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.

fl_vs_ajax_vs_silverlight_mic

November 18, 2009 | Filed Under Conferences | 2 Comments 

Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2 first public betas

We just released the first public betas for the two client runtimes: Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2. You can grab them from here and here.

The cool thing about this release is that there are versions available for all three operating systems Win, Mac OS, and Linux (openSUSE, Fedora, and Ubuntu) right from the beginning.

fp1 air2

For now Flash Player 10.1 is available only for x86-based computers/netbooks. Later on we will have other releases with support for mobile.

Here you can see public demos and interviews for Flash Player 10.1. You can learn more about features like hardware video decoding, graphics acceleration, instance management, multi-touch support, or microphone access.

You can install sample applications for AIR 2 from here. Here is a list with the new AIR 2 features:

You can read more about this here and here.

If you have feedback, please don’t be shy!

November 17, 2009 | Filed Under AIR, Flash Player | 12 Comments 

Cool 3D Game created in Flash made in Japan

My fellow Japanese evangelist, Teiichi Ota, showed us a cool Flash 3D game made in Japan. You can actually try it for yourself despite having the instructions in Japanese. Here is how to play the game (click here to open the game):

1) You get presented with 10 questions. You’re supposed to click on one of the three circles. Just click them randomly.
2) After the 10 questions you get to name your robot using 3 letters. This is easy.
3) Now you have a robot, with all the custom parameters automatically set.
4) You are presented with 3 buttons:

[Random Match]      [Search for Opponent from the Ranking List]
[Challenge the Boss (very strong)]

5) Click whatever button you want.
6) The fight starts. You get to click 3 buttons each once in the battle. Each button represents a special move or weapon.

jp_1

jp_2

The image quality is excellent, the design is very clean, and I have to say I’m really impressed by this game. Behind this application, there are IMG SRC/Non-Grid, Kaibutsu, and Masayuki Kido (he’s the one who created the 3D library used by this game).

Not so long ago, Mariko Nishimura (Field Marketing Manager with Adobe Japan) posted a series of articles (Community Power at Adobe MAX and What’s going on now in the Japanese Flash world) that shed light on the Japanese Flash developers. I think their work and especially the quality of their projects may be a surprise for many of us.

November 16, 2009 | Filed Under Others | Leave a Comment 

Adobe and RIM collaboration

Today RIM (an Open Screen Project partner) made some interesting announcements for Flash developers at the annual Blackberry Developer Conference. With the upcoming version of Creative Suite there will be additional support for the Blackberry platform.

At the same time we announced together with RIM that we will be optimizing the Adobe AIR runtime and the Flex Mobile Framework for the Blackberry platform. This actually makes RIM the first OEM to announce support for these technologies.

You can find additional information on Mark Doherty’s blog and Ryan Stewart’s blog.

Isn’t this great news for the Flash community?

November 10, 2009 | Filed Under OSP | Leave a Comment 

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.

a2a1

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.

November 9, 2009 | Filed Under AIR, Conferences, Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, Flex, PHP | 1 Comment 

AIR 2 Beta notification sign-up

If you want to be among the first to test the public beta of AIR 2.0, all you have to do is to sign up over here.

In case you don’t know what new features are planned, here is a short list:

November 3, 2009 | Filed Under AIR | 1 Comment 

New ActionScript 3 Book in Romanian

My friend, Cosmin Varlan, a professor at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University published a book about ActionScript 3 – web programming with Flash and Flex. It is in Romanian, so I guess for many of you it is not too useful :D . For the others, you can buy it from the bookstores across Romania (it is published at Polirom) and it costs 42 RON (10 Euro). You have 400+ pages to  ramp up your ActionScript 3 skills quickly.

coperta1

Here are some of the topics:

October 30, 2009 | Filed Under Books | 2 Comments 

Article about Flash Catalyst in Dutch Magazine

If you are a designer or you just want to learn how to use Flash Catalyst you may want to check the latest issue of the Dutch Magazine Web Designer. I wrote an article for this issue demonstrating the workflow between Adobe Illustrator, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Builder. Although by the time the article got published, Flash Catalyst Beta 2 was already out (in my article I used Beta 1), I still think it is worth the read especially for someone who’s new to this tool. Almost forgot you have to know Dutch to read the article :D .

dutch

October 27, 2009 | Filed Under Flash Catalyst | 2 Comments 

Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com Preview

We just launched a developer preview for Flash Builder for Force.com; it allows you to create Flex applications that connect to services and data in the cloud (Force.com platform). You can read more here.

October 26, 2009 | Filed Under Flash Builder | 1 Comment 

PayPal Express Checkout with Flex and Adobe AIR

Miti was very busy this summer and if you read his article you can see why. If you want to integrate your Flex application (web or AIR) with PayPal his article on this matter is a must.

In this article, I will show you how to integrate PayPal Express Checkout with either a Flex application running in Flash Player or an Adobe AIR application. Express Checkout streamlines the checkout process for PayPal buyers, but there are security implications for using it in stateful applications.

l will review the security and UI considerations, introduce the architectural approach, and then show you how to implement the whole thing. You can also download working samples to see how everything works together.

October 23, 2009 | Filed Under AIR, Flex | 1 Comment 

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