Google Finance
Mike Migurski gushes about Google Finance. As well he should. That’s some nice work. I also love the Ajax integration - drag the chart and watch the milestones at right scroll. Too bad you can’t scroll the milestones to control the chart - but that’s just nit picking.
Sparklines
Jon Udell has an interesting post on designing sparklines — “Tufte is all about subtraction.”
Flash Vulnerability
This came out yesterday (14 March 2006)…
There’s a critical vulnerability in the Flash Player (apparently found by Microsoft). You should download the latest version here.
Adobe announcement
Microsoft announcement
Mario Klingemann has a good take on it here.
It also affects Breeze Meeting Add-in, Flash Debug Player, and Shockwave player. So get installing. Links.
Certified
In my effort to stay on the bleeding edge of technology, I just got developer certified in Flash MX 2004 – release date 25 August 2003. (Flash 8 test isn’t out yet.) I’ve been thinking about taking the exam for a while, but never got around to it. But last week, Future Media Concepts was offering free tests for former students – so I finally took it. (I think Adobe is making a push to get more people certified (there are only 633 certifications as of today - I guess I’m lucky number 634), so, there may be other deals out there. )
Thoughts on the test…
I thought the test was fair. You have to know Flash pretty well to pass. But, the whole idea of a multiple choice, non-open book computer test is kind of flawed. Syntactic questions aren’t too meaningful when you have code-hinting and searchable on-line documentation when you actually program. But, I can’t think of another way to do it. Another complaint - it was unclear that the last 7(?) out of 74(?) questions were about the test itself (e.g. “was the test fair?”). If you were running short on time, you’d want to know up front what were real questions and what weren’t.
In terms of prep, I read Flash MX 2004 Certified Developer Study Guide, which I thought was good. There are a number of typos (at least the version that I had) and a lot of the code samples are AS1 prototype code. But, I did find it helpful. I don’t use all of Flash’s capabilities on a regular basis and it’s a good summary. But, I think more than anything, you need to regularly use Flash to pass the test. (I think the reader reviews on Amazon are accurate, if you want more book info.)
idgit.org
After doing the trailer for the FlashForward awards (which I lost - I can only assume the judges were Swedish), I remembered how fun it is to make useless Flash animations. You don’t have to worry about user behavior. You can add music. Big initial downloads don’t matter (although findr personal sure has that). So, I’ve re-launched an old url of mine (idgit.org) where I used to post Flash experiments. I went through some old files - and cleaned up and posted one. (more soon, hopefully)
What does this have to do with data visualization? Uh, not much. But, it does use the drawing api.