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The latest about ScaleNine

The Book is Out…November 14 2008

Today a FedEx package dropped on my desk. Inside was the book Andy and I spent so much time on writing, finally printed. When I talked to Doug about when he received his book in hand he said it was all worth it and I have to agree. To think, this book started as a presentation given at 360|Flex Seattle.

For those of you who pre-ordered, the book should be on it’s way soon. Andy and I will be working on getting the source code up as soon as we get back from MAX. If you see us, we’ll have copies there.

You can learn more about the details of the book at the book’s website. The one thing that isn’t immediately apparent is Appendix A: Skinning and Styling Diagrams. To give people an idea, here’s a little sample of one of the diagrams:

Now, imagine every single Flex component with the exact same diagram that po

The New Look of FlexOctober 30 2008

There have been a ton of new specs added for Flex 4 lately, so I thought I’d grab the most recent version of the Flex 4 SDK to see what’s changed since I last checked. I currently have the Flex 4 SDK set up to run in Flex Builder 3, so I just added some components to start playing around with a few things. When I ran the application I noticed a whole new Flex theme that looks something like this:

It appears the Halo theme we’ve all have come to know is going to be replaced with a refreshed look (Any guesses on the name of this theme?). This theme is done all in FXG and includes a pretty good number of new “Gumbonents”. It’s great seeing the new method of skinning executed on an entire theme because you can really see some of the power behind what you’ll be able to do.

After I saw this default theme, I started looking around in other folder in the SDK download and there’s another theme that’s been added as well, called Wireframe. It looks like this:

Winning Themes AvailableOctober 21 2008

Just wanted to send out a quick note that I’ve made the winning themes of the “Skin to Win Challenge” available for download. Not all of them included source files for the artwork, but you can grab the skins and CSS to use in your own applications. Get them from the Gallery

I’ve also revised the homepage to list the winners and feature the themes of the top 3 prize winners. Stay tuned for more themes from all the other entrants.

And the winners are…October 17 2008

Before we get into the winners, let me just say that the response to this contest exceeded the expectations of Adobe, EffectiveUI and myself. We got 27 total entries and enough to make it really hard to pick the final winners. That also means 27 more themes for people to access here on ScaleNine, so thanks to everyone who submitted.

Now, on to the winners. Oh, and if you don’t remember what each of the prizes were, you can refresh your memory here. With one exception. Initially, some of the prizes included Adobe Creative Suite 3 software, however, since Creative Suite 4 was just released, Adobe isn’t going to send you on your way with old software. Winners will now be getting CS4 software instead of CS3!

Ok, really, on to the winners.

First Place - Undefined by Alberto Alcaraz

Alberto did an awesome job of creating a really tight theme and paid attention to pixel

Protoshare for Collaborative Interactive WireframesOctober 8 2008

I’m constantly in conversations with people concerning the perfect tools for different stages during a project. One stage that seems to come up in everyone’s process is creating wireframes. I’ve heard of people using Apple’s Numbers, Fireworks or Balsamiq, which all have there pros and cons.

Tracey Varnell, a fellow Experience Architect at EffectiveUI, pitched me a link to Protoshare, a site for rapidly creating wireframes and collaborating on them with others. Even better, is that there’s interactivity, so people can see various interactions, rather than trying to describe them in text or over the phone. They have a tour on the site covering some of the features.

Other Options

There’s also Axure for wireframes, prototypes and spec creation. The bummer is that it’s PC only, however, there is a prebuilt library of design patterns you can use instead of having rethink the wheel. If someone tries this out, I’d love to hear their thoughts.