check me and the power I wield… no sooner had I had a little moan about FB3A2 expiring than we get not one but 2 new toys on Labs…

Flex Builder 3 Alpha 3 for Linux and
Air for Linux Alpha

According to the FB release notes nothing much has changed except the addition of Air support, but at least I can keep on working without it expiring.

I’ve been using FlexBuilder on Ubuntu for several months now, it’s got it’s oddities and the design view is missing but it mostly works fine. I’m currently using Alpha2, and it’s now telling me it runs out in 18 days. The fcsh says it will expire in 3 days. The discussion group on Labs seems to have been wiped recently and there’s zero feedback from Adobe there. There is currently no option to buy FB for linux on the Adobe site.

So Adobe, what’s going on? Is there going to be an A3? B1? Are we ever gonna get design view? When can I buy the damn thing? Is anybody out there??

…at least it could have been if Tink had let me do the photoshoppery…

And before you say it… NO, I won’t grow up!

This wikipedia entry tickled my funnybone…

The term “bogon” stems from hacker jargon, where it is defined as the quantum of “bogosity” (i.e the smallest indivisible units of bogus-ness). This then leads on to the theory of Quantum bogodynamics

So I came across this small tutorial on the Reg entitled ‘Build a Silverlight media player’. Now I’m far from an expert on this stuff (hell I’m on Ubuntu, can’t even see the demo), but there were a few things in there that seemed odd, be interesting to hear feeback from someone that knows more…

* First of they say…

“Rather than work with Adobe’s Photoshop, let’s encourage the designer to use the new Microsoft Expression.”

… now I guess by that they mean ‘MS Expression Design’…. HAHAHA! (Please imagine a demented Tom Cruise type laugh there!) Every creative I’ve ever worked (i.e. many of the UK’s best) with would rather poke out their eyes with rusty nails than drop photoshop for some new untested tool, let alone one that comes from MS and doesn’t run on their Mac. I know (hope?) this isn’t the only way of getting your artwork in there, but surely you’ve failed at the first hurdle if you really expect this to happen. (Hmm, I wonder, can Design open PSD’s?)

* It’s not really covered in depth but they seem to do the actual layout design in Blend. Having been quite excited about Blend before it’s launch and in turn quite disappointed with it when I tried the first release, this seems to sum up the problem. Designers will not use Blend as a design tool, period, end of story. It’s an odd bastard child that sits somewhere between being too geeky for designers (loads of panels and event lists) and not geeky enough for developers (no code??)… it’s rather like the old days of clunky flash components and seems to me to be good for one thing, filling in and ticking little boxes to join the code and design up… an important task no doubt but who’s the tool intended for?

* Next there’s a little C# added in VS to hook the events up, all simple enough and easy to read from an AS perspective. I’m assuming here using ‘rootElement’ isn’t the cardinal sin ‘_root’ is in Flash?

* Then they use the timeline to animate the slideshow. Now I know this is a simple demo, but surely you’d want to show how to load images dynamically rather than embed them all, that’s just bad practice, no?

* On a side note, if I remember rightly the Blend timeline works more like coded Tweens in Flash, ie it’s all about the end points of the animation and not where the objects are starting from… this I like!

* They sum up with the statement…

“Traditionally graphic designers use a tool like Photoshop then “throw their design over the wall” to developers who are responsible for cutting the graphics into the application. The design very rarely works exactly as intended and considerable rework is required if the design changes. The combination of Expression and Visual Studio offers a way to close the gap between the two camps.”

..well I’d say designs and functionality will always change, and if you work in that way you’re always going to have problems. We (I?) work in a design led, technology based field and if your designers and developers don’t work hand in hand from the initial brainstorm through to delivery no amount of new tools are going to improve your end result. Surely better teamwork, understanding and communication would help close the gap?

So anyway, I’m not trying to bash the article, the authors or even Silverlight, I don’t know enough about it to do so, would instead welcome your thoughts and comments…