Rob Huddleston's Blog - User Group

Adobe BrowserLab and Flash Catalyst

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:13:00 -0600

This week, I did a user group meeting on two exciting new technologies from Adobe - BrowserLab and Flash Catalyst. Briefly, BrowserLab is a new hosted service (meaning that it's an online tool hosted by Adobe) that allows you to test web pages in a variety of browsers that you may not have installed on your computer. Currently, it tests on Firefox 2 and 3 and IE 6 and 7 on XP, and Firefox 2 and 3 and Safari 3 on Mac. So as a Windows user running IE8 on Vista, I at last have a way to find out what my page looks like on IE 6 and on a Mac. Pretty cool.

Flash Catalyst is the newest tool in the Flash Platform. Catalyst allows you to take designs created in Photoshop or Illustrator and easily convert them to Flex-based Flash applications.

You can view the recording of the meeting if you want to get more information on either technology and to see my demos.

Because the Catalyst demos ended up taking longer than I had planned, we are going to continue the discussion about Catalyst at our August meeting. This session will also be recorded, and I'll post the details then.

Sierra MMUG Meeting - Weds. Feb 4, 6:30 PM Pacific - Adobe Video Tools

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:37:00 -0600

Tomorrow night is the monthly meeting of the Sierra MMUG, the Sacramento region's Adobe user group.

This month, we'll be doing an overview of Adobe's video tools. We'll be looking at recording live video using OnLocation, editing video in Premiere Pro, editing audio in Soundbooth, adding effects in After Effects, and finally creating menus and burning a DVD in Encore.

If you'll be in the Sacramento area, please join us. If not, feel free to join us online. Details of both the location of the meeting and the URL to log in online are on the group's website.

A million thanks to the members of the Sierra MMUG

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:21:00 -0600

We held the December meeting of my Adobe user group last night. I had asked the people if they wanted to do something party-ish or just have a normal presentation-based meeting, and they voted for the later, so I did a preso on using Flash, After Effects, Soundbooth and Photoshop to create an animated greeting card.

It's been a tradition of ours to encourage members to bring an unwrapped toy to the December meeting that we then donate to the Toys for Tots program. Last night, I ended up being about fifteen minutes late for my meeting (yet another time when I'm very glad to have a co-manager...) and when I did arrive, I was taken aback by my group's generosity: there was a really big stack of toys laid out a table. Not only that, but they were *nice* toys - a stack of games like Battleship and Sorry, a couple of dolls, even a fairly big playset.

So there are going to be a bunch of kids that will have a better holiday season this year thanks to the group, and as I said in the subject, it's a day that makes me proud to be associated with these folks.

Adobe to announce CS4 on Sept. 23

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:41:00 -0600

Adobe is going to official unveil CS4 on Sept. 23. Specific details - including things such as which products exactly will be included in CS4 and when exactly it will be released - are still not available, and are in fact exactly what will be announced on the 23rd.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, you can attend a special joint meeting of the bay area Adobe user groups on Sept. 30 to get your fill of CS4 goodness. Stay tuned here for more details on that.

My user group in the Sacramento area will also be holding a CS4 announcement event the following day - Oct. 1. Again, check back here or take a look at our website for details in the coming weeks.

If you aren't in either of those areas, then I'd urge you to find a local user group. Most user groups around the world will be holding events in the week or so following the 23rd, so don't miss out!

Sierra Adobe User Group Present: Dreamweaver CS4 Preview

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:37:00 -0600

This Wednesday night (Aug. 6), the Sierra Adobe User Group is going to be having a preview of the next version of Dreamweaver, presented by yours truly.

The meeting is scheduled to start at 6:30 PM Pacific time. We will be broadcasting the meeting online, so everyone anywhere is welcome to join us. You can get details, RSVP, and find a link to the online meeting room at our website, www.sierrammug.org.

Hope to see everyone there!

Sierra MMUG Meeting: Introduction to ColdFusion

Fri, 02 May 2008 13:23:00 -0600

Next week, our Sierra MMUG meeting is going to feature Nolan Erck, who will be doing an introduction to ColdFusion. This is the second part of our occasional, on-going series introducing members to the key concepts behind creating dynamic, data-driven pages.

Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend the meeting myself. I accepted a gig to teach Flash to the Army at Fort Polk, Louisiana. For those not familiar with Ft. Polk - and you're not alone - it's at the corner of No and Where in central Louisiana. Seriously - it's about 3 hours south of Shreveport, 4 1/2 hours northwest of New Orleans, and 3 1/2 hours northeast of Houston - literally in the middle of nothing. The class is Tuesday and Wednesday, so during the time of the meeting, I'll actually be on a plane flying home.

One important result of my not attending is that this meeting will not be broadcast online, so if you want to participate, you'll need to get up to Auburn.

Sierra MMUG Meeting - 2/13/08 - Tables to CSS

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:17:00 -0600

I will be presenting at the Sierra Adobe/Multimedia User Group meeting on February 13. Since it's the first meeting of the year and I like to start off things with good attendance, I'm going to do a presentation on converting a tables-based web site to a CSS-based site - a topic that is usually certain to draw a crowd. I also have lots of schwag to give away, since both Adobe and the publishers have been being pretty generous of late. If you want to join us and see the preso live (as well as be eligible for the schwag), then jump on over to the Sierra MMUG home page for a map and directions. If you can't make it to Auburn but want to participate anyway, we will (barring technical difficulties) be broadcasting the meeting online. You can join the meeting by going to the Acrobat Connect meeting room. The address and link for the meeting room is also on the the Sierra MMUG home page. If you're going to attend, either virtually or in person, please drop me a line at rsvp@sierrammug.org to let me know.