The Book

A good portion of my free time this year was consumed by the book Andy and I wrote, “Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0″. Writing a book is something I had always thought about writing, but never knew what about. The subject matter for the book became immediately apparent after giving a presentation at 360|Flex. Andy and I jumped in with both feet and are glad to see all the work we put into the book has paid off with good reviews coming in.

For those of you asking for a poster of the diagrams in the back of the book, we’re working on it.

ScaleNine

ScaleNine has been doing pretty well. I’ve been slacking on updates to the Showcase and Resources sections because of other things I’ve gotten involved with. I was able to put on a contest thanks to Adobe, specifically Andrew Shorten and Mike Potter, and EffectiveUI. Not only did Patrick Hansen whip together an awesome logo, but we got a great response with 20+ themes added to ScaleNine.

Stats for the site have definitely grown, which is probably in part to the interest in Flex/AIR growing. Here’s some numbers:

124,470 Unique Visitors

533,319 Page Views

197,399 Visits

Last year stats were 145,427 visits, 323,763 page views and 90,446 visitors. Sounds like I need to start getting some ads on there to generate some revenue for the long hours managing the site

Degrafa

This year has been an exciting one for Degrafa. Working with Adobe to find a happy medium with Degrafa and FXG was great to see and I think some of the full benefits of that are still to come. What’s really been amazing is the number of downloads, the amount of community support (like tutorials, screencasts and samples) and seeing some big name companies using the framework. We get emails from people all the time saying that the reason they looked at Flex was because of Degrafa. It’s stuff like that that keeps the team going.

I think this year is going to be awesome for Degrafa. We have several things in the works that are going to blow people’s minds. We’re on our way to Degrafa 1.0, but we’re also looking at things that will compliment the framework and make it a very approachable solution for designer’s and developers.

Effective UI

In February of 2008 I started at EffectiveUI as an Experience Architect. The first project I got to work on was awesome. I got to architect, design and develop a fun AIR application that I hope to share more information about soon.

Since that first project I’ve been able to work with technologies beyond Flex (iPhone, Android, etc.) and across different types of devices. It’s been fun, as each device/technology/app offers it’s own set of problems.

I’ve also been able to hone my design skills at a rapid pace. The design team at EffectiveUI is awesome. It’s the reason I moved to Denver, so I could sit right in the middle of it. The conversations that fly around just amaze me and I couldn’t imagine not going into the “office” every day.

I’m excited to see what we do this next year as a company. If it’s anything like what we’ve talked about, it’s going to rock!

The Industry

I’m excited to see where things go in the industry in 2009. 2008 almost felt like a transitionary state that will take new paths in 2009 with things like Flash Catalyst, Android, 3D and more. Sitting right in the middle of it all is definitely inspiring.

Other Stuffs

Beyond all the work stuff, my fiancé and I have settled into Denver (oh yeah, I’m engaged). It’s a great city. Granted it is colder than Southern California, it’s what I wanted. A change.

This year also saw me go out and present a bit more. I was excited to make it out to MAX Europe to present on “Prototyping AIR Applications with Fireworks CS4″. Maybe next year I can hit a trifecta for MAX (North America, Europe & Japan).

Future Stuffs

Another things I’ve always wanted to do is start my own successful business. Whether by myself or with others. There’s nothing to report on that yet, but I’ve got ideas and several seeds have been planted. I’m excited to see if any of them take in 2009.

One of my goals for 2009 is to crank out more screencasts. I can make them much more quickly than tutorial blog posts, but that’s probably cause I don’t do any editing.

The End

So, this post turned out to be much longer than I expected and I’m sure I forgot to mention some stuff. Anyway, I look forward to seeing everyone in 2009. See you next year!

After being involved with different types of projects and playing different roles on those projects I have definitely started seeing patterns in the way applications are used to create RIAs and what seems to work best. Different projects have different expectations at the design stages. Sometimes the deliverable is a series of “wireframes”, refined views or a full prototype. For a successful series of applications, these use-cases need to be supported. Based on my experiences I’ve assembled a list of what I’d want in an “RIA Suite”.

Fireworks

For me, Fireworks is my go-to application for UI design. I can rapidly iterate on designs that maintain vector qualities, make rich symbols for quickly laying out views and keep everything pretty well organized. Fireworks CS4 makes it even easier to do the day-to-day tasks with features that seemed to be lacking in CS3. The downside is that I usually have to bring Fireworks artwork into Flash to add animation and maintain vector quality before bringing it into Flex. Filters also have to be removed and reapplied in Flex because they don’t translate the way I’d like. From what I’ve seen, Thermo will help solve some of these issues.

Flash

When creating a UI for a Flex/AIR application it’s usually inevitable I’ll be using Flash. I’ll use it to group assets into a single SWF, package up a font, create a complex UI, or add animations. However, it seems I’m beginning to use Flash less and just doing everything right in Flex Builder. Using Tweener and Degrafa I can achieve the results I’m looking for most of the time, but I can’t give Flash up completely yet.

Thermo

We’ve all heard about Thermo and I think it’s going to address a lot of the issues I have with current workflows. It seems Thermo will be the middle application that bridges the gap between CS applications and Flex. Mockups are transformed into working MXML with the help of a designer-friendly environment. This includes converting graphics to working components, adding animations, creating dummy-data sources, and more. The one thing I have yet to see is how the designer/developer collaboration actually works. What happens when a developer makes a change and how does that get reflected on the designer’s side, and vice-versa?

Flex Builder

Every day that I am working I fire up Flex Builder and start plugging away, so of course it’s gonna make it onto my list. From a design-perspective I use Flex to add transitions, bitmap filters, do layout, etc. I’ll jump into Design View or CSS Design View to make sure everything looks the way I want it instead of compiling the application.

Bridge/Version Cue (RIA Edition)

Okay, this is not a real product, but it’s something I see lacking in the current collaboration between designers and developers. Developers are familiar with version control systems like CVS, SVN and the like, but what about designers? How will designers be able to tap into those same repositories to maintain the fluid collaboration? Use a command line, Flex Builder, FTP? Probably not.

I’m thinking it would be great if a familiar application that designers already use, like Bridge or Version Cue, would make it really easy for designers to interact with a repository. Developer’s might cringe at the idea of a designer having that kind of access, but maybe it isn’t direct. If Thermo allows for designers and developers to directly interact with the same code base I think this would be a nice feature. There’d also need to be a way to cycle back and forth with files and probably need to be able to check them in and out.

Degrafa (Not Adobe)

Degrafa is not Adobe, but every project I work on gets Degrafa added to it. Why? Because bitmaps and static vector artwork can only go so far. I make 80-90% of my skins in Degrafa. This allows me to open up any properties of the graphics to CSS, which means one Degrafa Button skin to create an infinite number of variations versus making separate graphics for each variation. There’s things I can do with Degrafa that I can’t with bitmap or static vector graphics and with the the things planned for Degrafa Beta 3, it’s a no brainer.

So, there’s the rundown. It’s a mix of a little present and future, and I’m sure there’s some tool out there that I just don’t know I want yet I’m looking forward to smoother work flows and tighter collaborations between designers and developers. When that happens there’s more time for innovation.

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.

Initially I was going to only make some based on those CS3 backgrounds you see on Adobe software boxes, but one thing led to another. Before I knew it I got Doug McCune to throw some Adobe icons into TileUI and send me some screencaps. I also threw in a Photoshop Runner wallpaper (for the EffectiveUI guys), a Kuler wallpaper and an Adobe icon arrangement reminiscent of the mugs they had for sale at MAX.

You can get them all from here, or click on the image below.

In my search I also came across these cool iPhone wallpapers.

I never really thought about getting credits on a piece of Adobe software, but it’s definitely cool to see (middle, right). Yes, I realize my name is a common one, but I swear it’s me. In case your wondering what I did, you can check out NJ’s post for some insight.

- Scan a bar code on a food item and get nutritional information, definitions of what those 26 letter ingredients are, etc.

- Scan a product and get reviews, price comparisons, place to purchase, etc.

Then, if they could get some text recognition you could take a picture of a business card and have the iPhone recognize the text and add the info to your contacts list. Possible? Probably not. Would be super cool though.

Ok… One last thing. Cover flow for contacts.

That’s all.