Adaptive Experience

About a year or so ago, I remember pestering one of the project managers with the nuances of experience design. I had shared 2 links with this guy, the first to a beautiful presentation (on SlideShare) that I promised would change how he looks at web based applications and the second to an equally cool presentation by Adaptive Path (http://www.adaptivepath.com/).

The poor chap had a tough time working it all out with me, but, in the end “something” did get done! There was output, never mind the absence of parameters to say if it was good or bad. At that time I was glad it got over. In the mean time, I kept wanting to go back to the app design situation and try to come up with a framework that could put a map to the chaos. When I checked my bookmarks, I realized, I had lost one of the two links.

What prompted this post was a presentation that Shreyasi shared around a few days ago (a biggie thankyou to her ):

 

The elements of User Experience

 

The interesting bit is that it looks like the link I’ve been missing, but, I am not so sure.

 

However, I still have the other link – the adaptive path presentation. It’s got sound and all. Pretty neat! check it out:

Experience Is The Product

View more documents from peterme.

(tangent: Big Thank you to the WordPress and SlideShare teams. Embedded slideshare presentations totally rock!)

It looks like I have both the links today, but need a new set of tools to frame the app design situation a bit better. Adaptive Experience…hehe.

 

To trim a long tale a bit, I find the work (or at the very least the ideas) that the guys at Adaptive Path come up with really impressive. Following their blog(http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/ ) and essays(http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/ ) comes highly recommended!

 

cheers!

S.

Optimizing Actionscript 3 performance

Performance optimization has been a challenge I have been facing A LOT in my projects lately. The more I try to research it, the more confusing the answers get. There were a few ground rules that I had found on the actionscriptWiki (http://wiki.joa-ebert.com/index.php/Main_Page) but beyond that…nothing.

It turns out that Grant Skinner was talking about these same issues at the Flash On The Beach 2009 conference. He has the slides from his talk up on the website now, check these out here: http://gskinner.com/talks/quick/#1
Mike Chambers also wrote a nice post, where he dissects the performance issue with a case study: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2009/10/13/case-study-actionscript-3-performance-optimization/

Both the articles make for really interesting reading… check them out!

For more of GSkinner talks go to: http://gskinner.com/blog/archives/2004/06/conference_sess.html

Mkie Chamber’s Blog: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/

now I should be off again… more code to write, after all I need to optimize my performance as well…hehe

S.

Flash CS5, iPhone support, Flex SDK 4 b2, Catalyst b2, Story and Flash Player 10.1

Wow! This morning was very news worthy!

First there was the announcements regarding Flash CS5.
The big thing here was the new support for native iPhone Apps.
Apparently one can, with the Flash Professional CS5, write AS3 code that compiles as native iPhone application.
They announced it at MAX a few hours ago thru this entertaining video:

Nice!

To me there’s other cool stuff in Adobe Flash Professional CS5 that is really interesting, like the xml based FLAs and the Text Layout Framework.

Mike Chambers here has a post that gets into more details of the iPhone support part.

Adobe has also released a few applications that you can try on your iPhone right away! I feel that it’s a good idea to read thru the Developer FAQs and Aditya Bansod’s article here. I did find the LLVM pretty interesting. There’s a paper and a presentation to check out on llvm.org. For an iPhone a developer can actually use RTMP, remote shared objects and AMF APIs of the flash player. Developers will also have access to the file system and SQLite APIs of AIR 2.0. I am sure we will find out eventually that some stuff is not available, but, what the heck! There will be workarounds…hehe

The idea of a native iPhone Flash Player is still not around…I see places where they say “its on the cards…”, but, there is no mention of a date. The Flash Player 10.1 is going to be available soon though! Again it was announced at Adobe MAX today. Check out Kevin Lynch introducing 10.1 in this video:

This kinda excites me more than the iPhone support. Flash Player 10.1 on Android, Net Books and even on set-top boxes for television providing seamless experience is an awesome awesome wow! More reach, more support for my products and services now.

Adobe’s even working on Slider – a mobile optimized port of the Flex 4 codebase.

Along with all of this Adobe also announced a host of other betas available! Check out the list below:

1. The Flex 4 SDK Beta 2 release
2. The Flash Builder 4 Beta 2 release
3. The Flash Catalyst Beta 2 release
4. and then there’s also the Adobe ColdFusion Builder beta 2 release
5. and the Adobe LiveCycle Data Services 3 beta release

I also found two very interesting project on Adobe labs.

The first is called workflowlab. A tool (AIR) that allows one to create and share workflows and best practices. Project Managers, Designers and developers can collaborate and contribute to a project in a nicer way with this. The big part is that they used the Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst to create this utility!

Finally, the second one is about something that is really close to my heart too. Adobe Story is an application for collaborative script development. I tried a few scenes of a sample movie script with it. Works really well! The code hints like auto-correct/completion features are really neat! What even nicer is that it supports export to a lot of formats including MS Word, Final Draft (Word and FD  are my preferred screen-writing applications) and also to PDF, CSV, XML and plain text! (There’s probably an AIR application available too, but, I have not tried that as yet). The Story beta was out on Sept 10, so I am a little late (and a little out of place) in talking about it here, but, with all the great up coming stuff, I wanted to blog all of it together.

Really cool stuff happening around. Lots to look out for.

Wave’s out. Adobe Wave that is.

I have been curious about this for a long time now. I see a lot of potential of such a service.

Adobe wave (beta) is out.

See: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wave/

It looks kinda like RSS, only better. You get alerts on your desktop when ever updates happen. (uh! I always feel weak when I have to explain the difference between email and SMS) RSS is email, this is SMS.

Basically sites would carry a “Get updates with Adobe Wave” badge. You, their audience would click on the badge and each time the site updates, you get a desktop notification.

Kinda neat huh! I see a lot of applications. Esp. for the on-line education applications and services sector. Another feature to add to the potential Web 2.0/Education 2.0 candy store.

Check out the demo videos: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wave/videos/
…and those who, like me, like to code may try: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wave/developers/

Nice stuff as usual! Let’s see where this goes.

—

PS:

1. I think I might be totally wrong about this one. So do check out those links above and correct me here.

2. When I received the announcement mail this morning, I realized, I had not wet my hands with code in some time! I loathe being that word running, excel pushing, empty headed ager-man. I kinda lost sight of what I liked in the business in the first place. Being an ager-man is okay, but, it’s not rewarding unless you have a purpose. What you really like doing gives you the purpose. To lead you need a head.

And I got mine back in place now. So, with luck, I’ll make time, get back in my play pen and rumble code a bit more now.
.
.
.

…and then came Silverlight 3 !

Yeah!

SilverLight 3 is here.

Loads and loads of new features. Infact, I am sure this is going to heat up the RIA wars with the Flash Platform.

Silverlight now combines the features of Flash 10, Flex, AIR and Pixel Bender all in one!

Also, Expression Studio already does what Flash Catalyst is supposed to do next year (or by the end of this year, when ever).

Hell I am impressed!!! Looks like with Bing, Azure and a host of new products, Microsoft’s getting it right all over again! And Silverlight 3 appears to be another one of those aces.

Take a look at the complete feature listing here: http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx

…and I’ll go start working on some samples now.

ciao!

S.

edit: Did I mention Sliverlight 3 also supports desktop applications for both Windows and Mac now? (I haven’t tested this yet, but what the hell! Its exciting to hear those words…!)

first trial pipe

I finally got around to playing with Yahoo! pipes.
It was something I have been very interested in since a long time now.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/shauryashaurya/blog_feed_meta_trial_1 is the first attempt at these.

It provides the aggregate of the two feeds that the user enters in the input boxes.

I have a feeling that I am going to enjoy this a lot…

pattern: new improved improvement

…and it so happened that after preaching anti-patterns in my very first post, I myself was stuck in one of them. It was called “If its working don’t change“.

I was stuck with blogger for a long long time, thinking things I shouldn’t have, a final disaster recovery routine pushed me over the edge and here we are. I hope WordPress is nicer. Please don’t push me into buying my own domain. I’d switch to Joomla or sth. if that happens. Rad huh? for now, I am happy though.

Three things helped me out in migrating from blogger to wordpress:

1. The nifty little import feature built into wordpress itself.
2. http://underscorebleach.net/jotsheet/2006/05/move-blogger-to-wordpress
3. http://www.benh.org/techblog/2007/02/migrating-new-blogger-to-wordpress-2/

…and here we are. An anti-pattern eliminated, a new non-IdiotProof solution in place. I sincerely hope, next time I am faster, more proactive at resolving things. I hope the present is not a sumo marriage, that stands on the shoulders of midgets.

“”

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Flash Player 10 – bad install for Firefox – Solution.

Flash Player 10 had been giving me a lot of grief when it came to working with Firefox.
I finally figured out a solution, am still unclear what the trouble was!
Wonder is my solution is correct – it seems to work for now tho.

Issue:
I was using Flash CS3 with player 9 installed. The ActiveX and .dll files worked well on IE and Firefox. Then I upgraded to Flash CS4 and Flash Player 10. Things worked well for IE, but did not work well for Firefox 3. I used the flash player uninstaller and still – nogo…

Solution:
It seems the following files:

1. NPSWF32.dll
2. NPSWF32_FlashUtil.exe

were present in two locations:

1. C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash
2. C:\WINDOWS\system32

and although the installer did update folder #1, it did not bother with the files in folder #2. Thus in my case folder #1 had flash player 10 files (which worked for IE) but folder #2 still had flash player 9 files (which did not work for firefox)…

So I manually copied the files from C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash to C:\WINDOWS\system32 (replacing those old flash player 9 files)

I restarted Firefox and things seem to be working fine now!

Still I wonder if I’ll have to do this each time there is a new flash player release…

#tweetcoding – a notable mention YAY!!!!

post #twex I got really interesting in another experiment…

#tweetcoding was a kick ass code contest by Grant Skinner (@gskinner)

gskinner.awsum(thx);

prtcipnts hd 2 code sth. cool in ls thn 140 chrs!

140’s too less you say? go check out the awesome stuff people did for 140!

@machine501 setup an online compiler to showcase all the #tweetcoding going on.

machine501.awsum(thx);

.
.
.
and now the results are out!!!

The Winners :
diagonal snake by @tomee6
Tunnel of Stripes by @piXelero (a personal favorite!)

winners.sendMsg(“Congratulations!!!”);

The Runners-ups :
the drummer by @vectorcinco
Ghost Marquee by @dickwolf

runnerups.sendMsg(“Congratulations!!!”);

and there were some entries that got a Notable mention …and My entry was amongst them:
The time-sketch by @shauryashaurya
happy happy – Wooohooo!!!!

judges.tweetcoding.sendMsg(“this is really encouraging!!!”);
judges.tweetcoding.awsum(thx);

take a look at the #tweetcoding winners page.

1. Check out all of the #tweetcoding (compiled) entries online
2. the #tweetcoding rules
3. link to @gskinner’s blog post on #tweetcoding
4. @gskinner says here that the next round should be in around next month: am eargely waiting!!!

S.

P.S. #twex analysis is still pending (my apologies!!! – sum dum projkts @ wrk I need to fin firs.) but results should be out next month! stay tuned

for those interested, the entry asked for 140 chars of code that, if embedded in some already given “me code” (from @gskinner) should do something “cool”. Here is the source code of my entry (turn strict mode off in Publish setting>action script 3 setting):

// @gskinner’s me code 1
g=graphics;
mt=g.moveTo;
lt=g.lineTo;
ls=g.lineStyle;
m=Math;
r=m.random;
s=m.sin;
i=0;
o={};
function f(e) {
// 140 chars of my code
if (i
j=o.x;
k=o.y;
z=j=k=200;
mt(j,k);
g.beginFill(0,.5);
}
i+=.05;
p=m.PI/2-i;
c=m.pow;
j+=i*c(s(2*p),3);
k+=i*c(s(3*p),3);
ls(k*.01,10,1);
lt(j,k);
}
// @gskinner’s me code 2
addEventListener(“enterFrame”,f);

cheers!

S.

:):)