SOME RANDOM DUDE

A while back, I wrote a small article about why I felt Silverlight should fail. The writeup generated a lot of good conversation and a bit of ire from Silverlight supporters (such as this example) so I thought it would be beneficial to write a followup. Let me try to make this clear, I am not a Flash fanboy. While I use Flash to pay the bills, I have written about my concerns with Flash. It is my belief that use of Flash on the web (and other RIA technologies) will continue to dwindle as open-source solutions that provide similar solutions take their place. Even if Silverlight usurps Flash (something I greatly doubt), there may not be much of a kingdom to reign upon once they do. I think Adobe sees this shift, I am unsure if Microsoft does.
(more…)adobe, air, browser plugin, cross browser, cross platform, flash, flex, javascript, microsoft, open source, ria, silverlight standards

Earlier this week, I asked readers what they disliked about Flash. The post spearheaded a large and helpful discussion on the various issues where Flash needs improvement. Many issues brought up were well know and expected, while others were things I had yet to consider. While I tried to respond to each person’s thoughts, I felt it may be interesting for me to lay out what does not excite me about the Flash technology as a whole. Let me preface this by stating, once again, that I make a living in Flash and there are many, many things that I like about it. I have spent time defending it - however, until some of these issues are addressed, I will continue to have my doubts.
(more…)adobe, annoyances, bad taste, browser plugin, context menu, doubts, experiences, flash player, flash projects, flash technology, intensity, internet users, many things, meta, new feature, preface, resentment, specifics web design

I spend a large majority of my work day working with or designing for Flash-based interfaces. Flash is essentially how I make a living on a daily basis. That said, there are many personal/philosophical issues I have with Flash on the web that I struggle with everyday I work with it. Flash has almost always been a divisive technology for the web community. Most people fall in either the love or hate camps with few not holding a strong opinion about it. I am planning to go into my thoughts about Flash - my likes, my dislikes and everything in between later this week. But first, I wanted to hear what your frustrations are with the experience of Flash on the web. Your thoughts can hit any subject - vague to specific. I just want to hear from the people whose opinions are the most important, the users.

Recently I posed the question to myself of how many sites I visit on a daily basis that use Flash. When I really thought about it, the answer really shocked me. I would love to hear if my personal experience mimics yours.

Your comments are going to greatly impact how I direct my article, so please lend me your thoughts.

Update: - You can now read what annoys me about Flash.adobe flash, flash, flex, web design web development

I am putting more work into my Layout Organizers project for various reasons. First, this code has already been quite helpful on a couple projects. Second, it is going to be worked in to a really cool open source Flex library. There are still a ton of features that need to be added and issues that need to be resolved, but progress is definitely being made. I spent time working on more primitive layout organizers that will be more helpful on everyday projects. The four new organizers are not anything fancy, but they will most likely be the most used out of all the ones I write.

(more…)actionscript, as3, demo, flash player, lattice, layout organizers, open source organizers

For quite some time now, I have been playing with breaking DisplayObjects into a grid to sample pixel data in order to create visualizations. I have spent time with this in both Actionscript and in Processing (see project). For Actionscript in particular though, I wanted to make the process cleaner and easier to implement. What has resulted is a slightly tangential project which ultimately makes sampling pixel data easier while offering a whole separate set of features. In its simplest form, the BitmapSegmentor allows you to take a DisplayObject's bitmapData and break it into a grid of individual segments. These segments can then be used for various purposes, including pixel data sampling. (more...)actionscript, actionscript 3, as3, bitmap, bitmap segmentor, bitmapdata, color, color sampler, demo, display object, flash, flex, grid, sample, sampling, segments, segmet video