Andrew Shorten

Developer personal ad - as presented at FOWD

Andrew Shorten — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:30:35 +0000

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:

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Presentations from UK Agency Flex/AIR Event posted

Andrew Shorten — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:43:53 +0000

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!

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Flex 3 Designer/Developer workflow

Andrew Shorten — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:46:29 +0000

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:

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.

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on AIR European Tour details

Andrew Shorten — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:42:27 +0000

As announced back in November, the on AIR tour is coming to Europe this year - we’ve now posted the details of all the dates and locations for on the tour website.

If you didn’t follow the US tour last year, then essentially in each location we’ll be running a one day conference on Adobe AIR, with technical sessions, showcases and discussions. All the events are free and are open to anyone interested in learning more about AIR - you do need to register in advance though.

Mike Chambers has all the details here, but in summary the dates/locations are as follows:

First leg, March 31st - April 11:

Second leg, June 2nd - June 13th:

I’ll be at the Brussel/London/Dublin and Prague/Munich/Milan events and look forward to seeing you there! Check out the agenda (the events are a full day with something for everyone), register and then spread the news

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Next London Poker Tournament on Monday 25th

Andrew Shorten — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:36:47 +0000

Following on from the first Poker Tournament for Adobe developers back in November, it’s great to see that we’re sponsoring the next event which is to take place on Monday 25th February in London - just one week from today!

The event is open to all designers and developers using Adobe’s software, with an array of fabulous prizes on offer - individual CS3 products for everyone on the final table and a copy of CS3 Premium (web, design or production) AND a ticket to MAX Europe 2008 for the overall winner.

You don’t have to be a poker expert to come along - drinks will be provided and it’s a great opportunity to talk Flex/Flash/AIR with fellow developers.

Go to the PokerCoder.com website for more information and to register for the event (essential - you won’t get in otherwise!).

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BBC uses Flex to report on US Super Tuesday

Andrew Shorten — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:24:33 +0000

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.

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European Flex 3 pre-release tour

Andrew Shorten — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:17:25 +0000

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.

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Flex training in December and January

Andrew Shorten — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:35:02 +0000

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.

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Colin Moock’s AS3 Tour - Europe dates

Andrew Shorten — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:40:42 +0000

Further to my previous entry I can now confirm the dates for all three European events at which Colin Moock will present his ‘ActionScript 3.0: From the Ground Up Tour’.

The dates are:

Munich, 20th February 2008
Amsterdam, 27th February 2008
London, 3rd March 2008

Registration for each event will open approximately 6 weeks before the event date, so reserve the dates in your diary and bookmark the official website.

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Flash Brighton Big Day Out

Andrew Shorten — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 21:04:56 +0000

Today saw Flash Brighton’s Big Day Out take place on the south coast of England and, as the first Flex/AIR camp in the UK, it was great to have a turnout of over 100 people.

Starting just after lunch and running into the early hours of the morning there were presentations from myself, Mike Jones, David Hassoun, John Crosby, Dominic Minns, Aral Balkan and Seb Lee-Delisle, together with good conversation, free beer and pizza. Seb and the crew from the Flash Brighton User Group did a fantastic job at organising the event and with the quick sell-out of (free) tickets I hope the guys will be up for running another event next year.

Along with a mix of technical and creative content, we’d organised a full copy of Flex Builder 2 for all attendees, so hopefully there was something for everyone!

The slides I presented during the keynote are available for download using Adobe Share.

The Flex and AIR applications I referenced during the presentation included:

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