Flash in the Peg

Our next meeting is all set: Thursday, January 24 at 7:00 p.m. We’ll be meeting in our usual location, room W411 of Red River College, Princess Street Campus.

At this meeting we’ll take our first look at the Spry framework for developing Ajax-powered web pages. Ajax is a way of method of developing responsive, interactive web sites using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It’s the backbone of a lot of those fancy new Web 2.0 sites you’ve been visiting.

Spry is an Ajax framework. It simplifies the process of building Ajax-powered sites by proving a set of ready-to-use widgets, visual effects, and data APIs to greatly improve the speed with which you can develop a web site.

We’ll jump into Spry by looking at some of the widgets and visual effects available (at a later meeting we’ll take a look at the data APIs). I’ll show you some of these elements in action and walk through the process of implementing Spry elements on a web site.

(If you already have Dreamweaver CS3, the Spry widgets are built in. You can also download them from Adobe Labs.)

Also, as I mentioned in an email before our previous meeting, we’ll be holding our biannual software draw. The winner gets the Adobe software package of their choice valued at up to US $2100! If you’ve attended one of the last three meetings, wrote a book review, or presented at one of those meetings, you’ve earned raffle tickets. But remember: you have to be present on January 24 for the draw in order to win!

(You may recall that back in September I sent out an email with the rules for these raffles; if you’d like another copy of that, let me know. Since those rules weren’t established until September, I’m only counting meetings held after that email towards the draw. If you’re interested in how many raffle tickets you may have earned, send me a private email and I can let you know.)

In addition to the software raffle, we’ll have our usual draw for books, shirts, and other goodies.

As always, please drop me a note to let me know if you plan to attend.

Our next meeting is set for Thursday, December 13th, at 7:00 p.m., room W411, Red River College, Princess Street campus.

Clayton Wilchowy, Senior Interactive Designer at Manlab, will give a presentation on how to use ActionScript to load data from an XML file and put that data to use in a Flash project. To demonstrate how to do this, Clayton will make a Flash file showing Canada, which populates itself with citizens of different shapes and sizes that display speech balloon comments when you roll over them. All of the citizen data will be pulled in from the XML file. Clayton’s presentation will include:

• What is XML?
• Best practices for structuring your XML file
• Loading and parsing the XML file using ActionScript
• Debugging your code
• Putting the data to use in the Flash project
• Web services, RSS feeds, and other examples of data structures, and how they can be ‘Flashed up’.

And of course, there will be prizes! This will also be your last chance to earn tickets for the software raffle. (Since December can be a busy month, the raffle itself will be held at our first meeting in 2008; remember, you have to be present for the raffle to win.)

Please RSVP to let me know if you’ll be attending. I hope to see you all out on the 13th!

Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, November 1st, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. As usual, we’ll meet in room W411, Red River College, Princess Street Campus. Our topic for this meeting is prototyping web sites using Adobe Fireworks CS3.

Lots of people think of Fireworks as just a simplified version of Photoshop. While you can use Fireworks as ‘Photoshop Lite’, if that’s all you do with it then you’re missing out.

One of Fireworks’ many features that set it apart is the ability to easily and rapidly prototype web site designs. Taking your design mockups from flat jpegs to an interactive prototype can help you test your design, and can help communicate your vision for the site to your client.

We’ll walk through the process of taking a site mockup from a Photoshop file to a working prototype using Fireworks’ new Pages feature. That’s right: we’re not saying goodbye to Photoshop. Fireworks CS3 is nicely integrated with Photoshop, so you can continue working in Photoshop to create your original design, then import that into Fireworks to build your prototype. (Fireworks is also great for creating mockups from scratch, and we’ll look at that, too).

Plus, we’ll also talk about some of the announcements that were made at MAX. You may have heard some of them already, but I thought it might be interesting to chat about a few of those, as well as my general impressions of the conference. I’ll send some links around next week if you want to read up before the meeting.

And of course there are prizes! Since this is the last meeting before the FITC Winnipeg Roadshow, it’s your last chance to win a free admission to the second day of the two-day event. We’ll also have a few other goodies to give away.

So I hope you can make it out! I’d appreciate it if your emailed me to let me know if you can attend. Personally, I think Fireworks is a great piece of software, and I hope you’ll see it in a new light after our next meeting!

The time and date of our next meeting is confirmed: Thursday, September 27, same time and place as our previous meetings. Please RSVP directly to me if you plan to attend.

You know what Flash is, and you have an idea of what you can do with Flash. Maybe you’ve even installed the free trial of Flash. But how do you get started? This meeting will help give you that little nudge you might need to jump in the pool.

We’ll take a look at the Flash development environment (both Flash 8 and CS3), run through some of the basic concepts behind Flash, and then I’ll demonstrate how to do a few things using Flash. The goal for this meeting is to give people who have never used Flash enough familiarity with it that they can download the Flash trial and not feel overwhelmed by it all. You’ll even know enough to be able to make your own First Flash Movie.

And for anybody who has used Flash in the distant past but not too recently, it will be a nice refresher. Hopefully this also will give you some grounding for future meetings which will delve a little deeper into Flash.

If you don’t want to wait and would like to get started right now, you can download a free trial of Flash CS3 and start playing around. If you’ve already done that, you might have some questions. If you do, send them to me in advance of the meeting and I’ll see what I can do to answer them!

As usual, we’ll have some goodies to give away, including a free admission to the FITC Winnipeg Roadshow in November. Your attendance will also improve your odds of winning the software raffle to be held at our December meeting, where you could win the Adobe software of your choice, up to a value of $2100 US.

Remember: let me know if you can make it, and especially if you have any Flash questions you’d like answered!

Thanks!
Darren

Adobe announced yesterday the launch of ColdFusion 8. Next week’s meeting will be a launch event to mark the occasion. Here’s what’s in store:

• We’ll watch a CF8 Deep Dive recorded specially for Adobe user groups by Ben Forta, Senior Technical Evangelist for Adobe.
• Prizes prizes prizes! One lucky person will win a copy of ColdFusion 8 Standard, valued at US $1299! We’ll also be raffling off a free admission to the FITC Winnipeg Roadshow, courtesy of FITC. And, there will be other little goodies to give away.
• Pizza and soft drinks will be provided.

The meeting is on Thursday, August 9, at 7:00 p.m., room W411, Red River College, Princess Street campus. If you can make it, please let me know by emailing me at darren@flashinthepeg.org so I can make sure there are enough refreshments for everyone.

I hope to see you next Thursday!

Hope you’re all having a great summer! My apologies for the long period of
radio silence, but the last month or so has been kind of hectic around
these parts, to say the least.

Now that things are settling down, I just wanted to drop a quick note to
update you all on a few things:

1. Topics for upcoming meetings. I thought I’d give you an idea of what
   some of the next meetings will look at:
   • Introduction to Ajax. What’s Ajax and what can it do for you? We’ll look
     at the basic concepts behind Ajax, then take a look at Adobe’s Spry
     framework for Ajax, and how that’s been integrated into Dreamweaver CS3.
   • Prototyping in Fireworks. Fireworks CS3 has some nifty new features that
     make developing web site prototypes much, much easier. We’ll walk through
     how Photoshop and Fireworks work together at the mockup stage, and how
     Fireworks can be used to develop wireframes and walkthroughs of a proposed
     web site.
   • Flash Lite primer. Flash Lite is a version of Flash optimized for mobile
     devices. I’ll show you what the current Flash Lite environment looks like
     and what’s involved in developing in Flash Lite.

   For other meeting topics, there has been some interest in a general Flash
   primer. I think this is a great idea, and would definitely love to put
   something together for a future meeting. But I’d like to target it at the
   broadest range of people, so if you’re interested in this topic, please
   email me privately and let me know what you’d like this meeting to cover.
   Are you brand new to Flash and would like to learn the basic principles?
   Have you got your feet wet and would like to start moving toward the
   deeper end of the pool?
   Any other ideas? What would you like to learn about/discuss?

2. Our next meeting. A couple people have expressed a preference for a
   summer meeting hiatus, and a couple others have been curious about when
   our next meeting will be held. Given how short our summers can be, what
   are your thoughts on holding a meeting at some point in the next month or
   so?

   (As of about September, I plan to establish a regular, predictable
   schedule for meetings. If you have a preference for when that would be –
   earlier in the month? later? – let me know!)

3. Software raffle. Twice per year, Adobe provides software for the group
   to raffle off. The winner gets to choose the software package of their
   choice, valued at up to $2100 (USD - practically the same thing at $2100
   Cdn these days!). I’m working up the rules for how the raffle for the
   second half of this year will work, and will post them in the next week or
   so, but to give you some advance warning: one way of earning extra raffle
   ‘tickets’ will be if you make a presentation to the group. So if there’s
   something that you’d like to present, send me an email!
4. Discussion list/forum. I’m exploring alternatives for setting up a
   web-based forum. The flashinthepeg.org blog uses Wordpress, and they also
   make forum software. It looks pretty slick and integrates nicely with
   Wordpress, so at some point in the next week or so, I’ll try installing
   that, so people can give it a try and see if it’s something they’d like to
   use.
   If folks would rather have something email-based, I could create a
   separate email list to be used for general discussion, and reserve this
   list for announcements only. How do people feel about having to subscribe
   to multiple lists?

Thanks to everybody who showed up for Thursday’s meeting! As promised, here are the files that were used in the demonstration:
Meeting #2 demo files.

These files were created to demonstrate how to implement SWFObject and sIFR in an HTML site.

I’ve included only the files that were necessary for the purposes of the demonstration. I highly recommend that you download the zip files for each script and take a look at them, since they have a wealth of extra information about how to make the most of the scripts.

I’ve also added fairly detailed comments to ‘home.html’ and to ‘navbar.fla’, to help explain what’s going on in each.

If you have any questions about anything in this package, email me.

Just a quick reminder that our next meeting is this Thursday, June 7, from 7:00 to 9:00 at Red River College, Princess Street campus, room W411. We’ll look at a couple of ways of integrating Flash into web sites in a standards- and search engine-friendly manner (more info here).

Room W411 is the same room as our last meeting; here’s a map showing how to get to the room:

Hope to see you out on Thursday!

Hi everybody, hope you’ve all had a great spring! My apologies for not being quicker in planning our second meeting, and for the rather short notice - we were on vacation for a while, and the time sort of slipped away.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, June 7, from 7:00 to 9:00 at Red River College, Princess Street campus (room TBA). We’ll take a look at a couple of really cool Javascript-based methods of integrating Flash content into web sites. These methods are standards-compliant, accessible, and search engine-friendly. And they’re very easy to use, so even if you don’t know any Javascript, you can use these methods to really enrich your sites with very little effort.

And, thanks to the good folks at FITC, we’ll be raffling off a free admission to this year’s FITC Winnipeg roadshow event to one lucky attendee!

The first bit of Javascript we’ll look at is Geoff Stearns’ SWFObject. One advantage of SWFObject over the standard method of embedding Flash content is that it lets you specify alternate content that is viewable to those who don’t have the Flash player installed. This content can also be crawled by search engines. By way of example, we’ll look at using SWFObject to add a Flash navigation bar to an HTML site.

The second method we’ll look at is sIFR. You know that you can use CSS to specify what fonts should be used to display HTML content, but ultimately you’re at the mercy of a relatively short list of common fonts. sIFR combines the power of Flash and Javascript to display small snippets of text (like headers and small quotes) in whatever font your design requires. We’ll look at how easy it is to get sIFR up and running.

If you can make it out, I’d appreciate it if you could let me know by email at darren@flashinthepeg.org. I hope to see you on June 7th!

Thanks to everybody who showed up for our first meeting last night; I think it went pretty well! Stay tuned for info on our next meeting, which should be sometime in late May/early June.