Here’s my Flash Catalyst presentation slides and source files from this weekend’s Flex Camp Orange County. Along with the slides (which I partly borrowed from Ryan Stewart), I walked through the “next-gen” workflow of creating a design, bringing the design into Flash Catalyst, then taking that into Flex Builder 4 to add some data.

The app I walked through was kind of a social address book. Along with some basic interactions I added in some 3D flip action and a expandable drawer. It was a pretty simple example, but it was plenty to go through in the 40 minute time slot. You can view the final app here.

If you’re interested in walking through the workflow yourself, you can download the Illustrator CS4 file, Flash Catalyst FXP file, final Flex Builder source and slides in a single zip file: Get the Flash Catalyst Source files.

The turn out for Flex Camp Orange County was great! And who can resist Flex and AIR cupcakes from Two Parts Sugar. Thanks to Nahuel, Laura and Jeremy from ASFusion for putting things together, as well as Tom and John of 360|Conferences.

If you’re looking for the Degrafa presentation Tom Gonzalez and I gave, I’ll be posting it to the Degrafa blog, or you can see the slides here.

A number of fellow developers from Denver will be going to speak. I’ll be heading down there with Tony Hillerson to present on Degrafa, while Tony is speaking on Flex Frameworks.

To learn more about Flex Camp Orange County, you can check out the website.

Download the Slides

Download the Source

This is my first MAX I’ve spoken at and the first MAX Europe I’ve attended. Overall I think the presentation went well and I look forward to the opportunity to speak at future MAX events. Tomorrow I’ll be speaking with Jason Hawryluk about Degrafa during lunch in the Community Lounge.

I’m also looking forward to giving a talk on Degrafa with Jason Hawryluk on Tuesday in the Community Lounge. I think the presentation will probably be the best one ever considering it will be given by the 2 guys who founded Degrafa.

You can learn more about the Degrafa presentation here.

Tony has more information regarding the source code on his blog. We’re thinking about evolving these samples as we have the time, so you may want to continually check back (no promises).

The video is now available here or through the 360|Flex feed for AMP.

I’m getting ready to take off for Webmaniacs to present during the FlexManiacs portion which starts on Wednesday. I’ll be presenting on Degrafa, its features and what the next release will bring. Of course, you can always check out the dev branch to get a hint.

One thing I noticed is that Degrafa session is listed under the “Advanced Development” category of session topics. However, working with Degrafa is anything but that. Sure, you can do some really advanced stuff, but it is super easy to work with at an MXML level. In fact, that’s one of our primary focuses. I’d say that if you know how to add a Button to a Canvas you can easily jump into Degrafa and do some really cool stuff. Working with the Drawing API is advanced, not Degrafa.

There’s also a session that was put together surrounding some of the current open-source projects going on. I’ll be sitting in with Adam Flater, Ben Stucki, Tony Hillerson and other open-source contributors to talk about the different aspects of open-source. Should be a good one.

I depart on Tuesday with fellow EffectiveUIers Tony Hillerson and Jim Cheng. It’s pretty cool seeing how many of the presenters are flying out of Denver. Anyhow, I’m looking forward to meeting up with people, so feel free to say “hi”.

See you in D.C.

Tomorrow I’ll be giving a presentation on Degrafa at the Rocky Mountain Adobe User Group (RMAUG). The user group is in Denver, CO, but if you can’t be there in person, the whole thing will be “broadcast live” via Adobe Connect. If you can’t make it at all I think it’s going to be recorded, so you can replay my lack of typing skills and those things that always seem to go wrong during a presentation.

If you haven’t heard of Degrafa, it’s an open-source framework for defining graphics programatically through MXML. It greatly simplifies the process of creating dynamic graphics, skins, data visualizations, etc. Features include a library of shapes, fills, strokes, advanced CSS, focus on code reuse and much more. I use Degrafa in every Flex project I’m get my hands on.

I’m glad to finally be able to do something like this. There has been a lot of expressed interest in Degrafa, particularly in a Connect Session. I plan on going in depth on the features Degrafa has to offer, what people are doing with it, running through some sample code and talking about what plans we have for the next release. There will also be more of a hands-on session, which I’m not quite sure how that will work for those following via Connect.

If you’re interested in Degrafa I think this will be a great way to get up to speed with the framework, get some questions answered or just another way to heckle me. I’ll also be listening for feature requests, although my answer usually always is, “We’re working on it.”

Get more details here

Degrafa links:

Degrafa Website, Samples, Community Showcase, Documentation, Discussion Group, Code Repository and Degrafa on Twitter.

The 360|Flex conference definitely had an open-source tone to it. With talk of projects like Open Flux, Merapi, FlexLib and Degrafa, it was exciting to hear how developers are grouping together to push Flex in the direction they’d like to see it go. I sat in on a session surrounding the topic of open-source projects to talk about Degrafa, as well as listen in on what others are working on.

Doug McCune and I were also able to fill in for Jesse Warden to discuss “Making it big as an independent Flex developer.” This was a great session where Doug and I just shared our experiences and thoughts on the Flex market, branding yourself, etc. I’ve never been without a full-time job, but I have done consulting work simultaneously. I think it was helpful for people to hear that you don’t have to quit your full-time job to make it. Jeffry Houser also offered up his insights, as did others. It pretty much boils down to working your ass off.

For me, Wednesday was the most exciting day of the conference. Probably because I got to attend the most sessions on that day. The day kicked off with some time where members of the community got to share what they were working on. Again, there was a few open-source projects mentioned, I got to plug my session on Degrafa, and we all got a sneak peek at what other’s were working on.

By my session, on the last day and time, I was pretty fried, but I was excited to share Degrafa with those who hadn’t heard of it and discuss some of the new features in the new beta release. Ben Stucki and Pavan Podila were there to field technical questions and comment on some of the new features. I was able to hang out a bit after my session to answer more questions, but then headed to the airport in a hurry.

So, 360|Flex rocked! The very next day I left in a car for Colorado and am now officially in downtown Denver, a couple miles from the EffectiveUI offices. Needless to say, it’s been a hectic and exciting week.

Here’s the slides from my session. The examples I showed will be available soon as samples on the Degrafa site.

On February 6th I’ll be heading up to Los Angeles to talk about Degrafa at the LA AIR User Group. I’ll be covering the features of the framework, how it may fit into your development work flow, and where we see Degrafa going. If you can’t make it out to 360|Flex in February and you’re interested in Degrafa, I’ll be sharing some of that same material.

This event should also be a great opportunity to catch up on some of Adobe’s latest releases. You can learn more about the event on the LA AIR event page.

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!