Latest News
November 21, 2008 - It's with much regret that we must cancel this upcoming Monday's meeting. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! We hope to see you in December.
November 17, 2008 - Join one of our local groups this Wednesday evening!
Where: Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan. We will be
meeting in Room 103 at the Morris Lawrence Building (map). Plenty of
free parking is available adjacent to the building.
When: Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 6:30pm - 8:00pm
Speaker: Mary Donnelly, Senior User Experience Consultant at Evantage
Consulting and Cathy McAdam, ACSW
Abstract
Making the web usable for all visitors is the primary goal of creating
an accessible website. The W3C estimates that close to 20% of all
website visitors have some form of disability, whether cognitive,
visual, hearing, or physical. These disabilities affect how visitors
access a website, whether on a computer with assistive technology,
laptop, or cell phone.
Learn what website accessibility is, why it is important, and what you
as a web professional can do to provide a more accessible website for
all website visitors. See how a screen reader views a web page and
discover the different methods for testing website accessibility.
Mary Donnelly is a senior user experience consultant with Evantage
Consulting. Her extensive experience includes user needs analysis, low
and high fidelity prototyping, usability testing, research study
design, and heuristic evaluation and assessment.
At the March 2008 EKU Web Accessibility Conference, Mary presented “An
accessibility study of an online resource directory geared towards
people with disabilities and seniors.”
Mary is an HFI Certified Usability Analyst, a member of the Usability
Professionals’ Association, and the Society of Technical
Communication.
Cathy McAdam, ACSW, has 20 years experience in rehabilitation medicine
as a medical social worker at the Rehabilitation Institute of
Michigan.
In 1999, Cathy started her own company as a consultant focused on
advocacy for assistive technology, and provision of career development
services. She runs a tutor program for libraries for basic computer
skills for Greater Detroit Agency For The Blind and Visually Impaired.
She leads grants focused on assistive technology for people with
disabilities to drive systemic change that will permanently improve
access to assistive technology devices and services.
Please reply to the Refresh Detroit group if you plan on attending. Thanks!
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For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/refreshdetroit?hl=en
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October 28, 2008 - Thank you to all who were at the meeting last night! We covered using free Flash photo albums and how to incorporate your own photos into those free tutorials. The tutorial we used can be found at http://www.entheosweb.com/Flash/Photo_Gallery1/index.asp
There you can find a free download that contains all the information you will need to create your own photo album! There are also other templates available, which are easy to use. All you need is to supply your own photos!
Next month, we welcome a speaker from Hook, based in Ann Arbor, and on the web at byhook.com
Hook is a firm that incorporates 3-D imagery into commercial art, such as animation and illustrations. The firm's clients include Toyota and its work appeared in 2008's North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
September 26, 2008 - We'll be meeting at WCC on Monday, September 29th. This month we will be doing an overview/preview of CS4 which was announced on September 24th. If you joined us for the Joey Lott presentation on the 23rd, you'll have heard us talking about how excited we all are for the release. If not, you missed a great speaker and a LOT of free books.
If you are going to attend the meeting, please let Misty know so we provide sufficient refreshments. Have a great weekend, see you Monday night!
September 15, 2008 - Here's some information from one of our local Adobe groups:
Click to view this email in a browser
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/287805/e87c0c8f1b/1395000515/09dc4f23b9/
When: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Where: Canton Public Library, 1200 S. Canton Center Road, Canton,
Michigan 48188.
Phone: 734-397-0999. We’re meeting in the Community Room.
Free parking is available next to the library.
I’m happy to announce that well-known Flash and Flex author Joey Lott
will be speaking at our September 23, 2008 meeting. Joey is traveling
across the country, from east coast to west coast, on his way to Adobe
MAX in San Francisco and we’re his first stop.
Thanks to the local Adobe user groups, FlashFocused and Detroit Area
Adobe User Group for joining us in sponsoring this special event. Joey
will be selling autographed books. Thanks to O’Reilly, we’ll have some
books to give away too!
Want to know how to use your existing Flex and/or Flash skills to
build applications for the desktop using Adobe AIR? In this
presentation we’ll look at what AIR is and is not, and we’ll look at
the key features of AIR. We’ll go beyond the standard marketing
presentation for AIR and instead focus on what is possible using AIR
and what it takes to get up and running using AIR.
Joey Lott is one of the founders of The Morphic Group, a Flex and
Flash application development company. Joey has also authored or
co-authored numerous books on Flex and Flash and related technologies
including Programming Flex 3, ActionScript 3 Cookbook, Adobe AIR in
Action, and Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns. Joey has
spoken at many industry conferences such as Adobe MAX, Flash on the
Beach, Flashforward, and FITC.
Disclosure: This program is neither sponsored, nor endorsed by the
Canton Public Library.
Hope you can join us!
August 27, 2008 - Students are arriving back on the University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan University, and Washtenaw Community College's campuses this week. Be sure to get the word out about our meetings! We're hoping to increase member participation this upcoming schoolyear and continually welcome new members.
It's official! We're now registered with Lynda.com as a user group. What does that means for you? First and foremost, discounts!
http://www.lynda.com/usergroups/resources/UGflyer_Store_0108.pdf
http://www.lynda.com/usergroups/resources/UGflyer_OTL_0108.pdf
Lynda.com offers a lot of really good titles for various topics as well as courses to learn new skills. Check them out!
August 22, 2008 - Hello everyone!
As we have many things happening in September and it is the week
before a holiday, we are going to forgo the August meeting. However,
there are a few things I would like to make sure everyone everyone
knows about:
- Again, the August meeting is canceled due to the upcoming holiday, students returning back to classes and also having several group things happening in September.
- I received the following email:
I have several staffing needs for ActionScript, Flash developers!
Margie Butler
Technical Recruiter
Judge Technical Staffing
2550 S. Telegraph Road, Suite 100
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan 48302
(248) 253-9500 x 1239
(800) 360-4474 x 1239
mbutler@judge.com - The Michigan Flash Festival is just around the corner! As such, we have two ways for you to save on the price of admission! There is a $25 discount that I will include in a separate message and there is also a way to get in FREE! What's that? Did she say FREE? Why yes, she did! All you have to do is show up and help us out. I'm scheduling volunteers for the day-of operations to assist with registrations, etc. I am also taking volunteers for a few specific areas, namely someone as our contact to the community. Just let all the area groups know about the festival and help with advertising. More details available on this position, just contact me for info.
- We are co-sponsoring an event in September with Refresh Detroit. Joey Lott, author of the Flash 8 Cookbook, Actionscript Cookbook and co-author of several other Flash and Flex books will be speaking on Tuesday, September 23rd from 6:30-8:00 at the Canton Public Library.
August 6, 2008 - Lisa had the following to say on her blog:
"I had the pleasure of presenting last week to the FlashFocused user group in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a lucky coincidence that my family summertime visit happened to be on the week of their monthly meeting. Yay syncronicity!
I gave them the lowdown on Flash video, of course — a topic that happened to be quite relevant for many of the members who attended. For those of you who have been waiting patiently for me to post the code examples and presentation notes, here they are!
–> Presentation [PDF] <–
–> Source files [ZIP] <–
Thanks for your patience, and for having me present to your group. And thanks to Misty for grabbing a copy of my book for a giveaway, as well! You guys rock."
July 31, 2008 - Many thanks to Lisa Larson-Kelley for speaking to our group this month! Lisa covered how to easily put Flash videos into websites and many different ways to do so. You can follow Lisa at her blog at flashconnections.com or watch her on AdobeTV when they release Flash 411.
Register now for the Adobe MAX Conference coming this November in San Francisco, CA. More information can be found at the Adobe Event site:
The Michigan Flash Festival still needs volunteers! If you're interested in volunteering (you get in for free!) or if you just want more information about the Festival, be sure to visit their site at www.miflashfest.org.
News Archive - See what has been going on with the User Group!
Pub Social - Let's get together! Have an idea for a night out? Let us know.
