The effect classes in Flex 2 have a wonderful new API. In particular, you can pause and rewind the effects as well as access them by id. They do not, however, act like I'd expect when you abort them. For example, I'm building a scrubbable component. You can scroll the slider, and the View it's attached too will show and hide objects over time, like markers on a map that are date specific. I want these markers to fade in when they appear, and fade out when they are no longer relevant to the date range.

They used to be "un-read" Fridays, and then Flagged Fridays, and now that I use GMail for both my personal and hosted POP email, starred Fridays. Basically, on Friday, I check all the email that took longer than 5 seconds to respond to during the week, or just ones that need followups. I don't always do it on Friday, but I strive to tie up all loose ends for the week. This week was busy despite travelling all day Sunday & today, and being at 360Flex Monday through Wednesday.

For an up to date conference schedule on your phone / device, I've created this Flash Lite 2 app. It's better than the paper they gave you because it updates from this XML file. Therefore, if there are any changes in the schedule, we can update the XML file, and the he app will have the most up to date schedule. I'm a little cracked out from Denny's-the-morning-after, so bear with me. I also left my good pixel fonts at home, so am waiting for new, better ones to arrive in my inbox.

Now that the Flash Lite contest is officially over, and I've submitted my entry, I wanted to take some time to discuss my thoughts on the whole development process. The goals are to let others know what my current feelings are on the industry, on development for devices, and to hopefully provide context on if Flash Lite development really matters, and how, in the whole Flash Ecosystem. My entry for the Flash Lite contest was a Google Calendar application.

Seeking Flex/Flash developer with strong graphics/web design skills for unique and exciting project. Must be expert in Flex CSS and Cell Renderers and comfortable with OOP development. Reply must include work samples produced IN FLEX by *you alone* as well as your preferred developer/designer tool-set and your availability. Location: Phoenix, Arizona area. Telecommuting OK. Compensation: Mutually agreeable project fee. Immediate opportunity Email: mlipsky@gabsight.

If you know of an IE PC fix and/or a Mac Safari fix, feel free to link in the comments. If you, like me, loathe Snap.com's popups, and refuse to have a cookie from their site as a removal solution, here's what you do. For Firefox: Go here. Install the plugin (click link at bottom) Restart Firefox. Click "Adblock" on bottom right of Firefox Add "spa.snap.com/snap_preview_anywhere.js" into the text field. Click Ok. If the link in step 1 link rots, search Google for "AdBlock".

For those of you who wish to just start working on a Flex project immediately, it can be quite daunting to do. New Project, setup Cairngorm, etc. Obviously daunting is quite the dramatic flair, but regardless, it should be quicker. If you don't have any integrated code generation tools, one quick way is to just copy and paste these template files into your newly created Flex project folder. They contain: Cairngorm 2.

mProjector, a Flash Player projector creator has just released version 3. This is a me too post, but just had to blog it since mProjector is my favorite out compared to Zinc and SWFStudio. If you can't wait for Apollo, and/or want to create applications using Flex or Flash on the desktop today, mProjector 3 is definately something you should check out. Here's what I did using Flex 1.5 over a year ago using mProjector 2.

Yahoo Maps provides a component that you can use in your Flash and Flex applications. FlightAware provides an API (you have to pay, not free) that allows you to get tracking information about air traffic. Together, you get a mashup of tracking the progress of an airplane currently in flight over the USA via an animated map. This example shows how to get dynamic data onto a YahooMap component from FlightAware's DirectFlight API using Flash 8, AS2, and PHP.

Twitter.com is a website where people post what they are doing, when they are doing it. It is like a 1 sentence blog entry, where you succinctly say what you are currently doing. You post an update to your situation whenever you can. The public and your friends can see what you are doing and receive updates to this via RSS feeds, your phone via SMS (text messages), and your IM client. You can even embed a Twitter badge on your website to show the world what you are currently doing.