Hero is available

The next version of the Flex SDK, codename Hero, is available to you for download now. If you want to check this special builds just go here and download.

What is so special about Hero? Well, the most important thing is the added support for mobile development. So far you’ll find in this builds: Spark DataGrid, Spark Image, Spark Form, OSMF 1.0 integration, Mobile Application, View & View Navigator, and ActionBar. You can read more here.

No go and start play with it already :D!

August 27, 2010 | Filed Under Flex, Mobile | 4 Comments

Working with Doctrine 2, Flex, Zend AMF, and Flash Builder

I finally got some time to play with Doctrine 2 and Flex. Back in May I wrote an article about working with Doctrine 1.x and Flex (you can read the article here) and my feelings were mixed. I chatted with Jonathan Wage of Doctrine about some of the shortcomings I found in Doctrine 1.x and his response was to check Doctrine 2 (still in development at the time of writing this article). Doctrine 2 is a big step forward.

In this article I describe how I rewrote the original application I created for my first article, this time using Doctrine 2, Flex 4, Zend Framework, and the Flash Builder data-centric development wizards. I’ll highlight the relevant differences between Doctrine 1 and Doctrine 2 along the way. Thus, you should find this article valuable in any one of these two cases:

You are already working with Doctrine 1 and you’ve wondered what it would take to move to version 2
You want to learn how to use Doctrine 2 with Flex; you know PHP and you know enough Flex not to be scared away if you see some snippets of code

Before going into the details let me say this: if you aren’t already using an ORM framework for PHP then you should. For most projects it can help you by freeing you of the tedious tasks of writing CRUD code and SQL queries. It allows you to focus on the business logic of your application. And all these advantages are multiplied when working on Rich Internet Applications because on this kind of project much of the work is done on the client and not on the server.

There are some aspects of using this ORM with RIA that could be better, but hey we don’t live in a perfect world. Most of these things, I think, are related to the fact that every time you use a server side ORM with a rich client, you leave behind the main story used for creating that framework – you use the ORM in order to feed a rich client with data and enable the client to persist the changes. Thus you need additional boiler plate code to make the whole thing work.

If you don’t know much about ORMs in general, you may want to read my first article first and before continuing.

August 5, 2010 | Filed Under Flash Builder, Flex, PHP, Tutorials | 9 Comments

50 resources to get up to speed with the Flash Platform

For the past six months we’ve been rolling out a lot of goodies, some of them in the form of final releases, others as betas. It’s no wonder you have to spend some time in order to get up to speed with the latest features of AIR 2, Flash Player 10.1 for Android, AIR 2.5, Flex 4, or Flash Builder 4. Thus, I thought it’d be a great idea to put together a list of resources to help you learn about these goodies.

So here I go, in no particular order.

Peer 2 Peer

Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2 brings new capabilities to the table when it comes to Peer 2 Peer. The best resource to learn about this is my fellow evangelist Tom Krcha (some say his dreams are multicasted, but only a few are lucky enough to receive them :D):

Flex and server side technologies

Christophe Coenraets wrote about tuning client-side performance using Flex 4 and LiveCycle Data Services
Ryan Stewart’s article on creating a basic CRUD application using Flex and PHP with Zend AMF
If you prefer to use the Data Centric Development features of Flash Builder when working with Flex and PHP check out this article
Debugging Flex and PHP projects with Flash Builder 4 and Eclipse PDT/XDebug
Using Flash Builder 4 to build a Flex application that consumes a .NET-based web service written in C#

AIR 2

AIR/Flash Player 10.1 and Android

Mark Doherty’s P2P Video Calls on Android tutorial
AIR 2.5 StageWebView demo
Geolocation in AIR
Video chat for Android using LiveCycle Collaboration Service and AIR
Android apps that connects to desktop apps using Peer 2 Peer: here and here
Setting up the tools for creating AIR for Android apps and accessing the camera from AIR
Android Trader Desktop with Flex and AIR for Android
“VoiceNotes for Android”: Sample App using Flex, AIR, and the Microphone API
Serge Jespers’s native installers packager

Flex 4

Other Flash Builder 4 related resources

Enjoy!

July 29, 2010 | Filed Under AIR, Android, Flash Builder, Flash Player, Flex | 3 Comments

Flash Builder’s Lost Features: Profiler

Here is the second episode of the Flash Builder’s Lost Features show. This time I chose to talk about Flash Builder’s profiler and give you enough info to feel comfortable using it if it’s new to you. Profiler helps you to locate memory leaks, identify excessive object allocation, or analyze execution times.

With the extension of the Flash Platform on mobile devices, I think that it’s more important than ever to build Flash applications that run efficiently for a long time. Here is the video (you can watch the video in a higher resolution here).

If you want to read more about the “art” of profiling then please take the time to read the official (here and here) and Ilan Avigdor’s article.

July 15, 2010 | Filed Under Flash Builder, Flex, Tutorials, Video | 3 Comments

Welcome to Hero – the next release of Flex SDK

Yesterday we announced Hero. This is the code-name for the next version of the Flex SDK. I think you’ll find the main themes for this release very interesting:

Multi-Screen Development: Allow developers to build applications that target the web, desktop or mobile devices using a single unified framework.
Spark Maturation: Polish and grow the Spark architecture by adding new Spark components and capabilities.
Large-Application Development: Support developers building large applications by improving fundamental Flex infrastructure pieces.

Among the big news is that both mobile and desktop needs will be served by the same core Flex framework (Hero). Previously, we said that Slider (the code name for the Flex Mobile Framework we announced at Max 2009) would be a separate framework from the Flex SDK. I think this is excellent news; having one framework to target both worlds (mobile and desktop) means that you, the developer, have to spent less time learning and coding.

You can read more about these themes here.

For now there are no public builds for Hero. We are working on this and pretty soon we will have public builds. Keep an eye on this site for Hero white papers and builds.

July 1, 2010 | Filed Under Flex | Leave a Comment

Working with Doctrine 1.x, Zend Framework, and Flex

Later Update: If you are looking for an article rather on Doctrine 2 than Doctrine 1, then check this one.

This year I finally had the time to play with Doctrine (version 1.x) and Flex. Actually, it was more than playing; I’m using it for a real project that hopefully will enter production pretty soon. To summarize the experience in just a few words: it’s mind-blowing.

OK, I admit I may be exaggerating a little bit. Still, it is something that can change the way you build projects. Doctrine is an ORM (Object Relational Mapper) framework for PHP and it can really speed up the server side development when you have a lot of tables in your database.
In this article, I explore how to work with Doctrine on the server side, Flex on the client side, and remoting to communicate between Flex and PHP (using the Zend Framework for remoting on the PHP side). I also want to share with you some tools and workflows that can save you some time. While most things are fairly straightforward there are a number of tips and tricks that you may find useful if you decide to go down this road. (I will show you how to use plain vanilla value objects and how to handle dates just to give you two examples. Why reinvent the wheel?)

The application I’m going to build in this article is simple but the workflow is the same one I used with a much more complex application. Having said that let’s start by understanding the big picture.

May 5, 2010 | Filed Under Doctrine, Flex, PHP, Tutorials | 19 Comments

White Paper: debugging Flex and PHP projects

I’ve just published a white paper on debugging Flex and PHP projects using Flash Builder 4, Eclipse PDT, and XDebug. You can read the article here.

In case you want to watch the webinar I did on the same subject today, you can go here. Thank you to all the people who joined my webinar!

PS. It seems we’ve come a long way when it comes to writing Flex applications. Out of 250+ registered people, only 60 decided to drop by. This is really good news, soon there will be no more bugs in our software :D

March 24, 2010 | Filed Under Flash Builder, Flex, PHP | 6 Comments

Get up to speed with Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4

There are bunch of online resources if you want to get up to speed with Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4. And because there’s a lotthat’s new, you may want to check these resources.

First of all, if you are new to Flex, we’ve updated the Flex in a week training free online course. Or, if you are in a hurry, use this Flex Test Drive to build a Flex application in an hour. Next, you can find here more about the new features of Flash Builder 4 and here you’ll find an introduction into Flash Builder’s Data-centric development feature. The pages for Flex and ColdFusion, Flex and PHP, Flex and Java, and Flex and .NET integration were updated too, so if you are using these technologies you may want to have a look.

If you want to quickly understand the Flex 4 framework here is a list of resources:

A brief overview of the Spark architecture and component set
Spark layouts with Flex 4
Introducing skinning in Flex 4
Differences between Flex 3 and Flex 4 (overview of the Flex 4 architecture changes, migrating applications to Flex 4)
Chet Haase (Flex SDK engineer) has many videos explaining the new Flex 4 animations engine

March 22, 2010 | Filed Under Flash Builder, Flex | Leave a Comment

Debugging Flex and PHP projects webinar

We’ve just launched Flash Builder 4, our latest IDE for building RIAs with Flex and ActionScript. If you use PHP on the server side, you may want to join my webinar on Debugging Flex and PHP projects.

I will talk about the new features of Flash Builder 4 that can help you while debugging and I will show how you can use Flash Builder 4 with Eclipse PDT and XDebug. The webinar will be this Wednesday (March 24th), 11AM Central European Time. You can register here.

March 22, 2010 | Filed Under Flash Builder, Flex, PHP | 4 Comments

Flash Builder and Flex 4 are out

We’ve just launched Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4. In case you didn’t know, Flash Builder 4 is the new version of our IDE for Flex and ActionScript, formerly known as Flex Builder.

As a former Flex/Flash Builder engineer I will always have tears when a new version is launched. This time I think my tears are bigger because both the Flash Builder 4 and the Flex framework 4 represent huge advancements.

You can group the new features and improvements of Flash Builder 4 into three big groups:

increased productivity: much faster compiler (do I hear a hooray?), improved debugger, better intellisense, Flex unit testing support, network monitor, command-line build
data-centric development:support for ColdFusion, Java, PHP, REST, SOAP services, as well for generating the form based on value object
design-development workflow: Flash Catalyst – Flash Builder integration, round trip support between Flash Builder 4 and Flash Professional

You can read more about the new features here. You can grab a sixty-day evaluation copy of Flash Builder 4 from here or you can buy the product from here (it comes in two flavors Standard and Premium and it is available for Windows and Mac).

Many of the new features from Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst were possible due to the new features from the Flex 4 framework: the new component mode (Spark) which separates the business logic and data of a component from its appearance or skin, and the FXG interchange language, an XML language that is “understood” by Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder. You can read about the differences between Flex 3 and Flex 4 here.

And the last news I want to share with you is about the new version of the Flex.org website. Enjoy!