We’ve been looking for a new permanent meeting space for our monthly meetings since I left our previous host, New Perspective, a couple of months ago. Hack Pittsburgh was nice enough to let us use their space this month, but now we have a new space for our meetings. Starting with our August meeting we will now be using the awesome space at Agency 1903 located at the corner of Gist St. and Blvd of the Allies.

We are very happy to be bringing Big Spaceship‘s Jamie Kosoy to Pittsburgh for the first PittMFUG workshop: No Flash? No Problem: How to build an experience for all users (human or otherwise).

If you’ve been wondering how bring Flash and Web Standards together or what approach to take for the iPhone and iPad, this workshop is for you!

Here’s the full story:

No Flash? No Problem: How to build an experience for all users (human or otherwise)
A workshop with Jamie Kosoy
Saturday July 31st, 9:30am to 1:00pm
There’s a long list of common complaints about the use of Flash, but many of the criticisms just aren’t true. Detractors say that Flash isn’t search engine friendly; Screen readers can’t understand Flash content; You can’t deeplink to specific pages…

You know what? They’re wrong. These criticisms are symptoms of misunderstanding by developers on the ways different technologies work together.

This workshop will show you how to take a higher level approach focusing on user experience. We’ll break down each common critique of Flash, one at a time, and show you how to address them in your work. Attendees will learn how to use HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, XML and Flash to compliment each other in creating the most meaningful experience to the widest audience range.

The goal is to feel comfortable making decisions about when and how to use Flash appropriately and to gracefully degrade immersive experiences for Flash disabled devices (like iPhones and iPads).

Check out the full workshop description and ticket information

We’ve teamed up with Refresh Pittsburgh and On the Fridge, LLC to make this possible. And a big thanks goes out to Smith Brothers for letting us use their space.

We’re back for the PittMFUG July meeting! And not just back to meetings but also back to our usual format. Don’t miss the new location – we’re meeting in the hackPittsburgh space this month. And now on the meeting details! We have two presentations planned for next week:

The Ins and Outs of ExternalInterface Joe Kromer
Joe will cover the basics of passing data between Flash and JavaScript. He’ll show some examples and pass along some useful tips for working ExternalInterface into your projects. This is a beginner to intermediate topic for developers.

What a Drag! Val Head
There’s more to a good drag and drop interaction than just startDrag() and stopDrag(). We’ll take a look at an example interaction and go through ways we can make it better both from the user experience side and the code side of things. This is a beginner to intermediate presentation for designers and developers.

PittMFUG July Meeting
Thursday July 15th, 6:30pm
HackPittsburgh Shop
1936 5th Avenue, Pittsburgh PA
The door is at the back of the building off of the alley way

Just a quick reminder that there will not be a PittMFUG meeting this week. Our June meeting is cancelled but we will be back in July. We’ll post here and email everyone with the meeting details and the new meeting location.

Go out and enjoy the (hopefully) awesome June weather. We’ll see you in July!

Thanks to everyone who came out for our May Special Event celebrating Adobe CS5! Next month we will take a month off so we’ll see you in July.

Since there’s no meeting you should come and see Val and Josh speak at FlashBelt.

Congrats to Greg for winning the Adobe Voucher.  Way to go buddy!

Presentations

PittMFUG Meeting Slides

We return to our usually third Thursday meeting time this month. Keeping with the trend of software releases, our May meeting will be all about the recently released Creative Suite 5. We’ll show you which of the new features we think are the coolest and most useful. It’s also time for our 6 month software giveaway! One lucky meeting attendee will win their choice of Adobe software product valued up to $2100*. And yes, this prize can be used for CS5 products! (*excluding Master Collection)

Please RSVP via email or on facebook, so we know how much food to pick up.

PittMFUG May Meeting
Thursday May 20th
6:30pm
at New Perspective
google maps

FYI: If the front door is locked when you arrive, call or text the number posted on the door to get in.

We will be holding a special Flash Builder event for our April meeting!

Thanks to Adobe, we’ll have food and extra prizes at this meeting, including a Flash Builder license.

Come check out the new Flash Builder and it’s brand new name. We’ll show you what’s new with this release and how it works with Flash Professional. We even have t-shirts for the first 15 people who make it to the meeting.

It’s going to be a fun night AND it’s going to be on a Tuesday, not our usual Thursday.

PittMFUG April Meeting
Tuesday April 13th
6:30pm
at New Perspective
2949 Smallman St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15217

The PittMFUG meeting March Meeting is this Thursday. We have a big meeting planned: three presentations plus a copy of Balsamiq Markup and four books to giveaway.

Building Your Own Map – Trenton Ahrens
Every web developer has leveraged google, yahoo, or mapquest to build location maps for their client. Sometimes so much functionality is not needed which gives us the opportunity to build something more visually appealing, however, building your own map can be challenging and cumbersome to maintain. You will be stepped through the process of making the map module for Devry University Admissions Portal which draws its map with some math, a binary file, and whos locations are marked by latitude and longitude. This is an intermediate/advanced developer topic.

Shared Stories in Workflow – Josh, John, Jacob
Ever wonder how other people go from design to code? Josh, John and Jacob will share three different workflow approaches. Maybe you’ll pick up some cool new ideas seeing how other people approach a project. This is a presentation for all levels.

Wireframing with Balsamiq Markups -Val Head
Val will demo Balsamiq Markups and show how you can use it to create wireframes for your project. We’ll be giving away a full copy of Balsamiq for free during the meeting as well. This is a beginner topic for designers.

Please RSVP via email or on facebook .

PittMFUG March Meeting
Thursday March 18th
6:30pm
at New Perspective
google maps

FYI: We’ll be holding the meeting upstairs.If you arrive after 6:30pm the front doors will be locked and you’ll have to call or text the number posted on the door to get in.