Now on to the business at hand:

There’s a big firestorm brewing right now about a “racy” presentation that was given on the last day of the conference. A blog called the Geek Girls Guide posted an email written to them by an offended attendee.

I believe that the description of the presentation in the above post is somewhat inaccurate because it is given without the context of the reset of the presentation and the kind of conference that Flashbelt is. So I wanted to post a response in defense of Flashbelt (and yes, Hoss too).

UPDATE: After writing this, but before posting it, Hoss posted a response (with a short note from Dave from Flashbelt before it) on the Geek Girls blog. It’s a good read, and you should read it.

Full disclosure: I consider Hoss a friend of mine and have known him for a number of years, mainly from attending or speaking at the same conferences that he has, so read this with that in mind. I’ve also been a speaker at the Flashbelt conference for the past three years.

I’d like to start with an overview of the presentation that Hoss gave from my point of view:

UPDATE: Hoss has posted most of the slides from the talk here, along with some descriptions of the content. I’ll leave my account of the talk here for those interested in another opinion.

First, he started off with his “ignite stye” talk that is a few slides about his recent work and the tough economic times, and yes, as Grant pointed out, it does begin and end with a picture of him at a club called “Club 11″ in Amsterdam (a quick Flickr search turned up this image of the club in question. May be NSFW for some, but it’s certainly not R-rated). UPDATE: Erik Natzke has posted a video of the first few minutes of the talk (which funnily enough, I have a small cameo at the start).

After this he then moved on to talk about a project he worked on for Adobe (the project appears to be no longer live), which was a graffiti/drawing tool. He said that any time you create a drawing tool online, the first thing people do is “draw penis swastikas” with it, which indeed, if the creatures that people have created with the game Spore are any indication, that statement is spot on.

He then went on to explain that in order to perhaps one-up the penis makers at their own game, he embedded a penis in the app itself as an Easter egg. (Before showing this he of course asked any Adobe folks in attendance to cover their eyes). He then went through some steps to place some stuff on the stage, and zoomed in on a crudely drawn penis, which you can see here.

I believe next he showed a couple of drawing tools, and since we were on the subject of drawing “cocks”, he decided to try to draw one. (Note that he had injured his hand a couple of days before and had a splint on his wrist, which was hindering his ability to draw anything, so his drawings looked especially crude and he had to start over a couple of times.) He drew a crude face and a penis and a white line coming out of the penis to the face. I considered this to be a little over the top, but it was at least on topic since he was using a drawing tool and as he just said, people draw cocks when you give them a drawing tool.

He then explained that he wasn’t an illustrator and wanted to invite an illustrator from the audience up to draw something better with the tool, so he asked if anyone was an illustrator, and a woman raised her hand, so he invited her up to draw something. Unfortunately she must have been confused about what he wanted, because she just drew a bunch of random lines and abstract doodles. He thanked her after a minute or two and she went back to her seat. As she left, he hit the replay button on the app so it would re-draw what she drew. As he was talking about how great it is to create an app and see what talented people do with it, he noticed that one of the doodles she drew very closely resembled a penis (which it actually did). So of course he laughed and said that she had drawn a cock and had upstaged him (clearly in a joking manner, it was very funny).

He then showed a fridge magnet tool his company created, and talked about how the narrative of the intro helps people figure out how to use the app, and he showed a video of someone using the app, moving the letters around. I believe it spelled out some PG-13 rated words, but nothing too bad. He was also talking about how the interface is super simple, that it’s magnet letters, which everyone knows how to use already, so it doesn’t take much to get people going with it. He also made references to how complicated video games often use the first level as a tutorial to teach you how to play, and that web apps could gain a lot from this type of set up.

He was then nearly out of time, so he opened up his “Orgasmorator.” The app is pictured here on Flickr if you are curious (don’t worry, it’s G-rated). The app is this: It shows a 3d rendered image of a woman’s face, and as you move your mouse up and down, her facial expression changes. This is in tune to some music I believe, and eventually if you move your mouse enough/in the right way, she gets a big smile and some happy music plays. The app is completely G rated. There is no nudity, no suggestive sounds, just some music and a happy woman. I believe he made a comment to tie the simplicity of the Orgasmorator to the simplicity of the fridge magnets app: that everyone knows how to move a mouse and it’s very basic. UPDATE: There’s videos of the tool here.

So this was the end of the talk. Everyone clapped and seemed to like the talk. There was no nudity and no “sexist” things said.

–

Now, I’d like to talk a bit about what kind of conference Flashbelt is. First, Flashbelt is not simply a technology conference. It includes many speakers who are not simply programmers, but artists and designers as well. It has a fairly high ratio of designers/artists to programmers, and I think this a big reason as to why the conference is so successful (and indeed, why other “Flash” conferences are so popular). People love going because you don’t just sit in a room all day and listen to programmers like me teach you about the subtle nuances of Flash Player security. You spend part of the day learning new things, part of the day seeing some incredible work from some of the best artists the internet has to offer.

Because of this balance of art and technology, I think attendees should be ready to see things they may not see at other technology conferences. The talks may not be G rated. There may be cussing. There may be crude drawings of things. If you don’t like risqué content, it’s ok to leave the room and check out the next talk. Nobody will mind at all. And of course it’s ok to speak your mind and blog about it, but please keep things in context.

So to sum up, I’d like to say again that Flashbelt is easily one of the best conferences around, and I will absolutely attend it again and again, and so should you. I also think that Hoss shouldn’t change a thing. I think his talk was enlightening and entertaining, even though it was crude at times and some might even say juvenile, but I don’t believe that there was anything sexist about it. I think his best course of action would be to post a warning at the start of his talks to alert people that there will be drawings of “cocks” and strong language, because TV has warnings and they seem to be OK. And lets be honest here, you’ll likely get stronger language and racier content from a night watching prime time television than from Hoss’ Flashbelt talk.

If you are still looking for a Flash/Design conference to attend this summer, I highly recommend Flashbelt.

The best European Flash conference is heading to the states this spring. Flash on the Beach has been happening in Brighton, UK for the last few years and is such a good time, I think everyone should go.

I’ll be heading down to Miami this year to talk about YouTube type things, so if you are curious about using YouTube for a project, or just interested in hearing some stories about a very high performance Flash application, you should come to my session :).

In case you are interested, there’s tons of pictures and writing about past FotB events all over the place. So check it out, and hopefully I’ll see you there.

It’s taking place at the San Bruno YouTube office this Thursday, July 10th from 10:30am to 5:30pm.

Here’s the blurb about it:

Powered By YouTube is a developer gathering focused on bringing together developers to learn more about the YouTube APIs and Tools. Spend the day at YouTube’s headquarters and learn how to bring YouTube to your website, share best practices, and get hands-on with the APIs. Meet fellow YouTube API developers across a wide range of companies, YouTube engineers and product managers, and leave inspired to enhance your user experience with the YouTube APIs.

Also: It’s free, and you get a free lunch.

If you visit this page in Firefox and click the “push me” button, you will see simply “Ref is:” but no other text. If you visit in with any other browser, you’ll see:
“Ref is: [http://dev.deconcept.com/referer_tester/]“.

The problem is that Firefox doesn’t properly append the referer header to requests made from swfs embedded on the page. Every other browser I’ve tested sends a referer.

How you can help:

Visit the bug page for this issue and “vote” for the bug. DO NOT ADD A COMMENT SAYING SOMETHING LIKE “Yes please fix this bug!”. This will only annoy the developers. Simply “voting” for the bug is enough. You vote for the bug by clicking the “vote” link on the top right side of the page, and putting a check in the box next to the bug and clicking the “Change my votes” on the subsequent page.

Flash on the Beach is a fantastic conference in Brighton at the end of September, and it’s one of the best Flash and design conferences to check out.

Registration is now open, so if you’re looking for an excuse to head to the UK, this is it.

Also, next week is Google I/O (Flight of the Conchords are playing a show there!), which I believe still has a few tickets available, and just next month I’ll be heading off to Flashbelt in Minneapolis, so come say ‘Hi’ if you see me wandering around either of these events.

It uses the YouTube player Javascript API to synchronize a Google Maps widget with the video (based on the current time of the video). It was pretty easy to throw together, it took maybe 4 hours from start to finish, and I’ve never used the Google Maps Javascript API before.

Check it out.

Yes? Then head over to this signup page and let us know you’re coming. The event is on March 27th, 2008 and will be held at the Google Mountain View campus.

p.s. free punch and pie

The new version is a complete rewrite from SWFObject 1.5, so we’ll need lots of testing before we officially launch it and replace the older SWFObject and UFO scripts, and since we have Adobe involved, they will be including this embed system in the Adobe authoring tools in the future.

The SWFObject project is moving to Google Code, where you can download the source from svn, grab the latest build, or file bugs or read documentation.

I’ve also created a new Google Group for SWFObject support questions and discussion.

If you are at MAX today, our presentation is at 2:45pm in room W-196c and it’s called “Flash Detection and Embedding: An open source solution”.

If you can’t make it today, we’ll be doing it again tomorrw (Wednesday) at 11am in room W-185d.

It’s got a fantastic lineup if you are into the whole Ajax thing, so I definitely suggest checking it out.

Check out my session outline for more info.

Also: Flashbelt is only 2 weeks away! It’s JUNE already. Time to hit the upper midwest and talk Flash with all the cool Flash nerds again. If you haven’t looked at Flashbelt and are itching for a conference, this will be a nice one to check out.

UPDATE: Apparently, there’s only 50 tickets left for Flashbelt, so get your tickets now if you are planning on going!

I’m heading out to Apollo camp in the morning. I’ll get into SFO around noon and make my way up to the city to wander around until it starts, then I’ll be spending the weekend in the city visiting some friends and just relaxing a bit.

I’ll be there with a couple other Schematic folks, and we are always looking for hot Flash talent™, so say hello if you are looking for work, or just want to say hi.

I’ll be giving a talk called Progressive Enhancement with Flash that will cover stuff like:

• Using SWFObject (maybe SWFFix by then) to embed Flash content
• Using progressive enhancement to allow search engines to properly index your content and increase SEO for Flash websites
• Flash content vs. Flash style, and how to treat them differently
• Deep linking and back button support in Flash

And a few other areas. I should also be able to talk about SWFFix a bit (hopefully it will be fully released by then, but who knows).

Go check out the Flashbelt page for more info. I can’t give you a direct link to my session, but it’s listed there in the session list. Hopefully I’ll see some of you there!

We’ve put up a dev blog on the site, and will be asking for help and feedback throughout the development cycle, so head over and watch the blog for updates in the coming weeks.

Bobby also has a great A List Apart article out today that talks about the problems with current Flash embed techniques.

It’s very common to hear people argue about Flash websites or RIAs vs. Ajax websites or RIAs, but this is always the wrong way to approach building any website. Would you have an argument with an architect about whether to build a house out of wood vs concrete? Of course not, they would use each material to build the parts of the house that the respective material is best for. Sometimes you might want to build a shack or barn out of all wood, sometimes you might want to build an all brick house, but many times you’ll want to use the best material for each section of the house. Build the foundation out of concrete, the walls and roof out of wood.

Websites and web applications should be treated the same way. Break things down to a component level and go from there. Use the right tool for each component. If you can do it well with HTML/Javascript, go for it. If it would work out better with Flash, then why waste time recreating something with Javascript that you could build 3 times faster with Flash? There are plenty of great examples of this today around the internet:

One of my favorite examples is Google Finance. They use HTML and Javascript for the stuff that is best suited for that, and then when they need to show a nice graph, they drop in a great interactive Flash graph and talk to it using Javascript as needed. The Flash controls the Javascript, and the Javascript can control the Flash as needed.

Another example is Flickr. They started out using Flash to display all of the images, including the image notes and the other toolbar options along with each image. While this might have been a good choice as the site started out, it was soon replaced by a more efficient HTML version of the toolbar and notes system that works just as well as the Flash version. They did end up keeping one small bit of Flash so users can rotate images and see a preview before they save it.

So the next time you start planning a website and you start thinking: “Hmm, Flash or Ajax?” Instead of looking at it from a site-wide perspective, try thinking about your site as a series of components, and then choose Flash or HTML/Javascript for each individual component instead.

You can read the article here where they misspelled my name (twice!) and in the podcast they say I’m a ‘Freelance Java developer’ of which I am neither… But I can’t be too hard on him, as he’s probably not the first person to confuse Java with Javascript.

Here’s the article, and here’s a direct link to the mp3. Fast forward to around 24:00 to hear my part.

The complaint generally goes something like this:

A user has Flash Player 9 (or other version) installed on their system and everything works fine with IE6. That user then runs the IE7 update and their computer stops showing Flash content on sites like YouTube or MSN video and other Flash sites. However, if the user goes to some other sites with Flash content, the content will play just fine, even if the site requires the Flash 9 Player.

I’m not sure of the official cause for this, and am still doing some research into what causes it, but a first guess I have is that when you upgrade from IE7, the browser install is not correctly reinstalling your existing Flash Plugin, so scripts that check for the Flash Player are failing, but since the plugin file is there, if you visit a site that does not use a detection script (like SWFObject) you will see the Flash content just fine.

There may not be a solution to this for the sites using detection scripts – they rely on a series of Windows registry entries that seem to be missing after an IE7 upgrade.

For users, here is a fix that seems to work well:

1. Quit all open programs. This step is important because other programs may be using the Flash Player, and if they are, the uninstaller will fail silently.
2. Run the Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller.
3. Reinstall your Flash player.

If you are still having problems after running the uninstaller and reinstalling the plugin, please post a comment with your system setup and other relevant details. (And remember, sometimes a system restart can make a difference with problems like this, so try that first).

UPDATE (1-8-2007): Added a new step 1.

Session Slides (pdf)

Links:

http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/
http://exanimo.com/as2/StateManager

Further Reading:
http://blog.deconcept.com/2006/03/13/modern-approach-flash-seo/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/progressive_enhancement.html

Enjoy! If you were in the session, leave a comment and let me know what you thought of the presentation, and include ways I can make the next one better if you like.

I’ll be hanging out around London Saturday and Sunday, and heading to Brighton Sunday evening, so if you are in the area be sure to say hi.

UPDATE: Well, after a smooth flight, we landed at Gatwick, waited a bit to get through customs, and then found out Brandie’s new suitcase was missing… all that was left near mine was another bag that was the exact same color and model as hers, but with someone else’s nametag on it.
So we notified the airline, and they will hopefully deliver it when this other person realizes they took the wrong bag.

So then we headed up to London for the night (before heading down to brighton Sunday evening). Well, the first thing I tried to do out of the tube station was get some cash from the cashpoint machine. I put my card in, selected the amount, and when the machine tried to spit my card back out, it got stuck somehow just out of reach. It tried a couple of times to spit it out, but eventually gave up and confiscated my card! The lady in the bank wasn’t helpful at all, and was just plain rude when I told her the machine ate my card.

So, right now the score is UK: 2, me: 0.

On the up side, the hotel we picked in London is very nice, and in a prime location to enjoy a bit of pre-conference shopping and sight seeing, and the airline website says they found our bag and it’s out for delivery… so things should be better from here on out :)

UPDATE (12-3-2006): Well, more than 30 hours after we arrived in London, our lost bag showed up. We got into Brighton this evening around 6pm, and met up with all the other nerds at the hotel bar and headed over to Aral’s house for a little pre-conference party. And HOLY CRAP he has a nice place. He was just moving in so the furniture was very sparse, but the apartment itself was fantastic.

This is a great example of using Flash where Flash can do something better than HTML. And doing it in a way that uses progressive enhancement so it doesn’t require Flash. It’s just that Flash makes it better.

SWFMacMouseWheel is another addon for SWFObject that listens for mouse events and passes in the mouse wheel events to your Flash movie using ExternalInterface. Very cool solution to a problem that has annoyed many Flash developers. Go check it out.

SWFMacMouseWheel

SWFAddress is a small script that sits on top of SWFObject and provides deep linking for Flash websites and applications. In other words it enables the Back, Forward and Refresh buttons of the browser and creates unique URLs with page titles that can be sent over email or IM.

SWFAddress uses the ExternalInterface functionality introduced in Flash Player 8. It has been tested on the following browsers:

* Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0
* Mozilla Firefox 1.5
* Safari 2.04
* Opera 9.02

It’s a great little script, and something I’ve wanted to put together for a long time. Even better: It was designed to work with SWFObject, so if you are already using SWFObject to embed your movies, it’s really really easy to just slap in some deep link and back button support.

Go check it out.