Launchpad 2.0 and Tour de Mobile Flex are out

Greg’s team launched two great AIR apps: Launchpad 2.0 – created by Holly Schinsky – and Tour de Mobile Flex – created by James Ward. Tour de Mobile Flex, as you can imagine, is a version of the Tour de Flex made for mobile and it’s all about Flex mobile development. You will find samples for all the mobile capabilities and components Flex has to offer.

Launchpad 2.0 improves on the previous version by adding new samples and support for mobile. So now you can use this utility app to get started with project creation for both desktop and mobile.

Download

You can grab Tour de Mobile Flex from here and Lauchpad 2.0 from here.

October 26, 2010 | Filed Under Others | 1 Comment

Public preview releases for Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, and Flex SDK

Last night we released the first public preview for Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, and Flex SDK. I can tell you that you will love them. I’ve been playing around for the past 10 days with Flash Builder and Flex SDK building mobile apps and the level of the support from the tooling and framework is just great.

There are so many new features and improvements (bidirectional workflows between Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst, support for mobile development) that I will not enumerate them here. Instead, I encourage you to read the following:

And more importantly, go here (Adobe Labs) and download/play with them.

LATER UPDATE: Almost forgot to tell you about this great resource: go to http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flexsdk_hero/samples/ and grab the sample applications built with Flex SDK “Hero” for mobile and desktop. Some of them have the source available so you can see how they were built.

October 25, 2010 | Filed Under Others | Leave a Comment

Going to Adobe MAX 2010

Today I’ll start my journey that will get me to Adobe MAX 2010. Please don’t laugh because for us Europeans it is quite a long flight. And you don’t want to be jet-lagged when the MAX Awards, Sneak Peeks, or MAX Bash kick in :D.

This year I will present a session on Flex and PHP beyond the basics on Wednesday, October 27th at 9.30AM. Monday, October 25th (2PM – 4PM) I’ll be on duty at Device Lab Technical Experts in the community lounge.

If you can’t make it this year, then don’t forget that you can watch the two keynotes live. You can register here and enjoy the show from the comfort of your home (in Europe it will be in the evening)!

See you there!

October 22, 2010 | Filed Under Others | Leave a Comment

Webinar on Flash and PHP Mobile Development

Tomorrow afternoon for Europeans I will host a webinar together with Kevin Schroeder of Zend on mobile development with Flash and PHP. I hope this will be the first in a long series of webinars on this topic (after Adobe MAX 2010 I plan to do more).

In the meantime, if it sounds interesting don’t hesitate to register here.

October 18, 2010 | Filed Under Conferences | 3 Comments

Radar – cool AIR app for Android

My fellow evangelist Mark Doherty was quite busy this summer building an AIR application for Android. Now, why I am taking my time and your time to talk about his application? Because this application is an excellent resource for learning how various capabilities of the Flash Platform fall together on Android.

This application enables users to make peer2peer video calls. It uses Google Maps in 3D mode, Twitter or Facebook for authentication (we just released a new version of the Adobe ActionScript SDK for Facebook platform), and Adobe Cirrus (formerly Stratus) for sending the data from one user to another. Of course it uses the location API to place the users on the map, and it uses Mic & Camera access as well.

Mark published this application on Android Market and built a desktop version too. You can find more about Radar on Mark’s blog.

October 15, 2010 | Filed Under AIR, Android, Mobile | 1 Comment

Flex 4 mini book: Flex 4 in a Day

As you know this year we released the fourth version of our framework for building RIAs on top of Flash Player or Adobe AIR. As you can imagine, I spent quite some time evangelizing Flex 4 at conferences, customer meetings, and training sessions.

In preparing my presentations/articles I read a lot of material (Adobe’s documentation or blog posts) and talked to our engineers. And some time this summer I started to distill all this information into a formal document I called “Flex 4 in a day”. Initially I was really looking to a way to put all the relevant information into a document you could read in no more than a day. In the end, what I created is a 40-page document with links to additional resources. So I doubt you can “eat” everything in one day.

So what’s in it for you in reading this mini book? I think I managed to keep a fine balance in staying focused on the main features of Flex 4 and providing enough information to understand each one. Here is a list of the topics I covered:

MXML 2009
- Namespaces
- States
- New MXML Tags (Declarations, Library, Definition, Private, Reparent, DesignLayer)
- Two-way data binding
MXML Graphics and FXG
CSS
Flex Themes
- Creating a Flex Theme
- Applying a Theme
Spark Components
- The Skinning Contract – Skinning Spark Components
- Creating Spark components and skins
- Spark Components/Skins lifecycle
New Layout Engine
- Existing Spark layouts
- Creating custom Spark layouts
New Animation Engine
- Built-in Effects
- Advanced Effects
What’s new in Adobe AIR 2
Text Layout Framework in Flex 4
- Working with Fonts
Working with Flex 3 and 4 components in the same project
Migrating Flex 3 projects to Flex 4
Flash Builder 4 new features
Additional Resources

I should have used “we” instead of “I”, because my colleague Alin Achim helped me with some of these topics. A big thank you to Alin!

Download

You can download the PDF from here (651 KB).

If you find mistakes or you have additional resources that you think should be added please drop a comment. Thanks!

October 11, 2010 | Filed Under Flex | 9 Comments

Start making money with AIR apps for Android: AIR is available on Android Market

Adobe AIR 2.5 for Android was just released. So, if you have an Android phone running FroYo (Android 2.2) you can go to Android Market, search for “air” and install the runtime like you’d do with any other application. Next, if you want to try some AIR applications for Android, just search the Internet for AIR Android application. Or you can have a first run with the three applications I’ve built this year (on the right side of my blog you’ll find the links for these apps).

If you want to start developing AIR apps for Android, then the first thing you need to do is to sign up with the AIR prerelease group. And once you grab the AIR 2.5 SDK and the Android SDK (from Google) you are ready to start creating AIR apps. You can use your favorite text editor, Flash Builder 4, or Flash Professional. Quick note: AIR for Android doesn’t support the HTML/JavaScript/CSS workflow for creating AIR apps (AIR apps for desktop can be created using these technologies); it supports only ActionScript/Flex.

How do you get your AIR apps for Android on the Android Market? Basically you need to follow these steps:

set up an Android developer account (it costs $25)
next you have to create a certificate for signing the application. As with AIR apps, the Android Market accepts self-signed certificates. This means, you can use adt to generate a certificate if you don’t want to buy one
now you are ready to upload your APK files

My fellow evangelist Ryan Stewart wrote a post on this topic.

Obviously, I’ve been playing with AIR and Flash Player for Android all this year. And I’ve seen the hard work our engineering teams put in in order to make these runtimes, designed initially for the desktop, to run fast and reliably on mobile devices. I hope that people who have enjoyed Flash Player on Android will love AIR too.

October 8, 2010 | Filed Under AIR, Android, Mobile | 1 Comment

Major update to the Adobe ActionScript 3 SDK for Facebook Platform

The ActionScript 3 SDK for Facebook got a major update. While this SDK is fully supported by Adobe and Facebook, the coding was done by gskinner.com. Using this SDK you can create ActionScript 3 or Flex applications that communicate with Facebook using the Graph API. You can download the new SDK from here.

At the same time, you’ll find many resources that can help you get up to speed with Flash and Facebook development on Adobe Developer Connection. We have a dedicated section on this topic.

You can learn how to build and test locally, how to package the application as a web, desktop, or Facebook app. You can find examples that illustrate how to display information on the logged user, display thumbnails of Facebook photos, and many more.

On the Adobe Developer Connection Facebook section you’ll find two sample applications that use this new SDK: FIFA superstars developed by Playfish and Glee Your Life developed by Trailer Park.

October 5, 2010 | Filed Under Others | Leave a Comment

Romania, Iasi Events

November 26, 2010

November 27, 2010

I will speak at the university and Flex Camp in Iasi, Romania.

October 4, 2010 | Filed Under Events | Leave a Comment

Italy, Milan events

November 9, 2010

November 11, 2010

I will speak at WebTech Conference 2010 and ePublishing Conference. If you want to meet me, or you want to organize a user group event please let me know!

October 4, 2010 | Filed Under Events | Leave a Comment