Flash Platform community elitism
When I began writing this post, I was starting it out explaining that I was going to try to choose my words carefully in an attempt to keep from upsetting anyone… I’ve changed my mind. This isn’t what I would call a scathing post, but I’ve changed my mind about being careful. With that said, here are my thoughts on some recent (and not-so-recent) experiences and observations within the Flash Platform community.
My, how times have changed
There was a time (not all that long ago) when everyone under the sun wasn’t using Twitter, Facebook and all of the other “new” social media tools. A time when most interaction between members of the Flash community happened in forums and mailing lists like We’re Here and Flashcoders. Well, as they always do, times have changed, technology has continued to advance and people have built new tools and found new ways to communicate with each other even faster than ever before. Gone are the days of posting to a forum and waiting days (or even weeks) for the right person to stumble across your question to help you with a solution. Now you can simply tweet your challenge, question, idea, etc and all of the people following you will be there to help you in an instant. If they can’t help, they may choose to retweet your issue or idea and within minutes you could have literally hundreds (or even thousands) of other members of the Flash Platform community reading that question or idea! Now you will be heard! Now you have a voice! Now you can be the driving force behind new ideas, differences and changes in the community… in the way other developers look at things… in the way Adobe develops the future of the Flash Platform!
Well, maybe…
Speaking at D-Flex
Next week I’ll be speaking at the Dallas Flex User Group (D-Flex) August meeting with group manager and Flex awesomeness, Jonathan Campos. Our topic will be Spark skinning in Flex 4. If you’ve read my articles on InsideRIA (here and here) or Jonathan’s post on his blog, you’ve seen an example of what we’ll be covering.
If you aren’t already a member of D-Flex, feel free to join us because we are awesome. And remember, you don’t have to live in Dallas to be a member.
Date/Time:
August 20, 2009 from 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Location
The University of Texas at Dallas
School of Management, rm 1.502
800 W Campbell Rd, Richardson, TX
Parking is in LOT J and M
The rest of the meeting details can be found here. We look forward to seeing all who can make it out!
WE are the future of the Flash Platform
Ted Patrick has posted what I consider to be an important piece of information on his blog titled The Future of the Flash Platform. If you are a Flash Platform developer of any kind (or skill level), please go over to Ted’s site and read this post.
Transitions in Spark skins
I’ve just posted the follow up to my first article on InsideRIA. Last time I wrote about getting started with Spark skins and we created a button. This time we add transitions between the states of that button.
Go check it out and let me know what you think.
Here’s the first one – Getting started with Spark skins
Here’s the follow up – Getting started with Spark skins: Transitions
Tilt Shift Photo play
After checking out some links about tilt shift photographic effects in a tweet from Mike Chambers (@mesh) I thought I'd give it a quick try based on this tutorial. While I've seen tilt shift photography plenty of times before, I never really realized what it was or how it worked. At any rate, here are my quick tries at this awesome effect.
Note: I am definitely NOT a profesional photographer.
Another Note: Numbers 2, 3 and 4 were taken with my iPhone.
Another-nother Note: Roll over the images to see the before/after
Photo 1:
Photo 2:
Photo 3:
Photo 4:
Ok, that's all I got. See ya later.
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