site look a little more professional than the other guys.

If you are a web developer but you and you really have had nothing to do with shopping cart sites in the past this would be a great way to integrate this type of functionality into your site. Check it out and let me know what you think.

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Well, I got my invite to the new site done by Kevin Rose of http://Digg.com. Looks pretty cool. Once you set up your account you get to download a desktop applications that will show you all of your posts and also allow you to post comments, links, files, and events.

Now how does this relate to my blog. Well the desktop app was compiled using Adobe’s new Desktop Environment, AIR. Basically an app that is build using the Flex Builder or Flex SDK. Now As most of you know AIR can be a program that is written in html, Ajax, Javascript, Actionscript or Flex. Wonder how they build this one. It does not look like they are using any Animation or smooth transitions in the app so I am wondering if that build it with Ajax or something like that? It would be cool to know.

Over all Looks pretty cool. If anyone out there joins up and wants to add me as a friend that would be cool. Just hit me up.

Adobe put out actionscript 3 (AS3) this year. There are a tone of books and tutorials out there now. So do you dive in or not? The short answer is….Yes. If you want to be able to do some really cool things on your flash or flex projects then you need to start digging in.

AS3 will give you a tone of performance improvements and some are the new features are just great. If you are a new user to actionscript don’t start with AS2. Everything is headed for AS3 in a hurry. There are quite a few changes to the code and the way you code buttons and events are totally different in AS3. If you are a big AS2 user you will feel like this takes a lot longer but you will see and understand the benefit after you start using the new code.

So I guess I am updating my goal. It is Always to “Learn Actionscript” but now it is to Learn Actionscript 3.

There are some great books out there. Check out http://oreilly.com. I would say you need to pick up Essential Actionsript 3.0 and Actionscript 3.0 Cookbook ASAP.

learn more at Adobe Labs

Good luck and keep coding.

See more progress on: learn actionscript

Wow Can you believe this. Check out the original Ubuntu Logo

Now look at this Logo from Microsoft Alumni Network Homepage

Thanks to my buddy John Henshaw over at Sitening.com for pointing this out in a local Nashville User Group of Web Designers and developers that I am a part of. After seeing this I had to post it to my blog.

Now I know as designers we barrow design ideas but you never copy someone’s logo or design. Quite often I will go to web sites and look at logos or Movie Trailers at the Apple Quicktime section of the site. It is great to get the ideas burning and turning in your head. There is one thing that you should stay away from or at least try your best to stay away from. DON’T BLATANTLY STEAL ANOTHER COMPANIES DESIGN OR BRANDING. This is totally unethical and also a violation of copywrite. Hopefully Ubuntu can do something about it that. MSA should be forced to change it. As a community of designers or consumers for that matter, we should do what we can to get this in the public eye. Please digg this store. Just because they are Microsoft and this site is a “Organization of Whatever” (not the .org) does not mean that gives them the write to do whatever they wish.

I am not one to normally write a blog post of this kind but thought that it was important to point out.

I would encourage you to do your part. Get this story some attention. Also if you have two seconds write a quick NICE and I do stress NICE but informative email to Microsoft about this matter. Here is the address.

msalumni@conenza.com

Nashville, TN and the surrounding area has it’s first official Flex user group. We will be focusing on Development of rich internet applications and also desktop applications using the newest platforms from Adobe. This will consist of Flex, AIR (Apollo) and the current version of Actionscript. If you are interested in joining you just need to have an interest in Flash and ActionScript and live in the 615 area code. http://615flex.com to sign up.

Thanks to all the guys that joined the group so far. We are planning our first group meeting for June 30 2007. If you can make it please check out http://615flex.com/polls/meeting.php

Let’s move forward and make this group of developers something great. Our main focus will be helping each members grow in their skills and build some really cool stuff.

ApolloHunter.com is a simple site to download, upload and share Adobe Apollo apps! This is a great site to see who is doing what in Apollo development. Maybe by the end of the summer you will be able to see something I have done on this site?

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