Just as you were getting used to CS3…

I can’t say that I’m not looking forward to it after seeing the new features previewed at Flash Forward.

Adobe is currently working a project codenamed, “Thermo.” It will be the most intuitive process for converting Photoshop and Illustrator designs into interactive applications. The program looks similar to Dreamweaver’s code and design views. When you switch to the code view you can see that the application is producing Flex code underneath, so designers and developers can collaborate throughout the process.

Thermo also has one of the best user interfaces that I’ve seen in an application. There appears to be essentially one menu, which alters its content based on the context. When dragging around or scaling an object, the coordinates and dimensions are displayed next to the cursor. This type of interface design will likely eliminate the need to have dozens of panels open.

Thermo also solves a problem that studios have be wrangling with for years with their Flash and web applications. How do I should the customer how the product is going to work? Storyboards work relatively well for linear narratives, but interactive narratives often branch in several directions. So some studios go to the trouble of making elaborate Flash prototypes for the client so that they can sign off on the project. This can be extremely costly. Thermo promises to make such a strategy cost-effective by enabling the designer to produce a simple interactive application in seconds. See the videos for proof.

These should cut down on the dragging and scrolling and searching. I got tired of dragging a selection across hundreds of frames only to lose it all with one slip of the mouse.

• Select Empty Layers command
• Select Frames to Start command: this takes your selection and selects all the frames before it as well
• Select Frames to End command: this takes your selection and selects all the frames after it as well

Downloads

1. Select Empty Layers.mxp
2. SelectFrames_toStartAndEnd.mxp

Queasy Tools is a new set of quick and easy tools for Flash designers and animators. This panel provides the fastest way to create tweened animation with easing in Flash as well as putting together a set of common design functions in one location. Feature list and free download below…

UPDATE:

Newer version (1.5.0) available here.

Screenshot

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This panel creates and saves guides in Flash CS3.

Features, instructions, and download below the fold.

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A little while back I was looking for a way to quickly create icons to differentiate my project folders and speed-up my workflow a bit. I found exactly what I was looking for in Pic2Icon. It’s a droplet application for Mac OSX that turns an image’s content into its icon. It works with transparency and even layered Photoshop files (CS3 included). Once the icon has been applied to the image file, you get run a get info (cmd + i) on the image and the file you’d like to apply the icon to. Click on the image’s icon in the upper left of the get info window and copy it (cmd + c), then click on the target file’s get info icon and paste (cmd + v). Voilà!

Extensibility

(from Wikipedia)

… is a system design principle where the implementation takes into consideration future growth…

…the design includes all of the hooks and mechanisms for expanding/enhancing the system with new capabilities without having to make major changes to the system infrastructure….A good architecture provides the design principles to ensure this—a roadmap for that portion of the road yet to be built…These excess capabilities are not frills, but are necessary for maintainability and for avoiding early obsolescence.

…can also mean that a software system’s behavior is modifiable at runtime, without recompiling or changing the original source code.

—-

This idea is useful when building projects that have iterations or phases. Sometimes the client knows they’re going to want multiple versions of a given project. Realistically though, this happens all the time, even when one is working with little outside influence. An idea doesn’t usually look the same on the screen as it does in our minds or in a script. It needs tweaking and fine-tuning. As designers, we often go through myriad iterations before reaching the final product. Over time, I’ve come to realize ways to save myself future hassle by taking time upfront, at the start of a project, and planning what pieces might change how I can design them to be more flexible and more economic. This ‘brain-time’ early on reduces the ‘oh crap’ time later.

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