Recent Blog Entries

Quick Site Update
Entry posted on Aug 14 by valhead

To avoid sending most of you updates twice -- once via this groups site and once via our main site -- we've decided to stop updating the groups blog.  You'll still see updates from our main site's RSS feed here, so you won't miss anything. You just won't get two emails about the same thing.

July Meeting - Thursday July 16th
Entry posted on Jul 14 by valhead

The July PittMFUG meeting is this Thursday July 16th and we have two presentations planned for this month's meeting. We'll also have free food!

UnitTesting Your Applications, Josh Sager
Working on larger projects seems to be the norm these days. It's becoming harder and harder to manage all of the features within your application or interactive project. If only there was a better way to manage this and avoid the following scenario.

Have you ever "fixed" one thing that broke two or three other things? Have you ever wished there was a way for you to know if things were broken without manually clicking every button and checking every feature? The solution is Unit Testing. Unit Testing is an approach to development that uses test cases to validate the expected results of your functionality. Each build a diagnostic is run and will display a dashboard of results notifying the developer of anything failing or passing the tests. As the project grows in scale it's an extremely valuable tool that saves time and allows abstract management instead of feeling lost in the trenches when something goes wrong.This is an intermediate to advanced developer topic.

Better Flash Typography: The Text Layout Component, Val Head
To date, typography in Flash has always been a little hit or miss.The new text engine in Flash Player 10 aims to fix a lot of those issues. The Text Layout Framework is a library built to help you take advantage of these new Flash Player features. To quote Adobe Labs: "Text Layout Framework delivers multi-lingual, print-quality typography for the web..."

Val will show you how to use the Text Layout Component currently available on the Adobe Labs site in Flash. While the TLF can most certainly be done with ActionScript, there's no coding involved in this demo.
This is a beginner to intermediate topic for both designers and developers.

Please RSVP to pittmfug@gmail.com or @pittmfug to let us know you're coming so we can order enough food.

PittMFUG July Meeting
Thursday July 16th
6:30pm
New Perspective2949 Smallman St
Pittsburgh PA 15201
Google Maps

May Meeting Redux
Entry posted on Jun 03 by pixelfumes

Thanks to everyone who came out last Thursday! Here's the files to go along with the presentations at the meeting:

Monkeys, Elephants and JSON, oh my!, Joe Kromer

SWFAddress set up for AS3, Val Head

Tearing Inverted Masks, Wayne Lincoln

April Meeting Redux
Entry posted on Apr 17 by pixelfumes

Thanks to everyone who showed up for our April meeting.

Jazz in the Digital Age

Tom N. had mentioned "Jazz and the Digital Age". You can read more about it here:

Sunday April 19 2009, 3:00 pm
Carnegie Library Music Hall,
Homestead 510 E 10th Ave
Homestead Carnegie Mellon School of Music
Map

presents "Jazz and the Digital Age" Hear one of Carnegie Mellon's Jazz Ensembles, directed by David Pellow, perform a new arrangement by Dr. John Wilson for jazz band, soloists and digital string orchestra. The "orchestra" is five Carnegie Mellon music students recorded onto 20 digital tracks that will be time-stretched to synchronize with the live band. The performance will also feature a high-end 8-channel sound system. This is the result of Professor Roger Dannenberg's project, which is sponsored by Microsoft through the Computational Thinking Center. There will be additional "digital jazz" with electronic performances by Tomas Henriques on digital valve instrument controller, and Dannenberg on trumpet with computer processing. Herniques is a visiting scientist in the School of Computer Science. David Pellow, music director This performance is sponsored by WDUQ FM 90.5. Research for this concert's technology made possible by Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science and Microsoft. Free Admission

Ben's Presentations

You can download Ben's Presentation slides (including links) here. Want to try out Fractal 4D? You can download the AIR installer here.

Val's Presentations

You can learn more about using the Color Picker Component over at Val's blog: http://www.thisisportable.com/blog/2009/03/25/quick-bit-of-code-using-colorpicker-component-as3/ Stay tuned to her blog for updates showing you how to work with Flash as a background element in your HTML as well!

April Meeting Details
Entry posted on Apr 14 by valhead

The PittMFUG meeting is this Thursday April 16th at 6:30pm

So, it's finally Spring. About time, huh? In honor of the awesomeness that is warmer weather, we're changing our meeting format for this month.

Our April meeting will feature a mini-presentation format. We'll be covering a whole lot of topics for just a few minutes at a time. Perfect for getting that little bit of extra info or learning about something entirely new.

Also, we're bringing back "Show Cool Stuff Time". The first 15 minutes of the meeting are dedicated to sharing cool sites, inspiring blog posts or whatever else has caught your interest this month. Everyone who brings a link to show at "Show Cool Stuff Time" will get an extra raffle entry.

We have four mini-presentations planned, and we'd like to have more. If you have something you'd like to show or demo for a quick five minute mini-presentation, email pittmfug@gmail.com to let us know.

Full Screen Flash Under HTML, Val Head

One ColorPicker Component, Two Things Changing Colour, Val Head

Working with the Proximity Manager Class, Ben Pritchard

Working with the JPEG and PNG Encoder, Ben Pritchard

Thursday April 16th
6:30pm
at New Perspective
google maps

FYI: We'll be holding the meeting upstairs. If you arrive after 6:30pm the front doors will be locked and you'll have to call or text the number posted on the door to get in.

Flashpitt is back for 2009

The Flashpitt 2009 dates have been announced. Yes, that's plural. We want to make Flashpitt even better the second time around. So, we're expanding to include both workshops and sessions over two days. All the important details will be posted in the next few months. Join our mailing list or follow us on twitter for the most up-to-date info.

Check Out Our Sponsor

Campaign Monitor continues to be our awesome newsletter sponsor as well as putting out a great product.

"Campaign Monitor is built for designers who can create great looking emails for themselves and their clients, but need software to send each campaign, track the results and manage their subscribers." And, they're really nice folks, too.

Suggest a Topic

Do you have a topic you'd like to see covered at a PittMFUG meeting? Do you want to present at a PittMFUG meeting? Send an email to pittmfug@gmail.com and we'll make it happen.

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