Actionscript Artist

Flashbelt takes place in Minneapolis, MN on June 7 - 10th, 2009. This conference has an all-star Flash Developer speaker lineup and a nice range of topics including Multiplayer Online games, Papervision3D, iPhone Development, Peer-to-Peer Communications and Streaming using Flash Media Server. More information on this conference can be found on there website at www.flashbelt.com.

The World Wildlife Foundation has produced a great Flash Video illustrating how much water is invovled in creating one cup of Latte. A great use of Flash to get an inportant message across. Click the image to get directed to the video.

Wwf Use less water video.

Came across an interesting article about AS3 optimization and what was the fastest way to copy an array. Benoit Beausejour at agit8 did a series of test using various methods of copying an array. The results are based on copying 500000 elements and are listed below:

for() unoptimized: 118ms

for() key-key optimized: 30ms

while() key-key optimized: 30ms

Bytearray copy: 176ms

Array slice(): 19ms

Array concat(): 8ms

More information about this and the source code that he used to find this out can be found here.

I found a great video on touch user interfaces (or TUI’s). It took place at NYC IxDA and the speaker is Dan Saffer, who is the author of Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices.

Some key notes that I took from this video are as follows:

• 1. Avoid putting essential features or information like a label below an interface element that can be touched, as it may become hidden by the user’s own hand.
• 2. Aim to have targets at least 11mm big. The iphone’s keyboard gets away with less by using adaptive targets that become bigger when the program and predict the next letter to by typed.

Do you have what it takes to become a special officer in the Swedish Armed Forces? Even if you are not inclined toward the military, this site is still worth exploring. It plays out as a game where you complete numerous tasks while seeing how you fare against other participants.

The game play and game physics and user interface are truly outstanding. A great use of 3D, which I’m guessing is probably Papervision3D. Click the image to open application.

The following is a list of shortcut keys that I find most used in Flash. These are the same for all versions of Flash to date. I have denoted these shortcuts using a PC. If your using a MAC, just change the CTRL to COMMAND.

Tools:

Selection Tool - V
Sub Selection Tool - A
Free Transform Tool - Q
Gradient Transform Tool - F

Line Tool - N
Lasso Tool - L
Pen Tool - P
Text Tool - T
Oval Tool - O

Flash Rectangle Tool - R
Pencil Tool - Y
Brush Tool - B
Ink Bottle Tool - S
Paint Bucket Tool - K

Flash Eyedropper Tool - I
Flash Eraser Tool - E

A great example of keeping the attention of your user in a Flash presentation. Its also filled with good content for getting more out of life. Check it out:

3 nice long days of all things Flash in Minneapolis this June featuring award winning designers, developers and authors. The excellent speaker line up includes Joshua Davis, Jared Tarbell, Craig Swann, Mario Klingemann, Robert Reinhardt, Jeremy Thorp, GMUNK, and a boatload of other pros.

The 30+ sessions will cover multimedia DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT and creating ENGAGING experiences. Presentations on digital art, motion graphics + animation, rich internet applications, database integration, actionscript 3, Flash CS3, flash video, data visualization, experience design, and the future. The full conference registration fee is $395. (Student discount available)

When developing Flash Websites and applications you will occasionally have to insert a scrollbar. In terms of usability, it is a good idea to use a scrollbar that your users are used to. Everyone who has used the internet has used the scrollbar located in their internet browser (Firefox, or IE). Therefore this is a good standard scrollbar to use especially when developing applications.

Think about the process of filling out a series of forms on a HTML based website. As you move from one screen to the next the screen goes completely white before going to the next screen. The amount of time that the screen goes white depends on you connection speed and the server’s speed. A usability study found that people get a little stressed when the screen goes white. Perhaps they think the signup process is going to crash on them as it probably has in the past. This ranks poorly on the usability scale. Most HTML based forms or applications are multi-page applications. This usually happens when the user’s session expires. This only happens in HTML based applications. There are ways around this using DHTML and other tricks but generally this is a problem for HTML.