Jon Knapp (.com)

Expand Portfolio Re-Design

Before we settled on a WordPress installation, we were playing around with a Flex-based version of our portfolio site. All information for the “Our Work” and “What’s Fresh” sections is read in from external XML files so that projects, pictures, and descriptions could be changed without having to recompile the project.

The initial video shown when you first visit the site is a Flash SWF that is loaded in by Flex, but is able to be controlled by Flex through a class interface. That way, I can tell the piece to stop playing and restart if the user decides to go to another portion of the site.

The pictures for each of the items on the site are only loaded in when they are to the left or right of the current piece. That way images are requested as needed instead of being embedded into the Flex application (which bloats the filesize) or being requested as soon as the application starts (which slows down the user’s bandwidth of the current piece).

The project link is to a backed up version of the site, since Expand didn’t end up going in this direction.

Technologies: ActionScript 3, CSS, Flash, Flex, HTML