ScaleNine

With all the hype going around about the “leaked” iPhone firmware 1.1.3, I couldn’t help thinking about that one elusive feature, Flash on the iPhone. It goes beyond just looking at Flash content on the iPhone into running Flex apps on the iPhone. There have been discussions about an iPhone SDK on the horizon, but I’d love to be able to run applications like Photoshop Express, Adobe Media Player, Buzzword and connect to my Adobe Share account (maybe to share files via wifi).

I know there may be limited screen real estate on the iPhone, but it just means reworking the UI to make the user experience enjoyable on a smaller device. Of course there’s always room for “Mobile” or “Lite” versions of software, although in some cases it may be overkill to add applications that almost require that larger screen size.

With that said, I couldn’t help but mockup a version of the iPhone home screen with a slew of Adobe apps. Granted some of the apps probably have no business being on the iPhone.

UPDATE: Someone asked about getting the file for these icons. Here’s the Photoshop file.

Yes, a year can be a long time, but in the whole grand scheme of things it really isn’t. Looking back it’s amazing to see the strides that have been taken in technology, not only with Flex, but all over the place. I thought I’d sum up what my experiences have been like since I started ScaleNine and my minute contributions.

I “officially” started ScaleNine on December 27th, 2006 with about 3 themes. One theme I had created myself and the other two were from Adobe Consulting. Since that date the annual hit stats were 145,427 visits, 323,763 page views and 90,446 visitors. The number of themes now showcased on ScaleNine is at 17.

Those numbers crazy to me considering ScaleNine is a side-project of mine and I never thought it would go as far as it did. It was really just a response to the number of people who were asking about creating skins on FlexCoders. If you told me a year ago that I’d be speaking at conferences and writing a book based on the knowledge I’ve gained maintaining this site and developing applications in Flex, I would have looked at you as if you were nuts. However, that’s exactly what happened.

I’ve also had the opportunity to meet a lot of awesome people within the industry. Chatting with those people and seeing what others are developing always gets me excited about where things are going and the potential for future opportunities. Meeting new people has offered me the opportunity to work on other side-projects like Degrafa (beta January 1st) and help start the Orange County Flex User Group.

The company I work for is getting ready to launch a really interesting product and I’m excited about the possibilities. I’ve learned so much by being part of the team that has taken it to where it is right now and I look forward to gaining even more knowledge when we go live. It’s definitely an adventure that I’m glad I can play a role in.

The really great thing is that this feels like just the tip of the iceberg. Not only for myself, but for technology in general. With changes in the Flex 4 framework coming and Thermo I know things will be pushed even further. The only prediction I have for 2008 is that it’s going to be an awesome year.

I came across this skin for Flex via the Yahoo! Flash Blog. It’s a very clean looking theme created by Joe Magnani and Jeff Bennett of the Yahoo Media Innovation Group. Best of all, the assets for the skin, including the AI, SWF and CSS file, are available for you to use and tweak under the BSD license. Check out the post here or download the theme here. Thanks guys!

I’ll be speaking about Degrafa at the 360Flex Conference in Atlanta, February 25-27. Degrafa is a declarative graphics framework for Flex that allows you to draw graphics, create skins, and more using MXML and CSS.

We’re getting really close to releasing a public beta and we’re pretty excited to see what people will do with the framework. We’ve been creating various examples to showcase some of the possibilities of what you can do and it’s really great to see. By the time the conference rolls around we hope to have more features added and possibly a second release.

In addition, several members of the Degrafa team will be there, which should provide for a pretty good session. You can learn more about the conference here. See you there!