Day Two MAXies

Only one presenter gets a golden star from me–Michael Coleman’s (an After Effects Product Manager) efficient, yet droll session on After Effects expressions left me quietly humming. Expressions eliminate the tedium of keyframing and drive some seriously wicked effects.

I had high hopes for a session called “Next-Generation Flex Skinning,” but Ely had covered most of the salient points in his Gumbo talk so this one sort of fell flat for me. If you haven’t seen Ely or you’re looking for skinning examples built on top of Gumbo then it’s probably worthwhile. However, it was encouraging to listen to someone UI nerdy enough to argue over beer about whether a radial knob (a range scrubber) fits under the same component framework definition as a slider (a range scrubber). Ultimately the Gumbo team’s answer was no, but those nerds are my kind of people.

The Sneak Peaks were also a big winner. Due to some smart tactical decisions (yay beer) this was a fun event. Nice work Ted.

MAX Sneaks – MeerMeer Rocks!

Dear MeerMeer. You had me at onion skin. Adobe has a web service that will compare web pages, rendered back to you from the server via a virtualization farm, as they appear on multiple OS and browser combinations. Not only that, it will onion skin differences and allow you to debug between “frozen states” and the server. Amazing. I’ve seen some cool shite tonight, but this one might be the most practical.