Topic: How to be a Flash Guru?

I have an interview for a position that requires Flash Developer Skills, or better "We are looking for a Flash Guru." This position does not require advanced graphical capabilities, as we have graphic designers for this, and is much more a developer in the traditional coding sense, developing the engine to allow the GDs to quickly put things together. I have an in. They know that I can code, they like my work ethic, and the people in the department like working with me; but they also know I have no real experience with flash. I want to change this by the time of the interview.

This leads me to ask, what should I know to be looked at as a flash guru. I can code, I have worked with JS therefore know the EMCA syntax. But what would the quick and dirty way be to really get my feet wet (I mean soaking) in the flash development side of things. I am going to say I have a week, I believe that I can get a good handle on any language in 7 days, but for some reason flash seems strange to me. I have done Steve's tutorials, I have looked at many resources, but I still don't know what makes a flash developer, I feel that I am missing some neuance of the whole flash thing, it has to be something more than just the code, I can feel that I just can't see it.

I am trying to cheat here, skipping the whole spend lots of time part, but if you can overlook that little obsticle, what would you recommend?

Thank you,

Dan @ Code Town

Flash and especially ActionScript have always attracted me but I never took the time to dive into it. Nonetheless I often helped my co-worker to code/debug some things in Flash. In my humble and unexperienced opinion, if you're not aiming to gain graphical skills, the things to test are :

1. toys like the prototypes on praystation and the likes,
2. communication between Flash and a DataBase or a Server Side language,
3. medias ( audio, video ) replay and streaming

I'm in no way an expert so I can be wrong, but this is the sort of thing I'd try.

I've had an über quick look at the specs of ActionScript 2.0 recently and the Object Oriented aspect has been highly improved. It's seems to be closer to C++ now. I'd put this within the point 1. of my investigations.

[edit] If you have 7 days, you could spend 2 days on each point, and on the last one try to make a little application mixing the 3 topics. If possible you could try to show the end result during your interview. [/edit]

If some Flash Developers could share their thoughts, I'm all ears too.
Good luck WarMage.



(Edited by poi on 02-20-2005 12:16)

Yeah - I wish you good luck too. That's what I want to do when I grow up!

Really. What a preposterous job listing. "Flash Guru".
"We won't tell you what it is, but we'll know it when we see it."
Bah.

What is a Flash Gurus? You could subscribe to FlashCoders:
http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders

Not surprisingly, they tend to be, uh, coders. Flash got a big kick in the butt with MX 2004 being so Object Oriented. Classes are being written all over the place, design patterns, comparisons being made with with java development... But I'm guessing the reason you feel disoriented with ActionScript is because it is associated with two things no other language is, a timeline and a movieclip Object.

I don't really know how to suggest you become a guru in a week. I'm sure with your coding background you won't be intimidated, but neither will you be as effective as you can be until you spend some time with your head immersed in the Flash paradigm which, as I mentioned, revolves around a timeline and a movieclip object and I sadly fear that reading my tutorials (flattering though that is) won't prepare you for gurudom. (though the one I'm working on now is about the most technical so far: http://www.thegoldenmean.com/temp/player5/

Flash development involves sort of equal parts code, graphics and sheer inventiveness. You can follow some industry blogs at my rss reader to put your finger on the pulse of some of the folk I find fascinating:
http://www.thegoldenmean.com/headlines/

Good Luck!!!

Thanks for the input.

Po1: I will spend some more time on those 3 areas.

Steve: Yes, it does seem like an odd kind of job. I know about the job early, I can get a look at what the job is really looking for on Monday (the list of real requirements).

And yes, I think it is a timeline that is getting to me. I see flash as an IDE on steroids, getting my head around that is a trip as my past IDE's are programs like vim.

As for the above, I felt that this might be the case. After some further exploring I think that I could get some knowledge out of delving into the flash API. Knowing the flash functions has got to really help here.

---
As a side, do you have any links to tutorials on what I am calling "random object generators"? A random object generator does the following. While relying on Math.random() it constructs an object within certain specification.

For example a 2D garden. This garden will be created on the fly with many flower. You can watch the flower grow, but you will not know exactly how tall it will be (it will be bound 50-100 height), they will have leafs on their stem (0-3), they will have a petaled head(4-8 petals; random colored petals). This should all be based on a Fib sequence somehow.

I can't seem to find anything like this. I think that covering such a topic would give me really good idea about flash. It would cover object creation, timing, object placement, fluid motion, a good deal of math, etc.
---

Thanks for all the information, if you think of anything else let me know! I know that you can't really cheat on this kind of thing, it all requires time and practice, but it is hard to find solid information on flash that is not a step by step walk through, or a manual that says spends 5 chapters explaining flow of control and variable naming syntax (which is important, but doesn't deserve a whole chapter).

Dan @ Code Town

Regarding your coding background, I think all you need is the various Documentation and References of Flash and ActionScript. Having a look at somes tutorials might help to get used to the timeline and other basics but unique things in Flash.

When I said 2 days on each areas, plus 1 day to try and mix them all, that was in the persperctive of trying to become a "Flash Guru" in 7 days for your interview

Mage:
Tutorials, no, but Jared Tarbell has always been one of my idols and he has some lovely stuff whose source you can download and dissect. There may be tutorials out there, I'm just not familiar with them. Jared is tops as far as I am concerned when it comes to visualizing abstract concepts - strange attractors, binary networks... ahh, but you were interested in things growing.
Take a stroll thru levitated: http://www.levitated.net/daily/index.html
and complexification: http://www.complexification.net/gallery/

Keith Peters has some lovely stuff too: www.bit-101.com/

Now I would call Tarbell brilliant, really. His gift for visualizing abstractions and making them beautiful and engaging has no equal I don't think. But is he a guru? Hard to say. He clearly has major gifts with mathematics but is what he does useful in a corporate/commercial sense? Sort of depends on what the company needs to do. I think guru-dom is going to involve code and aesthetics and a deep understanding of how the things that are unique and idiosyncratic to Flash can be applied to problem solving. Buzz words in the Flash community are RIAs, data binding, web services, conferencing, multi-user chat and white boards - that sort of stuff. I don't know if making randomly gnarled trees or binary network simulations is a fruitful course for you to follow at the moment . Jared HAS done some extremely engaging multi-user projects with Moock's java based unity server - but again - you need to get a sense of what this company does and looks for in a guru. Do they make games? Do they make tiny hand-held apps? Do they serve corporate communications? What they think of as a guru may be different from what you think of (and from what you want to be).


Flash is capable of some seriously non-trivial stuff. All depends on what they want I guess. Good luck.

I pretty much know exactly what they do, as right now I control a good chunk of the files that are on the production server.

We do online learning, and our content is flash that is XML driven. We develop components with are animations, quizes, and even advanced things like business simulations, we model real world objects and allow the user to act upon them in the course of learing. So I know what we will be doing.

Steve, your MP3 tutorial was nice in thath it shows the basics of connecting XML objects to flash. Good stuff there.

But for us I really think a guru is going to be someone who understands flash so that when a problem pops up, such as the quizv is displaying bad data you can easily diagnos and solve the problem. Also to make reusable objects for dynamic XML driven content, a lot of simple stuff like that. But also to once in a while really assist the GD's in realizing some complexly interactive system, and then to make it reproducable.

Although the complex math driven stuff might not be best for me, I am finding thinking about the complexity of the stuff a lot of fun. Knowing it can't hurt.

I am finding this thread really useful. The links you both are supplying are great thanks a lot.

Dan @ Code Town

Sounds exciting! XML and Flash are a beautiful combination.

Not to plug my own stuff, but did you read the RSS Reader tutorial I just finished?
http://www.thegoldenmean.com/technique/rssReader01.html

Oh - I should have mentioned in the previous posts - if you are going to be doing lots of XML with Flash then get ahold of the extremely useful XPath classes here:
http://www.xfactorstudio.com/Actionscript/AS2/XPath/

See - you're already on your way to being a Flash guru!

Thanks for all of the information. I read through your tutorial on the RSS reader, but, I couldn't acutally do it because I fail in the requirements portion of tutorial (only have FlashMX like 2002 or something).

I really liked you quick intro to XPath, it does seem very useful.

Thanks a lot.

Dan @ Code Town