That is a neat movie in the link provided. The flare seemed instantaneous in the video. Stepping through the frames and looking at the time information, I think it lasted about a half hour. To traverse the sun in such a short period of time means it was really moving.
Thanks for the many excellent posts.
From what I understand that flare (number 1 ranked flare) was so strong that we really do not know how large it was. The instrumentation monitoring it was saturated. That is why its size is listed as X28+. There really are some informative web sights now on-line concerning solar weather.
ps - I also had underwent many months of corporate training after leaving college. But hey, we don't count that.