LFFS - 3: Object Oriented Language

Our latest post in the Inside RIA series "Learning Flex from Scratch" is up. It's called: LFFS - 3: Object Oriented Language. In this post we unpack the definition and need for an object oriented language and also define object oriented concepts that are relevant for our next post on ActionScript.

Stay tuned.. thanks for reading.

Resources for my 360|Flex Talk - Advanced Skinning and Component Development

You can download the resources for my talk here.

Flex Open Source Panel at 360 Flex Tomorow

If you're at 360|Flex in Atlanta this week, we'll be doing a panel discussion of a bunch of different Flex Open Source projects in the hands on room tomorrow at 10am. I'll be there talking a bit about Merapi, there'll be folks representing other projects such as, Degrafa, OpenFlux, Flex Lib, the MDI windowing project.. etc... This will be a very open panel / birds of a feather style session. So, if you want to hear about an OS project or get some questions answered, come on over for the session.

Speaking of Swag...

I'll have Merapi t-shirts and stickers on hand at 360|Flex. There's a limited supply of the shirts, but if you come to my talk you'll have a better chance of vying for one.

Thanks to Andrew Powelll for receiving the shirts at his house in GA (and modeling for the photo).

Also, I need to thank the companies that sponsored these shirts...

First of all, the biggest sponsorship came from the Tom and John at 360... thanks a lot guys ... your logo is on the back ;)


The rest of the sponsors are listed in alphabetical order...



Thanks again to all the sponsors!

Sneak Peek of My 360 Talk

My talk at the upcoming 360|Flex conference in Atlanta is called : Advanced Skinning and Component Development. Once I got in the thick of preparing for this talk I realized it was really two topics. So, my talk will focus more on skinning than component development, but I'm still going to try to hit both topics.

First, we'll look at the basic skinning techniques and some quick examples. Next, I'll move on to an example of using the CS3 Flex Design Extensions to build this custom skin for a ComboBox:


Finally, (time permitting) we'll wrap up with a look at the component development process for this custom horizontal list component (a recreation from Apple's site) :


Please bring any questions or comments you might have about skinning or component development.

I'll be posting all the resources for the talk on my blog just before the session.

cya in Atlanta
-adam

LFFS - 2: Flex Defined

The second post in our Learning Flex from scratch series is up: Flex Defined. This post defines Flex and the important concepts around it. In our next post we'll start looking at the programming languages of Flex... Stay tuned...

Top 10 Reasons to go to Flex|360 - Atlanta

10 - Swag

9 - Tons of Great Sessions

8 - Adobe's Big Announcement

7 -  The new 360 API Contests 

6 - Awesome Networking Opportunities

5 - Tom and John know what's up... you need to meet them if you do Flex

4 - Doug McCune.. you just never know...

3 - Ryan Stewart + Thermo.. c'mon

2 - Matt Chotin, Very nice.

(Courtesy of Louie Penaflor)

1 - Beer

LFFS - 1: Meet the Authors, Meet Flex

Our first post is up on the O'Reilly Inside RIA Site.

LFFS - 1: Meet the Authors, Meet Flex

This first post is an introduction of Scott and myself and a way to set a base for what we'll be up to in the coming posts. Our next post is called Flex Defined. In Flex Defined we'll define the major topics of Flex that are important for a novice learning Flex to be aware of.

You'll also be able to find the aggregation of all our posts at: InsideRIA: Adam Flater and Scott Sheridan Archives

Blogging on O'Reilly's Inside RIA

I feel very fortunate to have been asked to be a part of the new O'Reilly Inside RIA blog site. Rich Tretola asked me if I would like to be involved a short time ago. I decided to take a stab at something that isn't yet that prominent in the blogosphere: "Learning Flex from Scratch". This is the title of the series that my friend Scott Sheridan and I are writing for Inside RIA. Scott is new to Flex and we'll be covering all the stuff he'll be learning to become a Flex developer. 

Here's our summary for the series:

This series of installments will chronicle the learning of a complete beginner as he attempts to become a Flex developer. The series will culminate with the production of a working application built in Flex and deployed on the web. Our hope is to create a reference that will serve as a guide to those new to programming and wishing to step into the world of Flex.

Check out our bios: Inside RIA Contributors

Merapi Desktop Bling!

Here's some Merapi bling for your desktop...

Eruption:

Smoke:

Enjoy

Meet Merapi

Merapi is a new project that is a framework for connecting AIR to java at the desktop. It will be built as freeware until the team is happy with the stability. We will then move it to Google Code and make the project open source. There will be more to come but for now I can tell you that Merapi will pick up where Artemis left off with the goals of making it easier to implement using the framework, providing a good mechanism of deployment, and solving some security concerns.

{ Update : Andrew's post about naming Merapi }

The contributors...


Sean Christmann

Sean is an Experience Architect with over 7 years work in online applications and games. Originally trained in design and media, he found reading code easier then designing web sites and now applies his knowledge of both worlds to help create compelling user experiences in the RIA space. Sean is currently leading the development of eBay's disruptive new desktop application codenamed 'San Dimas' built on the AIR platform. Sean works for EffectiveUI.


Adam Flater
http://www.adamflater.net

Adam was co-creater of the Artemis project and creator of this project. Artemis was created when AIR was still in alpha and code named Apollo. He's been a Flex coder since 2005 and a was a java developer before that. Adam works for Universal Mind.


Alex MacCaw
http://www.eribium.org

Alex is a 18yr old Rails & Flex developer. He's been using Rails for 3 years now and has a fair number of open source projects to his name, as well as an active blog. Alex works for Reevoo, a London startup.


Louie Penaflor
http://www.restlessthinker.com/

Louie is a designer turned developer and has been designing and developing interactive applications and games utilizing Flash since 1999. Louie works for Digital Primates.


Andrew Powell
http://www.infoaccelerator.net

Andrew has been architecting and developing web applications for over 10 years using ColdFusion, Flex, AJAX, and Java. Currently, his focus is on integrating enterprise Java technologies such as Spring and Hibernate with Flex and AIR applications. Andrew works for Universal Mind.


Juan Sanchez
http://www.scalenine.com

Juan is experience designer and has a variety of design experience with branding, advertising, Flash, Flex, HTML, CSS, and print media. Juan works for EffectiveUI.


Rhazes Spell

Rhazes is currently a Lead Interactive Developer. Prior to that he was under the tutelage of Adam who learned him well in the art of making bits and bytes dance and prance. He's been a Flex developer since 2007, Java before that, but Perl will always be his first love. Rhazes works for Roundarch.

New Animation Library from Mims Wright - KitchenSync

Mims Wright has just released a new animation library. I haven't tried it out yet, but it looks pretty cool. 

Quoting the wiki:

"KitchenSync was designed for developers who want a smart way to handle animation or other time-based functionality with code. Written from the ground up in ActionScript 3.0, KitchenSync relies on smart object-oriented architecture rather than complicated shorthand. It includes a number of features and shortcuts, such as the clone() method, that save effort for developers. KitchenSync makes extensive use of events and informative runtime errors and is quite flexible when it comes to extending the functionality."

Check out KitchenSync on GoogleCode : http://code.google.com/p/kitchensynclib/

Links from Mims' blog post:

 - Getting started
 - Types of synchronized actions
 - Units of time, parsing time strings, and sync mode
 - API Reference