For those of you going to MAX this year, be sure to check out the introNetworks installation. gskinner.com worked with the social networking geniuses over at Mixed Grill to develop version 3 of this awesome application. We also had the opportunity to work with Ben Allfree who did the back-end work that supports the application.
This version focused on responsiveness, stability, flexibility and developing a good clean code base that we could build on in the future. We succeeded in this by starting almost from scratch, re-engineering (and documenting) all of the server interaction, and re-building the app using the gskinner.com Application Elements (including the elusive GLIC). This gave us a stable, well architected base, allowed us to get rid of all the hacks and tricks we had used in previous versions to get around problems with the Macromedia v2 framework, and resulted in massive improvements in responsiveness and usability, not to mention cutting the file size of the application in half.
Another goal was to empower Mixed Grill to quickly customize large portions of the application without having to recompile the swfs, and I think we were very successful in this regard. We've reduced the time it takes Mixed Grill to deploy a new introNetwork immensely.
We even managed to squeeze in a few brand new features, like the ability to locate a user in your contacts or from a search on the visualizer.
Anyway, we're very proud of it, and wanted to brag a bit. Thanks to Mixed Grill for the opportunity to work on this interesting and rewarding project.
Here's a couple of screenshots for those of you who can't make it to MAX (click for larger version):
Comments (6)
Grant - thanks for the kudos - we are thrilled to have had you as the technical architect for V3 of the introNetwork application. Your team really delivered.
Mark
Posted by: Mark Sylvester at October 15, 2004 04:20 PMURL: http://www.intronetworks.com
I can't make it to MAX this year...anywhere that I can demo the app?
Posted by: vidal at October 15, 2004 04:46 PMURL: http://www.mindsofdesign.com
There will be a public demo of the app going up in the next little while. I will post again when it is accessible.
Posted by: Grant Skinner at October 15, 2004 05:28 PMURL: http://gskinner.com/
Looks nice. The director of my school has a login to the TED version of this thing that I've played around with, so it'd be cool to see the performance improvements you've added. Unfortunately I won't be at MAX this year...
This definitely means that GLIC will be released soon, no? But don't worry- you're not the only one taking longer to release your components than you hoped for... ( http://www.bit-101.com/blog/archives/000076.html )
Posted by: Jed Wood at October 15, 2004 05:35 PMURL: http://www.usableflash.com/portfolio
Right, so that's the difference i noticed between the old versions and the MAX version! I did wonder for a second how Mixed Grill were able to skin the V2 components, but never had an indepth look. I really like the subtle look of GLIC. Nice work. :-)
Posted by: Owen van Dijk at October 16, 2004 12:56 PMURL: http://ohwhen.typepad.com
I'm experiencing a bug in the skills/interests section of the editor. I saved my profile then went back to edit it a bit. It first duplicated all of the items I had selected (requiring me to remove them and start over). Now it won't let me continue with the "Please select one word..." error message.
Anybody have any ideas?
Posted by: Matt Kerner at October 18, 2004 10:18 AMURL: http://www.kerner.net