Flash, Flex, AIR, ActionScript and Design

Since 2 or 3 weeks i am addicted to Twitter and i am really impressed by the idea of leaving notes of interest within 140 characters. But as simple and effective the idea is, for me it highlights a problem with the social network structure of the Flash community. But first a short introduction.

I first get in contact with Flash at the age of 16 (Flash 5) and i always tried to contribute and be a part of the community. My first community was the german FlashForum and i learned a lot from the heroes (Andrè Michelle, Ingo Ramin) at this time. As i get older and at the time i realized that i want to work as an Interactive Developer i decide to attend to a Multi-Media course at the university at my hometown (Salzburg, Austria). This was may the best decision of my life because it offers me a whole new world. It forces me to see Multi-Media from different points of view(Concept, Design, Programing, Media-Theory, etc.) and let me recognize that i have to be envolved in this discourse to getting better and that i need permanent exchange with other people.

But this is a bit of a problem for someone located in Austria because there are not a lof of chances to attend to events like Flash on the Beach , FITC, FlashCamp and all the other great events i always read about on Twitter and different blogs and for sure, there are not many Flashers in the neighborhood.

What i really like is when i follow the Flash heroes (just a few, because there are many ;), Grant Skinner, Lee Brimelow, Seb Lee-Delisle, Aral Balkan, Mario Klingemann, Mike Chambers, Keith Peters) on Twitter and to recognize how they communicate with each other. They are funny, they are telling jokes, launching competitions like #tweetcode or The 25-Line ActionScript Contest and they are all addicted to their work (imho). Most of them are speakers at the big conferences and there are a lot of projects they are sharing with the community. This allows us to get familiar with cutting-edge technology and to learn.

But what i miss a bit is the communication between youngsters like i am. What i would enjoy is to hear and talk with a lot more geeks at the age from 16 - 25 or to have more projects started by them. I only know 2 guys at my age that are as much involved into the community as the respected netheads.

So, my idea is now to stop this situation. I want to invite everyone who is interested in RIA’s, Web, Flash Platform, Programing, Design, User Experience, etc. and/or wants to help the youngsters to get out of the dark to start a new chapter. I want to collaborate and participate and i think there are many people out there with a similar wish.

If there is anyone interested, just drop me a line with your Twitter/Blog/Skype/Project/Whatever contact details and i will add it to the list below.

I want to start the list now with myself, to give you a template. I am looking forward to hear/read from you. Btw. i am looking forward to attend FotB in Brighton later this year, if anyone near Salzburg is thinking about going there, let me know. Btw. i would also enjoy to see some contact details from the “netheads”.

Update
You may follow this discussion on twitter http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23flashy, insert #flashy to get your tweet listed.

My name is Hannes Moser, Austria
Interests Flash Platform, Games, Screen Design, Communities, Programing & too much other things
I want to work on community projects, talk with people, attend all sort of events
C0ntact hannes@impossiblearts.com, hannes@impossiblearts.com, @eliias, Skype: eliias

One thing i never understand was why a lot of people prefer Photoshop instead of Fireworks for prototyping and building up a layout for a webapp or site.

For me it was always clear, that the basic vector tools, some bitmap effects(live-effect) and the ability to handle the file-export easily are enough to setup a layout. At least the pixel-perfect positioning threw input fields of vector-forms is a main, maybe the biggest reason for me to use Fireworks.

I met some designers that prefer using Illustrator/Photoshop to get their results, but i always discovered that this combination has a major drawback, two different tools for one thing.

But in the last month i am getting very annoyed about Fireworks because of its bad font-rendering behavior. One major reason is the Anti-Aliasing of Fonts. The basic settings (Crisp, Strong, Smooth) are crap. Font-sizes up to 15px are looking like the same that my neighboures dog lost in front of my door this morning. Event for the basic fonts like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma it is heavy to find a good anti-aliasing setting.

About font-sizes around 10px, 11px, 12px (this  is usually my choise for floating text or text that is not so important) the things get really worse.

Next big problem with Fireworks is rendering text. Even the Flash-Player has better capabilities of how to render text, especiall block-text (and for sure, Flash-Player has the better Anti-Aliasing).

In version 10 of a product that has its focus on prototyping web-applications i expect a bit more than block-left aligned, block-right aligned and an unusable block-centric. At least it should be possible to have a multi-line paragraph that is block-text and the lines do not have this crazy kerning.

Multi-column text would also be a nice feature. Maybe it is possible to get the new Flash-Player text-rendering with the new text-layout framework to work with Fireworks. Would be an advancement to the current status. But i would prefer to have the same text-anti-aliasing like Photoshop had it.

I also discovered a bug. First i thought is has nothing to do with Fireworks and it depends on the used font, but later i see that it also happens with system fonts.

The text should be in the blue area.

I am currently thinking about how to improve this without changing the tools. But i think its Adobe's turn now.

h.

Btw. if you have similar problems or even better a solution for this, just drop me a few lines here.

It happened already two weeks ago, but there was no time to post about it. We were nominated and invited to the Europrix  09 award and won in the category for games. The game will be online soon(1st January 2009), you will find it here.

Some photos from the event could be found here.

And for sure i am the GEEK on the photo ;).

Thanks to the other project members

Bernhard Kerschbaumer (3D and effect artist)
Jürgen Brunner (sound design and level design)
Max Brandl (project management and screen sesign)

Ps.: Jürgen send me an URL to link your name.