Dynamic Flash

Aral has finally taken the wraps off of his super-secret Singularity project:

Singularity is the first large-scale online web conference in the world.

Singularity is over 100 of the world’s top web visionaries, developers, designers, thought leaders, and celebrities.

Singularity is three days of talks over multiple tracks.

In 2008, Singularity will define Web ‘08.

I’m proud to say that I’ve signed up as a speaker for the event. My session, however, is an absolute secret that I will not divulge to anyone before the time is right. Okay, okay… I’m not 100% sure what my session is going to be just yet, but I’ve got until mid-october to sort something out. My experience working at Yahoo! - trying to bring together the best from the Flash/Flex work with the best from the HTML/CSS/JS standards world - is sure to give me a unique view on something, right?

If there’s something specific you want to hear about, let me know via the comments.

My colleagues in the Yahoo! Flash Platform team recently released version 1.1 of the Yahoo! Astra library. The library includes a whole bunch of brand-spanking new Flex and Flash components, as well as updates and bug fixes for the existing Flash components

All of this stuff is available now under a BSD-style license. Check out the official announcement or get straight to the goodies at the Astra Component Library section of the Yahoo! Developer Network.

PS. Yes I know I’m a little (okay, almost 2 weeks) behind the times with this information. However, since I know that a number of people come here to get their fix of Flash/Yahoo! news I thought I ought to mention something about the release, however belated.

An early Christmas present from the Flex elves at Yahoo! Joseph Magnani, from Yahoo’s Media Innovation Group, has created a slick skin for Adobe Flex.

The skin is released under the BSD license, and includes the Adobe Illustrator files for the various images used, so you can tweak it or use it as the base for your own skins.

Download skin @ YDN

I’m heading down to Brighton this evening for this year’s Flash on the Beach conference, and right now I’m feeling like a kid on the night before Christmas.

Last year I didn’t plan my schedule in advance, and ended up missing some sessions I’d really like to have seen. This year I thought I’d be ultra-prepared and decide what I wanted to see in advance. With that in mind, here is my personal schedule for the conference:

Monday

1. 09:00-10:00 Keynote: Overview of Flash CS3 Professional - Richard Galvin
2. 10:15-11:15 Localising Flash Content and Applications - Dave Williamson
3. 11:30-12:30 Understanding Adobe AIR - Mike Chambers
4. 13:30-14:30 Adobe AIR for Interactive Designers - Lee Brimelow
5. 14:45-15:45 The Pirates of Accessibility - Niqui Merret
6. 16:00-17:00 Dynamic Abstraction - Joshua Davis
7. 20:00-21:00 Inspired: If it ain’t broke, break it! - Brendan Dawes

Tuesday

1. 09:00-10:00 Flex and ActionScript 3.0 Worst Practices - Ted Patrick
2. 10:15-11:15 Perceptive Interactions & Alternative Interfaces - Craig Swann
3. 11:30-12:30 2D or not 2D, that is the question - Mario Klingemann
4. 13:30-14:30 Mobile Flash Development - Dave Yang
5. 14:45-15:45 Flashing Flex - Tink
6. 16:00-17:00 Breaking away (Processing) - Robert Hodgin
7. 20:00-21:00 Inspired: Beyond the Knowledge - The Art of Playing - Erik Natzke

Wednesday

1. 09:00-10:00 Adobe Town Hall Meeting - Adobe
2. 10:15-11:15 Stylising Flex Applications - Joey Lott
3. 11:30-12:30 Klangfabrik - Andre Michelle
4. 13:30-14:30 Visualising Time - Marcos Weskamp
5. 14:45-15:45 Flex Application Development: Done in 60 minutes - Mike Jones
6. 16:00-17:00 Algorithms to Fill Space - Jared Tarbell

I’m not sure how much of the after-hours partying I’m going to get to. Last year my fellow Yahoos and I sloped off to a local bar and spent the evenings drinking beer and shootin’ pool rather than partying, which is much more my kind of scene.

Anyway, if you’re lucky enough to be going the the best Flash conference on the planet, I’ll see you on the beach.

It’s been more than a while since I posted anything useful on this blog, partly because I’ve been busy with other things and partly because things have been pretty hectic at Yahoo! for the past few months. Now things have calmed down a little, I’m hoping to spend more time coding and writing here, starting with a post tomorrow on how to use the upload functionality of the ActionScript 3.0 Flickr API Library to build a simple Flickr upload tool as an Adobe AIR application.

Update: Okay, so a small post on the upload functionality has turned into a multi-part post on using the AS3 Flickr API Library. Expect the first part around the middle of the week.