Many of these elements can be found in Flex Flash Builder, but that won’t do you much good if you are developing in the flash IDE.

I’m using these components in a few projects I’m working on at ACS. By using Astra I’m getting the not insignificant benefit of standing on the shoulders of some very smart and accomplished programmers. Yahoo Astra components have numerous features which accommodate most common situtations and the components can of course be extended to fit your sites specific needs.

You can find Yahoo Astra at: http://developer.yahoo.com/flash/astra-flash/

There seems to be a lot going on with flash this past week. Adobe has posted Flash Builder 4 on labs along with Flash Catalyst aka Thermo. This is seems like a good time to check out labs.adobe.com

My designs are clearly informed by my background in fine art – I spent most of my formal education sketching, painting, sculpting, and of course, doodling.  Upon occasion, I even did these things in Legitimate Art Classes (as opposed to, say, Geology or Psychology classes, where impromptu design – particularly large-scale sculpture – was woefully underappreciated).  In 1998 I started working as a freelance web designer in the emerging internet.  I’ve had the chance to work with some truly talented people and continue to enjoy the personal connections this career affords me – artists and programmers whose work and passion I respect, and the gifted managers of people and resources who make this work possible. In my varied career, I have appreciated the unique challenges of novelty, and have consequently worked in a broad range of settings and with a diverse client base, from my ground-up work as the number two man in a design-house start-up to large, established organizations catering to millions from all across the globe.

What do I do now?

I’m currently a salaried consultant with Comsys, presently deployed as the consulting Art Director for the American Chemical Society, Web Strategy and Operations department. This means I lead a team of exceptionally talented individuals with whom I collaborate, creating new and better websites to meet the needs of this large and diverse organization.

On a day-to-day basis I am responsible for overseeing the design and art direction of ACS.org websites, including the recently launched Member Network, a social networking site that now claims greater than 30,000 members.  Though projects of this size necessarily require me to delegate many tasks to my highly-skilled team of designers, I continue to maintain a hands-on role in the design and production of these and other projects.

-A

A special thanks goes to BJ Ball for helping me with the CSS.