Andrew Shorten

Adobe was one of the main sponsors at Future of Web Design, which was held today in London. I only had a short presentation, but given the opportunity to speak to around 1000 designers I decided to highlight the opportunity that designers (who typically use Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator or Fireworks already) have to work alongside Flex developers to create engaging and intuitive Rich Internet Applications.

I finished up the presentation with a ‘personal ad’ on behalf of the many Flex developers who would like designers to embrace the Flex skins and component kit features that were added to CS3 products via updaters earlier this year.

Thought I’d share it here for your amusement:

Share This

As I mentioned previously, we held a one day event for UK-based digital agencies to coincide with the Flex/AIR launch on the 25th February in London. I’ve had a number of requests to make the presentations from the event available so I’ve posted them here for download (46Mb zip file).

In addition to the Adobe keynote, presented by Steve Heintz, we had sessions on AIR, Flash Media Server, CS3 and Flex Designer/Developer workflow, as well as case study presentations from Emak Mafu (Demonstrating MafuNet, a Flex-based CMS), Monochrome (Business case for RIAs) and Tribal DDB (Building the Volkswagen site using Flex) .

Thanks to all the presenters for letting me share their presentations!

Share This

We held an event in London exclusively for digital agencies on Monday 25th February to coincide with the launch of Flex 3 and AIR - one of the sessions that I presented was ‘Flex 3 Designer/Developer workflow’.

The aim of the session was to overcome some of the perceptions that people have around Flex and highlight how designers can contribute to the production of a Flex-based application. I’ve uploaded the slides I presented to Adobe Share.

Some of the common myths that we hear in relation to Flex include:

• Flex is only used for ‘Enterprise’ applications - FALSE! Check out the Flex Showcase for inspiration
• Flex requires expensive server software - FALSE! Flex is free, open source and doesn’t require any particular server technology.
• Flex and Flash don’t work together - FALSE! Get the Flex Component Kit for Flash CS3 and use Flash to create content and components for Flex.
• Customising the default Flex look & feel is difficult - FALSE! Use CSS-based styling or Adobe CS3 tools to create visual skins
• Flex only has a fixed set of visual components - FALSE! There are lots of additional components or you can create your own!
• Flex applications are large - FALSE! Flash Player 9 (update 3) supports caching of the Flex Framework, reducing the size of your Flex applications dramatically.

Whilst some Flex applications will use the default look and feel (internal applications, data dashboards, etc) there are some great examples of Flex applications where designers and developers have collaborated to create rich, compelling and expressive visual experiences - take a look at Betfair, Volkswagen UK and Picnik.

In each of these cases the development teams were building applications that needed to be maintained and supported for years to come and hence building on top of the Flex framework provides them with significant advantages over using Flash CS3 (note: Flash CS3 is still the choice for creating expressive and interactive content, it’s just not the right tool for every job).

As a designer, you can now contribute to the development of a Flex 3 application in the following ways:

• Use Flex Builder’s design view to apply styling to Flex components
• Use Fireworks to create UI layouts based on the Flex components and generate code that a developer can then use
• Use templates in Fireworks or Photoshop to create bitmap-based graphical skins that replace default skins used in Flex components
• Use templates in Flash or Illustrator to create vector-based graphical skins that replace the default skins used in Flex components
• Use Flash to create components or containers that can be used in Flex projects

The links above reference articles, tutorials or video content on the Adobe Developer Connection site - before you get started though you’ll need the following updates for your CS3 products:

• Flex Design Skin Extension for CS3
• Flex Component Kit for Flash CS3

Quite rightly there has been a lot of buzz around Thermo, and having spent some time with the product team last week there is no doubt that this will change the way we build Rich Internet Applications in the future, but it’s important to note that with Flex 3 and CS3 designers have an important role to play today in creating RIAs.

Share This

You can’t help but know from all the media coverage that today is ‘Super Tuesday’ in the US, when some 24 states vote on who they will back for the Democratic and Republican nomination for the next US election.

In the UK, BBC News has used Flex to build a map-based tool which provides readers with an overview of the states participating in Super Tuesday, as well providing a historical view on how each state has voted in the election over the last 60 years.

The BBC has often used interactive maps during previous US and UK elections built using Flash, but this is the first time that the new Flex-based version has used.

You can view the application on the BBC News website.

Share This

We’re all set with the dates for the European Flex 3 pre-release tour which is taking place in January 2008. Serge Jespers, James Ward, Enrique Duvos and I will be traveling across Europe talking about Flex 3, AIR and BlazeDS - if you’d like to get up-to-date on the forthcoming launch of these technologies then please join us at one of the events.

There will also be presentations organised by the local usergroup leaders which will highlight some of the Flex applications being built in each country.

Dates for each of the events that Enrique and I will be at are listed below - please check the local user group website for location, times and registration information:

• Monday 14th - Moscow, Russia
• Tuesday 15th - Warsaw, Poland
• Wednesday 16th - Prague, Czech Republic
• Thursday 17th - Sofia, Bulgaria
• Friday 18th - Hamburg, Germany
• Monday 21st - Istanbul, Turkey
• Tuesday 22nd - Zurich, Switzerland
• Wednesday 23rd - Barcelona, Spain

If you can make it along to one of the dates above then we look forward to meeting you there! If you’ve been building a Flex application and would like to show it at the event then get in touch.

Serge and James will be visiting the following locations:

• Tuesday 22nd - Paris
• Wednesday 23rd - Milan
• Thursday 24th - London
• Friday 25th - Amsterdam
• Saturday 26th - Brussels

Check Serge’s blog for updated information on these events and locations.

Share This

With the continuing demand for Flex developers you might want to take advantage of two training offers that are currently running, one from Total Training and another from Academy Class.

For online training in Flex, Adobe have partnered with Total Training to provide free Flex training courses for 30 days - simply sign up using the activation code 29fa706d. This promotion runs until December 31st 2007.

For classroom-based training in Flex, Academy Class are running a 2 for 1 promotion for their 5 day Flex Masterclass courses running in Manchester and London in January (i.e. two attendees for the price of one). This offer was originally available to attendees of the Adobe CS3 Creative License tour, but they’ve kindly agreed to extend it. To find out more about the offer, including details of any restrictions and course availability, contact Academy Class directly.

Finally, there is also a huge amount of content on the Adobe Developer Connection site which is geared to help you get productive with Flex. Make sure you checkout the samples, documentation and tutorials in the Flex Developer Centre.

Share This

Betfair, one of the major online betting providers in Europe, have today launched an application built using Flex 2. The Blackjack game, developed by an in-house team of designers and developers, is now available to their 1,000,000 registered users on Betfair.com.

We started working with the guys at Betfair about 15 months ago, introducing Flex to both the development and business teams, so it’s great to see the first of their online games built in Flex go live. You can access the game here (you’ll need to register first), but for those of you based in the US (who won’t be able to see the site due to US legal restrictions) I’ve provided some screen grabs below:

The game replaces a previous version built using HTML/JavaScript (see below), and undoubtedly provides a richer, more interactive, approachable and enjoyable experience; for me, that is the key here - making it ‘enjoyable’. If you want people to stay online, using your application or service for longer, then the experience needs to be one which they enjoy; when your revenue is based upon how long you can engage with your customers, it’s easy to see the ROI for an RIA.

HTML/JavaScript version of Blackjack game (above)

Flex version of the Blackjack application (above)

The game was built by a team of 2 designers and 5 developers over a six month period - built using Flex 2, the application makes use of the Flex Component Kit so that the designers could create visual assets in Flash CS3 that were fully integrated into the Flex application. I think you’ll agree the result shows how visually rich you can make a Flex application; with Flex 3 making this process even easier, we should continue to see an increase in the number of expressive Flex applications on the web.

Betfair has some pretty amazing stats about their site, so this is also a great example of Flex being used in a high-volume, business critical environment. Here are a couple of facts I received from Betfair:

• Betfair processes over 5,000,000 transactions per day (1000 per second)
• Betfair does 15 times as many transactions as the London Stock Exchange
• Over a billion bets were placed on the exchange platform in 2006
• £2,000 a minute is deposited on the site

Hopefully this will be the first of many Flex applications that Betfair releases

It’s not just the games team at Betfair that have leveraged Flash, there is also a trial taking place on Betfair’s Labs site using Flash Player and Flash Media Server to stream their radio content - you can checkout the trial and provide feedback (the existing service uses Windows Media) at http://labs.betfair.com/Project+and+Discussion+Viewer/?contentId=572

Thanks to Graeme Harker at Betfair for providing some background info on the Flex application - checkout Graeme’s blog at: http://graemeharker.blogspot.com/.

Share This

As announced recently, Adobe is offering Flex Builder 2 with Charting free of charge to educational establishments and students. The link to register for your free download is now on the Adobe developer connection site, or you can access the registration site directly at http://www.flexregistration.com/

When registering you will need to provide proof of eligibility - so that means you’ll need to scan in a copy of your student ID or a letter on an educational institution letterhead stating that you are a current student. Once you’ve got that you’re good to go and get your free copy of Flex Builder.

Share This

The guys at the Flash Brighton user group have been working on putting together a free one day event that will cover Flex, AIR and ActionScript 3 - on the lines of a Flex/AIR/RIA Camp, but entitled Flash Brighton’s Big Day Out!

This event will take place on Saturday 24th November at the Royal Albion Hotel on Brighton’s seafront. The details are still going up on the official website, so you’ll need to keep watching for full details on speakers and sessions, but registration for the event is now open.

Adobe is helping out with the food/drinks, and I’ll be there to do the keynote session in the morning, but this is an event run by the community for the community, so please come along or tell any friends/colleagues who would like to get up to speed on recent Adobe developments about it.

Spaces at the event will be limited so make sure you register. I hope to see you there

Share This