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

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

Just a quick reminder post that there will be no October PittMFUG meeting due to Flashpitt. Flashpitt is taking place on the same day our meeting would have been, and it’s a whole lot more content and fun than we could ever fit into a PittMFUG meeting.

As you might have heard at our recent meetings, Flashpitt 09 is coming up in just a few weeks.  We’re really excited to be involved in bringing a conference like this to our city again this year.  Some of the folks doing sessions include Jer Thorp, Odopod, Seb Lee-Delisle, Dan Mall, Stacey Mulcahy and more.  It’s a great chance to take a break from the daily grind to learn and be inspired. It’s not often we have this kind of representation of the international Flash community in town!

If you want to catch all these great speakers and meet the folks behind the Flash blogs you read,  attend the conference portion of Flashpitt.  But get your tickets now.  Early Bird Conference Tickets are only around until September 13th. Don’t forget to check the most recent PittMFUG newsletter for a discount code, too.

We know a lot of you have been looking for some Action Script training around Pittsburgh, so we should point out that Flashpitt is also offering a full day’s worth of Action Script training  the day before the conference.   Whether you’re totally new to Action Script or are looking to make the transition to AS 3.0, the The Beginner and Intermediate Action Script 3.0 workshops will get you there.   Taking both workshops will run you less than $200, so it’s a very affordable chance to upgrade your skills.

Flashpitt 2009
Workshops – Thursday October 15th
Conference – Friday October 16th
Flashpitt.com

Adobe is launching the FlashBuilder 4 and Flash Catalyst Tour in full force! Next week we will be having a joint user group meeting with the Pittsburgh Cold Fusion Users Group for an official pre-release event! Join us at IMPAQT as Adobe sends Adam Lehman, Adobe’s product manager for ColdFusion to talk to us about the advancements in CF, FB and FC! There will be swag, giveaways and food! Make sure you head on over and RSVP for an extra chance at an iPod as well! This is on our normal meeting night so make sure you show up at IMPAQT instead of at New Perspective! Directions and the RSVP form are available at: http://pittsburghadobe.eventbrite.com/

The 2009 Web design and development Spring
Conference is just under two weeks away! To kick things off, we are giving away a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium or Design Premium to one lucky attendee that registers for the event before June 2. This is valued at over $1500! To be entered, register through our e-commerce site by going to http://sbconference.com and clicking Register Now at the top of the page.

General admission tickets are only $65, students get in for $20. This is an outstanding price for the world-class caliber of Web professionals that will be presenting. For instance, renowned CSS guru and author of “CSS: The Definitive Guide” (O’Reilly), Eric Meyer will be giving us all a taste of how JavaScript Will Save Us All. Adobe Platform Evangelist Kevin Hoyt will be teaching us the Top 10 problems with RIA that you never knew existed. Stephanie Sullivan and Greg Rewis, authors of the recently published “Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS4″ (New Riders) will be delivering our keynote, as well as presenting on topics from CSS to AJAX.

More of a developer than a designer? Join Fusebox core lead Adam Haskell as he dissects this popular web application framework, or learn to incorporate the desktop into your web applications through An Introduction to Adobe AIR 1.5 with Ben Pritchard.
Interested in bringing interactivity to your site through JavaScript? Why not learn from the lead of the jQuery UI build & release team, Richard Worth, as he helps you understand this popular JavaScript library through his hands-on Learning jQuery UI workshop.

This is just a sample, in all 19 Web professionals will present this year.

Visit http://sbconference.com for a full roundup.

Those of you in the Pittsburgh area may want to check out the ART AND CODE symposium going on March 7-9 at CMU. I just got an email from Drew Trujillo (Dr. Woohoo) who will be presenting some “adobe-centric” presentations on “Hijacking Photoshop and Illustrator with Extendscript“, “ExtendScript” and “Getting Started with Extendscript“. Be sure to check out the info at the ART AND CODE symposium site also!

Fellow MFUGer, Isaac G. turned in this lead on the ART AND CODE symposium coming up March 7-9 at CMU. For more details, visit the site here: http://artandcode.ning.com/

Tickets for Flashpitt2008 are on sale and there are still early bird tickets left! Check out http://www.flashpitt.com/register to get your tickets.

We’ve also started to announce our speakers list, and it’s definitely a great list so far. Speakers confirmed for Flashpitt2008 include: Big Spaceship Julian Dolce, John Lindquist ,Stacey Mulcahy, Ben Pritchard, Jose R. Rodriguez and Craig Swann.

Our speakers are coming from places like: Big Spaceship, Papervision3d, Schematic, Fuel Industries, Pixelfumes, New Perspective, JRVisuals and CrashMedia.

Our speakers page will be updated with the remaining speakers as they are confirmed.

If you were at the last meeting and haven’t used your PittMFUG discount code yet, now is the time! We’re down to less than 10 tickets avialable for that discount code.