What’s the hubbub, bub?
Well, I’ve been saying I’m going to write this blog entry for a while now, and I’ve just been really busy with alot of projects. The interesting thing is, I realized it was BECAUSE of gProject and Grant himself that I actually *have* projects to work on instead of being put in a padded room with a box of crayons.
Alrighty, I’m just going to put it in plain english: If it weren’t for Skinner and his minions (Ryan Matsikas, Lanny McNie & Phil Chung) making this tool and some excellent 3 day training, I would probably not be employeed at Blitz any longer as a flash developer.
Say wha? Does your boss know?
First, let me just get this out of the way, cause I mention it above: If you see an advertisement to do training with Grant in a near by city or user group – DO IT! Don’t think about how you’ve been doing flash for 7+ years, don’t think about your title, don’t think about the high profile sites you’ve done under your own abilities thus far – forget all that. Go, pay yer money, and thank me later for talking some sense into ya. What I learned there, saved my job and sanity. Also, If you don’t know Grant, he’s one very cool and very interesting person. Talk to him about sky diving – it’s a riot.
Ok, fine, I’ll embarras myself.
Ok, now yes, the sessions were great – but taking gProject home after that was the clincher. Instantly (Yes, I said instantly), I was a new developer. For one, let’s just talk about library organization. Ever gotten an FLA from a developer/designer team and spent literally hours figuring out what movieclips were bound to which classes and where they were? I know I have 
Here’s the library from the project just before Grants session and gProject:
Instantly, you see exports – but trust me, this image is cropped and the library litteraly had hundreds of assets using classes. you’d have to double click on everyone of them to figure out what class was being used with which asset. INSANE.
Now for redemption
Here’s one of my first project post gProject:
Now, I’m showing the FLASC project for a couple of reasons: 1) to point out how organized the library is and 2) because my next point will illustrate the time savings.
You can see instantly which classes the movieclips are using – there’s no mystery. gProject manages that for me when I use it to create my bound classes. I then use gProject to update the UI elements listed in the classes that are bound to movieclips. If I add a new element to the movieclip on stage, I just use the “update UI” option and it automatically looks at the stage in the FLA and updates the class with the proper imports as well as property references. CAN I GET A ROCK ON \M/?!?!
Time saver
Now, ok, great, it organizes my library and can keep my bound classes up to date – sounds great. How did it save me time?
Yes, typing time of course as well as silly “Oops, forgot to import this and that…oh and that too”?. But how about on a project I was releasing to Open Source?
I mean let’s face it, most of the code we might write doesn’t see the light of day in front of any one else. But the stuff that DOES go before someone else, we might spend some serious time organizing the library and cleaning up old / not used clips etc.
gProject takes the guess work out of it. Here’s the library for FLASC:
Note the 3 movieclips at the bottom – they’re not being used at the moment and there’s no mystery about it. If I choose to delete them, I do so without ever worrying about deleting something important. Also, there’s no mistake about what movieclips use which classes and where those classes would be located. So it’s a timesaver for me AND the other developers.
I was able to turn around and release the code for FLASC instantly! Unlike Xray where I’m STILL refactoring and cleaning up code to release the interface.
Good Times
In this picture, you can also see a “Commands – FLASC”? folder:
“Locations”? are the coolest feature of gProject – especially for anyone doing JSFL work! You can point to the commands folder or ANY folder that has JSFL files and either edit or run them by right clicking:
Final Thoughts
If you work in a place like BLITZ where you work with high profile clients and alot of different designers/developers and you live with alot of stress – I think this tool is is your first step. The training is the 2nd part to the equation – you HAVE to get to one of Grant’s workshops – I can’t stress that enough. It’ll be the best $$ you EVER invested in your Flash carrier. I’ve been 100x’s more productive and have YET to be stressed out since using gProject and employing what I learned.
Oh, and up until that time, I missed nearly every deadline I was given. Since then, I have YET to miss a deadline and in fact, i’ve actually been early on occasion.
Get it:
gProject Product page
Bootcamps (workshops):
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2005/12/flash_8_bootcam_1.html
