• Finite State Machine
• Custom XML requests
• Image / Video loading, resizing and smoothing
• Custom scrollbars
• Flash optimization
• Various mouse + movement interactions
• Embedding symbols and fonts
• Animations (coulisse effect, layers)

Some of the most interesting/educational techniques (in my opinion):

Finite State Machine: The showcase is build up in 4 different states. The banner-state, search-state, list-state and detail-state. Using the Finite State Machine method helped building the different states separately. Each state controls it’s own entrance and exit and deals with their own children. So it helped making the application structured and clearly divided. This method is close to programming Artificial Intelligence and inspired me to do something more with it.

Custom XML Requests: The showcase gets it’s data from an external API which is developed by In-orde. The API needs an XML request to return the correct data. I made a class with which one can easily compose and send a request. It was great fun to learn how well XML works in Actionscript.

Flash optimization: I didn’t know much about what Flash can and can not handle. The showcase deals with lots of text- and imagedata and heavily relies upon smooth animations to make the experience complete. So it was a good exercise to keep the complete showcase as smooth as possible. During this process I learned a lot of little tips and tricks to aid in achieving this.