ActionScript.com is introducing the ActionScript reference section. It's like PHP.net but for ActionScript. It's like Flashdoc and Javadoc but with user comments. It's like ActionScript: The Definitive Guide but it's online and free! AND it includes components.

 posted by Vera Fleischer (8/23/2003 08:11:09 PM);

Today was Day 2 of the FlashKit conference in San Jose.

Chris MacGregor did the keynote, titled Success Starts With the User. He likened the user interface to a waiter in a restaurant.



Chris did a very laid-back keynote while wearing a snappy suit, which gets him definite points as a speaker. His talk about usability and the user experience was so inspiring that a little later, when Sas and I visited the bathroom where, in order to determine if a stall was occupied or not, we had to bend down to look for feet, Sas remarked that the bathrooms had an aweful user interface.

Next up was Mike Lyda of Cisco Systems with a presentation titled ActionScript Performance Best Practices. He gave us a list of about 30 tips that can help optimize ActionScript performance. Here are some of the ones I thought not everybody might know about:
- Export movies without trace actions by selecting Omit Trace actions from the Publish Settings.
- Use TextField.length rather than TextField.text.length to get the number of characters in the text field.
- Make calls to external Javascript functions for intensive processing. (Who knew?)
- Use short variable names. (Short function names don't make as much of a difference though.)
- Instead of
for (var i = 0; i < myString.length; i++) {
do something;
}

do this:
var theLength = myString.length;
for (var i = 0; i < theLength; i++) {
do something;
}
- If possible use if/else statements rather than switch statements.

For the entire list of Mike Lyda's performance tips, go here.

The next presentation I went to was Phillip Kerman's Exploring Practical Uses For FlashCom. He showed us a neat little online answering machine/greeting card where visitors can leave messages with plain text, audio and/or video. I also liked Phillip's presentation because I won one of his books, ActionScripting in Flash MX. I am glad I finally have my own copy of this book since I have been recommending it to several people who asked me how they should go about learning ActionScript.

I had lunch with the Electric Rain guys and with John Starkey, webmaster of FlashKit.

After lunch the Panel discussion took place. Aesthetics vs. Functionality: Where Should the Two Meet? Kristin Henry was the moderator, and the other panelists were Jonathan Kaye of Amethyst Research, Sas Jacobs of Everything Is Possible, Chris MacGregor, and Jessica D'Elena of Animax. Below is a picture of the panelists in action.



I spent the duration of the next presentation at Starbucks with Steve Ogden and Scott Manning, I'm afraid to admit. Oh well.

Finally, I saw Michael Williams, product manager at Macromedia, give his presentation on application development for Macromedia Central. Michael tells us that Central is in Beta 3 as of today, and that it will be released later this year. Scott Manning has a much better review of this presentation, so go read his.

After the conclusion of the conference, Scott Manning, Jon Williams and I talked Flash trash over Indian food for a few hours, and then I went home.

 posted by Vera Fleischer (8/22/2003 11:19:01 PM);

Today was Day 1 of the FlashKit conference. The keynote was given by Macromedia's senior product manager, Forest Key. After talking about the present state of Flash, he also gave us a little future splash of what we should expect from future versions of Flash:
1. More focus on states instead of the timeline since the timeline has become a somewhat outdated metaphor which only really works for animation.
2. Being able to export directly to .swf from Final Cut Pro.
3. A video component that allows you to scrub the movie back and forth in real time.
4. Automated routines/scripts for transitions, effects, and events, similar to behaviors in Dreamweaver, and 3rd party extensions for 3D, text animation, etc.

After the keynote, I went to Danny Franzreb's presentation titled Introduction to XML in Flash. I didn't really feel like I needed an introduction but I wanted to show him my support since he traveled all the way from Germany for the conference. And I did learn something new from this presentation, which is that the first element in an XML document can't have any siblings. Didn't know that before.

Next I went to Robert Reinhardt's The New World of Flash. He showed us a cool project he has thrown together recently: a messageboard in which people can submit messages along with live audio and video streams of themselves. If you go to the post titled FlashKit 2003 San Jose, you will see a video of himself and the audience at the conference, which he recorded and submitted live during the session. I know it's a little blurry, but if you look really closely, you can see me in the audience.

Then I went to Jonathan Kaye's session on State Machines. Jonathan is a generalist whose presentations are very theoretical. I should really listen to him because I tend to just jump right into the code. He, on the other hand, didn't show any code but he did give away some CD's with very "valuable software" on it.

Bill Spencer aka Pope de Flash was supposed to be next, but he had to cancel at the last minute. Kick-ass designer Jim Foley of Electric Rain took his place and showed us some amazing 3D animations he has been working on. For a great example of Hollywood meets Silicon Valley, take in the Crime Scene clip at Flash Illuminations.

Scott Manning took the stage next. He talked about video. It was hilarious. He had some great old gems of videos featuring He-man and Transformers. He also gave all of us a copy of Muzak's Video Control component, which I have put to use in this nifty little video of myself hula-hooping:

Lastly, I attended Sas Jacobs' presentation titled ActionScripting: Working With UI Components And External Data Sources. Sas is a Flash and ASP developer from Perth, Australia, who does business as Anything Is Possible. As the title of her presentation suggests, she talked about using components with server-side data, and she did so in a refreshingly un-object-oriented way. It made me feel all nostalgic about the days when ActionScript was exclusively procedural.

Besides Danny, Scott and Sas, I got to meet some more extremely cool people: Silke Fleischer of eHelp (yes, we share the same name and incidentally also the same birth month and year and country); David Emberton of ActionScript.com; Chris MacGregor of Flazoom; MD Dundon who is SO much fun; and several other speakers and attendees. After Sas' closing presentation, thirteen of us had dinner and margaritas at Pedro's. Towards the very end we were joined by Jim Foley, Steve Ogden and Paul of Electric Rain.


From left: Don Synstelien, Sas Jacobs, Jonathan Kaye, May-Li Khoe, me, Jon Williams, Chris MacGregor, Silke Fleischer, MD Dundon, Kristin Henry, Danny Franzreb, Nader Nejat, Scott Manning.


Here we have the same group, but rearranged and with margaritas. I was lucky to sit next to Scott Manning and Chris MacGregor since both of them made me laugh constantly.


Here we have Kristin, Chris, and Don scratching on their CD-ROM turntables.


That would be me. Don't ask. Or if you must, ask Kristin. Thanks again, Kristin!

 posted by Vera Fleischer (8/21/2003 11:22:02 PM);

I'm blogging this live from the FlashKit conference in San Jose. I will be here all day today and tomorrow. If you're speaking or attending, come say hi. I would love to meet you.

 posted by Vera Fleischer (8/21/2003 10:17:13 AM);

Macromedia went shopping for buildings. This can only mean good things. Right?

 posted by Vera Fleischer (8/19/2003 01:28:19 PM);