Proof of life

Another year of evangelism has almost passed. I spent some time looking back these past days and I have to say it was a hell of a year! Of course, it was a lot of work. One day out of four or five I was on the road, sixteen times during weekends. I spoke to almost 3,000 people. With some of these people, I think I became more than acquaintances. If I have to pick only two favorite events, they would be China and Israel. I had such great events and met amazing people over there!

But leaving out the events from Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, UK, Portugal, Germany, Croatia, Poland, Italy, Romania or US wouldn’t be fair. Some of these events were driven by the PHP community (The Hague, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, London, Cluj, Copenhagen) others by Adobe User Groups (Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Milan, Zagreb, Bucharest, Gdansk, Craiova, Timisoara, Lisbon, Iasi). Being among passionate people about technology who are so open minded is very refreshing.

As I said, being again amongst the PHP community is great. I truly value opportunities to talk with our community. And not because it is easier because they know the Flash Platform, but because of the quality of feedback they provide us. Some times it is harsh, but not any bit less helpful. Let me tell you a true story from the advertising industry to better illustrate my point. In the ‘90s, a sweets factory invented a process that enabled them to apply a thicker chocolate coating on the biscuits. The factory representative met his account manager from the advertising agency. And he starts talking about this new technology and how great it is, being unique in the whole world. After 20-30 minutes of peroration, the advertising guy interrupts his client quite bluntly saying: “All this is very interesting, but in the end it’s just a ***** biscuit!”.

Sometimes we think that this or that is a mind-blowing feature. And you, the community, help us to recalibrate our view and better understand what is important and what you really want. Nevertheless, I think our job of telling the Flash Platform story to the world has become increasingly easier. All the work done around the Flex Framework, the new tools, Flash Catalyst and workflows (designer-developer, Flash apps for iPhone) are some of the changes to account for this. Probably the biggest selling point is that the Flash Platform bridges the gap between different screen sizes/devices/OSes (Flash Player 10.1).

I want to thank you for attending my events or helping me with them, and for reading my blog. And I wish you happy holidays and may the next year be greater than this one!

December 23, 2009 | Filed Under Others | 9 Comments

Flash Player 10.1 beta 2 is available

You can download the latest beta for Flash Player 10.1 (for PCs and Netbooks) from here. What’s new? The global error handler is there, and you’ll find debug versions this time too :)

Additionally, if you want to be among the first to try Flash Player 10.1 beta on a Palm Pre smartphone, you can register here.

December 18, 2009 | Filed Under Others | Leave a Comment

Help shape the future of Flex, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Builder

… and get a chance to win a nice gift in the process!

If you have 15 minutes to spare, then click here to fill a survey. You can literally shape the future versions of our tools and frameworks.

I know this doesn’t matter , but just in case you want to know, the prizes are:

One Apple 64 GB iPod Touch (valued at $399)
One Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5K 9 MP Digital Camera with 10x zoom (valued at $350)
One of two $250 gift cards from Amazon
One of five $100 gift cards from Amazon

LATER UPDATE: Unfortunately, the prizes are only for those living in North America.

December 18, 2009 | Filed Under Others | 2 Comments

AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 samples added to Tour de Flex

If you open the Tour de Flex application today you’ll get an update and among other things, you’ll see samples for AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 features.

Did you try AIR 2? If so, what do you think?

December 16, 2009 | Filed Under AIR, Flash Player | Leave a Comment

Why Flash: Interview with Mindomo.com

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Zoltán Lörincz, the guy behind Mindomo.com. Mindomo.com is one of the coolest mind mapping apps out there and it happens to be a Flex application.

I met Zoltán in 2007 when we talked about Flex Builder 2 and what they want to see in Flex Builder 3. At that time Mindomo.com was already in the market, and we knew that we could get a lot of valuable feedback about Flex and Flex Builder from someone who created such a complex app. Since that time they added many new features were added and created a desktop version using AIR. Another interesting feature of their application is the toolbar itself. They implemented probably the only Microsoft Ribbon in Flex out there.

In this interview you can find a short story about the birth of Mindomo.com, and you can learn some of the key features of this application.

I apologize for the image/sound quality. I did this interview remotely and the sound was recorded from the phones.

Enjoy!

December 15, 2009 | Filed Under Video | Leave a Comment

First iPhone app built in the pre-release program is out

On December 11th, the “Boost your Brain” iPhone application became available on iTunes. This is the first application created in the pre-release program for Flash Professional CS5 that was accepted on iTunes. The creator of this game is Francis Bourre. You can find the application here.

December 14, 2009 | Filed Under Others | 6 Comments

FlexPMD Eclipse plug-in available

We just released FlexPMD 1.0, FlexCPD 1.0, FlexMetrics 1.0, and an Eclipse FlexPMD plug-in for Flash Builder (beta for now).

If you haven’t tried FlexPMD, then you should download the plug-in and test it.

FlexPMD is a tool that helps to improve code quality by auditing any AS3/Flex source directory and detecting common bad practices, such as:

* Unused code (functions, variables, constants, etc.)
* Inefficient code (misuse of dynamic filters, heavy constructors, etc.)
* Over-complex code (nested loops, too many conditionals, etc.)
* Over-long code (classes, methods, etc.)
* Incorrect use of the Flex component lifecycle (commitProperties, etc.)

FlexCPD detects copy & pasted code snippets (it reuses the JavaCPD engine).

You can see FlexPMD in action in these two screencasts.

December 10, 2009 | Filed Under Flash Builder | 3 Comments

Webinar: using PHP and Flash for developing Rich Internet Applications

On December 2nd, together with Roy Ganor from Zend, I will host an e-seminar about PHP and the Flash Platform. We will show you how you can create a Rich Internet Application using the Flex framework, Illustrator, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Builder 4. Then we will show you how to connect the Flex application to a PHP backend and how easy is to debug the PHP and Flex code using Zend Studio 7.1 and Flash Builder 4.

You can register for free here. The webinar will start at 6:00 PM Central European Time (9:00AM Pacific Standard Time) on December 2nd.

LATER UPDATE:

You can download the slides from here, and next week the recording will be available you can watch the recording over here (you need to have a Zend account).

December 1, 2009 | Filed Under Conferences, Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, Flex, PHP | 8 Comments