I was teaching class today and we were looking at some OSFlash projects when Javier Abanses and Gilles Bertrand mentioned that the lack of a static navigation area made it difficult to conceptualize the site, identify the main sections and navigate to them (thanks guys). This is something I've had a problem with also and, although DokuWiki handles in-page navigation well with the Table of Contents, it does lack an out-of-the-box static inter-page navigation system.

In any case, to cut a long story short, we now have a sidebar with static links to the main sections of the site. This is implemented as a Wiki page itself so it can evolve over time to fit our needs.

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ARP, the Open Source Pattern-Based RIA Framework for the Flash Platform is now part of the Open Source Flash (OSFlash) initiative.

The new web site is:
http://osflash.org/arp

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I was fortunate enough to attend the Skill Swap evening in Brighton last night, organized by fellow Brightoner and CSS guru Andy Budd. Presenting was none other than the delightful Molly E. Holzschlag who was over in the UK for the @Media conference. The topic was the CSS Zen Garden but the conversations drifted to cover the gamut of standards-based design from how it should be taught in higher education to future challenges in the world of AJAX, Flash and the Internet's shift towards becoming an application platform.

What was most interesting for me is that had I been in a group of advnaced Flash developers, instead of the advanced CSS/HTML developers that were at the meeting yesterday, we would have been talking about the same subjects. It all boils down to best practices and the separation of content and presentation. The exact same topics we try and tackle in the Flash world.

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Here are some software decisions I've taken, in no particular order, that have helped make me a happier geek:

1. Choosing a good indexing/search application. I tried them all and even shelled out seventy-odd bucks or something for X1 before settling on Google Desktop Search. It just plain works, doesn't make my computer choke and I actually have the luxury of forgetting that it exists until I need it.

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We had a great meeting last night at the London MMUG, where Rob Bateman premiered his SMX Components set, developed for use in the BBC News US and UK election maps and now released by the BBC as open source.

You can download the release from the BBC's account on SourceSecure at the following address:
http://www.sourcesecure.co.uk/trac/bbc/smx

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