Back to Nature

I recently went on a camping trip to King's Canyon National Park. Didn't think about work, answer cell phones or watch TV. What a concept. I did manage to hike over 18 miles of beautiful trails and got a chance to relax. No bear sightings, but came across two rattlesnakes, and a inquisitive deer came over to check us out.

I love to take photos on my trips, and was pleasantly surprised that my rechargeable batteries lasted the entire trip. I shot hundreds of photos, and sadly (I'll blame Vista) - my card reader fried one of my compact flash cards, so I lost about a two hundred shots. Before it fried, I did manage to transfer about half of the photos. (If anyone knows of a way to repair a damaged cf do contact me)

I'm using Picasa 2 to manage and upload the photos. I love the simplicity and the simple tools. One cool feature is the ability to upload the photos to a web album, which also has a RSS media feed. A media feed means you can load my photos in a browser or rss reader and see thumbnails. Also there's really cool plugin called PicLens that detects the media feed and creates what they call an immersive experience. Think coverflow.

Worth checking out. First install the PicLens plugin and come back here and click the image above or go to the RSS media feed, and click on the PicLens button on your browser. It's possible to have images on the webpage launch PicLens, but blogger doesn't allow link tags.

Code Behind

Last night I had an opportunity to do a presentation at BAADUG about Code Behind techniques and a basic introduction to Cairngorm and MVC.

Good news no one ran away screaming, it was after all, my speaking debut at BAADUG, and elsewhere for that matter. I'm a coder not a polished speaker, so I have no regets for any lack of powerpoint slides in my presentation. We'll leave the ppt for the Adobe guys... What I had hoped for was a way to introduce our members to some of the basic concepts in flex programming that I personally use day in and day out.

Feel free to comment publicly or privately, be kind (I am human) if you attended last night's presentation, as I'd like to hear some feedback.

Also would help to know found the information useful and what you'd like hear in a future talk.

As I mentioned last night, I started out as a TV news editor, not an engineer, I'm just a quick study, and willing try anything and spend hours hacking away. For me it's always been about the end result, but recently I've learned that how to get there is just as important. Techniques and design patterns are useful means to that end.

Networking, is the primary main reason I show up for BAADUG meetings. I hope that showing members an insight of my own practices, will help open up future meeting discussions for all.

The flex community offers programmers of all levels fantastic resources for development ideas and solutions. Also as Mark mentioned, our group can always benefit from members doing such presentations, so step and show us what you got.

As promised, I said I'd provide some links to some of the great articles I've read on the subject.

Code-Behind (Facade) Design Patterns:

Ted Patrick's Article:
http://www.onflex.org/ted/2007/02/code-behind-in-flex-2.php

Adobe Dev Net Article:
http://www.onflex.org/ted/2007/02/code-behind-in-flex-2.php

Cairngorm:
David Tucker's Video Series: (IMHO:Winner Best intro to Cairngorm series) Parts 1-5
http://www.davidtucker.net/category/cairngorm/

AS3 Libraries Demo'd:
Yahoo Maps:
http://developer.yahoo.com/flash/maps/index.html

Degrafa:
http://www.degrafa.com/

Finally last night's raffle prize sponsor:
Premium Port Wines.
http://www.premiumport.com/

Expectations...

We all have them. Managing client expectations can be challenging.

Adobe's Ted Patrick has a great suggestion - when showing clients functional prototypes (wireframes) - don't use the default halo skin in flex.

Use a simpler black and white skin to keep them focused on the functionality of the app vs distracting them with apps look -- Check out Ted's Blog.

Wow Ted, what a great idea! He's so right... with flex it's easy to mock up quick prototypes of applications to illustrate functionality, most of us find it's easier for the client to "get it" when they can see a working example and click through the UI. Even with timeline and schedules, they don't just understand how much effort is requred to move a functional prototype over to a finished product.

Clearly if you deliver an app that's got a pleasing interface, you set up an expectations - that the app is further along, or if the client likes UI then they might not consider other alternatives.

Ted's idea is so simple, I wish I had thought of it ....

Wireframes and prototypes are a great tool to communicate the application design -- then again so scratches on a napkins.

One thought why not dumb it down ever further... Actually use a napkin.