Keith Peters Pre-interview
This evening, Actionscripthero.org are holding a 30-minute online pre-interview with Keith Peters. As well as talking about Keith Peters and perhaps his latest book ‘AdvancED ActionScript 3.0 Animation‘, he’ll be discussing iPhone development from a Flasher’s perspective and the Flash On Tap conference. Following that, he’ll be demo-ing some of his latest work.
To register for this free event and for more information click here.
Free Photoshop CS4 workshop
Creative Techs is running a free 10-week Photoshop web-based course from the 26th of this month.
Each session’s an hour long and kicks off at 11am in Seattle (that’s 7pm for us Brits). The course is aimed at new or intermediate users.
- Week 1, Feb 26 – Interface, Tools, and Shortcuts
- Week 2, Mar 5 – Photoshop Layers
- Week 3, Mar 12 – Selections
- Week 4, Mar 19 – Advanced Selections
- Week 5, Mar 26 – Masks
- Week 6, Apr 2 – Pen Tool / Shape Layers
- Week 7, Apr 9 -Drawing Tools / Brushes
- Week 8, Apr 16 – Retouching
- Week 9, Apr 23 – Color Correction pt 1
- Week 10, Apr 29 – Color Correction pt 2
For more info or to register, click here:
Freee Photoshop course
Five random things that have happened since my last post
- Barack Obama became the first Afro-American President of America
- I began studying for the Flex 3 & AIR Exam
- Woolies and Zavvi went into administration
- The identity of the remaining cylon was revealed
- AdvancED ActionScript 3.0 Animation was published
Sittin’ on Chrome, waitin’ for CS4
Today Google released its browser, Google Chrome onto the world wide web. See the Chrome site for further details. Be sure to take a look at the comic book too!
In other news, on Sept 23rd, Adobe are going to broadcast a special webcast, showcasing the Adobe CS4 suite. I don’t know about everyone else but I’m still getting used to CS3! You can register for the webcast here.
Free Flex video training
You can now find a series of free ‘Flex in a week’ training videos on the Adobe Developer Connection site.
Topics covered:
- Day 1: Flex Basics
- Day 2: Component Development
- Day 3: Putting It All Together
- Day 4: Adding Visual Appeal
- Day 5: Architecture And Advanced Topics (coming soon)
The videos are supplemented with PDFs and source files as well as a forum to post any relevant questions or issues, such as the one I experienced where the Flex debugging wasn’t working in Firefox 3. I resolved it by uninstalling the AdBlock add-on.
Free Flex 3 Book
The first 100 people that scored 5/5 in this Flex quiz were jammy enough to win a hard copy of ‘Learning Flex 3′. They’re all gone now but anyone who completes it gets a link to the PDF version. You don’t have to register or anything and the quiz is dead easy. Offer ends Sept 22nd.
Brief Summary
I often try to leave MAJOR news out of this blog ’cause who REALLY wants to write the same thing for the 1001th time?? So I’m guessing that by now everyone knows about Flash Player 10, Pixel Bender (formerly known as ‘Hydra’) and the Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Soundbooth CS4 beta versions, all of which are available for download on the Adobe Labs website. To get started with the new Flash Player beta, Lee Brimelow has published some new tutorials on his popular gotoandLearn site.
A couple of other things of interest I’ve stumbled across recently:
AIR 1.1 now released
The latest version of the Adobe Integrated Runtime is now available for download from the Adobe website.
Firefox Download Day!
Hopefully by now, you’ve helped to make history with Firefox by downloading FF3. They’re hoping to break the world record for the largest number of downloads in 24 hours. I hope their attempt hasn’t been scuppered by the ‘HTTP 1.1 service unavailable’ message displayed when I first tried to download it. Worked a treat after a quick refresh.
Update: Despite initial server downtime, Mozilla appear to have broken the record. They are however awaiting confirmation from Guinness officials, which could take up to a week.
Google Maps AS 3 API released
The Google Maps API, which allows Flex users to embed maps in Flash applications is available here. You will need to register for an API developer key.
Adobe made noise!
It seems that people can make a difference and Andre Michelle’s Adobe Make some Noise campaign has done just that. In Flash Player 10, Adobe Flash player engineer Tinic Uro et al have gone some way to remedying the onSoundComplete issues. For a more technical insight, see Tinic’s three-part blog article detailing the nature of the issue and the actions they have taken to address it:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Nothing quite like community pressure. I wonder how much I’d get if I flogged my ‘Adobe Make Some Noise’ T-shirt on EBay?? 
New Flash and Flex magazine
Flash & Flex Developer’s Magazine is a quarterly publication distributed in the USA, focussing on issues such as ActionScript development, server-side interaction, audio, animation and mobile apps. It is aimed at both experts and newbies alike. Each issue will be accompanied by a CD containing the latest programs and video tutorials. The magazine will be available in electronic format from May 19th and hard copy in June.
They are currently still looking for beta testers and authors. If you would like to contribute, e-mail en@ffdmag.com or visit their website. To keep abreast of FFD-related news, you can subscribe to the FFD newsletter here.
