ScaleNine

Today the specifics of Adobe’s C3 product offerings were announced and it’s quite a lineup of software. It’s the biggest release of software in the company’s history. I can’t wait to start using the new CS3 products, but what initially caught my attention was the way Adobe’s branding has visually transitioned to include products acquired from Macromedia as well as products developed after that.

Many people have voiced their opinions of likes and dislikes of Adobe’s approach to visually representing their products. However, after seeing the a larger role out of branded packaging it seems to make more sense. It’s almost as if Adobe had to go the route of breaking down their product icons to a very simple form — type, color and shape, part of the core of what Adobe deals with. It’s a lot of products that can work in tandem with each other in a variety of combinations.

Not only that, but dealing with simple aspects in form gives Adobe the ability to make those icons, and their basic constructs, into what ever helps make their products and their connections to each other more understandable. The icons of CS2 may have been more appropriate at the time, but their were much fewer overlaps in the product line. Now, you having things going from Photoshop to Illustrator to Flash and back again in a variety of ways. There’s is an overlapping of workflows from web to print and what better way to represent that than colors and the ways they blend together, like on the new packaging.

Flexibility is also a benefit of having such open-ended icons. Those square icons can grow into bands of color, become three dimensional blocks in an Adobe Rubik’s Cube, easily morph into bars in a chart to represent sales, or break the square shape and rely on the type and color as identifiers.

I’ve also noticed that others who have seen Adobe’s new icons and corresponding color wheel image begin creating their own metaphors for what those icons represent. They are pixels that make up the image of Adobe. They are color swatches making up Adobe’s palette of products. They are elements that make up a atom or DNA like structure. It’s interesting what happens when you take away such descriptive visual elements like those of CS2. People start making their own.

All of this can be seen as advantages that tie in appropriately with Adobe’s “Creative License” statements. The directions this new branding initiative can go are only limited to those behind it and I can only imagine how large this spectrum is really going to get.

Apollo shirts are now available for purchase and have one of the winning phrases from a previous post. The design is as seen above, and here, with your choice of one of these three phrases on the back. Choose from:

One small step for man, one giant leap for developers.

Desktop 2.0

The web is not enough…

They’re available in Red or Dark Grey in sizes S, M, L, XL. Prices are $9 + $4 shipping and handling. So, $13 all together, unless your ordering from outside the U.S. Then it’s a bit more. I make the shirts as they are ordered and I when I have enough orders to do a larger run. They’ll get screened as I have time, so it may take a couple weeks to get the shirt.

Before purchasing, make sure you are happy with the quality. Again, I made these on my screen printer at home with a type of ink that is semi-transparent. I tried to take detailed shots to make sure to illustrate this. Also, I will only be taking orders for the next couple weeks.

Purchase an Apollo Shirt Here:

http://scalenine.bigcartel.com

ScaleNine is prepped and ready for Apollo. The themes I’ve created so far can be used in both Flex and Apollo and I will be adding Apollo applications, in addition to Flex applications, to the showcase area. I can’t wait to see all the great stuff people come up with as well as finding the time to create some more themes.

Recently several people have inquired about the need to create a mailing list (similar to the FlexCoders Group) dedicated to the customization of UIs for Flex and Apollo. While I think this is a good idea I need to evaluate how great this need is and whether there are enough people who would be willing to contribute. As it is right now it seems new community information pools are popping up more frequently (almost once a week it seems) and in some cases contain redundant information. In some cases it makes it hard to find the information you’re looking for.

Obviously I don’t want to overlap other resources that might be gathering this information, so before I put together a Yahoo Group dedicated to UI customization I also need to make sure there isn’t something out there already that people feel is adequate. The last thing I want to do is fragment the information sources already established.

The topics to be covered would include: app skinning, styling, extending components to get a visual look you want, UI design practices, patterns, etc. for Apollo and Flex. Essentially the goal would be to answer questions from “Why can’t I get a drop shadow to show up on my canvas?” to “How can I make the ComboBox drop down go up instead of down?” to “How do I implement this component I found to distort my application to work?.” Also, the group should be centered on advanced customization of applications either visual or in terms of behavior. What i mean, is that the topic of the group shouldn’t be only about skinning, but about everything related to creating richer interfaces. From very beginner levels to advanced.

Just in case this idea flies (and the name), I created a ScaleNine Yahoo Group. However, I’m looking for ideas for what the name of this group should be and whether or not people feel there is a need for this. If not, hey, it was just a thought

Thoughts, questions, concerns?

UPDATE: I’ve changed the ScaleNine Group to FlexApolloUI Group.

Adobe made Apollo available for download. Time for some more sleepless nights.

Download it here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/

If your dealing heavily with the design side of Flex 2, creating UIs and skins, you may find it tedious having to write and rewrite, or copying and pasting the same CSS code over and over for embedding SWF assets. Brian Wills put together a JSFL based helper script for Flash to help ease this process and save time.

It’s an early “work in progress” but a great start for a solution to one of the processes that I’m hoping Adobe will be addressing/solving in the upcoming release of CS3.

Check it out.

The Flex 2 Primitive Explorer, from Jason Hawryluk, is great for helping to understand how to draw shapes in Flex 2, whether for graphics, programmatic skins or custom components.

Jason expanded upon the Flex 2 Style Explorer to create this easy to use/understand tool. It will definitely help me with getting more involved with programmatic skinning and the source is included.

Experience: http://www.3gcomm.fr/Flex/PrimitiveExplorer/Flex2PrimitiveExplorer.html

Info: http://flexibleexperiments.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/flex-20-primitive-explorer/

Source: http://www.3gcomm.fr/Flex/PrimitiveExplorer/srcview/index.html

A decision has finally been made regarding the back of the Apollo T-Shirt I’m putting together. There were so many great ideas (more responses than I expected) that it made for a hard decision to make on my own. So, I enlisted other fellow bloggers and friends to help me make the decision. Even then I narrowed it down to three.

The overall top choice was (insert drumroll here):

“One small step for man, one giant leap for developers” posted by Mathias

I think Ryan Stewart had part of it right as to why this ended up being the decision:

…it ties in so well with the theme and the
old days of central.

In the end it was the tie in with the theme, memorableness (a word?) and reactions that I got that pushed this one to the top. So, Mathias, you get a free shirt and if you don’t claim it the free shirt goes to Grant

There are also two runners up:

“Desktop 2.0″ posted by Faisal Abid and “The web is not enough…” posted by Stefan le Roux. If the runners up want a shirt they can get it for a discount with their winning phrase on the back.

Thanks to everyone who put their 2 cents in. If you’d like a shirt I’m thinking of making them available for sale in any size, red or dark grey with one of the 3 phrases on the back. I need to finish the design first, so if you’re interested you might want to wait to see what the art looks like.

Keep in mind these are “home-made” shirts, so there might be small imperfections, but I’ll do my best

Time to get screenprinting.

Now taking orders: http://scalenine.bigcartel.com

Mike Chambers and Ted Patrick got the ball rolling with a one stop site to view all the videos they’ve been putting together for Flex and Apollo. I tried getting something like this going on over at flexcursion.com, but I’m sure they’ll be much more successful.

Not only can you view the videos they’ve put together, but you can also download them for your own purposes. Very nice!

Check out video.onflex.org

So, the other day I went to upload some images to my Flickr account via the Flickr Uploadr utility and after I clicked the “Go to Flickr” button the uploader froze as did my browser. How peculiar I thought. I forced quit my browser, restarted it, then went to Flickr to make sure my images uploaded successfully. I couldn’t login and I got this message:

We’re sorry, but there’s a problem.
Here’s what going on:

Your potentialunfounded Yahoo! ID uses the email address juan[at]scalenine.com. That email address is already associated with the scalenine account on Flickr.
Here’s what to do:

* If you are trying to create a new Flickr account for your potentialunfounded Yahoo! ID, you need to either:
o Remove the juan[at]scalenine.com email address from your scalenine Flickr account. (You’ll need to sign in to Flickr with your potentialunfounded Yahoo! ID to do this.) Or,
o Change the primary email address for your potentialunfounded Yahoo! ID. (Your potentialunfounded Yahoo! preferences.)
* If you are trying to access your scalenine Flickr account, please sign in to Yahoo! again with your potentialunfounded Yahoo! ID.

I tried doing all the things recommended by the message above, but still no success. All I got was a screen asking me to create a new Flickr account or merge an existing account. Tried merging but got the same message above.

I racked my brain trying to remember if I had done something that would have caused this. Nope, been logging in the same way since I created my Flickr account. But wait, I did try out the new My Yahoo Beta. Could that have done it?

I went through Flickr customer support and was finally told that it must be on Yahoo’s end. My only choices are to download all my pictures, let them delete my Flickr account and then create a new one.

What’s weird is the following:

1. The picture I uploaded when Flickr Uploader froze did go through. It’s the most recent image that’s up there.

2. All my Yahoo Groups got cleared from my account, yet I still recieve email updates from those groups.

3. At one point when I went to the Yahoo home page it once said “Hi juan” and another time said “Hi potentialunfounded.” Which, unless there is some randomness to that greeting, I find rather odd.

4. I went to the FlexCoders group, which I joined a while ago, and went to one of my former posts. There are details on the right of the post regarding the user who posted it and one of the details is online status. It said my status was “Offline” when I was clearly logged in looking at my own former post.

It’s as if my accounts were separated at some point.

Now I’m trying to get in touch with Yahoo, but in the mean time I’m downloading all my pics and preparing for the worst. I guess that’s what happens when mergers occur, users can slip through the cracks.