Archive for the 'Meeting Recaps' Category

Ellis Elkins - Displacement Maps

Ellis Elkins began the meeting with a great intro to using Displacement Maps in Flash. He did a great job explaining how they work, and was able to show some great examples on how to use them.

Links:

Psyark Example

Sample Files

John Lindquist

John continued his presentation from where he left off last week at the UDFUG meeting, and was able to show some great examples of exporting 3D models from 3D Max and importing them into Papervision. (Including more of a gorilla than anybody needed to see.)

(I’ll add any sample files or other links when I get them.)

Thanks again to Ellis & John for volunteering to present on these topics - it’s greatly appreciated. If you’re interested in presenting on any topics for an upcoming meeting, just let us know. Drop me a line at josh@joshbuhler.com.

Last nights meeting was pretty good. Scott Stoddard of SpiritOnin.com was presenting a collection of Flash games that he has developed. In addition to showing the games, he also took time to show us some of his “secrets” - how he handles things like collision detection, animation, and timing issues in games - applying slow-motion effects, for instance.

He also offered some tips for improving the performance of your games, and examples of how a game can be very basic, but still a lot of fun.

The meeting was pretty small, and very informal - we spent a lot of time simply discussing various tips & tricks that we’ve picked up over time for working in Flash.

Next Month:

September’s meeting will feature both Ellis Elkins and John Lindquist. Ellis will be showing us how to use the built-in Displacement Map filter for various effects, and John will be discussing PaperVision 3D.

More details will come as we get closer to the meeting.

Last night’s meeting was pretty good. We discussed Unit Testing using FlexUnit, gave out some prizes and checked out some cool Flex apps made by Rob Taylor.

Presentation

The format of the presentation was more of a discussion than an actuall presentation. I provided some examples of how to use FlexUnit in your projects, but pretty much everyone participated in a great discussion on the pros & cons of Unit Testing, Test Driven Development, and when Unit Testing is and isn’t appropriate.

We did record the meeting via Adobe Acrobat Connect, (link below), however, as a result of the more discussion-like nature of the meeting as opposed to being a formal sit-and-listen-to-the-presenter-style meeting, the audio quality isn’t that great. Apparently the noise cancelling features of my headset mic work a little too well. The mic picked me up pretty good, but when I moved it closer to the center of the table, it decided not to pickup anybody. So, you’ll have audio in the preso for about 5-10 minutes, then sporadically for the rest of the recording.

I’ll work on trying to locate a better mic that we can use for recording these meetings, as everyone in attendance seemed to really like the discussion format of the meeting. If you weren’t there, you missed out.

News

• ApolloCamp is now SOLD OUT. Last night there were about 23 seats left, but now it is completely sold out.
• Adobe is looking for AJAX users to help beta test Apollo
• Justin Everett-Church has posted some info you need to know about Flash Player compatibility and Windows Vista

Preso Resources

• Unit Testing - Wikipedia
• Test Driven Development - Wikipedia
• FlexUnit - Unit Testing framework for Flex & ActionScript 3.0
• ASUnit - ActionScript 2.0 Framework for Unit Testing
• Unit testing and Test Driven Development (TDD) for Flex and ActionScript 3.0 - Flex Developer Center article
• Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns - A great AS 3.0 book, that also contains a good intro into using FlexUnit

The meeting recording can be found here: http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/p35065087/

As I mentioned earlier, I’ll try to find a better solution for recording audio, so that this doesn’t happen again. We’ll get the recordings sorted out eventually.

Also, don’t forget - each meeting that you attend is one entry for our big software giveaway in June. The more you attend, the better chances you have of winning!

Sorry the recap is kinda late, but better late than never, right?

Our last meeting was pretty good - we had a good presentation, and some exciting news to talk about. We even managed to give some stuff away!

News

As Adobe MAX was going on last week, we were able to discuss some exciting news from Adobe. Stuff like Flex Builder 2 for Mac being released. And the new Full-Screen mode for Flash for browser-based content. Adobe also released a new application called Adobe Digital Editions - “a specific rich Internet application (RIA) built on the current version of the Adobe Engagement Platform”. It is not an Apollo application.

Presentation

Our guest presenter for the evening was Sam Robbins, a member of the Boston Flash Platform Users Group. His presentation, “Design Patterns, What They Are and How to Use Them”, was a good intro to some basic design patterns and how to apply them in Actionscript. Once I receive his notes and sample files, I’ll post them on the site.

Also, I apologize, but I forgot to record the presentation. (This was both mine and Sam’s first time using Connect, so we were kinda figuring things out as we went.) However, we now have our Adobe Connect (formerly Breeze) account setup, so we’ll be able to record future presentations.

A big special thanks needs to go out to Ed Sullivan of Adobe and Gordon Clarke of the Flex User Group who were able to help us use Connect to present the meeting. We wouldn’t have been able to have a presentation if not for their help.

Upcoming Schedule

• Nov. 8 - Seth Taylor will present on design concepts and how to best bring the content you receive from a designer into your Flash apps. As most of us have to work with designers, this will be some good info.
• Nov. 22 - No meeting, due to Thanksgiving
• Dec. 13 - Meeting - Topic TBA
• Dec. 27 - No Meeting, due to Christmas, my birthday ;), and New Years

Beginning in January, we will begin meeting on the second Wednesday, and fourth Thursday of each month, to hopefully allow those that have conflicts on Wednesdays to attend our meetings.

Last night was our group’s ‘10 Years of Flash’ party. It was a lot of fun - basically, it was a good excuse to gorge ourselves on some free food, give away some free software, and have a good time. We took turns sharing some of our first experiences we’ve had with Flash (mine involved a 75MB swf file - I didn’t know any better), and watching some good cartoons.

Thanks to all those who came, and congratulations again to Daniel Larsen - he was the lucky winner of a license of Studio 8!

Last night’s meeting was a good one. We watched a Breeze presentation from Adobe Developer Week that focused on the the future of RIAs using Adobe Apollo. After the presentation we had some good discussion about what Apollo means for us as Web Developers, and what we could do with it.

Afterwards, Tyler Wright was kind enough to share with us some more tricks he’s found integrating Flash and JavaScript, including more on how to embed your JavaScript code into your Flash application.

As a reminder, our next meeting will be August 9, 2006, at our new meeting location, Certiport. We’ll post a map and directions when they become available. Hope to see you there!

Site Picks

• Yahoo! Maps Beta
• Onyx VJ

Apollo Links

• Building Killer RIAs - Adobe Developer Week Presentation
• Apollo Info - Adobe Labs

Our first official meeting was a success! Thanks to everyone who attended. We understand that it was pretty short notice for the meeting, but it was still nice to see those that attended.

Jacob Wright gave us a good introduction to Flex Builder and Actionscript 3.0. Most of the meeting was spent discussing the new code-editing features of Flex Builder, and the changes in Actionscript 3.0. Everyone there was very excited to see what the future of Flash and Actionscript holds. And we barely scratched the surface - most of what was covered were just the changes to the Actionscript language.

This group already has the beginnings of being a great resource for Flash / Flex developers. You’ll be able to meet new developer friends, talk code, maybe find a job or two, and generally geek out talking Flash for a couple of hours. You don’t want to miss this.

As we meet twice a month, our next meeting will be June 28, 2006, at the mediaRAIN offices. We’ll still be discussing Actionscript 3.0, so if you missed the last meeting, you’re in luck, and if you were there, we’ll try to continue where we left off. We hope to see you there!

- Josh