Archive for the 'London MMUG' Category

London MMUG: April 20th, 2006

Published on April 2, 2006 in London MMUG. 1 Comment

The London MMUG will be holding its monthly meeting on the 20th of April and Tink's done a great job (as usual) of getting us a great guest speaker for the event.

The first session will be on Developing Flash Components and will be presented by Mike Jones of Flashgen fame.

The second session, titled "A Round Trip with FileReference", will be presented by none other than our very own Tenacious Tinkerer of all Things Technological, the Tireless Troubadour that is Mr.Tink himself.

Sadly, I am going to miss this great meeting as I will be in Canada for FITC but you don't have to. Not unless you forget to sign up for it, that is. Which you should do straight away... yes, *before* feeding the cat Mrs. Jenkins -- where *are* your priorities? :)

London MMUG meeting on 16th March

Published on February 25, 2006 in London MMUG. 1 Comment

Check out the meeting we have planned for March at the London MMUG.

We're going to be giving away a copy of the Adobe Video Bundle (oooh) and Emmanuel Okyere and I will be holding sessions called Testing Flash Applications (test-driven development, unit testing, etc.) and AMES for Flash Development (installing and using the AMES suite for open source Flash development.)

For more information and to sign up, see the meeting page at the London MMUG.

London MMUG - 16th Feb, 2006 - Flex 2 Beta 1 and After Effects

Published on February 8, 2006 in London MMUG. 0 Comments

The London MMUG is holding its monthly meeting on the 16th (next Thursday). Sign up today if you want to attend my session on Flex 2 Beta 1 and Vishal Shah's Introduction to After Effects.

Here are the session summaries:

Cutting Edge: Macromedia Flex Beta 1
by Aral Balkan

Adobe just announced some very exciting news regarding Flex: The Flex framework and compiler are going to be made available for free. This is big! It suddenly catapults Flex to the head of the pack of available RIA technologies in terms of competitive advantage.

To coincide with this announcement, Adobe also released the public Beta of Flex, including Flex Enterprise Services (FES). In this session, I will take you through the latest changes in Beta 1 and provide and overview of where Flex is heading and why you should care.

Compositions in Time: An Introduction to After Effects
by Vishal Shah

Compositions in Time will look a some key features within After Effects. The presentation will cover basics and introduce you to techniques such as image masking, time mapping, layering multiple video images, keyframe animation and combining the still image with moving image media. The presentation will provide you with the knowledge base required to start experimenting and developing your own work using After Effects.

The meeting will take place at our usual venue (City University in Angel, London) in room CM505. Doors open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. At 9.30pm, we'll hit the neighbourhood pub for some late-night drunken socializing.

Sign up to attend on the London MMUG web site.

Last nigh’s London MMUG…

Published on January 20, 2006 in London MMUG. 5 Comments

We had a packed crowd at the London MMUG last night with close to a hundred people in attending.

... was a wonderful success. We had close to one hundred members turn up to our meeting to watch presentations on AS3 and Flex2 by Tink and myself.

Tink's presentation, which itself was created as an ActionScript 3 (AS3) project using the Flex Builder 2 Alpha 1 tool, introduced members to those changes and new features in AS3 that Tink "thought were important". These included changes to access modifiers (including the new ones, like internal and protected) and the new DisplayList, Sprites, Events, etc. Suffice to say, he covered a range of important topics and covered them well! :)

Not to be outdone by Tink, I also hacked together my presentation in Flex 2 Builder Alpha 1, but this time using the Flex Framework. In fact, in a little over an hour, I was able to put together a basic application for making presentations. With a bit more work during Tink's talk, I was able to add an index view, showing all the slides in the presentation as thumbnails in a TileList component. (Although switching States between my presentation's base state and the Index State caused run time errors during the presentation and now, after a restart, it causes runtime errors every second time! Don't forget that Flex 2 is still alpha and will be improving in future releases. I've reported this bug and I'm sure it will be fixed ASAP if it hasn't already been in some internal build deep within the vaults of Adobe's engineering cavern.) The very fact that I was able to put this application together in such a short amount of time is a testament to the amazing agility Flex 2 gives you during development.

A screenshot of the Flex application I built to create my Flex presentation. Yes, it's all very Escher, when you think about it!

Some of the topics I covered in my talk included the new Eclipse-based Flex Builder, the new Flex Framework, changes to the Flash Framework and AS3, new and existing containers and controls, Data Binding, the new cell/item renderers, keyboard control, and, of course, States.

If you're interested in learning more about ActionScript 3 (AS3) and Flex 2, take a look at two of the one-day Hot Shots Seminars I'm going to be teaching next month in London: Hot Shots: Head Start ActionScript 3 (AS3) and Hot Shots: Head Start Flex 2. During these one-day seminars, I will have time to cover a much broader range of topics and go into further details on the most important aspects of both ActionScript 3 and Flex 2.

Sign up on the London MMUG web site to stay informed of upcoming meetings, topics and speakers. Our next meeting will be on Thursday, February 16th, 2006 (we always meet on the third Thursday of the month) and topics and speakers will be announced shortly.

London MMUG: 19th Jan, 2006 - Flex 2 and AS3

Published on January 13, 2006 in London MMUG. 0 Comments


The London MMUG is holding its first meeting for 2006 on the 19th (next Thursday) at our usual venue in City University, London (nearest tube: Angel). In it, I will be covering Flex 2 and Tink will talk about AS3 (both are currently in Alpha at Macromedia Labs.)

We've currently got 63 people signed up to attend. Our current room has a maximum capacity of 70 so please sign up now if you want to attend. (There is a chance, if there's enough interest and if we have enough forewarning, for us to move to a larger room, seating 110 -- but that's the largest room they have available currently at the university so please sign up early if you do want to attend to give us time to arrange this.)

Sign up today if you wish to attend.

So what happens to MMUGs now? Her’s Londo’s answer…

Published on December 30, 2005 in London MMUG. 2 Comments

I saw that senocular.com was asking What will happen to MMUGs now? Will they become Adobe User Groups (AUGs?) I can't speak for other MMUGs but I can announce what we're going to be doing in 2006 with the London Macromedia User Group: We're going to be renaming it to the London MultiMedia User Group. Being lazy at heart and not wanting to give up too many XBox cycles on rebranding, we thought this would be the easiest route :) Also, it fits perfectly with our wanting to embrace a wider range of topics.

Darn, 15 minutes to get to my gate... I better post this and get going lest I miss my flight to Cyprus. Going to be spending New Year's with my family in the North.

Happy New Year everyone! Here's to an exciting 2006! :)

London MMUG December Drinks

Published on December 8, 2005 in London MMUG. 0 Comments

The London MMUG is getting together on the 15th (that's next Thursday) at the Elbow Room (89-91 Chapel Market) -- very close to the N1 Centre -- Islington (N1). There will be food. There will be drink. There will be pool and there will be music. And we have a copy of Keith Peter's new book, Foundation ActionScript Animation. It's a really great book and I was honored that Keith asked me to write the foreword for it.

See you next week!

London MMUG room change and 1000th member

Published on October 18, 2005 in London MMUG. 0 Comments

We just got notified that there was a double-booking on our original room at City University and that our meeting will instead be held in room U215. There will be signs up leading you there from the main entrance.

More info and to register to attend:
http://londonmmug.org/calendar.php?do=attend&e=25

And here's some good news: The London MMUG now has over 1,000 active members! Congratulations to our 1000th member, Mario Falomir who joined up on 22nd September 2005 at 18:19 :) Mario, come down to this week's meeting to claim a prize!

I'm looking forward to catching up with you all at this month's meeting.

PHP5 for Flash

Published on October 15, 2005 in London MMUG. 2 Comments

David Power, author of PHP5 for Flash from friends of ED will be presenting on the very subject at the London MMUG this Thursday (Oct 20th, 2005). It's free to attend, just sign up on the London MMUG web site to let us know you're coming (or miss out on the wonderful goodies we raffle off at the end of each night.) The meetings start at 19:00 (doors open 18:30) and last until about 21:00 to 21:30, after which we shuffle of to the local pub for much socializing and gossip!

We hold the meetings at City University in Angel (Northern Line).

Collision Detection in Flash 8

Published on October 15, 2005 in London MMUG. 0 Comments

Alias Cummins is going to be presenting a session on Collision Detection in Flash 8 at the London MMUG on October 20th, 2005. It's free to attend, just register on the London MMUG web site.

The event will be held at City University in Angel and doors open at 18:30.

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