Seeking a talented graphic designer.

LorAlex Works is looking for a talented designer to refresh our existing corporate look web and print.

Description:

The task will be to refresh and unify our corporate branding across our site, blog, twitter account and printing material like brochures and business cards.

Requirements:

• Excellent portfolio (we are looking for someone with exceptional design skills)
• Available during regular business hours (9 AM to 5 PM) North America (EST)
• An Skype account (Preferably with Video and Audio)
• Fluent speaking and writing in English or French (both would definitelly be an asset)
• Must have a broadband Internet connection.

Optional Requirements (not a must but better if candidate meet these also):

• You work in Mac OS X Leopard
• Experience working with BASECAMP.

How to apply

Please email: info [at] lordalexworks [dot] com address the email to Bolo Michelin. Send your CV & Porfolio.

50 Flash Twitterers Worth Following

My twitter account has not been open for long, I originally opened it for curiosity. However I started using it more and more to the point that it became a daily routine and an indispensable every day tool. Last friday I had the honor to be introduced as one of the50 Flash Twitterers Worth Following. That made me look back for a moment and made me realize how much I have accomplished with twitter: gained contracts, met new people, kept in contact with peers, hired contractors, shared with the community, announce UG meetings, even ask for help or advice on some things once in a while.

I am even creating a job board (@swfgigs) that will notify instantly my readers about new jobs being posted.

I wonder how other people are taking advantage of twitter for work or personal use. Do you use twitter in a interesting way? has twitter help your professional or personal life?

First impression on Flash Catalyst and Flex Builder 4 - Part I

With the public beta for Flash Catalyst out, I decided to give it a try on a real project just to get a feel of what will be like to incorporate it into a regular workflow.

I work mostly with large projects and sometimes with teams that I probably know from just a few hours before I get placed right in the middle of the action. Co-workers expect guidance and clients want to see results immediately. So having a proper architecture is important but understanding workflows and interactions between the tools and people using them is fundamental to improve on teams performance and communications, so being able to bring Flash Catalyst into pipeline without causing much disruption is vital.

Step one from Photoshop to Flash Catalyst

I requested a design for a simple app from a Photoshop designer, a wireframe was provided along with comments about what I wanted as an initial interface. When the design was ready, I imported it into Flash Catalyst and indeed, it made a good job of keeping the design integrity.

However I quickly realized the following:

Flash catalyst takes the entire size of the canvas set in photoshop, my designer had created a nice background but I had to go back to him to get it removed. You could also hide the layer but I realized this a little too late (darn). However I think is cleaner just to remove assets you won’t use to keep your files small and more manageable.

Not all designers are diligent at naming *all* their layers and organizing and grouping their content in folders. I had to send it back for a second round to tide up a little more the layers and grouping assets in a logical manner in folders. This does not mean the designer is sloppy or anything but you quickly realize with Fc in the picture these details are very important and not necessarily obvious, but this is something that can be improved once done a couple of times.

Once I got it back, this time assets showed up nicely in folders, however another issue was that some designers use small shapes and lines overlapping to obtain the desired look and feel so this forced me to go and group these assets to make sure I can convert some pieces into components nicely. If you have a lot of these little lines and shapes this can be very time consuming. ( I hear is common to do this in printing work, so something to watch out for ).

Once things looked fine within Flash Catalyst, I decided to give the HUD a spin and start figuring out actions and transitions.

So far my first thoughts in terms of design are:

• It is important designers working with catalyst have a good chat with the developer to discuss the best way to arrange assets in such way that that components layer are nicely tuck together and perhaps the states are separated in folders.

• Layers also need to be named appropriately otherwise you will get a lot of generic names that will be to be changed later, so give them meaningful names.
• Buttons states need to be nicely done in layers to avoid round trips back to photoshop, round-tripping between Ps and Fc is a nice feature, but I if you have to go back and forth 20 times because you overlook details then I just think it’s not productive. I got rollOver states but not all the others, so this is easy to forget.

Our designer at first wanted nothing to do with Fc, so I intentionally ask him to sit with me while importing his Ps file and after going over a few states and adding a few actions he spontaneously said

maybe I can do this

and started playing with. This is definitely a good thing because Flash Catalyst is meant primarily at designers.

One think I must note is that some elements did not end up in the place as they were in Ps , nothing really significant but still, hopefully this will be perfected later.

The next step for me, will be porting the project to Flash Builder, for the final challenge. I am already a little preoccupied by this, as I like to take advantage of frameworks (particularly Cairngorm) so I see a lot of re-factoring involved and I am asking myself if I will be able to bring back the project to Fc after bringing Cairngorm into the project.

I tried it briefly and I got message from Fc saying The project was modified outside of Flash Catalyst and it would not let me import it back, but more on this shortly, so stay tuned for

First impression on Flash Catalyst and Flex Builder 4 - Part II

If you have any comments feel free to use the comments sections, what do you think about bringing Flash Catalyst into your workflow?

Flash Builder 4 Beta and Flash Catalyst Beta now available

Adobe Labs has made pubic beta versions of Flex Builder 4 now renamed into Flash Builder 4 as well as Flash Catalyst. Twitter is off the hook with comments about it since early this morning.

You can download both apps from Adobe Labs. It seems the apps install separately from your existing installations of Flex 3, so it's safe to install and play with them, without worrying about messing any Flex 3 projects.

I will be blogging about Flash Builder 4 and Catalyst this week so stay tuned, meanwhile enjoy and explore the new IDE's

BTW, what do you think of the new name Flash Builder 4 ?

swfMontreal - Thursday May 28th, 2009

The next meeting for swfMontreal is taking place May 28th. Unfortunately I won't be able to make it as I will be attending FlashOnTap, but this meeting is packed with good content.

So if you have not signed up for it yet -> click here.

Going to FlashOnTap

I will be going to FlashOnTap next week. This is going to be my first visit to Boston and FlashOnTab all at once. So I hit the road with Stacey Mulcahy (@bitchwhocodes) on the 27th, who is kindly giving me a ride there.

Looking forward to meet a couple of people I have not seen in while like Tink and Robert Hall. Of course I am also looking forward to meet new people so if you see me around don't hesitate to come and say hi.

Cheers!

*update*

I just realized I misspelled FlashOnTap I had FlashOnTab and I haven't had a beer yet. Go figure! Anyhow I made the correction, see you there!

LOL

LordAlex Works -Tell us your price!

We want to do something to help our clients in these economic times, so we came with the "Tell us your price initiative" and a new aggressive pricing matrix valid until 2010 offering a whooping 30% (for real!) discount on our consulting rates.

To take advantage of the Tell us your price initiative, you need to contact us and tell us about your project and budget. We will quickly review it and get back to you with an answer within 48 hours.

That is not all, we have also decided to embrace a new emerging language for RIA, RoR (Ruby on Rails). We are very exited about this.

We are also going full scale with ColdFusion Development, real soon so we invite you to inquire with us if you are considering RoR or ColdFusion for an upcoming project.

To know more head to my website: LordAlex Works.

The SWF Files: Beware of closed Micro-Architectures

There is a current trend of using closed micro-architectures, they can be of great help but sometimes they can be your worst nightmare... read on.

In most cases company X develops a small micro architecture (generally based on cairngorm or similar) to accelerate the work. They sell this idea to the client, which generally agrees to it (Although I have seen cases were the client does not even know about it).

The problem is that in some cases the company X becomes really comfortable with their framework and in an attempt to keep an edge over the competition they close it, essentially the client is not given the source code or the code is simply obfuscated or hidden.

This carries a lot of potential negative consequences, for as long the two parties continue in good business terms or the business relationship is mutually beneficial and cost effective things might go real well. However once this is no longer the case, then the client becomes hostage of company X.

Retaking ownership of the project is a huge problem because company X owns the code and reserve the right to keep it closed.

This effectively block new developers to quickly take control of the code and continue extending the application.
Most of the time I get developers coming to me saying:

"I think is better if we just re-do the entire thing".

For some companies this could be extremely expensive and potentially hurting them financially so bad, they might just abandon the whole project or just take them out of business.

Here is a few things I always advice my clients starting a project:

- Make sure you do indeed need a framework, not all projects need one.
- Enforce open frameworks (like cairngorm or gaia) and make sure they stay true to the architecture.
- Make sure you retain ownership of source files and code.

When you use an open framework, you have a better chance the code is well documented, tested by the community and have tons of resources to solve any potential issues that may occur.

If Company X wants to use a custom architecture, make sure is for good reason, ask questions about where has it been implemented before, I would ask a reference from a previous client endorsing if the framework indeed was useful.

If you are outsourcing a critical project and have no in-house technical resources, hire a consultant or resource outside of company X to overlook the project progress, make to sure proper documentation and guidelines are followed and your interests are well represented.

If you had issues with a close frameworks, I would like to know how some people deal with theses issues, feel free leave a comment.

Adobe Hispano Event

I will be speaking at the Adobe Hispano Event. This will be my second time around talking to a hispanic audience online. This time I will introduce designers to Flex and the tools that are available now to create original interfaces.

For anyone interested in the event check the link here:

http://www.adobehispano.com/

Nos vemos en Adobe Hispano!

Flash Camp for Developers in Montreal

Yes, we did it! Montreal is getting it's first Flash Camp. The space is limited so make sure you follow the link for registration and print the confirmation.

Please help spread the word and see you there!

+LA

swfMontreal invites you to join us at Flash Camp for Developers, a free one night gathering with food, drinks, and coding covering everything you need to know about the Adobe Flash Platform – including Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, and Adobe Flash Catalyst. Bring your laptop, we'll provide the goodies.

New to Flex?
If you're at the beginner level, we suggest arriving at 4:30 because there will be a "Flex 101" session for your needs. More advanced developers should come to the event at 5:00 for our Welcome period.

Doors open for Flash Camp at 4:30 PM
4:30 - 5:30 - Flex 101: A beginners' lesson for those w/ little Flex experience
5:30 - 6:00 - Welcome: registration.
6:00 - 6:15 - Introduction
6:15 - 6:45 - "Flex SDK and Using Item Renders"
6:45 - 7:00 - To Be determined (looking for someone local with a cool demo!)
7:00 - 7:30 - "Using the Profiler in Flex Builder 3"
7:30 - 8:00 - BREAK
8:00 - 8:45 - Flash Catalyst
8:45 - 9:00 - Using cloud based services
9:00 - 9:30 - Conclusion and Q&A with Mike Potter

Hurry, and sign up soon: http://swfmontreal.eventbrite.com/