About Flagstone

The frameworks were developed by Flagstone to easily create rich user interfaces for web applications. The original code was written in objective-C and were designed to be used with Apple's excellent but under-appreciated WebObjects. The code was then ported to Java with the release of WebObjects 5 and at the insistence of early users.

Projects

Some of the applications which the Transform and Translate frameworks have been used for include:

1. Dynamic report generation with ActionScript used to control basic animation. Reports? Animation? Actually in practice this is not an oxymoron, the idea behind using Flash and ActionScript was to create a strong brand image for the report - particularly if the report was being viewed online.
2. Dynamic generated maps - create interactive maps that add more information than is supported by for example Google Maps or Microsoft´s MapPoint. I still think this is one of the killer apps for Flash on the web, particularly since the graphics model is scalable this could be a great way of deploying location based services without worrying what size of screen the map or information is being displayed on.
3. Creating a platform to allow small businesses to easily advertise services on TV channels. This is a Generator style application but rather than use a scripting language for "assemble" the animation it simply used an existing Flash file as a template. The application simply substituted the correct images and text then rendered the Flash file to a framebuffer where it was broadcast on cable TV channels. The whole system was very cool - with SMS integration which allowed registered users to order the services advertised.
4. Real Estate Sales - this application was similar to the advertising for small businesses except that the goal was to create an interactive tour of a property. Again templates were used to create the basic animation. The seller drew a basic floorplan of the house (using a custom Java drawing tool) and uploaded this along with a set of photos to a server where the complete tour could be viewed on-line or distributed to real estate offices and used as promotional material for potential customers in advance of visiting the property.
5. Software Version Control and Packaging - this one can easily be put in the cool but rather weird category. ActionScript was used to assembly ActionScript source files and package them with Flash templates to create a final animation. I don´t pretend to understand all the details but it was this application that helped identify about 90% of the bugs in the first version of Translate AS1 and allows it to successfully compile ActionScript that should only be written by those with a strong nerve and a steady hand.

These are only a few of the big projects that I know the frameworks were used for. I worked on a couple and got to see the final results so I now understand where the frameworks do a good job and where they could stand some improvement. Including a parser from day one was a good idea. Having now worked with a couple schemes for that used Flash files as templates I now have a few good ideas that will be included in the next release.