HomeWorks Visualizer is similar to the Beauti-Tone Paint Home Designer in that it allows the customer to apply product to a variety of home exteriors and interior rooms, including kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms and more. HomeWorks Visualizer includes a wide range of product categories including siding, stucco, brick, stone, roofing, decking, garage doors, concrete coatings, paint, doors, windows, flooring, ceiling, countertops, wall coverings and tiles. Users can save their projects, email them to a friend, and request a home install from their local Home Hardware store.

You can use the HomeWorks Visualizer here: http://www.homehardware.ca/index/renoworks-homeworks

Your Scrapbook is a great place for members of the Home Hardware site to store photos they find inspirational into their very own scrapbook. Using the Image Grabber utility, which can be launched on any website using a bookmark, a member can add photos on the fly while they are surfing any web site.

You can use Your Scrapbook here: http://www.homehardware.ca/index/renoworks-scrapbook
Note: You will need to register on the Home Hardware site before you can use the Scrapbook.

We developed the HomeWorks Visualizer & Your Scrapbook using Adobe Flex, Java and db4o. We developed the Image Grabber using JSP, JavaScript & HTML. Congratulations to everyone at RenoWorks for bringing this project to life.

Home Hardware also launched the Beauti-Tone Paint Colour Finder. This desktop application allows users to drag an eyedropper over any image on their computer and find the nearest matching Beauti-Tone colour.

We developed the Home Designer using Adobe Flex, Java and db4o. We developed the Colour Picker using Java. Congratulations to everyone at RenoWorks for bringing this project to life.

You can try these applications out for yourself at http://www.homehardware.ca/index/renoworks.

While working at Rare Method our team invested a lot of effort into designing and developing this great interactive Flash and HTML/CSS hybrid site. ArtPad was commissioned by the Calgary Glenbow Museum for the purpose of informing and interesting youth in contemporary art. I’m not sure when this site finally went live, but chances are that you have never seen or even heard about it, as I was unable to find a press release or news article anywhere. Take a few minutes to check it out. I think you will enjoy it and maybe learn a thing or two about contemporary art.

http://www.glenbow.org/artpad

I just finished skimming through this book and have decided that every Flex developer should own a copy. I have been developing Flex applications for over a year now and I still managed to learn a ton of new things from this book. The authors have done an excellent job of formatting the book into problem and solution scenarios. Quick and easy answers. The book starts off with issues a Flex noob might encounter and then proceeds all the way up to issues a Flex pro might encounter. Each solution includes code and a discussion/explination. This book is not really a cover to cover read, but more of a quick reference that you want to have within an arms reach while coding. I still recommend skimming through it when you first get it, because I’m sure you’ll learn a bunch of new tidbits right off the bat.

You can get more info and purchase this book here.

I worked on the initial stages of this redesign at Critical Mass over two years ago. My involvement at the time was building a working prototype of the site in Flash. Only a few vehicles could be selectable back then, but overall the site’s design has not changed too much. The Mercedes-Benz’ development team has done a great job of finishing it off.

Congratulations to everyone involved in creating this site.

http://developer.yahoo.com/flash/articles/display-list.html

The Yahoo! Flash Developer Center also has some great open-source components available for download. I am playing around with the Charts and I am very impressed. These seem like a great and free alternative to FusionCharts, which at this time are not available for ActionScript 3.0.

Here are some examples of the Yahoo! ASTRA Charts:
http://developer.yahoo.com/flash/astra-flash/charts/examples.html

First off lets start with loading an XML file and reading its contents. I realize that there are much easier ways to load XML into Flash than this, but the advantage here is that I can use File.applicationResourceDirectory which allows me to target the installation directory for the XML file that was included with the AIR package. In this snippet I am using the synchronous open method. This essentially pauses everything else in the Flash movie until it has completed its task (opening the file).

import flash.filesystem.*;

private var _data:String; // Data string pulled from the xml file.

/**
 * Load the xml file and read its data.
 */
private function loadData():void
{
  var dataFile:File = File.applicationResourceDirectory.resolve("data.xml");
  var stream:FileStream = new FileStream();
  stream.open(dataFile, FileMode.READ);
  _data = stream.readUTFBytes(stream.bytesAvailable);
  stream.close();
}

This next snippet shows how to save data to a file using the asynchronous openAsync method. The asynchronous methods allow Flash to continue running normally and use events to trigger user specified actions.

private var _dataXML:XML;	// The XML data.

/**
 * Save the modified data to the xml file.
 */
private function saveData():void
{
  var dataFile:File = File.applicationResourceDirectory.resolve("data.xml");
  var stream:FileStream = new FileStream();
  stream.openAsync(dataFile, FileMode.WRITE);
  stream.writeUTFBytes(_dataXML);
  stream.addEventListener(Event.CLOSE, onDataSaved);
  stream.close();
}

/**
 * Called when the data has been successfully saved.
 * Load the saved data back into the application.
 */
private function onDataSaved(event:Event):void
{
  loadData();
}

If you are planning on using AIR (Apollo) for your own projects I would highly recommend reading Apollo for Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide by Mike Chambers, Robert L. Dixon & Jeff Swartz.

The new products include:

• Adobe InDesign CS3
• Adobe Photoshop CS3
• Adobe Illustrator CS3
• Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional
• Adobe Flash CS3 Professional
• Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
• Adobe Fireworks CS3
• Adobe Contribute CS3
• Adobe After Effects CS3
• Adobe Premiere Pro CS3
• Adobe Encore CS3
• Adobe Soundbooth CS3

The launch will be broadcasted here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/launchevent/webcast/

If you are interested, here are the new features of Flash CS3
http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/features/

You can download it here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/

Here is a snippet of code showing the workaround to this issue:

function reset():Void {
  var next:Boolean = false;
  var prev:Boolean = false;
  var keyboardListener:Object = new Object();
  keyboardListener.onKeyDown = function () {
    if (Key.getCode() == 39) next = true;
    if (Key.getCode() == 37) prev = true;
  }
  this.onEnterFrame = function() {
    if (next) {
      delete this.onEnterFrame;
      trace("next page");
      flash.external.ExternalInterface.call("alert",
                                            "next page");
      reset();
    }
    if (prev) {
      delete this.onEnterFrame;
      trace("previous page");
      flash.external.ExternalInterface.call("alert",
                                            "previous page");
      reset();
    }
  }
  Key.addListener(keyboardListener);
}
reset();

I added some JavaScript Alerts to prove it works in the browser.

The official announcement from the Adobe Creative Solutions PR team.
http://blogs.adobe.com/creativesolutionspr/

Fraser

Some of the new features include:
- Advanced Color Picker
- Export All CSS
- Support for StyleName Styles
- Text Formatting Styles
- Text-Entry for Slider Controls
- Inclusion on New Components
- Improved Navigation
- Indication of Components Edited
- Progressive Disclosure of Controls
- Improved Graphic Representation of Styles
- Improved Scrollbar management

To read more about the new Flex Style Explorer visit Adobe Consulting.
Try the online version.

Before leaving Critical Mass I spent around three months on the Rolex team helping out on the development side of this site. Although the site appears to be completly Flash to the common user, it supports deep linking and it is search engine friendly. If the user does not have Flash installed it degrades gracefully to an HTML version.

The design is incredible, featuring stunning photographs of scenery from around the world as well as many very gorgeous models, and of course plenty of beautiful watches that most of us will never be able to afford.

Congratulations to everyone involved in creating this site.

I am currently in the process of reading the excerpt from Tom Muck’s Flash Remoting: The Definitive Guide. This excerpt is part of a new partnership between ActionScript.org and O’Reilly. It seems like a good deal for both sides. I am sure this will drive a lot more traffic to ActionScript.org and inevitably lead to more book sales for O’Reilly. So far the first few pages of the excerpt have been very well written and quite informative.

While reading the article I have realized that I will have to change my job title. Now that Flex has been released I am no longer a Flash Developer, but instead, a Client-Side ActionScript Programmer. I think that this is a much more dynamic sounding title, but it will take some getting used to after referring to myself as a Flash Developer for so long.

I am quite excited about the freshened up ActionScript.org site and enjoy having the ability to preview books before investing in them. Of course O’Reilly is one of my favorite publishers, so this is good news to me.

Read the full press release

See a preview of the next Yahoo Messenger here:
http://messenger.yahoo.com/windowsvista.php

Overall, this new approach to branding by Adobe seems much better than the old swirls and feathers of the past, but I don’t really understand the color wheel. I’m assuming that it has something to do with the relation between products, but I cant recognize what that relation is, only that Adobe has left the products that they acquired from Macromedia the same color that they were before.

Roll over the icons to view the related product.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/veerles-blog/328983830/

Congratulations and the best of luck Scott!

P.S. Make sure you say hi to Schiller and Dr. Yes for me.

http://try.flex.org/index.cfm

Copy and paste between Adobe’s programs is great. There was an example of copying a Photoshop image into Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver opens up an optimize for web window in which you can specify the compresion and file path for the pasted image. Dreamweaver then creates the href tag to the saved location. PSDs can be imported into Flash preserving the folders and layers. Flash gives the user an option to save layers as movieclips and also allows for maintaining the edibility of text fields. Blend modes also convert to Flash’s native format, so more adjustments can be made. The transition of files from design to development is about to get much easier. Fireworks is also very impressive. It is now a great way for designers to layout Flex applications using component “templates” that are incuded right in the software. These templates support 9 scale just like the Flex components do. The designer can build a slideshow of the application using invisible buttons that target selected slides. This slideshow can be output into HTML and sent to a client for review. After the application is design is signed off, Fireworks exports is in MXML. This is going to save so much time for developers. Now, the work only has to be done once. That seems to be the main goal of this whole Adobe and Macromedia merger. Make more money by making the software everyone already uses work together seamlessly. I will soon be able to get right into coding without wasting a bunch of time mimicking flats. I’m stoked!

I attended all of the Apollo talks and am very excited about about it. I always wanted to learn a desktop application development language so that I had the knowledge to build offline apps. Now I dont have to waste the time learning a new language when I can just use my existing knowledge in ActionScript, XML, CSS, HTML and JavaScript to build cross platform software. Apollo installs into the users system just like any other application would. In windows it provides the user with icons in the taskbar, start menu, add remove programs window and an icon on the desktop. The same deal with Mac. Linux will be supported in the near future as well. You can use system chrome or completly customize the look. The Flash Player now supports an HTML renderer. This render is the same one that Safari uses. You can modify the bitmap data that the render produces just like it was a movieclip. You can scale it, rotate it, blur it, etc. and it still refreshes in this state. Now the sky is the limit! More info can be found on MXNA in the Apollo smart category and at www.adobe.com/go/apollo. There are some images of Apollo on Flickr.

There was some good entertainment at Max including the Blue Man Group, Ben Forta in a Scorpion costume, a couple of great pool side parties at the Venetian and The Palms, and some clubbing at Rain nightclub. I had never been to a Vegas nightclub before and it really put anything we have in Calgary to shame. The dance floor was surrounded by a moat of fog and had flame throwers mounted above it. The couches where made of water beds. Private rooms surrounded the higher levels of the club. I do think Adobe should have brought down some of the Playboy Playmates to help even out the male to female ratio on the dance-floor.

All in all, I had an excellent time. Las Vegas was a great place to hold the Max convention and I will definitely go again.