Software, Fitness, and Gaming – Jesse Warden

Blog

  • Kudos to Mike Chambers & All Other MM Customer Relation Types

    I’m frustrated. Wanna know why? How would you like if those people who bitched an wined about how Flash sux were on a forumn that only THEY were on, ALL day. Then, people like Mike Chambers read that forumn, and made the assumption that this was the voice of the community, and they actually modified Flash to suit those “supposed” community needs. Wouldn’t ever happen, right?

    Well, it’s happening with Star Wars Galaxies right now. Somehow, the forumns that station.sony.com hosts appear to be the main customer feedback area. Not only that, but they are communist-like controlled in that some posts are deleted, and a lot of them ignored by the devs.

    The game was released with a lot of bugs and things didn’t work, but it was, and still is fun as hell. However, they keep changing things, and only fixing 1 or 2 bugs each change (about every 3 days). The game is not what it was 2 months ago.

    The people on the forumns are rude a-holes, negative, and frustrated with no way other than the forums to funnel their frustration towards SOE, the company making the game. Out of the hundreds of people I’ve met online and played with, I’ve only met 2 who were “slightly” annoying, and even then, I’d still play with them. No one acts like they do in the forumns. I don’t like them being my representatives, but the forums suck usability wise, and customer relation wise.

    Over the course of 2 years, I’ve seen Macromedia people get involved in all walks of life to understand their customer’s needs. I’ve seen the results of people’s inquires, suggestions, and frustations. I’ve seen Macromedia improve their products. By giving us people to talk to, and “inside” channels of information, Flash (yes, and ColdFusion, and all the others) has given us such a great community of people and a phat product.

    You don’t appreciate someone until you realize how valuable they are when you don’t have them.

    Thanks guys and gals! I think I speak for the Flash community, and the MM community as a whole when I say thank you, you are appreciated!

  • 9-11: Coderz Pay Their Respect

    <code>
    // Jason Merrill – ICF Consulting
    // e-Marketing / e-Learning Solutions
    // www.icfconsulting.com
    for(i=1; i<=3016; i++){
    trace(” ? “+”(person “+i+”)”);
    }

    // Sean Voisen | http://voisen.org
    var secondsElapsed = 0;

    function silenceAndRemembrance() {
    trace( ” … ” );
    secondsElapsed++;
    if( secondsElapsed >= 60 ) {
    clearInterval( silenceInterval );
    }
    }

    var silenceInterval = setInterval( silenceAndRemembrance, 1000 );

    // Lee Probert
    i = 60*1000;
    while(i–){
    // SILENCE
    }</code>

  • onClipEvent(load) Lives! or Another Best Practice?

    In the creation of behaviors for yourself and others (many developers use them to prevent writing the same shiot over and over again) as well as empowering designers to not have to code, I’ve noticed something interesting.

    Because your creating code that is placed ON an object, you revert to the on(press) and onClipEvent(load) mentality of Flash 5.

    I think with onClipEvent(load) and a little Flash 6 mojo, you could still get away with some pretty clean coding for behavior creation. Since behavior creation is, in itself, not technically coding but the actual creation of code underneath, you can get away with a lot of bad things because the complexity of the app will not get too high (assuming your not doing crazy shiot with your behaviors).

    Therefore, what are people using for best practices in the code they use for them? (I know it’s early in the game, but at least we can look back on this).

  • Studio MX, Flash MX & Flash Player 7: Hot Date

    Just doing my part to spread the good news and hopefully give some insight.

    First off, Macromedia has released for purchase <a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/software/mx2004/”>Studio MX 2004 & Studio MX Professional 2004</a>.

    Secondly, for those only buying Studio to get at the new Flash versions (<a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=flash”>try Flash</a>, <a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=flash_mx2004_pro”>try Pro</a>), they too, are available for purchase and download.

    Third, Macromedia has released the <a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash”>Flash 7 player</a> (7.0.14.0) to the general public. It has the auto-update feature built in, so that should help with the many updates we’ll get to the player itself. In my opinion, however, we’ll be getting more updates to the IDE than the player as most programmers we’ll be trying to break their new shoes in.

    Finally, although there are a bunch of other phat progs in Studio, you may want to check out <a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/”>Dreamweaver MX 2004</a>. I’ve used this to code in Flash MX, and now I’m hoping with it’s built in CSS, it will rival <a href=”http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/index.asp”>TopStyle</a> enough to become many people’s new editor.

    Why should you care about the new Dreamweaver? Well, it should definately make designing your blog a lot easier if you use <a href=”http://www.moveabletype.org”>MoveableType</a>.

    Also, if your looking to see what people are experiencing throughout their experiments with the new Flash in hopes you too can learn, make sure to check out some of their blogs, including Macromedia’s:
    – <a href=”http://www.fullasagoog.com/”>Full As A Goog</a>
    – <a href=”http://www.thedevilneversleeps.com/flog/”>Flog</a>
    – <a href=”http://www.markme.com/mxna/index.cfm?category=Flash”>Macromedia’s XML News</a>

    By the way, did anyone catch the Flash animation on Macromedia’s website touting Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Pro 2004? It said, “It’s like dating two hot twins, except you only have to chose one.”

    …that was definately written by a woman, cause I don’t know of any hetero guy who would only chose one!

    Anyway, good luck! Great times ahead.