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New Resolutions for 2006

Okay, I know... I've been really slow with new stuff of late, but...

... I haven't been able to do any personal work for about three months. I currently have 4 big projects nearing completion at the same time, and all of them are urgent.

Hopefully, the new year should be a lot quieter. I am owed a lot of time off, so hopefully I can catch up then... that and the constant 15 hour days are getting a bit old without any time off.

Yup, I know... all the other web designers out there will be thinking 'Yeah, you think you've got it bad / You should see my hours...'.

Anyway, big new years resolutions for next year

Get up to speed with Longhorn so that I am cool with the new UI design features when they come out. Something that all ActionScript people should be taking a healthy interest in!

Get into webservices a lot more. I know how to do the Flash end of a web application, but I've only played with it from the server side. Its high time I started being able to do the whole loop myself quickly.

On the graphical side, I have a lot of half finished personal Flash projects that really need completing. Ive got a version of 'Passages' working using the page flip technique as the UI (see a few of the static pages below for a flavor of the actual content, although the final version will contain motion graphics rather than bitmaps). I've also gotta get some episodes of Draconis Coy finished... the link shows +10 year old work (most of it was actually done on a Commodore Amiga!) I've had this on semi-retirement for a while, but last year I converted some of the stuff (its all 3D rendering) to Softimage XSI using a current PC, and some of the stuff the new technology allows me to do really blew me away. I can't wait!

Do all the other stuff I've been promising - vCam and all the other goodies.

Start that online ActionScript reference I've been promising for a while. The templates and back end have been done, its just now a case of getting all the ActionScript 1.0/2.0/3.0 entries done (and getting release on some previous work I can use here). Yeah, its a mammoth task, but I actually did half the entries of the (print based) MX ActionScript reference in about 4 months, so I believe its a doable task (more fool me). Watch this space.

Posted by motiongraphics at 12:13 PM | Comments (1)

Flash 8 Essentials: learning Flash 8 on steroids

Disclaimer before I go on: I have not written the Flash 8 Upgrade Essentials book, have nothing to gain from it, and didn't even know until today that it was in production.

Okay, on with the show...

A few years ago I wrote a book called Flash MX Upgrade essentials. Its out again for Flash 8 and I've just been given a final draft of it. If you know Flash MX 2004, and need to learn Flash 8 in a hurry i.e. you are busy designer who can't waste time re-reading stuff you already know to find the stuff you don't know (...so that's all of us!), this is the book for you.

During the Flash beta phase, Macromedia give early releases of the software to designers. These designers play with the releases, see what is cool, what needs changing, and what is broken. Most of all, they get 6 months ahead of the pack in terms of learning curve.

The first edition of the Flash essentials book was a journal of my experience as a beta tester on Flash MX. My aim with the book was to put readers on the 'six months ahead' curve simply by reading a book that condensed all the new stuff into something that could be read in a couple of days.

Although a book that only looks at the new/upgraded sections of an application seems like a good idea (and why don't more publishers do it, etc), there is a very good reason why more Essentials type books are not around... this kind of book is very difficult to write. Everything is new and there is nothing you can write quickly (such as updated content from previous editions), and when you start the book it is not even clear what the contents page will look like. Although its cool for the reader that there is only new content, it takes as much time to write something like an Essentials book as it takes to write any two other books. So, lots of kudos to the authors of this book (Paul, Tink, Glen and Chris over as CRASH!MEDIA, Matt, and Todd).

So what do I think of the new edition?
There's a lot of new stuff in Flash 8, but most of it takes some digging around to find... unless you have this book. It goes through everything - all the new design tools, all the enhancements, and of course all the new ActionScript.

I really can't recommend this book enough. A must-buy for anyone even remotely involved with Flash design and development. The book is especially useful for the busy design office that needs a book full of Flash 8 design techniques, tips and walkthroughs that can be learnt quickly, and used now.

Posted by motiongraphics at 08:04 PM | Comments (4)