Archive for the ‘Interviews & Authors’ Category

Sean TheFlexGuy Inerviewed


Sean Moore

Sean “the flex guy” Moore is a highly visible blogger in the Flex Community. He has been developing web applications for 12 years now and it’s no surprise that he was chosen to be a Flex Developer Community Champion by Adobe for his hard work and dedication to the Community.
FlachSope decided to interview this prominent Flash Developer, and luckily Sean agreed to answer some of our questions:

FS: Can you share with us a little bit of your history? Was there a turning-point in your life when you decided to cast your lot with web development?

Sean: I got into multimedia and programming in 1997. Lingo was my first programming language, shortly after that I studied HTML, JavaScript, Visual Basic, Perl and ASP. I messed with Java a little back then but never got into it too much. I’ve recently starting learning a lot more about Java. My first job out of college was doing CBT programming with Authorware. This was when Flash was just first coming out and gaining some ground. I started messing around with Flash in my free time and really liked it. My second job was doing web design and development for a mortgage technology company. That’s when I started doing a lot of Flash work, both animation and scripting. I think Flash 3 was just being released at this time. I had a good amount of experience with Director, Lingo, Authorware and Dreamweaver so Flash and ActionScript weren’t too hard to pick up. My next job was for an Learning company where I was a full time Flash developer for over four years. When I started that job we used AS1 and Flash MX. AS2 was released while I was working there so we ended up doing a lot of code migration from AS1 to AS2. In 2006 AS3 was really gaining some attraction so I started getting more serious about learning it and Flex. In 2007 I started doing freelance work for AS3 and Flex based projects. In 2008 I started Kannopy, Inc. and have been running the company and working with various clients ever since. Kannopy was the first company to focus on Adobe AIR development.

Posted by Steve, February 1st, 2010 in Interviews & Authors
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Derek Entringer Speaks Out

Derek Entringer is a talented Interactive Media/Web Application Developer who really loves what he does. His talents include a mixture of multimedia and application development that allows him to create dynamic and engaging projects ranging from full Flash or Director games and websites to web based CRM Applications and Flex projects. The quality of Derek’s work is determined by his vast experience. The projects created by him embody creative and modern ideas and incorporate top-notch functionality into a simple, uncluttered form.

But we got interested first of all in Derek’s activity as an interactive media specialist, as his talents are also specialized in the technologies that allow us to control the dynamic content and give us the ability to collaborate with others online. As it is known, he is a creator of FLV Player – free video player Flash component that have already came into notice of many users and Flash developers due to its significant features. But Derek is famous not only with this project. He has many achievements to his credit.

Well, enough introductions, as Derek willingly agreed to give us several priceless pieces of advice concerning interactive web application development, web design and how to make it a powerful interactive tool between you and your customers.

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Can you share with us a little bit of your history, and also what is the main attraction point that got you into the Flash Platform?

Back in 1999 I was working for a company creating a Microsoft C++ application which allowed users to interactively place office furniture, kitchen fixtures, and cabinetry within a specified floor plan. We were using AutoCad and 3D Studio Max along with our custom application to create these interactive environments. It was very similiar to todays Ikea Office Planner, but it was tied to installing on a users computer. My manager at that time asked me if I wanted to look into something called Macromedia Director to see how we might be able to port over the functionality that we currently had, to something web based. You’ll have to remember that back then, Macromedia was really just starting up to become what it is today. I gladly took on the challenge, and it was my first step into the online interactive media world.

At that time, Flash had just become accepted as a default plugin for MS IE5. It was quite a young development tool, but there was a lot of buzz surrounding it and it was a new and interesting platform. Right about then, I decided that I wanted to further my education, and learn more about interactive media. I knew that things were going to really pick up, and I wanted to be right on the forefront of how the internet was going to change. This was really the starting point for everything that I have accomplished over the last 10 years in regards to Interactive Media, and developing on the Flash Platform.

Now, I’m working as a Independent Contractor under my DerekEntringer.com brand, and am also running FLVPlayer.com.

Posted by Steve, January 18th, 2010 in Interviews & Authors
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What are Flash components?

Flash technology strongly came into web design. The best evidence of this fact is that more and more websites are characterized by presence of the animated elements in the design, such as flash images, flash banners, animated galleries, flash maps, players, charts and much more. These active elements, or Flash components, brighten up the website design; make browsing more pleasant and convenient and websites – original and up-to-date.

Flash components are separate full-fledged Flash extensions that can be easily built into your Macromedia Adobe Flash design. Flash components are characterized by their own adjustable parameters and due to self-contained functionality they can be easily integrated into your project and then reused within different Flash projects. Components can include graphics as well as code. For example, a component can be a radio button, a dialog box, a preload bar, a menu bar, or even something that has no graphics at all, such as a timer, a server connection utility, or a custom XML parser. And rather than creating code for these widgets once again by yourself, you may just drag them into your FLA file. So, as you can see, these Flash files are very convenient and greatly save developer’s time. And the main focus for developer here is to create an editable component, built in the same style as the User Interface components. In other words, flash components should be compatible with the opther User Interface components, and there are many conventions that should be followed correctly on order to reach the goal.

Posted by Steve, January 18th, 2010 in Interviews & Authors
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