Oscar Trelles

So, I just wrapped up a couple of projects that needed to be sent out before year’s end, and everything is ready for my trip to San Francisco. All I would like to do is now wish you the best holiday season ever, and a New Year full of successes. Also, I couldn’t leave without sharing my thoughts about the last installment of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) series, which I just saw last night…

Though I’ve been playing the game, and thus had a sneak preview at quite a few scenes from the movie, The Return of the King is nothing less than breathtaking, and the golden seal for the best sequel I’ve ever seen in my life. Undoubtedly the best movie of the trilogy, it brings such dramatic photography, to the mix of epic battles, friendship and rock solid loyalty. I doubt Peter Jackson will ever see this blog post, but I leave here my admiration and congratulations nonetheless, to him and everybody who made it possible bringing LOTR to the big screen.

Friends of mine and I, very fond on fiction novels, discussed many times about the great challenge of making a movie from Tolkien’s story would be. So great, most probably nobody would care or be able to achieve success, as it has happened with other productions that attempted similar great novels from authors like Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Phillip Farmer, among others, and ended up with cheap B movies, to say the least… It is perhaps its production design which makes LOTR stand out, since it was made as a whole, unique and huge movie, and then divided for screening, saving resources in the process but making it a very hard task at the same time.

Anyway, I usually don’t recommend movies and stuff, but in this case, even if you are not too much into this kind of reading, LOTR is something you shouldn’t miss.

*** Intended for Mature Audiences only ***

Zeek’s Xmas games are now online. My favorite is the one where you have to rescue the elfs… just don’t let them fall

[via LIFUG mailinglist]

As you may have already noticed, I’m not posting stuff very regularly this month. This time of the year is usually very busy for most people because everybody wants to get things done before the holidays, and forget about work until the next year.

This is specially true for me this time, because Elizabeth and I are traveling to San Francisco to enjoy the holidays with some relatives of mine I haven’t seen in years. We’ve never been to SF before, so we will be doing some tourism as well. We also have plans for dinner with Kristin Henry and Vera Fleischer, who I never had the pleasure of meeting in person before. I’m sure we will have fun

For all this to happen, I have to deliver everything I have in my hands right now by December 22nd… So, please forgive me if I don’t have anything to offer in the next few days, except for trivia, which will not appear in the aggregators, unless is somewhat related to our business

During my research for a new project, I found Hellocode (via NoMaster). They have a few cool examples of non-conventional navigation schemes, though some of them may not convince usability advocates out there. I think a product’s target audience is what ultimately determines whether we have green light for innovation or are to respect conservative standards.

I’ve been asked to design an innovative interface for a company’s portfolio, and although they don’t want anything too complex, a unique experience has to be delivered. Unfortunately, a ‘unique experience’ is a very subjective concept. Our idea of uniqueness is tied to what we have been exposed to. This is specially true with clients, since they don’t do the kind of research we do nor are up to date with the work produced by our colleagues, not to mention that we are already contaminated with our own productions.

So, now I’m trying to introduce some new concepts slowly. I remember when I developed a drag’n'drop shopping cart a few years ago, and the poor thing got so much critique, that even I started to look bad at it. Now I look at this example over at Hellocode, and wonder where the hell is my source file! (my cart wasn’t limited to only 3 items

Share your thoughts, or any resources related to innovatve interfaces and navigation schemes.

Lately, I’ve been taking some time to read a handful of articles related to migrating from Flash MX to Flash MX 2004 (F04), and adopting AS 2.0 as the new standard for Flash development. I’m yet to explore and read some more, but with the information at hand, and what I’m expecting from 2004, I think I soon will be taking my first steps toward AS 2.0

If you read my fairly recent review of the PHP Cookbook, you already know that it’s not in my nature to run and learn new skills related to programming, unless it is critical to the completion of a project (or to keep my job). As a matter of fact, I think I’m a little behind many of my developer friends, regarding advanced uses of ActionScript. But, I’ve managed to get the work done every time so far, and still need to unlock some of the secrets of AS 1.0, so why do I need to learn ActionScript 2.0?

Although everything has been prepared for a smooth transition between ActionScript versions (read Migrating from Flash MX to Flash MX 2004 at Macromedia DevNet for some info on this), it seems like using OOP with AS 1.0 is officially deprecated, according the LiveDoc brought to my attention by a blog post from Darron Schall, which will force developers to take on AS 2.0 sooner or later. Well, maybe later for most.

Too bad all this comes when I’m just starting to re-read Branden and Samuel’s OOP book: the first time I browse through those pages it was just too soon for me. Anyway, I think I will be able to finish it before getting my hand on the upcoming book by a Colin Moock, ActionScript 2.0 Essentials: Object-Oriented Development with ActionScript 2.0

No way. Since it’s release, I’ve been impatiently waiting for the moment I could start using Flash MX 2004 for my day-to-day work and projects, but it seems like (even after the update), the product is not ready yet.

Ever since the release of the trial versions for Flash Pro and the different components of Studio MX 2004, I was very excited about the time when I would start using it for actual work. Sadly, Flash hasn’t been behaving as expected, not even after the dot release, which might have fixed whatever bugs, but not the overall performance of the product. It still takes awhile to launch, a lot more to compile even the smallest movies ever.

Yesterday it was the worst: Flash crashed or closed itself without any warning 6 times in less than an hour. Further more, it appears that this behavior is inherent to Dreamweaver too. Both would never open before trying to launch them 3 or 4 times after a crash, and Windows would never show an alert dialog box or anything at all. Sometimes you would hear a sound or see the programs trying to open in the taskbar, and then nothing… I just hit the pillows earlier than I expected, frustrated.

I thought that there might be an issue with my system, but nothing of these happens with other applications. As a matter of fact, Fireworks has proved to be a lot more robust, compared to it’s previous incarnation and to the rest of the gang in MX 2004.

I don’t think Macromedia should stop other developments to fix Flash, but they sure have to start working extra hours to deliver the product they offered when we opened our wallets.