The general topics slated to be covered are:

• Getting Started (Intro, project types, pros/cons, comparison to other editors)
• Shortcuts ('QuickFix' code generation, refactoring, searching, etc.)
• Integration with Eclipse (SVN, ANT, XML, and other helpful plug-ins)

I will speaking on the third item, Integration with Eclipse, presenting an introduction to simple ANT integration and workflows, along with some of the Eclipse plug-ins I use on a regular basis.

Here are all of the details from the flashpdx.org site:

David Knape, Jon MacDonald and Matt Gitchell will show how they use the FDT development environment in their daily work.

When: Thursday 10/15 11:30 - 1:00pm
Where: Second Story 714 N Fremont St #200

Pizza will be provided, seating is limited to 25.

Please RSVP with shane {at} secondstory {dot} com

PowerFlasher, the makers of FDT, have generously donated a copy of FDT Pure edition for a raffle, and will send discount codes to anyone who provides an e-mail address for the raffle.

(Don’t know what FDT is? In short, FDT is a professional code editor for ActionScript. More info on FDT at http://www.fdt.powerflasher.com. )

So while this is extremely exciting (as in, I just became an iPhone developer in 5 minutes this morning exciting) there are a few things to note:

1. This is only for standalone applications - meaning iPhone/iPod Touch applications that you download from Apple's App Store either on your phone or via iTunes. It does not include Flash played via the Safari mobile web browser. So no online Flash video just yet. Ryan Stewart, an Adobe Platform Evangelist tweeted the following today during the keynote: "When Apple is ready to bring the full Web browsing experience to iPhone users, we'll be ready to bring Flash Player to Safari."

2. You cannot load external SWFs into the apps you compile for the iPhone. The official line on this is: "iPhone applications built with Flash Platform tools are compiled into standard, native iPhone executable packages and there is no runtime interpreter that could be used to run ActionScript bytecode within the application." But in reality, Adobe is just staying within the limits imposed by Apple and their "no running other bytecode in apps" rule.

3. This won't be available until Flash CS5 is released. The good news here is that a public beta of Flash CS5 will be released before the end of 2009.

You can read all about this announcement over on Adobe Labs: Flash Professional CS5 Applications for iPhone, at the official Adobe press release, and in the Adobe Dev Center where they have posted an article about Developing for the Apple iPhone using Flash. The Dev Center article goes into some good technical explanation of what is going on behind the scenes.

There is also an extensive technical FAQ available on Adobe Labs which is worth the read.

Lastly, you can see some quick video of the Mythbusters-type segment they did as the announcement below:

I'll be posting more about The Good in the very near future, but as for Twitter, I tweet quite often (you can follow me here) on a varying number of topics from everyday life to serious Flash platform development. In either case, I have come to find that I can distill most of what used to be a full blog post down to 140 characters or less instead of putting a bunch of filler around the main point just to have enough content to form a blog post.

I see this being the case with most of the Flash/interactive community these days as most of the blogs I used to follow via my RSS reader have been all but abandoned in favor of the author's Twitter account. And for most topics, this works quite well: more to the point, easier to share, and certainly easier to post information quickly.

I do plan on continuing to post to this blog when a longer discussion is merited, such as my posts from conferences such as FOTB and the upcoming "what I have been up to for the past six months" post.

So, if you feel abandoned by my lack of posts, my apologies again and don't worry: you can find me on Twitter.

After spending a few days pre-conference in London, I've arrived in Brighton for Flash on the Beach 2009 and the first day of workshops. I chose to attend the iPhone App Development For Flash Developers workshop taught by Julian Dolce today.

While I certainly didn't grow any fonder of Objective-C today, I did learn quite a lot. During the eight hour session we covered a pretty wide range of topics and tasks. First Julian gave us a few hour Objective-C overview before we all took the virtual pet example from Colin Moock's Essential ActionScript 3.0 book and coverted it to Objective-C. This was a great task since everyone in the room knew AS3 and was more than likely familiar with the virtual pet example.

After a break for lunch we all jumped into some quick equivalents of ActionScript 3 code in Objective-C, and then used those examples to build a sample application with some animated images, touch events (taps and dragging), audio. Lastly Julian gave an overview of Interface Builder and then went over some general tips and tricks.

Julian will be posting his slides, sample code and some recommended additional reading on the page he setup on his website: http://deleteaso.com/iphone-workshop/

Hopefully I'll find a way to learn to like Objective-C as much as I do AS3 since developing for the iPhone, as I learned today, can certainly be a fun experience.

Thanks, Julian!

I'm excited to be heading over to Brighton, UK once again this year to attend Flash on the Beach 2009. Besides all of the wonderful speakers and catching up with everyone, I'm equally excited for a new addition this year: The Elevator Pitch.

The conference website describes it as "...exactly what the title suggests - 20 'newbies' / 'oldies' / whatever you want to call them, get 3 minutes to show their best work, a new idea, live coding, live drawing, whatever."

This is great for two reasons. First, for the past two years the most well attended sessions were the 'filler' sessions where several speakers got up and free-formed it for five minutes each to fill an hour long session left blank by a speaker who had to cancel last minute. This always leads to exciting presentations about small projects these guys are working on, rather than some topic that takes an hour to present. Second, one of my favorite events in Portland is Ignite, where presenters have only 20 slides that automatically rotate every 15 seconds to get their point across. When you are forced to distill a topic down to only a couple of key points, it often ends up being a much better presentation.

I also think it is great to be giving some up-and-coming talent a chance to speak. Most people (myself included) find it difficult to put together a presentation on a topic that would fill a whole hour. You either end up having way too much content or way too little content. And the prep time pre-conference can be a time consuming nightmare. But if you only need to prep for a three minute talk, there are no excuses.

You can see a full list of the topics that will be covered by Flash on the Beach's 3 Minute Wonders at the conference website, but I'm really looking forward to topics such as "I can't draw, but I can program", "ActionScript to Objective-C (and everything in between)" and "Beta, my arse!".

I've been using the update for a few hours now, and it certainly makes Flash seem a bit snappier. In addition, my initial tests are showing that the OS X Spaces bug with Flash has been fixed. This was a major annoyance for me, and several other developers based upon the popularity of my blog post on the subject.

Thanks to Adobe for listening to customer feedback and working hard to get this update out as soon as possible.

Update: Based on comments below and other feedback I have received, it appears that the Flash CS4 update alone does not fix the Spaces issue for everyone. However, the combination of the latest Apple OS X 10.5.7 update (released 5/12/2009) and the Flash CS4 update seems to do the trick.

If you use FDT, this looks to be a huge update. Here is the list with main new features from the FDT blog:

MXML Support
- Semantic Highlighting
- Templates
- Wizard for MXML Classes
- Flex-Builder Project Importer
- Attribute Auto Completion
- Quick Outline
- Type Hierarchy
- Hyperlinks (F3)

Further AS-Support
- Improved SWC-Parser
- Improved Auto Completion (constructor)
- CS4 Help Importer

You can find instructions for updating to the beta here.

Over the years, Stumptown’s become a central haven for independent thinkers with a quirk and a twist, producing some of the most darkly observant and refreshingly honest talents of our time.

That is what the Cut&Paste website says about Portland. And while I'd have to concur, tonight's competition will certainly be telling.

If you are unfamiliar with Cut&Paste, it is a digital design tournament taking place in 16 cities this year ending with a global championship in New York City. New this year are 3D and Motion competitions, in addition to the legacy 2D competition.

I kicked myself for not attending last year, especially once Tim May, the winner of last year's 2D competition joined us at XPLANE as Senior Interactive Designer.

If you can't make it to the competition tonight, you can watch the live webcast on the Cut and Paste website.

Yes indeed, "this nook in the Northwest, the City of Roses, is the new bohemia." Looking forward to seeing it tonight.

After some searching I came across a JSFL command for Flash CS3/CS4 that finds the parent symbol in the library of the item currently selected on the stage.

To install the command, download this file, unzip it and place the resulting JSFL file here:

Mac:
/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash CS4/en/Configuration/

Windows:
\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash CS4\en\Configuration\

You can also replace CS4 with CS3 for your flavor of choice.

Once installed, select the object on the stage that you wish to locate in the library and is likely buried way, way deep inside nested folders that the Illustrator to Flash process created. In the toolbar choose "Commands" and then "Find in Library". The object will now be highlighted in your library panel. Digging for the symbol no longer required.

I'd like to point out that I am not claiming to have written this script, but I found it on some site far, far off on the Internet and which I can no longer locate to provide credit where credit is due. I do remember, however, it was provided "free and open source", so all should be well.

XPLANE Corporate Website

URL:

http://www.xplane.com

Synopsis:

XPLANE is an information design consultancy that drives better results for many of the world’s leading corporations including Microsoft, Intel, Nokia, U.S. Department of National Intelligence, U.S. Marines, Nike and BP through visual thinking and design.

Working with the internal marketing and design teams at XPLANE, the entire website was built on the WordPress platform utilizing a custom developed theme to match XPLANE's branding. Content highlights include project case studies, company news, and an online store.

The internal marketing team handles all day-to-day updates utilizing the content management features of WordPress, allowing them to eaisly add, edit and remove all content on the website. Since the site launch XPLANE has also seen significant increase in search engine optimization (SEO) and daily unique page views.

The site is listed in the WordPress Showcase, an honor since only a relatively small number of submissions are added to the showcase.

The XPLANE e-store:

Case studies:

Company news:

To see the full site, visit http://www.xplane.com.