user workflows

I've decided against building an intricate sports pool for my project in favour of something slightly less ambitious, but something that will still allow me to explore the capabilities of Adobe Flex and PHP within our limited time frame.

As such, I'm going to try and build a user-friendly search panel for live music events that allows users to enter simple search parameters and view the search results in more detail.

At the moment, I'm updating my learning proposal to include the following:

- updated project concept
- the interface design
- user workflows

What I'm having some difficulty with is the workflow because I'm used to thinking about web sites in terms of navigation, where as my new project concept doesn't involve multiple screens, but just a single interface. In looking for guidance with this, I found the following article which helped somewhat:

Modeling User Workflows for Rich Internet Applications

some initial thoughts on my results with

FLEX:

• it's pretty
• it's easier than i expected
• it's quick to implement
  
• it's only the beginning...

BUT,

• it only works with Flash
  

my flex test and some thoughts on php

Adobe Flex

i've successfully tested an application i built with Adobe Flex here and it confirms my understanding of the Flex application development process. (i handcoded the ActionScript and MXML because it helps me to understand what's going on a lot better than if i were to rely on my trial version of FlexBuilder!)

my next steps are:

1. learn how to code in PHP/MySQL in order to build a search component
2. learn how to connect my PHP/MySQL scripts to a Flex front-end

initially, i wanted to build something entirely with Flex, but since i've gained a better understanding of it in the past 2 weeks, i think i feel comfortable enough to wrap my head around PHP too...

PHP

having built a some relatively simple web applications with ColdFusion, my first reaction to PHP was of the "WTF?" variety. ColdFusion's tags aren't much of a stretch from HTML, and therefore, are less intimidating to me than PHP code, which by comparison, is unintuitive and far from "human readable".

thankfully, PHP is a part of DMT, so this is a great opportunity for me to learn it.

flex development process

okay, i was starting to get confused by the whole flex-application architecture thing, but i think this section from wikipedia makes things clearer:

Flex Application Development Process

Everything below is directly sourced from the help file in version 2.0 Beta 3:

• Define an application interface using a set of pre-defined components (forms, buttons, and so on)
• Arrange components into a user interface design
• Use styles and themes to define the visual design
• Add dynamic behavior (one part of the application interacting with another, for example)
• Define and connect to data services as needed
• Build the source code into an SWF file that runs in the Flash Player

does this mean that i don't need to have some sort of flex application running on the web server since it's already compiled into a swf before deployment? i'll try and write a simple flex application and see if the compiled swf file runs on charlie then post my results here.

inspiration

having read a lot of the introductions from the first e-tivity, i noticed that there were a number of students who work in the industry and are interested in DMT to enhance their already existing knowledge of web technologies, as well as a bunch of students who manage web sites but don't know the inner workings.

well, for whatever reason you decided to take this class, i think it's fair to say that making money is a pretty good incentive. if that's true for you, i highly recommend this entertaining presentation that i stumbled on from the bloke who created the Ruby on Rails framework, David Heinemeier Hansson: A Secret to Making Money Online

an interesting article about RIAs

okay, i quickly skimmed over this article, which was written last year, but confirms my worst fears: technology that falls by the wayside. i've come across Laszlo, Silverlight, and Flex, but i'd never heard of Mozilla's Prism nor Curl. i guess they're already out for the count.

nevertheless, it was an interesting read, and one that makes me lean a little closer towards Flex.

brainstorming for the learning proposal

i've only just discovered google trends and it's helping me to decide where i want to go with my learning proposal for my DMT class... not only do i want to learn something completely new, but i want to have some sort of assurance that whatever i choose will be a technology with some legs.

at this stage i'm leaning towards adobe flex for a few reasons: (1) i find the whole web 2.0 thing both incredibly inspiring and utterly daunting; (2) the google trends charts for adobe flash and flex are still promising; (3) i skimmed some online job listings and found a decent amount of demand for flex and a high amount of demand for flash; and (4) after looking at some samples of flex-based websites, i'm interested to learn more about RIAs (or, rich internet applications).

the only thing holding me back is my dislike for Flash that can be traced back to when "flash intros" were all the rage. yuck. i stayed away ever since just hoping that it would crawl into a ball and die. but now, years later, here i am, eating my words and entertaining the idea of jumping on the flash/flex bandwagon...

oh, and one more thing, i have a pretty good idea about what flash is, but flex? notsomuch.

note to self: research how flex relates to flash, and... just what the heck is flex anyway?