Building a Drupal module with Flex: Fx Gallery
Maybe your PHP is good, as good as Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu. Maybe your Flex skills are excellent or perhaps you are a beginner. Either way, you may be wondering what you can do with PHP and Flex. Well, don’t wonder anymore! Just come to my webinar and bring your friends with you.
This Friday (February 5th) I will do a webinar about Fx Gallery. What is Fx Gallery? It is a Drupal module for displaying images. The idea behind this project is pretty simple: there are many popular PHP projects (CMS, blog and forum platforms, electronic shops and so on) and probably for any one you could create a new module/plug-in that uses the expressiveness of Flex to bring more value for its users.
I developed this module together with my friends from Fx{r}, Stelian and Andrei. This gallery displays pictures from Flickr, Picasa, and Drupal installations. It was built using the Flex 4 framework, and a little help from Flash Catalyst. At the time of this writing we are cleaning up the code in order to make it available as an open source project. Thus anyone will be able to see how it was made or extend the module by adding new features.
At the webinar you can see the module in action, learn about its architecture, and hear how it was made.
The event is free, though you have to register here.
Mark Anders in da house
Next Wednesday (January 27th) at our office we will have a cool event. It will not be a typical technical event with slides because the host will be none other than Mark Anders. He has many stories about Flex, Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder. So, if you are in Bucharest next week and you want to know more about the Flash Platform, especially internal stuff from one of the people who started the whole Platform, be there. The event is free, though you have to register here.
Mark Anders led the creation of .NET, Flex Builder, and Flash Catalyst (yes, before joining Adobe he used to work for Microsoft).
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).
Transylvania Flex Group hosts a new RIA event
On November 21st in Cluj, Romania there will be a new RIA event hosted by the local Flex User Group. The name of the event is Flex vs Silverlight vs AJAX. My friend who organizes the PHP Geek meetings from Cluj, Mihai Brehar will be the moderator.
The event starts at 10:30 AM and ends at 2.20PM. Although the event is free, you have to register. The event’s location is Betfair Romania, 69-71 Brancusi street, Cluj-Napoca.
PHP and Flex Webinars
Last week I visited Zend headquarters, and I had an interesting talk over there. One effect of this meeting is this: we will start to do webinars together with Zend.
If you want to find more about Zend Studio and other products related to PHP from Zend, or learn more about the integration between the Flash Platform and PHP (Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder, Flex framework) you shouldn’t miss this opportunity. I know that webinars don’t offer the same experience as in-person events. On the other hand, you can attend them from the comfort of your own home, there is no traveling involved and no need to convince your boss to let you attend the event.
We haven’t set the first event date yet, but it should be in the first week of December, and probably it will be in the evening (Central European Time).
Keep an eye on my blog for the exact date and time.
Flex Camp in Iasi
UPDATED with the final details!
After successful Flex events in Bucharest, Craiova, Timisoara, and Cluj it is time to have a great one in Iasi. So, if you want to learn more about the Flash Platform, meet other people from the community, or just get your first taste of Flex come on October 31st to Dublin Pub: str. Vasile Conta nr.30 (Fundatie – Casa Studentilor area). You can register here.
Here is the almost final program of the event:
| Interval orar | Prezentare | Speaker | Companie |
| 9:00 – 9:30 | Inregistrare participanti | ||
| 9:30 – 10:15 | Keynote | Miti Pricope | Adobe Romania |
| 10:15 – 11:00 | Flex 4, Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder and PHP: A delicious combination | Mihai Corlan | Adobe Romania |
| 11:00 – 11:15 | Pauza | ||
| 11:15 – 11:45 | Automation Testing with FlexUnit 4 | Adrian Aioanei | AyoneSoftware |
| 11:45 – 12:30 | ‘A’ stands for… Application, Architecture, or Adobe? | Sabin Buraga | Universitatea A. I. Cuza |
| 12:30 – 13:30 | Pranz | ||
| 13:30 – 14:00 | Analytics & Media content management solution in Flex | Gabriel Mirea | Digital Distribution Network |
| 14:00 – 14:45 | Interoperabilitatea AS3 cu alte tehnologii | Cosmin Varlan | Universitatea A. I. Cuza |
| 14:45 – 15:00 | Pauza | ||
| 15:00 – 15:45 | Editarea vizuala in browser si dezvoltare rapida de aplicatii | George Plesu | Kabinet |
| 15:45 – 16:30 | Flex 4 SDK: What’s new | Miti Pricope | Adobe Romania |
Now, wouldn’t be nice to start a Flex User Group in Iasi too? This would make much easier to create events like this one in the future.
I’ll update this post with the exact time and location soon. See you there!
Wrapping up MAX 2009
I took some time to think about what I saw at MAX 2009 last week. Although I knew what the announcements would be, the way we chose to package them was a surprise for me and, at the same time, the crowd’s reaction was an interesting barometer. Because it is one thing to think that your kid is the smartest one around and another thing to have others telling you the same.
First of all, more of the announcements were Flash Platform related compared to last year’s MAX. And please notice that I used “Flash Platform” and not some more specific terms like Flex, Flash Player, or AIR. I think almost everybody is now comfortable with this term and understands what it means. We first used Flash Platform on a large scale during the June launch of beta previews for Flex 4, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Builder 4. It is a nice surprise that in only three months you have embraced this.
Going back to the the Flash Platform news, I think one of the biggest was the preview of the Flash Player 10.1 for mobile. Today Nokia, Android, Palm, and Blackberry are on board for delivering early next year the first smartphones with full support for Flash Player 10.1, and this makes iPhone the only one without Flash. You’ll have goodies such multi-touch and accelerometer. Of course, we also announced that the next version of Creative Suite will let you develop Flash applications that target iPhone (they are compiled to iPhone native code). Later on this year you should be able to play with this new version.
The Flash team did great work to optimize Flash Player for mobiles. They reduced the memory footprint by 50% and optimized the execution so your battery will not run out of juice when playing Flash content. Furthermore as you might expect for mobiles, when the Flash application is not in the foreground it reduces power consumption even more. I’m sure this is only the beginning and the Flash team will continue to improve and innovate further around mobiles.
To tell you the truth I can’t wait to have devices and play with this technology to build Flash apps. I just have to have a little more patience and to convince my boss to approve a new phone for me. Having one platform to target all kinds of screens and devices is one step closer.
AIR 2.0 brings to the table many of the features you’ve requested in the past year. You’ll have raw access to the microphone. You’ll be able to package your application as a native installer and run commands and system executables from within your application. You’ll be able to open any documents with the system default application for that particular file.
On the same track of improving the performance for devices that don’t have the same power as computers, Intel and Nvidia demoed chips that bring HD playback capabilities (nice and smoothly) using Flash Player to netbook devices.
During the Sneak Peeks there were three cool demos. The first one showed how to swap code during debugging in Flash Builder (you can change the body of a function/method during the debugging and continue to debug, no need for restarting the debug session). Then there was Ely’s demo on a Flex framework for mobile. As a former Flex Builder engineer I am very excited thinking about having these two features available soon. And finally, the Rome demo an AIR application and browser application that can create digital content using animations, drawing tools, and text layout tools. It can even import Photoshop documents and display all the layers set in the original document.
Serge Jespers demoed a cool game built using AIR and how you can distribute and make money using Flash Platform Services. I think this was the missing link of our Flash Platform story. Using these services you’ll be able to distribute and monetize your applications more easily.
Speaking of the missing link, I have to remind you about the Omniture deal. We’ll see some interesting things in the future regarding the integration between Adobe technologies and Omniture services.
And since I mentioned Photoshop, during the same Sneak Peeks there was a cool effect demoed. Basically it is a smart heal brush that can intelligently removes parts from a photos and replace with suitable parts from the rest of image. You can remove persons, ugly buildings that ruin a beautiful landscape, wires, scratches, and so on.
ColdFusion was another product with great exposure and I think it was well deserved it. I know that in Europe ColdFusion is not the number one server-side technology, but if you’ll have a look at it, I’m sure you’ll find places to use it even in the enterprise world. As Miti loves to say it is just an amazing bus services platform, a product that can glue together different pieces from the enterprise world. ColdFusion 9 has an amazing set of features, integrates with Java, BlazeDS, and LiveCycle Data Services, can generate PDF, plays well with the Flex framework and finally has an excellent IDE built on top of Eclipse. Did you know there are more 800,000 ColdFusion developers out there and the trend is up?
While I’m talking about the enterprise, it was cool to see the FedEx application that allows them to see what their trucks are doing in real time and then redeploy the trucks according to the specific needs in time and space. It is built using the Flash Platform. Sometimes I hear people say something that annoys me a lot: “Well Flash is a cool thing, but for the enterprise world is just eye candy”. People who think this better think again. There are simply too many examples of enterprise applications that rely heavily on the Flash Platform in order to offer features, experience, and usability.
Of course there were many more things worth talking about, but these are, for me, the closest to my heart and mind. If you weren’t at MAX, then you can watch it online (http://max.adobe.com/online). Having said this, I can’t wait for the next year’s MAX. The countdown started and time passes in a blink. Are you coming?
PS. Thanks to everyone who took the time to talk with me and share his/her ideas and thoughts, including old friends and new friends.
Flex Evening in Cluj
My friends from the Transylvania Flex User Group dropped me an email announcing a Flex event on October 15th. Here is the agenda:
MX.EVENT – Transylvania Flex Group – October 15th
17:30 – 18:00 Intro
18:00 – 18:45 Flash/Flex from a Product Owner perspective (English session) by Mattijas Larsson (Product Manager at Betfair)
18:45 – 19:00 Break
19:00 – 20:00 Welcome to Cairngorm 3 by Dragos Dascalita (Engineer at Adobe Romania)
20:00 – 20:10 Break
20:00 – 20:40 Flash Exotics: LocalConnection by George Iosif (Flex Developer at Betfair)
The event will take place at Vitrina Business Center, str C. Brancusi nr 69-71, Cluj Napoca, and you can register for free here http://flexcluj.eventsbot.com/ .
Going to MAX LA 2009
Tomorrow I’m gonna fly out to Adobe MAX Los Angeles 2009. This will be the fourth MAX for me. And I have to say that it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve attended before, because somehow it is always at least as exciting as the first time. Maybe even more now than before, because I know more people and MAX is also about meeting old friends and making new ones.
Having said that, let’s talk about my MAX. I will do a lab together with Cornel Creanga and Miti Pricope (BlazeDS and LiveCycle Data Services in the Cloud; btw there is still room for my lab if you are interested), I will be TA for another two labs (Creating custom components in Flex 4 and Building Media Experiences in Flex with Open Source Media Framework ), you can meet me at the Ask the Evangelist area (Tuesday noon) and Platform Demo Station 2 (Monday noon).
Between my duties I hope to have the time to see the keynotes, sessions on Flex frameworks and Adobe AIR. And of course, to talk with you!
If you can’t be there, then you can watch the event online. For the first time you’ll be able to see the keynotes and the most interesting news online using MAX Online (October 5th and 6th). You can join ten minutes earlier and watch the behind the scenes action. Besides these live streaming keynotes you’ll be able to see the top three session of the day from each track (Design, Develop, and Envision) using on demand video. Starting with October 11th you’ll be able to see all the sessions on demand but Labs and BYOL.
Don’t forget about Twitter. You can follow @Adobe and @AdobeMAX to see the breaking news and community insight (use #AdobeMAX tag if you twitter about MAX). I will twitter (@mcorlan) and blog as often as possible to cover the event.
I wish you an amazing MAX!
AIR MAX Companion application is live
If you want to twitter about MAX and see all the tweets that are MAX related (#AdobeMAX) you can use this sexy app MAX Companion (you can install it from here).
Once you have installed the application you’ll see that there are three main features: Twitter, Sessions, and Places. The Twitter feature, as I said, helps you send messages with the official Max tag (#AdobeMAX) and see all the messages sent about MAX.
The Sessions feature displays your schedule. It is an easy way to keep an eye on what you want to attend so you don’t miss anything.
And the last one, Places, displays maps so you can quickly find your way around MAX.
Finally, whenever you tweet from the application you are automatically entered for a chance to win a copy of CS4 and Flex Builder (your Twitter id is linked to the MAX id). Good luck!
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I am a Platform Evangelist for Adobe. The views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect the views of Adobe Systems Incorporated. More about me. -
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