Powerflasher FDT – Flash/Flex Development Environment Blog

Attending the FITC festival in San Francisco, the Powerflasher team was interviewed by Adobe and featured in their EDGE website newsletter:

Bruno Fonzi: The impressive new thing is just seeing devices, having Flash working on devices.

Martin Libich:  Well, I think in the Flash world, in general, what we are seeing and this is crucial for what we do, is the possibility of taking Flash out of the browser. Using the flexibility of Flash to do what has been done on the web anywhere you want, in the store front, at the counter when you are ordering your latte.

The Conference

In this article, HTLM5 vs. Flash at a Flash Conference, Yosun Chang captured the openness and true interest in digital art design and technology that explores and goes beyond Flash. This is valid for FITC, FlashOnTheBeach (FOTB), FlashAndTheCity (FATC), FlashBelt and many other Community driven conferences around the world! So many hard to mention all, sorry !

Yosun has even missed however the presentation about haxe.org another alternative language to ActionScript or Flex ”Everything you wanted to know about haXe, but were afraid to ask”  with Nicolas Cannasse presented at the super cool Influxis Voodoo Lounge
We have also done some interviewed ourselves to some of the haXe fans attending FITC, including the number one fan Nicolas Cannasse

We also had a blast on the rooftop CODAME event, it could not have better a place for Powerflasher to celebrate our first year in USA as a Digital Interactive Development company. Looking forward to new upcoming exciting projects !

A special thanks to our supporters, Gaia Online, Organic, Mypressi and Influxis for the drinks!

I would like to thank @Starpause for helping us to organize the art tech side of the event with the help of @keisukes @andremichelle @radley @calebhaye @jamiew @EvanMorris transmote.com for making CODAME an awesome multimedia experience ! Buck & Sumit as great hosts of the now legendary San Francisco rooftop residence!

And big thanks to the fog for passing by and make the CODAME event a full San Francisco experience!

Check it out yourself in this Photo Gallery taken by @photonburst and video taken by @keisukes

FITC was definitely fun and informative, we were glad to see you in our new home, San Francisco, and hope to you here again next year !

@BrunoFonzi

FlashCamp St.Louis kicks-off September 3rd and Powerflasher is proud to be a sponsor.

The full-day unconference will feature Flash, ActionScript and Flex/AIR sessions from a number of top industry experts on the Adobe Flash Platform.

We recently caught up with David Ortinau, who will speak at Flash Camp St. Louis,  and invited him for a chat about his upcoming session and convinced him to give our readers a sneak preview.

David Ortinau is a freelance web developer relying on the kindness of many friends to deliver his projects on time and with minimal blood-loss. He has been developing web applications for 15 yrs with internet startups, advertising agencies, and enterprise healthcare vendors. While the list of technologies he admits to knowing rapidly shrinks, he continues to work with Flash, .NET, Rails, and mobile platforms (iPhone, Android, Windows).

FDT: Why did you chose the Managing and Using Assets topic?

David: It’s a common decision all developers need to make, and it’s something that should be of interest to both developers and designers. This is where the hand-off occurs with most assets, and interactivity has a significant impact on how those assets need to be provided and implemented. There are quite a few options and many developers I speak with only know and use 1 or 2.

FDT: Why should developers care about Managing and Using Assets in AS and Flex projects?

David: Filesize and performance are two good reasons. It all contributes to user experience. It’s not just a technical decision, but a creative decision that impacts pace and flow.

Developers often complain their designer counterparts vanish after the initial handoff. Often it’s because the designer’s ability to continue contributing to the project is hindered by the asset management strategy. If you use a strategy that allows the designer to continue accessing and manipulating files, then that’s a team win.

FDT: What will attendees see in your presentation that’s not shown in your sneak preview?

David: I’ll be featuring some real world scenarios from past projects. I’ll touch again on the screencast (not relive it) and discuss a variety of other options available such as bulk loaders, RSLs, and swfs with library loaders.

And for anyone that has never seen FDT in action, I’m gonna throw as much FDT-fu at them as I can. The first time anyone sees the code generation and templates at work in FDT, it’s absolutely mind blowing. I love tools that make me faster, better at getting to the end result.

FDT: Where can readers learn more about you?

David: You can find me on Twitter @davidortinau, and my blog.

FDT: Which technologies interest you most and why?

David: Mobile and touch, generally speaking, because of their growing ubiquity and capacity to change our lives; how we think and behave. These devices and experiences can be very persuasive and I’m intrigued by those possibilities. The whole human computer interaction field is fascinating.

FDT: Which sessions are you looking forward to seeing at Flash Camp STL?

David: It’s an amazing lineup this year; I could list all the speakers! I mean, look at this schedule.

Top to bottom there’s not a session I want to miss. I’m plan to geek out during sessions from Jeff Roberts on IoC concepts, and Ben Stucki with “The Art of Computer Science”. I always love a good usability discussion, which we’ll get with Danielle Cooley.

FDT: Any interesting side projects to promote?

David: Last year I launched White Paper Bible (whitepaperbible.org), which was my first big foray into Rails and iPhone development. It’s a personal, topical Bible tool.

My side projects this year have turned to business topics, which is embodied in 360Flex coming up Sept 19-22 in DC. I’m presenting 2 sessions that I’m very excited about: “How to Scale Your Freelance Business and Maximize Profit”, and “The Invaluable Freelance Flasher”. People can read more about that at my blog and 360flex.com.

Sneak Preview:

Use Flash Pro Assets in ActionScript and Flex Projects

Like what you see?

Do not miss David’s full session at Flash Camp St. Louis, September 3rd. In addition to great sessions, there will be plenty of giveaways (including FDT Pure licenses), swag, and lunch too!

Find David’s and other great screencasts on the Powerflasher FDT Screencast group on Vimeo.

As the RIA Forum in the beautiful city of Zürich, Switzerland, is coming up, we are supporting the event and its great sessions. We’re sure the forum will be as good as last time and the time before, so come and make sure to take part in the FDT raffle.

Multiscreen gaming with the Flash Platform – Desktop, Web and Devices

As you might know by now, at Powerflasher, we like to play! Plus, we think Flash and Gaming are a good match !

We are very excited to host together with Adobe our first Flash On Games (FoG) meeting, scheduled the 7th of Sept 2010

This is a flash gaming group located and hosted in San Francisco, focused and aim to involve audience and speakers at the national level. All sessions will be broadcasted live and recorded. A link to the webcast will be sent in a follow up email once registered. I hope you can join us.

Register here flashongames.eventbrite.com

In our first meeting we’ll have the following two session:

1. Flash Sizing Zen: Android Devices

Getting Android to Respect Your Intent

by Allen Ellison Solutions Architect @ Adobe

When you bring Flash games and content to the multi-screen web using Flash Player 10.1, it can be a challenge to get your content to displayed consistently across devices as you intended; in terms of size, orientation, alignment, interactivity and full-screen behavior. This becomes even more complex when you start taking web tablets into consideration.

There are a number of obstacles to creating a consistent and usable experience including mobile content transcoders, mobile devices that behave in certain ways to make a web experience really intended for desktop systems accessible to mobile users, an inconsistent use of HTML tags and meta-tags across device families, and user-configurable browser or device settings.

So, in order to create an experience that scales gracefully between desktop browsers and mobile browsers, this session will walk you through the steps necessary to eliminate the various potential points of variation.

2. Particle Systems 101

by Alec McEachran, Senior Software Engineer @ Gaia Interactive

If you have ever wanted fire, waterfalls, clouds, snow or myriad other effects in your Flash games, then you have needed to create particle systems. There are loads of particle effect systems out there that might suit your needs, but if you want your games to remain fast, you have to roll your own.

In pure AS3, this session will look at one way to build a fast particle system from the ground up, and survey some of the techniques for moulding your particles into the effects you’re looking to achieve.

About Flash On Games (FoG)

FlashOnGames covers all aspects of a flash gaming development phases, design best practices and technical challenges. Covering the entire gaming lifecycle, from the initial concept game idea, the designer and developer workflows, testing aspects and customers feedback and delivery.

It explores the gaming ecosystem, social platforms, frameworks, distribution, marketplace for the multiscreen gaming.

Follow us on Twitter @FlashOnGames or visit our website flashongames.com

Cheers,

Bruno Fonzi

Recently a new community-project has been launched which combines most of the active FDT blogs like Aiden Tailor, Matan Uberstein, Marvin Blase, Francis Varga, Alan Klement and many others. WeLoveFDT fetches their feeds, filters them for FDT related articles and teasers them on www.welovefdt.com. This way it provides a continuously updated summary based on everything that deals with FDT in the blogosphere, so users can quickly access related news, poke around or search for a specific topic without having to fight with Google keywords.

The idea came up as more and more great articles about FDT were published and some days after people started asking where to find this and that again and who had written it – as they remembered the topic but not the blog itself. So Marvin Blase thought of how to summarize these articles without disregarding the blogs itself but to provide a self-refreshing, community based feed. With great help of Fabian Beiner this idea was quickly realised and a first version was able to launch. The idea behind this might be transferred to other topics as well – there already popped up a request for doing the same with Robotlegs or the like.

If you are blogging about FDT from time to time feel free to sign up at their “Take part” section to enlarge the pool of which articles are gathered. The more the better!

Is your Flash/Flex User Group actively looking for speakers and sponsors?

Powerflasher FDT is big on education and we’re ready to help you organize presentations on the latest innovations in Flex/Flash development from experienced and motivated speakers as well as other topics that your members are looking for – with no added marketing fluff.

Joining our User Group Support Program is easy. Just click here to sign-up and you’ll receive program details, assistance finding quality speakers and the Powerflasher FDT newsletter.

We’re already supporting a number of User Groups worldwide and would be thrilled to have your group in our program. Please send an email if you have any questions before signing up.

We look forward to working with you to make the Flash/Flex community more remarkable.

We’re on the lookout for speakers from around the globe to present on Flash/Flex, ActionScript, MXML or haXe topics. If you would like to join our network of speakers and be introduced to User Group leaders and event organizers in your region.

FAQ:

Q: What is the goal of the program?

A: More speakers doing more presentations at more regional events. We want to help connect  user group leaders and speakers, showcasing speakers and their areas of expertise and helping groups get the speakers and topics they want. We also want to work to increase the presentation skills of participating speakers and help provide resources and future speaking opportunities for them.

Q: What are the advantages of the FDT Speaker Program?

A: We realize that some speakers are already well-connected and may not need as much assistance in making connections. For them the program becomes a way to showcase their speaking activities as we add event history and group reviews to speaker profiles. We will help less-experienced speakers gain more community exposure and establish a track record for conference speaking events.

Q: Who can participate?

A: This is open to any speakers wishing to present on Flash/Flex, ActionScript, haXe and MXML topics.

Q: How does this compare with other speaker lists?

A: Our goal is to make this much more than just a list. Additional steps such as peer/group event ratings, speaker training opportunities, and additional speaking opportunities are all things we’re working towards.

Q: Who benefits?

A: User groups benefit by being able to find speakers in their “region” that they might not be aware of. Speakers benefit from increased exposure with the community and a way to share their willingness to speak on specific Flash/Flex topics. At the end of the day, we hope that the overall community benefits.

Q: How do I add to the list of topics?

A: Just send us an email request or simply fill the following