25
Apr
2005

This is my first Flex project.

I’ve been working with Flex for a while now, giving my thoughts here and there about this and that. (vague enough for ya?). However, I had yet to build a Flex app, because there never seemed to be time.

So, a few weeks ago, I decided to make time in my schedule to learn Flex for real. Other than go to meetings, I did virtually nothing else.

~

I had three goals:

  1. Learn Flex.
  2. Prototype ideas for improvements to the Flex framework.
  3. Think about what makes for a good RIA.

For this first project, I wanted to pick a project that was “real” enough that I would learn what Flex development was all about. I wanted something that had a heavy focus on usability, involved data and effects, and had potential scalability issues to consider.

I settled on building a prototype social music tagging site. The idea is as follows:

  • You create an account and optionally upload your iTunes music library file as a starting point.
  • The interface allows you to rate and tag your albums.
  • You can find out about new music by looking for other users with similar albums, or by sorting albums by tag.
  • Later on, I would love to add things like reviews, top 10 lists, etc.

BTW, if something like the above already exists, I’d love to hear about it. Not that it would stop me from building out my prototype. :-)

3 Responses to “This is my first Flex project.”

  1. Tariq Ahmed

    Hi Sho! Just found out about your Blog. Good luck on your journey, I’m looking forward to knowledge. Just added your blog to Community Macromedia Flex (aka CFLEX, http://www.cflex.net).

  2. Niklas Richardson

    Hi Sho! Just found your blog as well! Good to see you on the radar now.

    BTW, I’m afraid a website already exists for this concept!

    http://www.audioscrobbler.com/
    http://www.last.fm/

    However, it’d be much better if it was in Flex!

    Enjoy!

    Regards

    Niklas

  3. Sho

    Thanks for the links!

    I never really planned to take this project to completion… I just needed to work on something “real enough” that I would get into meaty issues as I learned Flex.

    If anything, my hope was that I’d actually finish and that I’d post it internally at Macromedia so that folks in the office could have a new way to communicate about music. But making it publicly available takes a whole new level of dedication to things like scalability, security, etc., that I don’t have time for in a side project. :-)

Leave a Reply