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editor s note dear readers there is a lot of buzz in the flash community surrounding android-based devices there are going to be so many interesting things that you will be able to do on android as well as many new skills that you will need to learn especially if you are new to mobile design if you haven t heard the android mobile operating system is going places where no other operating system has gone before android is not only on mobile phones but it is coming to tablets notion ink adam dell mini 5 marvell moby smart tv s sony samsung and is even being integrated into automobiles like the chevy volt interesting read more on page 8 ­ lee graham as always has prepared for you a great portion of hot topics that are important for flash and flex developers adobe certification proves your expertise in adobe products and provides employers and clients a means to recognize it the candidate who holds industry certifications related to the required job skills is more likely to succeed on the job ­ to see more reasons for getting certified check out page 12 do you know how to be paid for your flash applications the interview with mark rose from playspan will give you the answer to start making money from your passion do not miss our creating an as3 game framework series of articles there are many more articles than those mentioned here ­ let s not waste your time and skip to the great content inside we look forward to sharing more information with the community in the coming weeks and months if you have questions comments or concerns please don t hesitate to contact me directly or ask our authors about any details i want to thank you for your continued commitment to the ffd mag community and i look forward to new opportunities to work together best regards ewa.samulska@ffdmag.com ewa samulska editor in chief ewa samulska ewa.samulska@ffdmag.com proofreaders patrick french betsy irvine dtp team ireneusz pogroszewski ireneusz.pogroszewski@software.com.pl art director ireneusz pogroszewski ireneusz.pogroszewski@software.com.pl senior consultant/publisher pawel marciniak thanks to the most active and helping beta testers russell tangchoon lee graham jassa amir lang ed werzyn yann smith-kielland justus csomák gábor kevin martin charles wong ali raza almog koren izcoatl armando estanol fuentes lionel low michael j iriarte paula r mould rosarin adulseranee sidney de koning to create graphs and diagrams we used company program by the editors use automatic dtp system mathematical formulas created by design science mathtypetm publisher software press sp z o.o sk ul bokserska 1 02-682 warszawa poland worldwide publishing software press sp z o.o sk is looking for partners from all over the world if you are interested in cooperating with us please contact us by e-mail cooperation@software.com.pl whilst every effort has been made to ensure the high quality of the magazine the editors make no warranty express or implied concerning the results of content usage all trade marks presented in the magazine were used only for informative purposes all rights to trade marks presented in the magazine are reserved by the companies which own them distributing current or past issues of this magazine ­ without permission of the publisher ­ is harmful activity and will result in judicial liability attention the techniques described in our articles may only be used in private local networks the editors hold no responsibility for misuse of the presented techniques or consequent data loss disclaimer 4 04/2010 12

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contents special report 08 flash player 10.1 on android air for android by lee graham flex development 28 creating an xml photo gallery with as3 ­ part ii by ryan d agostino inbrief 10 news by csomÁk gÁbor games developer s journal 38 flash game achievements with gamersafe by aaron clifford events 11 flash flex events 2010 by louis dicarro interview 40 working with creative niche ­ interview with stephen hodges 44 getting paid for your flash applications ­ a q&a with mark rose tools 12 taking the pain out of ria development by danny kopping success story 46 rob shoesmith ­ mobile application marketer 13 amethyst -the flash platform in visual studio by huw collingbourne certification 16 validating skills and best practices with the adobe certified associate exam by sinead hogan review 48 flex 3 component solutions 48 flex 3 with air exam aid by ali raza actionscript development 18 using flash builder 4 to code flash cs 5 projects by louis dicarro tip of the issue compressing bitmap animation in flash jeremy mayes director of game production we ve all been there you worked really hard to get a flash project out the door on time only to realize that it s way too large in terms of le size at the last moment before you sacrice the visual delity of your bitmaps in one fell swoop try this if you have a lot of frames of animation compress those that are only displayed for one frame at a time for example let s say you have an animation of a character standing still a frame you stop the playback head on then she transitions into a looping walk cycle before coming to a complete stop another frame you stop the playback head on do not compress the frames you hold on because they are displayed on screen for long durations of time since the remaining frames are only displayed at 1/30th of a second or whatever your frame rate is set to you can afford to sacrice their visual quality a bit because compression artifacts are very hard to discern during these incredibly short durations focus the majority of your compression here zend and php 24 writing a remote end point part 1 by kevin schroeder the issue 4/2010 sponsored by advertisers influxis www.influxis.com 2-3 mediaparts interactive s.a www.page-flip.com 5 digicrafts www.digicrafts.com.hk 7 kevin ruse associatess inc www.kevinruse.com 15 flexappsstore.com www.flexappsstore.com 21 elementriver www.elementriver.com 23 gamersafe www.gamersafe.com 33 exsys www.exsys.com .37 creativeniche www.creativeniche.com .39 screentimemedia www.screentime.com .41 kindisoft www.kindisoft.com .43 flex{er www.flexer.info 45 infosoft global p ltd www.infosoftglobal.com 49 actionscriptjobs.com http actionscriptjobs.com 50 6 04/2010 12

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flash player 10.1 on android air for android g oogle i/o just wrapped up and there are many great news items for flash and air platform developers there is a lot of buzz in the flash community surrounding adobe and google partnership http blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/04/adobe air_on_the_android_platf.html on bringing adobe air and flash player 10.1 fp 10.1 to android-based devices google publicly announced android os 2.2 froyo as well as google tv during the conference froyo froyo will be much faster support tethering turn your android mobile into a wireless hotspot and many more really great improvements you can read more about those improvement on my blog posts here android becomes a man but is it ready to be the king and google tv is born http l33.me/android-becomes-a-man-google-tv-is-born if you haven t heard the android mobile operating system is going places where no other operating system has gone before android is not only on mobile phones but it is coming to tablets notion ink adam http gizmodo.com/5471559 notion-ink-adam-tablet-caught-on-video-specs-finalized dell mini 5 http www.engadget.com/2010/02/11/dellmini-5-we-have-it marvell moby http www.marvell.com company/news/press_detail.html?releaseid=1397 smart tv s sony http www.informationweek.com/news hardware/virtual/showarticle.jhtml?articleid=224900139 subsection=news samsung http www.techradar.com news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones samsung-looking-at-android-for-new-tv-platform-685978 and it is evening being integrated into automobiles chevy volt http reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-2000522648.html with google tv being released this fall 2010 this presents a whole new platform for flash developers to deploy their apps on google tv will support flash player 10.1 as well as android apps adobe has said their air for android apps will run on google tv but no timeline yet because their main focus is making air for android work amazingly well on the android mobiles that are currently on the market · · · · · to sign up for the air for android sdk go here http labs.adobe.com/technologies/air2/android open flash cs5 or download the 30 trial here https www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm product=flash and create a new as3 project or air for android project build code and design your app and test it within the ide get an android device that supports air for android or android fp 10.1 i highly recommend the google nexus one http www.google.com phone if you are building an air for install the air for android runtime then install your app the workflow is very similar to build desktop air apps if you are building air for android you can go ahead and setup for android market developer account http market.android.com/publish/signup it will cost you $25 per year which is much better than $99 for iphone developer program note you will not be able to immediately sell your apps in the android market as that the air for android program is still in getting started adobe s air for android developer program is now open this means that you can download the air for android sdk and runtime to start developing new apps or converting your older apps so that they work on android-based mobiles when the air for android runtime is made available sometime later this year figure 1 runningmap website http www.randytroppmann.com 8 04/2010 12

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beta when it goes live for end users you will be able to sell or distribute your apps however you see fit things to keep in mind as you develop · size does matter screen size is the largest difference when developing mobile apps each mobile devices has different resolution dpi/ppi and physical screen size if you aren t familiar with developing scalable content i recommend checking out christian cantrell s article authoring mobile flash content for multiple screen sizes http www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/authoring for_multiple_screen_sizes_print.html this is especially useful if you are planning on developing for both android mobiles and all of the android tablets that are coming out this summer optimize optimize optimize most mobile devices don t have the processor or ram that a typical computer has so you must keep that in mind as you develop your framework and assets adobe has assembled a great set of documentation specifically for developing mobile apps with actionscript 3.0 optimizing performance for the flash platform http help.adobe.com/en_us/as3/mobile/index.html while it does mention the flash cs5 iphone packager and that entire pissing match has been documented in the last edition of http ffdmag.com/magazine/1058-theflash-on-iphone-war most of that information is still relevant to developing android apps as well · figure 3 studyshuffler video demo http vimeo.com/11070417 website http memoryspiral.com · multitouch gestures event learn how to use the multitouch gesture events http www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/multitouch gestures.html within as3 and learn what is available on the specific device you are building for while i can t speak about how the actual air for android sdk works yet my guess it that it will function much like the flash cs5 iphone packager but without having to jump through all of the hoops of setting up an apple developer certificate and mobile provisioning file stay tuned more coming soon about developing air for android and flash player 10.1 workflows and examples on mobiles in the meantime check out a couple of screen captures of air for android apps that are currently in development special thanks to joseph labrecque http memoryspiral.com randy troppmann http www.randytroppmann.com for sharing these images and links lee graham lee graham is co-founder of trimagination http trimagination.tumblr.com an educational app company based in the united states he has been involved in developing interactive elearning application for ve years and working with adobe in beta testing flash cs5 air 2.0 air for android flash player 10.1 you can connect with him on twitter http twitter.com/donaldleegraham or his blog http l33.me figure 2 sketch-n-save video demo http vimeo.com/11036849 website http memoryspiral.com 04/2010 12 9

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in brief events 2010 flashbelt ­ design develop engage date june 13 ­ 16 2010 location minneapolis mn professional development creative inspiration flash platform at google i/o recap google i/o 2010 was a really great event where three exciting topics were introduced connection with the flash platform · adobe officially launched the public beta release of flash player 10.1 for devices upgraded to android 2.2 get a lot of great details from paul betlem sr director flash player engineering on all the efforts behind the mobile-ready runtime adobe announced the public availability of the adobe air for android developer prerelease program any designer or developer can join to build android applications using the flash platform with the beta sdk ­ whether you are a seasoned flash developer or just interested in learning people who join will also have access to a new extension to flash professional cs5 that publishes directly to android devices adobe demonstrated how they are working closely together with google on google tv ­ google s new android based platform that brings the power of the web in to the living room google tv includes flash player 10.1 integrated directly into the google chrome browser delivering the full web to consumers on their television sets from matt rozen adobe flash platform blog the 7th annual flashbelt conference brings together rock-star designers whizkid developers and best-selling authors from around north american and europe to lead sessions and workshops covering multimedia design and development don t miss this amazing opportunity for intaeractive designers developers and enthusiasts to learn from the pros http www.ashbelt.com about · · fitc san francisco 2010 date aug 17 ­ 19 2010 location san francisco ca fitc is proud to present fitc san francisco 2010 with the launch of adobe cs5 it is the perfect time for an event such as this since we re in adobe s head office hometown we ve added the adobe `under the hood presentations to the schedule get up close and interact with the people behind flash http www.fitc.ca/events/location ?event=110 air 2 for android public beta the air team did it while at google i/o this week developers are getting blasted with awesome news and new technology google and adobe have worked hard on this and imo it is a top 5 event of the week for those of you who don t know air adobe air for android enables developers to build standalone applications that run on android devices like the nexus one my all time favorite smartphone you can use any text editor and the free sdk to build applications and easily deliver applications that works across linux mac android and pc when developing for android you must use the air for android sdk if you are interested in joining the prerelease program just hit http labs.adobe.com/technologies/air2/android from duane chaos nickull adobe flash platform blog flash on the beach date sept 26 ­ 29 2010 location brighton uk if you are a designer developer coder student manager game developer artist animator or a newbie then this conference is for you don t miss this opportunity to see nearly 60 of the best minds in the industry delivering 3 full days of awe-inspiring sessions plus one day workshops that will give you in-depth training from the worlds best speakers www.ashonthebeach.com the truth about flash player adobe published a few numbers about flash player numbers that we may already know · · · · · · · 98 of internet connected pcs have flash player 85 of the top 100 websites use flash player alexa 75 of web video is viewed using flash player comscore 98 of enterprises rely on flash player forrester 70 of web games are delivered using flash player evans data corp 3.5 million developers use the flash platform 19 of the top 20 device manufacturers worldwide have committed to shipping flash technology on their devices read more on adobe s article http www.adobe.com/choice/flash.html news selected by gábor csomák from andrei ionescu flex{er max 2010 date oct 23 ­ 27 2010 location los angeles ca max 2010 is the perfect time to connect with thousands of designers developers and business leaders as we shape the future of digital media together discover new opportunities presented by the growth of rich experiences across screens and devices explore strategies for monetizing content in the new digital economy learn how the latest innovations enable powerful synergies between designers and developers http max.adobe.com 10 04/2010 12

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events flash and the city 2010 by louis dicarro what better way to learn about the latest in flash and flex development learning it in new york city f lash and the city was held may 13th through the 16ht 2010 in new york city and is in its inaugural year the event was held at the 3ld technology center in lower manhattan and is a space used for a variety of events dealing with technology and art it was three days of presentations by some of the top names in the flash and flex development community brought together to share their knowledge show demos and meet with the community it was also an opportunity to network with members of the flash community who arrived from around the world but what makes fatc different from other flash conferences most importantly it is how the event was organized the event team was led by elad elrom who is a developer based in nyc and has worked on the flash platform for many large companies such as viacom and nbc universal he has also worked on several books for flash flex and flash testing ­ his most recent release is advanced flex 4 from apress publishing he and his team are not event organizers but are working developers this makes a big difference on the type of material that was presented at the event elad spoke on the last day of the event on some of his thoughts about the philosophy behind the planning of the event since this is a conference put on by developers and not organized by event planners the subject matter was carefully chosen to reinforce the development community most of the speakers were sought out by the conference organizers instead of putting out a general call for speakers there were many sessions that either pushed new technologies dug deeper into the current technologies or just presented views of the current state and future of the flash platform another important facet that sets fatc apart from most other conferences is an issue that many attendees have to deal with at other conferences often you go to a conference in a cool new location and are in presentations from 9am to 6pm every day then there are some social networking functions in the evening before getting back to the hotel fatc knows that this is nyc and it would be a shame to be here for three days without getting to see the city in addition to the normal tracks that are usually offered by conferences fatc also offered a city track figure 1 flash and the city logo that took tours of nyc visited museums and allowed the conference goer to visit different parts of the city most of the trips were half day adventures so it was not a rushed offering tours were held of brooklyn liberty island south street sea port and wall street while the american museum of natural history and the museum of sex visits were available ample opportunity was set aside for social networking with developers from across the country and the world friday night after the last session had a performance by the band 22nd century who played while attendees enjoyed pizza and beer provided by conference after the band attendees were able to participate in bar hopping through the city s meat packing district in manhattan saturday had a cruise that went around lower manhattan and an awards ceremony and sunday had a final happy hour after all the events had wrapped up on the cruise the statue of liberty awards were presented for various categories to recognize outstanding members of the flash community it has caused a bit of controversy as a person claiming to be a certain ceo from a well known fruit named company accepted the most influentual person of the year award he began claiming that his company had just purchased adobe and the cruise was now known as the iboat he began discussing his future plans for iflash and changing the name of the conference to objective c and the city click here to read the rest of the article 04/2010 12 11

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tools taking the pain out of ria development aerial cms is a simple content management system and framework that allows developers to rapidly scaffold and develop rich internet applications with a stable concise backend aerial cms was built from the ground up with ria developers in mind to help you get the job done fast and efficiently a erial assists developers by generating all necessary models and services with which to build simple or complex data-aware applications that integrate with any database engine and php5 aerial cms was originally founded by danny kopping and later joined by robert cesaric aerial is only in its infancy now but there are many great things to come the scope for a framework like this is massive and we have a long list of additions and modifications to make for upcoming releases · simple structure few enforced conventions and ­ above all ­ a shallow learning curve to have you up and running in minutes getting started technology stack head over to http aerial-project.org to get started with aerial cms on this site you will find video tutorials plus clear concise walkthroughs to help you on your journey with aerial aerial is incredibly simple and easy to learn and will help you automate all of the dull tasks of ria development happy coding aerial cms utilizes two well-established and stable frameworks to accomplish rapid ria development · · doctrine orm http doctrine-project.org amfphp http amfphp.org aside from these technologies aerial takes advantage of the myriad new features of php5 to give you the following feature-set as of version 0.7 · · · generation of database tables from a simple schema file using doctrine orm generation of actionscript 3.0 php model classes generation of actionscript 3.0 php service classes danny kopping robert cesaric aerial cms ­ http aerial-project.org 12 04/2010 12

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amethyst ­ the flash platform in visual studio amethyst the flash platform in visual studio the amethyst ide lets you edit design and debug flash flex and air applications i f you want to build flex air and actionscript projects using a full set of visual design and coding tools you have only one choice right well actually no adobe s flash builder is no longer the only visual ide for the flash platform sapphiresteel software s amethyst provides a powerful editing debugging and design environment built into microsoft visual studio i ve been involved in the design of amethyst from the outset and i can tell you that the technical challenges of integrating a flex design and debugging environment into visual studio have been formidable right at the start we decided that amethyst had to be a truly visual system there was really no point in creating yet another actionscript editor or a feature-light visual studio plug in visual studio users tend to be quite demanding and anything less than a complete ide with a drag-and-drop designer and a first-class debugger would fall far short of their expectations our aim was to make amethyst a natural part of visual studio with a feature set comparable with those of microsoft s c and visual basic ides ­ one that would give windows programmers a real alternative to microsoft s own tools for its wpf/silverlight platform adobe flash builder built on eclipse has its own way of doing things and it is ideal for people who are familiar with an eclipse-based ide but visual studio is fundamentally different we wanted to make amethyst look and work in a way that would be immediately familiar to visual studio developers so that they would very rapidly be able to engage in serious development for the flash platform drag drop click and code even though the amethyst visual designer is developed entirely in flex from the user s perspective it has much more in common with the microsoft windows forms designer than with the flash builder design environment for example the amethyst designer uses the standard visual studio layout toolbar this toolbar contains a set of buttons which you can click in order to align selected controls to the left right top or bottom adjust the spacing between controls make them all the same size and so on the amethyst designer also provides the same interactive alignment options as the windows forms designer you can either display a customizable grid which causes controls to snap the nearest grid line or you can align controls using on the fly alignment bars that appear when you drag components around on screen in common with the c designer but unlike flash builder amethyst controls are always shown live when you move or resize a control its entire contents ­ all the buttons and panes in a rich editor say ­ are moved aligned and resized too this means that that you can see the effect on the appearance and layout of a control with every single pixel change you make the amethyst designer also has a go live mode which makes all the controls in the user interface react to events such as mouse clicks and keystrokes so that you can try out the rollover effects of buttons or enter text into a text area in order to preview the font settings the designer is tightly integrated with the code editor and it also has active links to many of the tools and panels in visual studio when you select a control its properties and styles can be changed in the properties panel when you want to create an event-handler you can either select an event in the events page of the properties panel or you can double-click a component in the designer if you double-click a component the code editor automatically creates a method to handle 04/2010 12 13

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tools its default event or if such a method already exists it navigates directly to that method for example if you double click a button called button1 this click eventhandler will be auto-generated private function button1_click event flash.events.mouseevent void or game you may want to debug one or more swfs implementing the user interface or game play environment each of which uses a different swf to handle data saving and loading with amethyst you can run and debug all three swfs simultaneously breakpoints placed on code in each of the three projects will fire whenever that line executes the actionscript code editor supplies a similar range of features to those available for c there is intellisense with code completion and auto-expanding snippets and there is code reformatting with 23 userdefined options to adjust spacing and indenting and either place brackets onto new lines or keep them on the same line as the preceding code the code coloring capabilities go far beyond those available to c developers in addition to supporting all the standard colors for strings comments and so on it has 76 additional syntax coloring options specifically for actionscript and mxml amethyst has a fast and powerful code refactoring you can for example rename identifiers such as methods and variables mark an arbitrary piece of code and extract it into its own method encapsulate a variable by adding getter and setter methods and change the order of arguments in a function s parameter list any code that calls a refactored method or uses a renamed variable is automatically rewritten to use the refactored version a preview window can be used to view all the refactoring prior to committing any changes this gives the user the chance to omit specific items from being refactored by toggling a checkmark alongside one or more lines of code amethyst has its own integrated debugger based on technology originally developed for sapphiresteel software s ruby programming ide ruby in steel the amethyst cylon debugger can be used to set simple breakpoints or conditional breakpoints and these may optionally be triggered after a specific number of hits for example on the tenth iteration through a loop the cylon debugger lets you step through code one line at a time and it lets you step into over or out of method calls you can drag variables from the editor into a watch window or you can hover over variable identifiers in the editor itself you can then drill down inside objects to view for example the individual items in an array there is an unlimited number of drill-down levels so that you can expand complex structures to many levels deep the amethyst cylon debugger is even able to debug multiple swfs simultaneously let s imagine that you are developing a multi-user database application flash development refactoring and debugging while amethyst supports both the flex 3 and flex 4 frameworks as well as air it is certainly not just a flex environment it can also share projects with the adobe flash ide in a team environment this would make it possible for several developers and designers to work on a shared codebase for instance artists and animators might work in the flash ide while the actionscript programmers could work on the exactly same files and folders using the editing and debugging tools of amethyst interoperability with other editors and ides has been a fundamental design goal of amethyst to assist in this amethyst provides an importer wizard which can either make a complete new copy of an existing project in a new location or can convert a project in its original location when converted in this way visual studio creates solution and project files containing the existing code but it does not make any modifications to that code amethyst professional is available for visual studio 2008 and 2010 a free edition amethyst personal which lacks some of the high end features such as the visual designer and refactoring is also available for more on amethyst visit the sapphiresteel software web site the best place to look for breaking news is on the blog comments and technical queries may be posted on the forum huw collingbourne huw collingbourne is director of technology at sapphiresteel software over more than 20 years he has programmed in languages ranging from ruby to c and has been a technical columnist for computer magazines such as pc pro and pc plus he is the software lead of the amethyst designer the flex user interface design environment of the amethyst ide for visual studio sapphiresteel software http www.sapphiresteel.com 14 04/2010 12

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certification validating skills and best practices with the adobe certified associate exam suppose you are a contractor in the running for an adobe® flash® software development project the employer narrowed the hiring pool down from a list of a hundred applicants due to the scarcity of it jobs now suppose you and the other final candidate are virtually equal on paper ­ who will get the job in order to secure jobs promotions and esteem from your colleagues consider industry certifications as the ideal tie breaker he candidate who holds industry certifications related to the required job skills is more likely to succeed on the job let s face it resumes can be exaggerated or even false a portfolio shows what you may have done in the past but it does not give any indication of how long the project took to complete and whether or not you used best practices industryrecognized certifications however prove that valuable skills and best practices have been learned and retained rather than studied long ago and forgotten according to certification magazine s 2009 salary survey incorporating detailed responses from more than 40,000 it professionals in over 150 countries a majority of respondents reported receiving a raise after earning their most recent certification around 47 percent said they think their most recently earned certification played a role in them getting a raise furthering their certification portfolios also contributed to respondents career progression roughly one in five respondents received a promotion in the first year after receiving their most recent certification in the survey certifications were also credited with helping it professionals get along better in this volatile market more than 85 percent of respondents agree that since they ve become certified there is a greater demand for their skills more than 86 percent said becoming certified has improved their problem-solving skills and roughly the same number report that achieving certification has increased their productivity on the job both students and professionals need to demonstrate their technical expertise to succeed in today s competitive job market whether they are looking for a new position or simply working to excel in their current role any it professional can use certification to prove they are invaluable many employers now recognize the value of technical certifications as a means to validate real world knowledge more effectively than a completed course or even a degree if you still need to be convinced let s discuss the value of one certification ­ the adobe® certified associate t the value of digital media certification the workplace demand for digital media skills ­ communicating information using multimedia video graphic web or design software ­ is on the rise since 2000 more specialized digital tasks have gained substantial traction in the workplace according to a study by the california community colleges media entertainment initiative called digital media skills initial findings 20 percent of respondents said they performed video audio web or graphic production tasks once or twice a week while another 40 percent said they executed such tasks at least once every couple of months products such as adobe® flash® adobe® photoshop® and adobe® dreamweaver® applications are popular among ordinary users and professionals alike and more industries than ever before are utilizing these tools to accomplish their technical goals flash is the world s most pervasive software platform with more than 1.5 million users worldwide and an audience of more than 560 million users across the web due to an accessible development environment there are a large number of amateur flash and flex developers even dabblers can call themselves experts and most claim they are proficient in a long list of digital media products with such a broad community ranging from hobbyists to true experts certification becomes increasingly useful to prove job candidates are more than familiar users of digital communications technology in particular the adobe certified associate aca certification program confirms that individuals have the entry-level skills to plan design build and maintain effective communications using different forms of digital media by requiring aca certification managers can standardize base skill sets and best practices for both permanent and contract employees one such professional the art director for virginia tech magazine discovered that adobe certified associate has helped boost his capacity and credibility to support web design projects at virginia tech as well as through freelancing opportunities 16 04/2010 12

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