Have you ever needed to give a colleague or client a web-based preview of your current project? Have you found the trudge of setting up some hosting, uploading the files and keeping them up-to-date to be a pain? I have, and recently I found myself in a position where I had no hosting available so needed to find an alternative way to offer a preview of my work.

Dropbox my saviour

I was tipped off by my good friend Nick – http://www.twitter.com/makeusabrew – that Dropbox’s public folder would allow me to get a URL for any files that were contained within it. I use Dropbox almost religiously as my work folder so having the ability to preview straight from it was brilliant – and I can’t believe I’ve never used this feature before!

Rather than copy the files over to the Public folder, I’ve simply used a little bit of Terminal magic to set up a symbolic link to the preview files:

ln -s ~/Dropbox/work/project/parent_folder/ ~/Dropbox/Public/preview/

From there, it’s just a case of right-clicking the newly created preview folder and choosing Dropbox > Browse On Dropbox Website.

Getting the preview link

Once you’re viewing your folder on the dropbox website, choose the file you want to showcase (in my case it was an index.html) and click ‘Copy public link’ (if you can’t find it, click the downward facing arrow on the far right hand side).

You can then either copy the full link or create a shortened version that you can send on to whomever you like.

That’s it! A preview that is always up-to-date and publicly available without the need to setup hosting or ftp files.

Just a note, obviously this puts your work on a public URL (although it’s not going to be indexed by google) so be careful about how you share the link if you have commercially sensitive work to preview!

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One of the challenges that faces owners of Facebook Pages is the need to get visitors coming back. It can cost a lot of time, energy and money to get users returning to your page but thankfully Facebook has a feature that can make it easier to stay in touch, the like button.

Getting a user to like your page does two things. Firstly it means that updates from your page (such as your status updates or posting of photos) show up in their newsfeed and, secondly, the news that they like your page is shown across their friends' newsfeeds.

Ideally, we want to get a user to like the page and then have them return regularly to post messages or like updates, repeatedly spreading content from your page to their friends which in turn will hopefully lead to more people clicking the like button.

To make liking the page a more enticing offer it is possible to show non-fans a specific tab when they arrive and within that tab offer some exclusive content if they click the like button. In the past I’ve used this technique to show exclusive videos, give access to competitions or show an interview with a celebrity; the content can be anything, it just needs to be attractive enough to get the user to click the button.

The old way

Previously creating this gated content (or fan gate) was simply a case of installing the static FBML application to your page, creating your content and using a small bit of FBML to say that if the user didn’t like the page then don’t show the content. Simple!

Sadly, this easy implementation was lost when Facebook retired the static FBML application earlier this year.

Finding out if a user likes you

Initially on investigating the new iFrame custom tab system it seemed like you would have to request permissions from the user to check through the pages that they have liked. This is a problem as requesting permissions is often a huge barrier to completion and, where possible, I always try to avoid asking.

Just as a side note, if you do need to request permissions, make sure you only ask for the bare essentials, users are very picky about accepting when you ask for the moon on a stick, especially if they think you stand to gain more than they will.

If your user is viewing your content anywhere other than on your page (i.e. in a Facebook Application or away from Facebook) then you will need to request permissions to check their status. However, when viewing a custom tab we have access to some extra (anonymous) data that tells us exactly what we need to know.

The signed_request

If you’re read my previous post about the transition from static FBML to iFrames for custom tabs you’ll have seen that Facebook requests our content via a HTTP POST request. In the POST request is a signed_request value that contains information about the user, including data to say if they are already a fan or not!

The big thing here is that it is anonymous, Facebook is giving us an insight into the user but is not telling us who they are. It’s not as simple as the old FBML way, but it’s better than requesting permissions.

To get to the data you need to process the signed_request, below is some example code that I have used previously to find out the status of a user as a fan.

list($encoded_sig, $payload) = explode('.', $_POST['signed_request'], 2);

$sig = json_decode(base64_decode(strtr($encoded_sig, '-_', '+/')), true);
$data = json_decode(base64_decode(strtr($payload, '-_', '+/')), true);

$expected_sig = hash_hmac('sha256', $payload, $your_application_secret, $raw = true);
if($sig != $expected_sig){
    //oops, the signed_request wasn't what it should be so we can't trust it.
    //need to handle this error gracefully
}
else{
    //excellent, the data is valid
    //now check to see if the user is a fan
    if($data['page']['liked']){
        //great, the user likes the page
        //show the extra content
    }
    else{
        //not a fan yet
        //let's dangle the carrot that makes them click like
    }
}

What happens when someone clicks like

Depending on how you have decided to allow users to like your page there are a couple of different ways to check their fan status.

1. If a user clicks the main like button at the top of your page, the page will automatically refresh on your application and your code should have seen the change in their fan status through the signed_request and show content accordingly.

2. If, however, you have implemented a second like button, typically with xfbml and the Javascript SDK, you will need to create a Javascript function that listens for the edge_create event. When this event is triggered you can either use Javascript to reveal the content or, as I have done in the past, you can cause the browser to reload the page in a similar fashion to clicking the main like button at the top of the page.

The code to subscribe to the clicking of a like button to become a fan is as follows:

FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(){
    self.parent.location.href='url_to_show';  
});

In conclusion

There you have it, a quick overview of how to use the data presented by Facebook’s signed_request to see whether a user is a fan or not. As with anything on the net, it is important to consider the intentions of users and try to produce content and interactions that match their motivations. If you have great content that you need people to share, something like a fan gate can be a great way to get your content shared across Facebook.

If you liked this post please share it!

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Facebook has recently upgraded Pages with a raft of new features that are aimed at helping Page owners communicate more effectively.  Amongst the new features are better ways to keep up with activity on a Page, new ways for Pages to share content, new ways for users to filter a Page’s content by relevancy and a completely new system for creating Custom Tabs.

I’ve been looking into what these updates mean for businesses and app designers and have found that the new iFrame system opens the door to bigger and better Custom Tabs.

The New Custom Page

The most obvious change has been the design, with tabs being removed from the top to under the profile image and photos uploaded to the Page being displayed across the top in the same way as a normal Facebook Profile.  Additionally, it is now possible for admins to browse Facebook as a Page, increasing the ability for the Page to build a presence through liking, commenting and sharing content across the network.

The not so obvious change is in the way that Custom Tabs can be added.  Previously it was possible for a user to create a Tab using the Static FBML application and this was a really simple way to get a personalised tab that could act as the opening view of your Page.  FBML offered ways to access features of Facebook, including the like button and comments, as well as ways to use data about the user to customise content for them.  A fan gate was a typical feature where different content was shown to users who had liked a Page to those who hadn’t.

I’m talking about FBML in the past tense because that functionality has all changed, and from tomorrow (12th March 2011) you are no longer able to add a Static FBML tab to your Page.  Instead, Facebook has introduced iFrame support to Pages and Custom Tabs can only be created using that feature.

How to add a Custom Tab

So how do you go about building a Custom Tab using iFrame Applications?  The good news is that the new system is actually much better in terms of functionality that can be provided and once familiar with the process it is really simple.

A Custom Tab is setup in the developers area of Facebook in the same way that applications are created.  You specify a base url for your Canvas Application and then specify the url that tab content should come from.  Currently you have to specify a Canvas URL, even if you only want to use the Custom Tab feature.

Development and testing is easier as you can build your application locally and use exactly the same code to power the live application, no need to copy and paste FBML/HTML into a form on Facebook before clicking to preview.  An extra little benefit is that because you host the content, not Facebook, the aggressive caching that Facebook employed for Static FBML tabs is now no longer used, so no more having to put query strings on css and image urls when you need to make a change!

With the Javascript SDK and various server-side SDKs (typically I use the PHP SDK to access features of the Graph API) it is now possible to build your application using the same HTML, CSS and Javascript that you use on your own website.  This means that libraries such as jQuery and MooTools can be used to provide extra functionality to your custom Tab.

iFrame Apps Technical Details

Facebook sends POST data to your application when a user clicks to view your Custom Tab (they call this the Signed Request).  Depending on where your application is being viewed, the Signed Request includes information about the Page and the User.  If you haven’t requested extra permissions, there is only limited data about the User available, including their country, locale and ID.

For Custom Tabs the signed request contains extra information about the Page, including a boolean that says whether a user has liked the page or not.  This feature is what allows fan gates to be implemented as it provides a way to check a user’s status without having to request advanced permissions.  You can also detect whether the user is an admin of the page.

The migration from FBML to iFrame tabs has also meant the demise of preload FQL.  As with currently built static FBML tabs, any apps that make use of preload FQL currently will continue to work, but new apps will not be able to use this functionality.

Custom Tab Gotchas

The need to implement Custom Tabs through iFrame apps has also introduced some interesting gotchas that application developers and Page admins need to take into consideration.  The main one being that all applications, even when not submitted to the Application Directory, have a publicly available profile page.  Whether this profile page is advertised or not there are ways to find it, and trust me that users will, so updates and administration will need to be factored into the management of the Custom Tab.

Another potential source of issues is that a Canvas Application will exist for all Custom Tabs.  What content, if any, is shown there is a point for discussion between developers, designers and the Page admins, however it is worth remembering that a Canvas Application doesn’t get the extra Page data in its signed request, so any Page specific functionality needs to be removed.

Finally, it is worth remembering that apps can be installed on any Page, not just the ones that you administer, so it is important to plan what should happen if the app is installed away from your control.  Typically I suggest using that installation as an advert that directs users back to the Page for which the Custom Tab was created, but that certainly isn’t the only way to handle that situation.

Expanding Your App

This move by Facebook to remove Static FBML apps will inevitably lead to developers and businesses becoming more aware of the Graph API and the structure of applications both on and off Facebook as opposed to simply knowing how to have a custom design installed on their Page.  I also think it will help Facebook spread the usage of the Open Graph as businesses will now have applications that they can use to administer their Open Graph pages.

With the iFrame content being served from 3rd party servers it is possible to build Facebook support into a central CMS.  This could open the door to much greater control and use of Facebook Pages as content can be managed and updated a lot more easily than was previously possible using Static FBML. Showcasing a particular product on your Page could now be as simple as changing an image and some text in your CMS.

Of course, this is merely scratching the surface of what is possible, and I’m sure that in the coming months we shall see a wave of innovative uses of iFrame applications that weren’t previously possible using the Static FBML app. On the flip-side, there will be people that don’t want to move to the new iFrame system and apps are already popping up that replicate the functionality that was offered by Static FBML.

More Information

Extra details about the changes to Pages and the migration from Static FBML to iFrame apps can be found on Facebook:

• http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/462
• http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/477
• http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/signed_request/
• http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-pages/an-upgrade-for-pages/10150090729...

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via fictivekin.com

I love the playfulness and thought behind this site, a first glance there's not much going on but have a click around and you'll find some really cool stuff!

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A key step in my design process is getting ideas down on paper. It doesn't really matter where this happens, either in my lovely notebook or on sheets of A4, the key is to rapidly get ideas sketched out using good old pencil and paper.

One recent addition to my wireframing toolkit was a Fujitsu Scansnap S1500m - a great document scanner that does double sided scans very, very quickly. I've combined this with Evernote to get cloud based, text searchable documents that I can organise really easily.

We've been using this template in the office on all our recent work, with the resulting wireframes getting pinned up on the walls for review, scanned into Evernote for indexing and storage and included in documents that are shared with clients.

The template is light grey dot grid which I find is really good for guiding straight lines without getting in the way (as a more traditional squared paper may).

I don't know if people will find it useful but I'll share it anyway, happy days!

Wireframe_Templates.pdf Download this file

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As part of an upcoming pitch I have been working away from my computer to remove internet distractions and open myself up to more creative thinking.

So, armed with a trusty pencil and a lovely Moleskine Cahier gridded notebook I’ve been perched in the front atrium of the Round Foundry Media Centre jotting down my thoughts and ideas for this exciting web project.

Some of the notes I’ve made are project specific, but some of them are more widely applicable and I thought they could be of interest/use to others so here is the first in a series of posts explaining some of my thoughts.

Mailto: is dead

As part of this pitch we commissioned some remote user testing (courtesy of the great service www.whatusersdo.com) and one of the unsuspected findings was how people want to contact others when browsing the web.

The problem was this, a user saw that they needed to email someone for more information, they clicked the email address and boom, their computer went crazy! All sorts of alerts and popups from Windows Live Mail, confusion reigned and they were left struggling to work out what to do next. If emailing the person shown on the site was a goal, this user was certainly struggling to achieve it.

The problem here is that there is a huge group of users on the internet that don’t use a native mail client. Instead, services such as Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail are the preferred choices and often people don’t setup these accounts with traditional mail clients like Thunderbird, Outlook Express or Mac Mail.

My notes on this were simply the following:

People should be able to communicate with a site’s contact without having to use their email or 3rd party software.

In short, if there is any part of your site that lists someone’s email address as a means of contact consider implementing a neat way to show them a contact form with the recipient clearly shown. The user won’t have to leave the site, open a new window or get confused by popups telling them they have to set up their mail accounts.

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ParticleSwarm3.swf Download this file

The little experiment now has multiple modes and a little system for sequencing them. I think this might be as far as I take this little experiment for now, but may end up coming back to it to add some new bits and pieces.

The code is pretty straightforward and development was made even quicker thanks to the awesome HYPE framework.  I wrote a custom particle class that is solely used to store numbers and calculate where it should go next (you pass it a target point and it swarms towards it) and the Main class generates and animates the 40 0000+ particles.

The Object Pool class from the HYPE Framework made working with large numbers of particles easy, though I think I could probably get greater performance from a custom solution.  Other than the maths to work out where a particle should go next the only other code worth noting is how a particle is drawn.

Experienced flash developers will know this like the back of their hands, but it's useful to document for newer developers that might now have had the exposure to manipulating large numbers of particles and drawing them to the screen.  It involves a large bitmap and the BitmapData class' setPixel32() method.

bmd.colorTransform(bmd.rect, new ColorTransform(1,1,1.02,0.99)); bmd.applyFilter(bmd, bmd.rect, new Point(0,0), new BlurFilter(1.15, 1.15, 1)); bmd.lock(); pool.activeSet.forEach(function(p:Pixel):void{   p.update();   bmd.setPixel32(p.x, p.y , p.color); }); bmd.unlock()

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I'm starting to pull the particles experiment into some form of shape now so it's possible to visualise the underlying shape a bit better. I've also tightened up the colour scheme a little bit rather than just using random values.

Main.swf Download this file

I think the next step for this system is to introduce a way of stepping through various sequences of patterns, I've got a good idea how this might be achieved so keep checking back to see what might come of it!

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Whilst playing with extending the HYPE framework I stumbled across this happy accident. It's not really what I'd intended the piece to do, but I think it looks really cool anyway.

Main.swf Download this file

I'm using the ObjectPool along with some customised swarm code to move 50000 pixel particles around the screen. Not that you can tell from this, but there is an underlying shape from which each particle gets a target point. Each particle is drawn to a bitmap which has a slight colorTransform applied to give the fade and colourise effect.

Currently the particles are given a randomly generated colour, but this will be extended to use custom colours. The next step, however, will be to use multiple bitmaps and apply funky blend modes, check back later for a bit more of that!

This example was coded in the brilliant FDT 4 M3 (I really recommend people get hold of this if they haven't already) and Flash Pro CS5. I'm becoming firmly convinced that this setup is the best Flash/Actionscript workflow you can have (probably another post about that though!).

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Sounds really exciting doesn't it but what you see below you is the result of little experiment to see how many particles my computer could handle at a decent frame-rate. I got up to 75 000 before it started to chug but for the sake of demonstration the following example only has 40 000 so that the majority of people can have a decent viewing experience.

Particle Storm C.swf Download this file

Although coded by myself, the idea takes inspiration from an example on the great site www.flashandmath.com - Perlin Noise Accelerated Particles (http://www.flashandmath.com/flashcs4/storm/index.html)

I'll post up some of my code later once I've given it a tidy up.

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Version 1

Version 2

My first update was to set several boids swarming to different points within the target shape with colours being pulled from a the colour pool I’d set up using HYPE. To me this looked absolutely ace, but was far too abstract so another angle was needed!

Version 3

The colours struck a chord with the client though so I had made a step in the right direction there. My final tweak was to change the swarm to random placement of squares. The squares wouldn’t leave the abstract trails of the swarm, but could be given the bright colours to help the main shape stand out. This worked really nicely and created the exact effect that I was after. Several variations and sizes followed before the final design was signed off.

Gallery of designs from throughout the process

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Getting closer in to the image reveals a level of detail that I find really fascinating.  The particles were spewed from an emitter and the Flash Graphics API was used to draw the circular shapes.  There was a BitmapCanvas from the HYPE framework capturing what was going on once every second and the colours were selected using the HYPE ColorPool.  Additional movement and randomness was added by using the Swarm and RandomTrigger classes.

The image was exported to PNG and because of the superb large canvas features included in BitmapCanvas the resulting file size is not only massive but crystal clear for high dpi, large format print runs.

This was really just a test run and isn't that great as a piece of art (in my eyes) so now I'm going to take this and build on it to produce some limited edition prints.  The theme I have in mind revolves around peoples' names and if it works will hopefully produce some absolutely stunning pieces of art.  I hope!!

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Above is some artwork that I've been creating using Flash, AS3 and the HYPE Framework (www.hypeframework.com). It's a one-off piece and it's the first print I will have ever had professionally printed. Fingers crossed that it comes out looking great!

Although I've been a bit quiet recently on the generative art front, I've been secretly beavering away creating some different bits and pieces both as paid client work and for personal satisfaction. One of the big breakthroughs for me was finding the HYPE framework and utilising the excellent BitmapCanvas and ContextSavePNG classes to produce hi-res copies of my artwork. Hats off to Joshua Davis and Branden Hall for an excellent framework that is so easy to use and extend!

I've got some more cool artwork to post up in the next week or so that was used for a promotional flyer for London based Breaks night Supatronix. I'll cover how it was made and will probably release the code as well so people can have a play about and create their own versions!

I can't show the whole of this artwork just yet, but will definitely be posting it up in due course - the lucky recipient needs to get their hands on it first though!

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My job title at Coolpink is 'Web Designer' and though my role has developed over time to incorporate Flash design and development, it was initially a bit different to what I'd come to expect as a web designer - I didn't have to code any HTML or CSS!  This came as a bit of a surprise to me (though not one that I would describe as unpleasant) and my colleagues all seemed happy enough with this arrangement.

It quickly became apparent that none of the design team had aspirations to learn Actionscript either so the Flash output was mainly slightly amended stock elements or very straight forward animations using the timeline and snippits of code pinched from searches on Google.

My background in Computer Science gave me a fairly hefty leg up when I stepped in to take charge of the Flash work we had coming in.  The recent release (at that time) of AS 3.0 meant that much of the best-practise for coding ActionScript fit with theory already in my head and as I worked on more interactive projects it became apparent that the best quality work could only be achieved by implementing code, not purely using the timeline in isolation.

In the past six months my role has changed as I've begun to focus more on creating experiences and interactive work and less on standard web design, so much so that I'd consider my job title to have changed from Web Designer to Interactive Designer.  I'll be quick to state that interactive does not equal animation (or the inherently bland images fading between one another as part of a promo), everything that someone comes into contact with on the Internet is in some way interactive.  On the whole though, I've been responsible for designing and developing Flash games/sites/widgets/etc. that are based around reacting to a user's input.

So, should digital designers learn to love coding? I'd say a definite yes as you can explore the digital medium better by knowing how to code, you are not limited to static mock ups of ideas.  One of the things I love about working with Flash is that you can create visually stunning work that can only be achieved by coding.  I'd argue that a coder that didn't have a visual flair wouldn't be able to produce this sort of work in the same way that a designer that creates beautiful work couldn't.  You only have to look at work by Josua Davis, Erik Natzke, Quasimondo, Jared Tarbell, Bit101, etc. etc. to see what I'm talking about.  Beautiful work all achieved through coding.

Sometimes the code is solely responsible for making something react or change in a pretty way, sometimes it changes a set of rules by which the elements on the screen abide, sometimes it uses drawing commands to produce artwork that mimics reality and sometimes it simpley loads another web page.  All of this code is creative and as a designer I feel better equipped to produce outstanding work by having the ability to make my ideas a reality, better equipped to make the user's experience of my work breathtaking.

Of course, not everyone loves Flash but that doesn't mean to say that code is meaningless to you if you don't create Flash work.  Javascript is a massive part of any website and is fundamental in improving users' experiences on the web as a whole.  Facebook without Javascript (in fact a lot of sites without AJAX) would be a horrific experience!  For the 'Flash is dead' brigade, HTML5 and specifically the Canvas tag will definitely not do away with a need to code, quite the opposite as there is currently no visual IDE available for production of content.

Reading, understanding and talking about what is possible with regards to digital is one thing; but I believe that only by understanding and implementing code will you truly get the best result.*

There is, of course, the opposing viewpoint that designers should stay away from code to avoid limiting creativity.  Lukas Mathis is strongly against designers coding saying:

Designers who also know how to code either work with dedicated programmers, or they implement their own designs. Both cases can cause issues.

In the first case, the user interaction designer is compromised because he may make premature decisions which should be left up to the programmer, who has the full picture of the code base and better knowledge of the technology. In the second case, he is compromised because he has two contradicting goals.

I disagree with this viewpoint as it relates more to the ability and mindset of the designer.  A good designer should implement good processes to ensure that they focus on the correct part of the job in hand and shouldn't limit themselves when thinking of how to creatively solve a brief.

Any designer's focus should always be on producing the best possible user experience and when it comes to working in the digital medium I'd say that a decent grasp of the relevant code is increasingly important.

*My caveat here is that coded projects are inevitably best when completed in tadem with an experienced developer.  I guess the main point should be that as a designer with the ability to code, it is possible to get the idea working in some form or another and then you can go to a developer and really make it sparkle.

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The iPhone started it, the iPad carried it on and now it seems that the revised T's & C's from Apple have really fired the whole Apple vs. Adobe argument. From the outset I'm going to put my cards on the table, I love Apple products - I have an iPhone, an iMac and use Apple computers at work - and I also love working with Flash so this situation is one that is of both interest and concern to me.

My personal history in this area begins properly in 2008, when I first picked up Flash professionally. Although I'd flirted with flash back when it was a Macromedia product, I hadn't really played with it in years and starting my new job at Coolpink threw me in at the deep end. Fortunately it seemed to just 'click' and since then I've enjoyed attending conferences, learning new techniques and building cool experiences with Flash. I've made a lot of interesting things with Flash and Actionscript and it's pretty much become my main focus. Given my relatively short amount of time working with Flash, however, this whole situation is a bit confusing and a little bit worrying. I'm sure I'm not alone here...

In a nutshell here's what I don't understand about this situation. The iPad is surely powerful enough to run Flash Player but doesn't. Flash doesn't perform as well on OS X as on Windows but Apple block access to APIs that would mean performance boosts. Web designers and developers seem to constantly cry fowl about Flash being a proprietary platform and say that HTML5 is a much better alternative, but it's currently miles off being good enough to rival what you can achieve with Flash and the Canvas element which makes it all vaguely interesting is in fact developed by Apple and isn't Open Source either!! Oh, and HTML5 seems to be more of a performance hog than Flash for a great many tasks.

When I was at uni (back in the dark days of the early 2000s) I was pushing the use of CSS over tables. It made sense, it was a better solution. So when someone at work suggested that HTML5 and CSS3 would render Flash pointless I decided to give this 'new' way of working a go. It sucked. I wanted to put a drop shadow on something and ignoring the lack of blend modes etc. I just couldn't get it to work. On a mixed background, some parts of the shadow were too strong and in other parts it looked like a glow. Rubbish!

For me, a lot of the bad press that Flash seems to get is not down to how the runtime performs, but how shoddy the development of the site or app is in the first place. You've only got to look at things like the Hobnox Audiotool (www.audiotool.com) to see how much performance it is possible to get from the Flash Player. It feels like Apple are being deliberately destructive here and given that they have sold a lot of hardware to creatives because of the Adobe suite of products it's very confusing.

Let's not forget that Google and RIM (makers of the Blackberry) have recently partnered with Adobe to help push the Flash platform forward, specifically on mobile devices. I've seen Flash Player 10.1 running on mobile devices and it performs really well. It certainly performs well enough on netbooks and in the past month my native Apple apps have crashed more than a browser running Flash.

Steve Jobs saying that intermediate layers create poorer experiences is nonsense, and I'll back up the many previous voices that have said that the blame for poor experiences lies with poor developers, not the tools they use. My personal feeling is that Apple really don't want Flash Player on the iPhone/iPod/iPad because it would undermine profits from the App store. The cross compilation from the Flash IDE seems a bit more murky as there may be some truth in the technical problems that it may cause with the new version of the iPhone OS but even so, why put that clause in there? If Flash compiles apps that don't work, developers won't use it, just like they won't use Lua, Monotouch or Unity if they don't work properly! The key is letting the developer choose.

So what does this all mean for me really? I will continue to use Flash for personal experiments and projects and I will continue to recommend it as a solution for clients where it is suitable but the shockwave (poor pun) of the Apple tactics have already started to be felt as we've seen clients questioning the use of Flash a lot more. I hope it doesn't die out as I've developed a wide and in-depth set of skills for working with AS3 and Flash, however, I'd like to think that I could use my knowledge to produce quality work on any platform using any tools or language.

My worry for the future is that this whole debate confuses people that don't really know enough about Flash or HTML5. I fear that clients will start requesting that work is not carried out in Flash without proper justification. Even if it is the best technology to solve their brief they'll be scared because of the storm that this debate has whipped up. Flash suddenly seems to have become the whipping boy.

Should people just starting out working with Flash be worried? I'd say not, so long as they are prepared to learn design and development from the ground up. As always, the aim should be to become a great designer or coder, not just a great Flash designer or Actionscript coder.

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Inspired by Erik Natzke this is an experiment with particles and chains to produce some pretty patterns!

DragAndBeHappy.swf Download this file

This effect is created by using the graphics API to draw the particles and then draw straight lines linking them.  Moving the mouse causes the particles to chase each other (and the mouse) and easing is applied to allow for some interesting shapes to be made.

Each frame is drawn to a bitmap which is made slight more transparent each frame to create the fade effect.

The next step is adding in width to the line to create a ribbon effect and I'll be posting that up soon!

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It's taken far too long to get this post up, so many apologies but I hope something of interest comes from it anyway!

IMG_0206.MOV Watch on Posterous

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FITC got started properly today and judging by the crush to get into the Keynote by Richard Galvan and Mark Anders it was going to be a busy day!

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