Adobe MAX conference mini site, ActionScript 3 stuff

The MAX 2008 North America mini site is a fun rich experience.

I like how the app’s startup sequence moves from an initial informative menu of options to a video with Kevin Lynch and then eventually the interactive background environment appears.  Pretty slick.

The interactive background has a lot of neat elements, and I’m still discovering new functionality.  It’s an engaging, well-designed site.  If I was an artist I’d consider replicating something similar in Silverlight, just to see how the experience would go.

ActionScript 3 intro deck
I often get asked to recommend Flex and ActionScript learning materials, and a resource that came to my attention recently deserves a call-out: Grant Skinner’s slide deck for his one day workshop introducing ActionScript 3.  Check it.

I also ran across a really cool Flash 9 page today: it has dancing kittens.

I’ve moved to Building 40

Check it out – the new office, on the 4th floor of building 40 on main campus.  In the scheme of things, it’s not that far away from my last building, number 42… Microsoft internal folks, stop by sometime and say ‘hi’!

Quick SFO note

A few weeks ago I flew down to San Francisco for the weekend to get some fresh air and explore the city.  It was a good time, and I was able to write a few Yelp reviews from it.  It’s a great city.

Last week I was introduced to someone who had a “oh, you’re Jeff Wilcox” moment – followed by a request to post a photo to my blog for customers and others to see.  So, here you go.  The slightly balding top is a key give-away that it’s me. 

The next time you see me at a conference or event, please introduce yourself, I’m open to a wide range of (mostly geek) conversation.

Next time I’m in San Francisco I’ll let folks know to setup a geek dinner or drinking event.  My sister took the above photo of me in the tea garden in the middle of Golden Gate Park (thanks!).

SFMOMA’s personal photography policy is pretty cool
A surprise during my time in San Francisco was enjoying the new personal photography policy at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).

Unless explicitly marked in an exhibit, personal, non-flash, no-tripod photography is permitted in the museum.

This is a step in the right direction I believe, in the digital age it’s nice to be able to take a quality photo with a digital cam, it’s great to share photos with friends & family over Flickr.com, especially those who weren’t able to come with me to the museum.

Here’s a Mark Rothko from the museum. I’ve had a beautiful print of this very painting at home for years now.

That’s it for the random blog posts for a few months.  I hope everyone’s having a great summer!

In early May, I plopped down $1,599 of my hard-earned dollars on the “CS3 Web Premium” package.  I’d rank it as one of the highest value personal software purchases in my lifetime to date, up there with buying the 3.5” disk version of Microsoft Visual Basic 3.0 and an MSDN subscription in high school.  Not just in dollar value, but just “awesome, amazing, sweet, really useful” value.

Since then, I’ve been using various CS3 products almost every day.  Time for my quick review (IMO)!

The good

• Photoshop CS3 continues to be the best tool out there. I use it with my digital photos, when working on Word documents, and even while working on assets for use in web applications built for Silverlight
• Hundreds of really new and useful features in all the products
• Proof that Adobe still knows how to produce and package amazing software for creative types
• Flexible activation:  I love that I’m able to legally use my CS3 on both my ThinkPad T60 as well as my more powerful quad core workstation at home
• Flash CS3’s interface is more refined and useful than previous releases

The bad

• Inconsistent interface: Even though some applications contain fundamental shifts in the user interfaces from their previous versions, there’s little consistency between the applications-even when there are new integration features that have been placed in the CS3 suite!
• Inconsistent interface part 2: The splash screens make the first-time launch and out-of-box experience feel really disjoint; many of the Web Premium applications start up with a Flash-powered “Welcome/Dashboard” type screen… but each one has a slightly different look, feel, and set of visual controls.
• Performance: I’ve only noticed slow performance in Photoshop CS3 Extended, at least compared with the last time I used Photoshop CS back in college, many tasks leave me waiting—although I’m sitting here on a very powerful quad core machine.  I don’t know if the software is not optimized for multiple cores, if I’ve misconfigured the app, or what!
• Price for the package: I found myself really only needing the latest and greatest Photoshop and Flash SKUs, with slight interest in the rest of the CS3 Web Premium package.  It wasn’t cheap, since this was mostly a hobbyist purchase.

My impressions as a Microsoftie

• Adobe tools are definitely still useful while developing Silverlight web applications.  I expect those professionals who own Adobe tools and are productive, efficient, and experienced with them will probably continue to use them while developing Silverlight applications at times.  Not as slick as Expression Blend 2, but the Adobe interfaces are tried and true
• As a developer too, CS3 Web Premium doesn’t do much to help me experiment with Flex and AIR development (different audience, I know!)
• It kind of hurts knowing that I spent more on Adobe software last year than my cell phone bill! (just kidding)
• On Windows, I’ve grown to love the new Visual Studio 2008 for web development—even when working on CSS and HTM files for use on PHP sites!  The new JavaScript editing experience in VS08 is just that good, and VS is always a beautiful text editor.  No need for Dreamweaver really!

“Future Heat”

• Expression Studio is targeted toward creative web professionals, and the more I learn the intricacies of it, the less I’m relying on Adobe CS3 products for prototyping, visualizing, and building rich digital content… there’s probably a set of creative designer-developers who will be comfortable working without CS3 once they believe in Silverlight
• GIMP and Paint.NET continue to gain in power, the casual web developer or hobbyist can now create excellent content without purchasing Adobe Photoshop CS3

Hope this is interesting!