It seems to me that there is a big culture of misinformation in both the Flex and Silverlight camps regarding how the other gets the job done. I figured the best way to bridge the divide was to investigate how Silverlight, and XAML, does the RIA thang. Through this article, I will focus on Flex 4 and Silverlight 3. That is, Flex 4 Beta 2 (Gumbo), Flash Builder 4 Beta 2, Flash Catalyst Beta 2, Silverlight 3 and Blend 3.
SatScan -- Free software that analyzes spatial, temporal and space-time data using the spatial, temporal, or space-time scan statistics. It is designed for any of the following interrelated purposes: Perform geographical surveillance of disease, to detect spatial or space-time disease clusters, and to see if they are statistically significant; Test whether a disease is randomly distributed over space, over time or over space and time; Evaluate the statistical significance of disease cluster alarms; Perform repeated time-periodic disease surveillance for early detection of disease outbreaks.
Sometimes I am asked to interview potential Flex programmers for clients. A common requirement is to assess the candidate's ability to design and develop custom components. Today's blog post is dedicated to the hiring manager who called after regular business hours today and illustrates some great skill tests for evaluating flex programmers, code included.
Data Binding is the action of passing values from one object to another automatically. When an object undergoes a change in his particular property, this change is reflected in some attribute of another object. In Flex 3.x Data Binding enabled mirroring of information from one object to another but the reverse did not occur automatically, so we were forced to create another Binding. In Flex 4.0, Adobe has prepared a great surprise to solve this problem: Two-way Data Binding.
Have you ever wanted to create an authentic looking Andy Warhol silkscreen? One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Warhol was known for his avant-garde paintings and screenprintings. Remember Warhols garishly colored celebrity images of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, or Mao Zedong? In the studio he called The Factory, Warhol took an assembly-line approach to his high-contrast, silkscreens and produced art as a mass consumable, like a t-shirt or a pack of gum. Its not surprising that his art is still popular today, and there are lots of one-click Warhol solutions. But if you want the real thing, join Deke McClelland in the final episode of this dekePod series, as he dissects Warhols process, and shows you how to use Photoshop to render your favorite portrait in bona-fide Warhol magnificence.
Signs are our friends. They help us observe the rules when we actually need to know the rules. We dont all speak English, and tourism is a huge industry, so signs need to be language-independent. Which is why a vocabulary of immediately identifiable symbols is essential to every working artist and designer. So if symbols are so important, why are most such an indecipherable mess? Computer icons! Laundry instructions! Or Dekes favorite: What you shouldnt throw into an airplane toilet! Learn what works and what doesnt in this laugh-out-loud episode of dekePod.
They say you cant be too rich or too thin. So how about getting rich by making others thin? Plenty of experienced retouchers make small but enviable fortunes shaving body fat off already lithe models. But rather than showing you a present-day example--honestly, how many underfed waifs do we need to see made skinnier?--Deke takes us back to a time when ideas of beauty were very different: the High Renaissance. In those times of mean circumstances and manual labor, body fat was a thing to be envied. How best to take a well-fed model rendered by the likes of Raphael and make her look like a modern work of art?
The ocean is a different world. Where else can you cavort with colorful animals a thousand feet or more above the Earths surface? But the romance of the sea comes at a price. Just as the watery depths rob our lungs of air, they rob our eyes of color. Its not uncommon for an underwater photo to lack any information in the Red channel. Which is where coral, clown fish, and our very own skin tones live. Fortunately, Deke knows how to summon a Red channel back from the dead. Watch this dekePod and learn how to create underwater images that will satisfy your inner Jacques Cousteau.
If you use Photoshop, then you probably browse your images with Adobes Bridge, which shows you thumbnails of your files. Good news: The Bridge lets you preview images without going to the trouble of opening them. Bad news: Those previews result in large cache files that eat up your hard drive. Worse yet, they permit others to track what youve been looking at. Even if youve long since destroyed the original file, the thumbnail persists! Learn how to protect yourselfand maybe even save your job.
Adobe's landmark pen tool defined an industry. But to the uninitiated, its reliance on anchor points and control handles makes it as approachable as first-year algebra. Until you see it's nothing more than a mating ritual: The points are boys and the handles are girls. Once you get that, it all falls into place.