Flashmech.net

During The Actionscript Conference (TAC) 2009, Flashmech.net managed to catch up with Peter Elst to talk in depth about how he began his career as a Flash Developer, what are the conferences that he likes, and a small little surprise that this conference left him.

Flashmech.net: Hi Peter! Thanks for this opportunity to have this interview with you. Ever since I know you, you have been quite a prominent figure in the Flash world. So how did you first start out as a Flash developer?

Peter: It was probably in 1998 when I started playing around with motion graphics. I was mainly designing when I discovered Flash back then. I got an apprenticeship in a company where I got to do all the bad jobs basically, doing the banners and such. It got up to a point when Macromedia introduced a project called the Macromedia Generator, and that was able to do dynamic banners, and so I work from that.

When Flash MX came out, I started doing some components work which I really like. Some people found it and they asked me to write a chapter in a book, so I did that. I got a lot of emails coming asking about the work that I did, and they asked for help, so I went freelance.

Flashmech.net: How long have you been freelancing?

Peter: I did it for 2 years first, and I did some other work, before switching back in 2004. That would make a total of about 7-8 years.

Flashmech.net: Considering the amount of experience you have as a freelancer, any advice to give to have a successful freelance business?

Peter: You just have to be passionate about what you do, like what you do, and just go for it whatever it takes. You don’t necessarily have to think about the money that comes in; just do what you’re good at and what you like to do. Usually the money comes in and even if it doesn’t, you’ve done something nice anyway.

Flashmech.net: What advice you would give budding ActionScripters?

Peter: Just experiment. Think about what you like to do and build it, and fail and try again, fail and try again. After a while, you will get very good at what you do. You will also have learnt from all those mistakes, so you won’t make them in the future.

Flashmech.net: How long has it taken for you to move from the stage of making mistakes constantly to being good at it?

Peter: I still make mistakes. [laughs] But there are things like basic modeling of applications that you’ve done before, and so you will not make these mistakes anymore. It usually takes three to four attempts before you get something right. Once you got that, you can build on from that foundation.

Flashmech.net: Have you studied anything with relevance to programming before you embarked on this career?

Peter: Actually most of things that I do results from self studying. I never studied anything with technology. I actually did a Bachelor Degree in South Asia Studies. In my spare time, just find out more about it and experiment. That’s how I did it.

Flashmech.net: The Flash Platform is now such a huge ecosystem. How do you, as a Flash Platform Consultant, keep up with all these changing stuff?

Peter: In the old days when there’s not too much, you could just understand everything. Right now it has grown so big that you have to focus on areas and topics relevant to your work. Generally, as a consultant, you have to be aware of everything a little bit. If clients ask of you, at least you know some of the basics of the technology in that area. Otherwise, you can say that you will look it up.

Mostly now I focus on AIR, because it’s new and I like it. I also focus a little bit on Flex as well. Although the sound things that André Michelle does are very nice, but I don’t really have the time to play with it. It’s a matter of prioritizing. There’s too much to do all at the same time.

Flashmech.net: Since you’ve been to many conferences, any advice on how to improve TAC?

Peter: I like conferences which are very community oriented, without a lot of commercial things. That’s why I like TAC. Flash On The Beach is sort of like this, though it’s more commercial and expensive, as they have more cost to it as well. MAX is more commercial, but 360|Flex in the US is good. I haven’t been there, but I heard a lot of good about it. FITC is a very nice conference but it is also slightly commercial. Another in Australia, webDU, is very good as well with a community mind. Scotch on the Rocks in the UK, which is ColdFusion, Flex and a little of AIR, is also growing very well.

Community conferences are nice because they are community centric, are not expensive, and you get a lot of great names with local people speaking as well. This is what I like most because sometimes you get Adobe throwing thousands at venues and all that and the speakers don’t necessarily get paid. I get annoyed about that sometimes.

Flashmech.net: Thank you for being so frank. [both laugh] Has there been anyone from the conference who has left a deep impression on you?

Peter: Some guys from Thailand came up to me and told me that they flew over specially to see me. I was a little surprised because you don’t think about that but sometimes people really look up to you and they want to see you. We’re just ordinary developers, so it’s always a plus when we’re lucky to go somewhere and people like to see you.

Flashmech.net: Nice! Right that’s all the questions I have for you Peter. Thank you so much for doing this interview!

If you’ve missed out the announcements at Adobe MAX, I’m going to fill you in on this great reason to learn ActionScript 3!

In Flash CS5, you will be able to use ActionScript 3 to write your application, and publish that content straight as a native application for iPhone! With the increased possibilities and wider distribution networks, if now is still not the season to convince one to migrate to ActionScript 3, I have no idea when will. Read more about Flash CS5 Beta. and Flash CS5: Applications for iPhone.

Some entertainment. *loL~!*

[UPDATE: Just saw Peter Elst's article about this, check out "Using Flash to compile to iPhone applications"]

For a write-up on the rest of the announcements, check out Flash Magazine’s article, “New Flash Player info and Beta releases on Adobe Labs.”

The Adobe MAX Day 2 keynote will begin on Wednesday, 0120hrs for those who are at GMT+8 zone, so don’t miss that! You can follow this direct link to register now. I would expect even more exciting announcements to come.

I have tried my best to make the title as self-explanatory as possible, but pardon me if you still have no idea what I’m referring to. However, more importantly is that this tip saved me a great deal of time, so I would suggest any FDT user to read this.

When you have a constant declared in a class, it is always considered good practice to refer to it with the class name. Meaning,

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package
{
    public class Test 
    {
        public static const APP_NAME:String = "fdt-tip";
 
        public function Test () 
        {
            // Best practice to include class's name
            trace(Test.APP_NAME);
        }
    }
}

As you can see from the above example, I referred to the constant using the class’s name. In our above example though, there is no issue since we’re only referring to the constant once.

Things start to worsen if the constant is referred to A LOT OF TIMES. Now it gets even worse if we had named our classes based on the display objects’ hierarchy, with class names looking like WrapperPageContentViewGenericSprite. *loL~* What if you actually have several classes with similar class names, e.g. WrapperPageContentViewUniqueSprite, WrapperPageGenericView, WrapperPage? At this point, even code-hinting will take you some time to filter through to the right class.

Solution

Head right on to Preferences > FDT > Editor > Templates and click on the “New…” button.

Here’s what I recommend to enter in the fields:
Name: tt (your own preference)
Context: AS2/AS3
Automatically Insert: Checked
Description: Fills in the current class (your own preference)
Pattern: ${enclosing_type}

After you are done creating this template, click the “OK” button. Try it out now! Simply type “tt” (or whatever is your shortcut), and press enter: the class’s name will now be automatically inserted for you. No fuss anymore, and no more excuses for not coding with best practices.

The Actionscript Conference (TAC) 2009, which spanned from Sept 13-15, had ended. If you ask my opinion, I would boldly proclaim that this year’s edition is in many ways bigger and better than last year’s. That said, the committee got all tired and burned out, and that also explains why this post is written two days after the conference had ended (I’m burnt myself).

I just want to take the time to write this post, to show the appreciation that I had for all who had helped out during the conference. Some of these guys may be lesser known heroes, but without them, I can assure you the show might not have gone right in too many ways. Here goes.

If you’re in the local Flash scene and do not recognise this face, there’s a big issue. *loL~* Shunjie is the user group manager of the Singapore Flex Usergroup (FUG), and the founder of both The Actionscript Conference and RIAction in Singapore. He started making the necessary preparations for TAC since way back in March, and the effort that he had put into this may not be seen by all. I’m one lucky one to witness it.

Being the co-founder of TAC and co-manager of the FUG, you ought to know Alvin too. He’s one of the guys that I really admire, having the ability to use both his left and right brains almost equally. He designed the TAC logo, paper bags, brochures, while preparing for his “Multi Touch in Flash” presentation.

Alex is the liaison officer between TAC and the speakers and recruitment companies. You may not see him running up and down the aisle often during TAC, but he’s working out behind the scenes to help in every way that he can. The next time that you see him, do say hello and give him a pad on the back.

Arul Kumaran is the command center head if you ask me. Hidden in the video control room, he probably had the most important job of recording the sessions for post conference enjoyment, and it all rests upon the shoulders of this man. If you think it’s easy, think again. Fighting against fatigue, toggling between the different cameras for the right capture at the right time, it is indeed highly stressful.

Arul Prasad was unfortunately, unable to be with us during the conference itself, as he had some business matters to attend in San Francisco. However, he was the original liaison officer and who knows how many emails he had to keep replying in order to connect with all the speakers. He was also actively participating in our pre-conference meetups, so indeed, credits go to him as well.

Elliot Williams is a volunteer for TAC, but little did he know that without him, the conference probably wouldn’t be able to run! He single-handedly fixed up the wireless network, troubleshoot whenever people got trouble with connecting to the wifi, being the security officer to ensure that no people come into the auditorium unauthorised, and being the emcee in between the sessions! Elliot, you’re great man!

Another two of our lesser known heroes, Victor and Jonathan were essential in a lot of roles as well. Tasked to be in charged during the registration, rotating between looking after our personal properties, recording of videos, you can literally see them everywhere. These two are what put our minds at ease so the rest of us can operate with a safe mind. Without them, it would again be a serious mess.

So yes, this is me. It feels weird adding what I did on my own blog, but yea, I’m one of the committee too. I was involved in the planning process, being the main photographer for the two days, and also the interviewer for the speakers. It is tough juggling all these roles especially when one has to prepare for his own presentation, but looking back, it was all worth it.

Aftermath

Now that the conference had come to an end, I’ll be working to put up my slides soon. In the meanwhile, I’m also in the works of transcribing the interviews. Once they’re done, I’ll post them up on this blog one by one.

Just a final word, it has been great working with you guys.

This is really quite exciting while I’m blogging this entry, because The Actionscript Conference 2009 is just next week! In fact, it will happen in about 4.5 days time!

Apart from being one of the organisers, I have the privilege to speak in one session this year as well. My session is titled “Warpspeed Flash”, and it’s basically sharing tips with the community on how to work smarter, not harder. Catch me at the conference and don’t be shy, say Hi!

TAC Tickets from $1!

In other TAC related news, we are now selling tickets from $1 on ebay! Call us crazy, but that’s our way of thanking the community for all the support they’ve given us thus far. Only 15 tickets! Wait no further and bid for yours today!

TAC Workshop

Finally, for those who had purchased the ticket, we are happy to bring you an exclusive TAC workshop! Details as follow:

What: Designer and Developer Workflow
When: 13th September 2009 (this Sunday), 10am-12pm
Who: Michael Plank, Powerflasher GmbH
Where: LAB School (nearest MRT at Novena)
185A Thomson Road, Goldhill Centre, Singapore 307629
Cost: FREE! Limited to TAC delegates ONLY

How to register?

Email shunjie@tac.sg, providing the email address that you used for TAC registration. There is a limit to the number of delegates who can attend the workshop, so act fast if you want to go!

We want to thank our two sponsors, Powerflasher GmbH and LAB School, for making this possible.