But for me, Ny Quil crystalised the triviality of the threat to Flash in one question : “The real question is this: will HTML5 make it easier or harder for me to get porn?”

But wait, I hear you say, there’s already the London Flash Platform User Group (LFPUG) run by Tink in Clerkenwell Road and the Flex London User Group (FLUG) in Brick Lane run by Mike Jones and Drew Martin. Both do an awesome and tireless job in showing what boundaries people are pushing in the Flash Platform world, so who needs another Flash user group? …Right? …WRONG!

LFPUG and FLUG are both high end development groups, catering for those who know the Flash Platform well and want to explore the higher end of it’s capabilities and methodologies. The very nature of the people who attend and run these groups ensures that they are advanced user groups and I know I find them very informative, but no one group can be all things to all men.

What’s been missing for a very long time is a group that caters specifically for beginners and intermediates: those who want to learn or improve their understanding of the Flash Platform (Flash, Flex, FMS etc) in a development and design capacity. Those who are trying to swap to Flash platform technologies, those who are learning them on their digital media courses but want real world experience or those who have mastered many of the basics but now want to move on to real world application of that knowledge. This user group is the nursery for user groups like LFPUG and FLUG. It also caters for designers as well as developers and as I believe very strongly that Flash platform developers should have an appreciation of both development and design, this seems like a well balanced beginner and intermediate group.

If you want to understand things like:

• Patterns,
• OOP,
• moving from AS2 to AS3,
• how to begin using Flex,
• how to start to work with video and audio in Flash and FMS,
• how XML and E4X work,
• how to do your first Augmented Reality piece,
• what best practices you should follow,
• how to work with 3rd party hardware like the Wii,
• getting started with 3D,
• code for designers

and much more, then this is definitely the group for you.

Better still, make a request for a topic to be covered (design or development). There’s a lot of sharing goes on to, with people being encouraged to show the group any work or solutions they have made. It’s an open and friendly forum. No judging and lots of support.
The group meets once a month, normally around the middle of the month. They have a fantastic set up: meeting rooms, over head projectors and several networked labs at their disposal. The group can and will be running workshops along side presentations so you’ll be able to get your hands dirty with real code and design and take them home to play with after. There are prizes to: Apress/ Friends of Ed have kindly agreed to give us books on Flash platform technologies to give away on the night.
The beginner and intermediate community is huge and poorly catered for. This Meetup group group addresses that gap. If you want to learn or improve your Flash-craft then go check out the group. Sign up, and come along.

Reed Professional Services have generously given us a ticket to Flash on the Beach to give away. Yes, just give away! They’re crazy here at Crazy ReedPS! They don’t want your name or your phone number or your bank account details or to know if “you know someone else” who does your job who IS available even though you’re not. Nope, none of that. Just email us here at Logic Bureau and tell us who you are, what you do and that you can go to Flash on the Beach on Monday 21st thru Wednesday 23rd and it’s yours. Obviously it does NOT come with travel or accommodation so don’t ask. We’ll pick a name out of the hat tomorrow evening and email the winner. This ticket will be in your name so it’s non transferable.

In case you don’t know, Flash on the Beach is sold out now so this is one of your last chances to go.

Incase you’re wondering who Reed Professional Services are, they’re not Reed Recruitment, but they are one of the sponsors at Flash on the Beach.

Is any of this in the Adobe road map? Likely, no, but we can all dream.

• Open source Flash Player
• Language agnostic – more languages compiling to ABC. Alchemy has shown the way, lets build upon it.
• Two tier development model, allowing for rapid prototypes, while also allowing for high end RIAs.
  • Scripting language for the timeline – Further enhancements to AS2 with new capabilities making it simpler for designers to continue to build simple RIAs/Websites/Interactions while allowing them to keep up with industry trends).
  • Application language for RIAs – Further enhancements to AS3, making way for AS4, which could progress away from the ECMAScript standard, and start heading towards a more hybrid route combining the best of Java, .Net, and ECMAScript.
• Multi-threading – Allow us to spawn a thread, Pixel Bender could be used here, but reduce the entry barrier by allowing developers to use AS would benefit everyone in the community.
• Multi-touch – a must have when it comes to FP10 on mobiles.
• Fix the NetStream issue whereby seeking between the first two indexed keyframes in an MPEG-4 AVC encoded video causes IE to crash.
• Better documentation of the SWF file format – currently the documentation is missing vital elements, such as Vector.
• Replace documentation with an open Wiki – Currently a lot of information is spread across blogs, Blueprint makes an attempt to bring this all into a central location while working in Flex, but a central Adobe Wiki would make a lot more sense for Adobe (Crowd sourcing documentation), and the end users.
• Fonts – Embedding fonts in a SWF is great, but wouldn’t it be great if you could use a normal font file, which is restricted via domain (similar to EOT, Embedded OpenType).
• Hardware acceleration
• Private Constructors – there are cases when Singletons are appropriate, why should we have to hack these in.
• Better integration with other CS products, for example importing a Photoshop file with filters and text, retains the same text quality, and filters. Catalyst makes important steps towards this, but there could be improvements.
• ActionScript support server side, via an Apache mod, or more importantly Coldfusion.
• Better code editing within the Flash IDE – this has been promised for CS5.
• A better “Flash Player Settings Panel”
• Lower level access to video and audio.
• Extension “App Store” – An Adobe vetted extension store, which allows developers to submit native extensions and get them signed by Adobe for use in the Flash Player via “Adobe Flash Player Enhancement” – similar to Octoshape’s P2P video streaming plug-in.
  Uses could include:
  • Augmented reality
  • Peer 2 Peer
  • Hardware integration (RFID, Barcode scanners, Arduino etc)
• Native support, and tools, for multi-lingual websites and translation – XLIFF support

Any other suggestions?

Well, let me stop you right there. It could equally be argued that components are the province of lazy or just plain bad coders who won’t or can’t do the code them selves. Of course this is not true, or at least it’s not true of well written components. They serve to reduce development time, simplify solution requirements and yes, in some cases, allow less skilled developers to produce the same results as highly skilled developers whilst learning better coding practices at the same time. No one disagrees with the use of components for all these reasons, in fact they extol them. Interestingly, the very same arguments can be used for the use of timeline solutions, where timeline solutions are appropriate and employ their own best practices. How then can this be a bad thing?

As is being pointed out a lot recently, Flash/Actionscript, is NOT java or C#. It’s getting there, but let’s not forget that it has it’s own unique, inherent strengths and believe it or not, the timeline is one of them! Let’s not abandon the old strengths of Flash / Actionscript for the sake of the emperor’s new clothes. Using OO based code solutions when appropriate and timeline when it’s pragmatic allows us to produce the right work in the right time for the client’s requirements. This is an example of good process at work. Flash is an amazing tool, capable of an entire spectrum of solution options. This diversity of solution options is a strength, not a weakness. If you want to be a Java developer then by all means be one, but if you want to be a Flash developer then extol it’s great diversity of strengths, from full on OO to timeline. Don’t be cajoled into admitting that Flash is a glorified coloring in tool by code snobs. Tell them they’re wrong! We can produce the same solution in 2 or 3 equally valid and completely different ways. Imagine how hard it would be to produce a coding tool that actually allowed for all 5 members of the Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition to operate. I seriously believe that there is no other software tool that does this. It should be celebrated with pride, not hidden in shame and though many of us use best practices, good process and pragmatism to produce the right solutions for our customers actual needs, Flash’s diverse solution palette is all to often reduced to just OO class file options in an effort to look professional.

Adobe need to stand up and support their huge Flash developer base on this matter to. For to long they have pushed Flex as the right choice and insinuated that if you prefer Flash then you are a Mickey Mouse developer. The reality is that we have all options and can help developers from novice all the way through to expert. I’m not condoning using the Flash API for coding as Adobe have failed to improve their actionscript code panel in line with their Flex one (some might say this was deliberate).

June issue Free for Download now