We are very excited to announce that Jim Armstrong (aka the Algorithmist) will be joining the Degrafa team as a contributor. Jim’s strong math and development skills will help the Degrafa project push forward into un charted territories. Though we have a clear path mapped out for the future of Degrafa, there’s still much to do and Jim’s skill set will most certainly help us get there faster.

Jim’s initial involvement will be to work in collaboration with Jason, Greg and Tom to port the Singularity package to Degrafa and move that research up to a level (MXML) that is more accessible to the Degrafa community. Here are some of the types of things Jim’s work will accelerate.

• A Spline set of Geometric Primitives.
• Text on a path.
• Shape Strokes
• Points and Angles on a path.
• much more…

Working off of Jim’s existing research in combination with our own will allow us to innovate at a faster pace. Jim will also participate in coming optimization goals and work with us to prepare the core of the framework for the future.

Jim is Degrafa’s first real rocket scientist and we are all excited as to where this collaboration will take Degrafa and what it will enable for the Degrafa community.

Now that the word is out about the collaboration between Degrafa efforts and Adobe, we’ve been getting plenty of questions regarding the viability of continuing to use Degrafa. People have asked, “Well, with FXG, won’t Degrafa become obsolete?” The answer is no.

Right now we’re finally at a point where we can start moving beyond creating basic shapes, fills, etc. and moving into a realm of really powerful stuff, all of which we’re hoping will extend FXG. With inspiration coming from things like Processing, we’re really focussing on allowing people to do some typically difficult things very easy.

We’ve discussed how you might use Degrafa for various types of data visualization, but with things we’re implementing in Beta 3 you’ll be able to completely change the way you think about charting in Flex. Some people are already taking advantage of the in progress version of Beta 3 to do some really great stuff.

Joe Johnston of Universal Mind created a slick looking chart that mirrors the look you might find on the Nike+ site. Doesn’t look like a typical Flex Charting component does it?

If you were at 360|Flex you may have seen Tom Gonzalez present some of his latest works that use Degrafa. He’s contributed a lot to opening up new possibilities for Degrafa in the data visualization arena. Below is his Google Finance “dashboard” that uses Degrafa for charting, complete with “micro-charts” created using the newly revamped Geometry Repeaters.

Ryan Campbell has also taken a liking to the new Geometry Repeaters and what is possible just using Property Modifiers with them. He combined Degrafa and OpenFlux to create what he’s calling FluxCharts. Definitely cool.

It’s really great to see people start jumping into the next release of Degrafa when it’s still a work in progress. Even better, all these samples have source available.