Kinetic Scrolling Box

Apple creates a lot of user interface innovations within products such as IPod.
I copied their Kinetic Scroller and implements it in a Flex Box (Vertical or Horizontal), for both direction.

Actually, I just play with scroll positions. If you want a good looking, the mathematical equations are really tricky because its a differential system but I spent 5 years to solve this kind of equations ^ ^ so I solve as a 1order system.

How it works?

You have still the equations, the variable t for time is replaced by a .. timer. You have just 2 mouse event handlers and 1 timer event handler:

• MouseDown: save the mouse position as reference (or offset)
• MouseUp: Calculate the delta position, then the ‘acceleration’
• TimerTick: Calculate the speed from the acceleration or from the delta position is mouse button is pressed

You can configure the user power.

Example

The example below is just a vertical list of images, you can scroll down using scrollbars or using the kinetic scrolling, and in both direction:

Click here to the example

Sources

Click here to download the KineticBox.as

Use it as a Box, but its very important to set the size of your container as the same size of its parent:

<KineticBox height='{ID_PARENT.height}' ....

2007 – Monaco Technologies

My first job, just after received my diploma. I was employed by a french services company called Abylisen, a very little company, for MT located in Monaco (close to the Casino and hotel Metropolitan).

This job consisted of an User Interface development with Flex 3 deployed with AIR, the backend was written in .Net by another team. I took place in a team of 3 flex’ers and a lot of .Net dev. and an amazing designer called Moune, all are young people. The aim of the project is to create a plateforme for buy digital media such as mp3, videos … All about music.

I stayed just 6 months because even if it was a good project, we don’t have work enough and I could not put up with spend all the day to do nothing except move a label to 3 pixels on the left

So I decided to move to London in order to have a solid professional experience. I had lot of trouble with my company Abylisen, even if I gave time enough as notice, they tried to keep me just 1 month more to finish their contract with MT, so I have a very bad memory with this company.

2005 – Intership at Cabesto

Cabsto is a french middle sized company selling stuff about the world of the see. When I did my intership, they had 2 stores, one at Ollioules and the other at Cannes and employed about 50 people.

This 3 month intership was really intersiting because it tooks place in a different company than computer science so I learn other things than if else for end ! About project management, selling and business methods…

So, I took place in the “software department”, to do a Enterprise Relationship Management system and add a CMS. The project started totaly from scratch, and was done using the amazing Asp.Net language and the simple mySQL database. I worked close to the marketing teams to collect their needs and to apply them as much as possible.

It was hard because it was my first intership and I was not really experienced in project development so I missed a lot of important steps BUT at the end, there is a good and stable product, installed in a locally server available by a VPN for the other stores and using by everyone, the marketing team, the seller team …

Now with the benefit of hindsight, I should never start a such project from scratch, even if I need to say no to some needs, it was a big waste of time and resources whereas it exists a lot of free and open-source CMS plateforme writing in different language.

On more thing is that this project was writing totally in Asp.Net, I should have considered RIA technologies especially for the dashboard and for the timetable.

To sum up, my first most important profressional experience was a success, I created something use by people and have a good feedback.

2007 – Intership at Hewlett-Packard

In order to end the 5 year study and have the ISEN diploma, we have to do a 6 month intership. I opt for HP because its a big company (number 1 in software in the world) and it was located at Sophia-Antipolis (close to the golf ^ ^).

This intership took place in the BTO department within a team working in J2EE with the framework JavaServer Faces. I was in charge of a Web2.0 concepts and technologies survey (social networking, AJAX, Rich Internet Application…) and how to use them in a professional product (Dashboard, CMS, Reporting tools…).

So I worked with JSF as backend (Managed beans and basic servlets) and with a lot of Web2 technologies:

• JavaScript with JSF framework such as ajax4jsf, IceFaces
• Adobe Flash with OpenLaszlo (a Adobe Flex concurrent)
• Pure JavaScript frameworks such as Prototype, Script.aculo.us, DOJO …
• Google Web Toolkit (an amazing tool/compiler to produce HTML/JavaScript from Java)

I learnt a lot, technically and also in project management because I worked with a very experienced team, and all of its member helped me every day and was really patient with me. Every week I had to make a presentation about my progress and a demo of my baby, it was really more than a simple working period, I mean, this team teached me a lot technically and more.

Hello world!

Welcome to my new blog, it replaces the old one because I reserved it to my business only. I know a new blog in the blogs space is not very usefull but I really hope you could find something interesting for you in it.

So feel free to give me your comments (exept porn spam ^ ^).