Mrinal Wadhwa › Comments

"Sure, feel free to do so, my posts here are all licensed under creative commons. And, I’m @mrinal on twitter" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Thank you everyone, very glad you liked the presentation" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Hi iksnae, The js code used is in the mxml file, it gets evaled into the container using Abdul’s Javascript tag. If you just put that code in the contain html file, it should work. Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Hi iksnae, The js code used is in the mxml file, it gets evaled into the container using Abdul’s Javascript tag. If you just put that code in the contain html file, it should work. Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Hi George, Yes I am opinionated (strongly, at times) … but I don’t wish to come across as rigid, so maybe I need to work on that, thanks for pointing it out. I do feel that debates (even the intense strongly opinionated ones) are a good thing .. because amidst all the chaos they provide an opportunity for clarity and help us understand things better. Thank you for the feedback Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Dennis, I and several others love reading what you say precisely for your frank, insightful and well thought out opinions. Don’t let stuff like this get you down, these people have no clue what they’re talking about. _ Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"That is a very good point Markus, Moving from server side controlled rendering to a thicker client approach can be pretty challenging implementation wise. Although, the focus on UX is independent of that technology choice, there are many examples of great experiences built with older UI technologies and at the same time many horrible experience built using newer so call RIA technologies. I think, its more related to how teams that produce software think … and weather on not there is a driving force in the team that consistently directs the team to good UX choices. Ideally this person should have an authoritative role in the process .. because at times he/she will point you to seemingly disruptive directions .. but that’s what’s needed. Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Leisa, Thanks for sharing you thoughts … you’re absolutely right, its really hard for most business decision makers to perceive the value in stripping features off their product … the reality though is that many a time features exist only to compensate for the ineptness of some other feature in the system. I think (hope) that the way around this is that businesses will start to understand tangible value in UX (already happening?) and that will hopefully create these influential UX voices and give them a proper place they deserve in application development work flows. Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"That’s true. I was trying to highlight why in general enterprise software has bad user experience .. I think its because of the missing design thinkers … interaction design is usually not part of the process of building enterprise applications .. and unless that changes I think we will continue in this state we’re in." - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Peter, that sounds like a great plan … Welcome to India ! I wish you all the best and look forward to hopefully meeting you soon." - Mrinal Wadhwa

"@rconr007 you can write similar code that modifies x,y position based on data to create an Org chart but for that you would write a regular Component. As far as I understand them, Layouts are not meant to deal with data, they generally only interact with the ILayoutElement or IVisualElement interface of group’s children" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Jesse, Neat little layout class you have there … shouldn’t take much to translate it to play well with Flex 4 … you should give it a try. If I ever need a random layout in a project .. I’ll pick on your algorithm .. thanks for sharing. _ Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"@Himanshi Really? I may have missed something … I still don’t see anything on the subject in the notes … could you please point to the exact quote from the release notes that would’ve help in this situation? Thank you, Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Hacker Night is an awesome event ! I had a lot of fun last year .. and some tangible code does come out it as well … In addition to all the examples Craig mentioned .. the Ribbit Flash Island I wrote at TechEd last year was a result of Thomas’ presentations I saw first at Community Day and then at Hacker Night. I hope more SAP/RIA geeks can make it to Bangalore this year .. I’m looking forward to a fun evening hacking stuff up." - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Hi Jan, That seems like a good idea … I will try and change that whenever I have some time. If you wish I would be glad to make you a committer on the google code project and you can make the change your self. Thanks, Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"@Satish Could you clarify what you mean when you say .. “current ActionScript + MXML mélange”? I haven’t spent much time with Laszlo _ Mrinal P.S its funny you use “was” with OpenLaszlo" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"If you find this annoying, please vote on this Flash Builder bug https://bugs.adobe.com/jira..." - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Garth, I would agree, as long as your mobile phone app deals with data on the network and offers a more engaging and richer experience compared to an average mobile app .. in my head its an RIA. Its all relative though .. its an RIA today, the same app may not be an RIA an year from now Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Sanjay, Thank you. . So some best practices I could figure .. . 1. Use Emulate Illustrator 6 (or any RGB color profile) Emulate Illustrator 6 2. Avoid non 50% mid point gradients 3. If you have a non 50% mid-point gradient .. for now use the SVG export workaround, described in the post above .. next version of Illustrator will fix that in FXG export as well 4. If you or your designer are still not happy with the output use the hard core manual approach described in my comment above 5. Rasterizing the gradient may be an option as well." - Mrinal Wadhwa

"This one is with the Emulate Adobe Illustrator 6 setting .. 1. Gradient (non 50% midpoint) created using Emulate Adobe Illustrator 6 setting 2. SVG Export . . You can find the modified AI file with this new setting here _ Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Sanjay, thanks for the quick reply An Illustration created with an RGB color profile, having a non 50% mid-point doesn’t seem to match exactly with its SVG export . 1. Gradient (non 50% midpoint) created using Adobe RGB (1998) profile 2. SVG Export . . You can find the modified AI file here Am I doing something wrong? _ Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Greg, Thank you for researching this. . As you said .. don’t think designers will like this restriction .. I guess I’ll find out later today when I suggest this to my designer . I’ll send Sanjay (from the Illustrator team, who commented above) an email about your findings .. lets see if he has a suggestion .. he did tell me in an earlier email that they will at least make it same as SVG with the interpolated points. That’s certainly not perfect. In the last image above that slight loss of purple tint makes a significant difference in my final output .. here’s what I am doing right now to satisfy my designer (don’t laugh at me ) . 1. Export SVG of the gradient. 2. Use the offset values in SVG to calculate pixels where colors change 3. In Illustrator place guides at all those pixels 4. Move all the guides up 1 pixel (up arrow) 5. Use a tool external to Illustrator (OSX DigitalColor Meter) to calculate the exact colors at those pixels 6. Convert all that to FXG 7. This leads me to an..." - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Thanks David, That is a very important point to highlight, most flex developers (like me) won’t know about that and most designers won’t care. . My second comparison above was done with the color setting of “Emulate Adobe Illustrator 6″ … but I still could not get an output that looks as intended (see above) _ Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"@Tyler, Such a tool would be very useful indeed, do let me know when you’re done . Illustrator could possibly have a Flash mode where the design area gets rendered in Flash while the designer designs … or Flash Professional should generate pure FXG without using assets. _ Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Greg, You’re probably right .. the mid-point reasoning seems logical. . I noticed that in my test illustration used above the mid-point is at 87% .. which does reflect in the FXG output above as ratio property of the second gradient stop .. that doesn’t seem right somehow. _ Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Sanjay, Thank you so much for reaching out to help. Appreciate that a lot ! I’ve sent you an email with a test file, let me know if I can help in any other way. Thank you, Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Raghu, Excellent comments ! You are absolutely right its not an “either-or” situation we need both .. ways to initiate new members into the tribe and ways to keep the existing tribes men/women interested and enthusiastic . Both, Adobe organized events and User Group meetings currently lack that mix. . The challenge with UG meeting is that they are short and its harder to create multiple levels of topics in that short time .. but I think we should try. . At the same time I think adobe organized events should try and create these levels as well, these events have a bigger audience and hence a bigger impact. . Thanks, Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"For what its worth that was not my intention" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"undermine, really? thanks." - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Sumit, I hear you man … my parents live in Panipat, Haryana which is very close to Chandigarh .. so next time I’m visiting my parents I would love to come to Chandigarh and meet with some of the Flex peeps there. I don’t have anything planned right now .. but we could plan it out … drop me an email. _ Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa

"Chetan, Good point about the various levels of audience that comes to user group meetings .. while having a new advanced group is a good idea .. it takes effort to organize this stuff .. so I think it may be better to have advanced meetings in the existing groups. The challenge with that though is that even though we’ve tried in the past to communicate that this meeting will cover advanced content .. we still get beginners at the meeting. I think that’s ok as long as it is clear to them what is the objective of the current meeting and the speaker can stay focused on the topics he/she was hoping to cover. Mrinal" - Mrinal Wadhwa