Adobe Flex in a Week!!

The adoption of Flex is going strong, and Adobe is doing everything in their power to make sure the wave doesn’t die off. That is why they have created “Flex in a Week“. Flex in a Week is allowing developers to learn Flex online through online video tutorials over a span of a week. If you are a budding developer it is worth your while to check it out!

Flex is taking it’s time to take off. I think though in the next 12 months when Gumbo (Flex 4) comes out, it won’t take off… It will sky rocket at the speed of light to light years and beyond. After all Gumbo will help designers to step in to develop user interfaces and leave it up to the developers to develop.

There are some great resouces out there, and this “Flex in a week” looks like it’s another one. Jump into the deep end and try it out. Who knows the water might be warm!

July 29, 2008
Tags: Adobe, Flex

Nice Ajax app!

I was browsing around today and found this nice Ajax app. The app is called Twiddla. It allows you to mark up websites graphics and basically anything else with a group of peers.

At first I thought it was made out of Flex until I right clicked. Twiddla Impressive!

July 21, 2008
Tags: AJAX, RIA

Flex 4 available for download!

That’s right Flex 4 (Gumbo) is available for download. Of course it is only in beta as it wont be realease until 2009. I suggest that you download it anyway if you are a Flex or AIR head so you can get a feel of what the next version will hold.

Ely Greenfield has post a video on what is in Gumbo, you should check it out.

July 15, 2008
Tags: Adobe, Flex, Gumbo

Flex SEO Competition!

Ryan Stewart has announced that he is doing a contest on the most searchable Flex app. He has come up with the phrase“Fleximagically Searchable” in which you have to have searchable in your Flex app. Right now if you type that into the search engine you get not results for Flex apps.

There are some conditions of course for entry:

It has to be a Flex application
“Fleximagically Searchable” must be dynamically loaded. It can’t be static text inside of your application. - But I don’t care how you load it, in fact that might make a difference in how Google ranks you.
The first link must be deep linked directly into where you load “Fleximagically Searchable” into your application. Feel free to use any deep linking methods out there.
Nothing in your code can dynamically load the phrase automatically. It has to be the result of a user interaction.
You must provide source code and be willing to talk about exactly what you did.
Multiple entries are allowed if you want to try different things.

So if your are up for it, give it a crack!

To go to the official competition page the link is here

July 8, 2008
Tags: Flex, RIA, SEO

Move over XHTML!

I won’t deny it, but XHTML is a beautiful language. It’s is vast and is practicably translatable on every computer. It is based off GML which many other well known languages are based off, but I am going to look into the future and tell you what I can see in my crystal ball…

“Over the next 5-10 years XHTML will phase out as the main language that is interpreted by the browser. The language that will exist will be a compiled language that will need a runtime to run it. Now don’t get scared! You don’t have to learn formal programming skills to code with this new language. This is because this new wonderful language will be based off GML as well. The difference to what you are doing now to what you will be doing in the future is compiling it before you give it to the world to see. “

For web sites to become more interactive and more diverse in what they can do, a stronger language has to be used. Right now XHTML is for presentation only. It can’t perform actions with out the help of JavasScript. JavaScript will be upgraded to 2.0 shortly, which will enable vast improvements, but will it make a difference. Hell yes! It will put it into the league every one else is playing. AJAX will vastly improve and blow people away.

Javascript 2.0 is based off EMCAScript Edition 4, which is the same as ActionScript 3.0. This means that JavaScript 2.0 will have power, that same power as ActionScript 3.0. I believe that eventually XHTML will be called something else and it will be designed like MXML or XAML (Microsoft Silverlight version of MXML). It will represent different classes as tags for easy building.

But like I said above I’m only looking into my crystal ball to the future, and of course it is hazy.

July 6, 2008
Tags: AJAX, JavaScript, MXML, XHTML

Flex 4.0 - What’s to come!

With Adobe Flex 4.0 to be launch in 2009 makes you wonder what they’re going to have in Flex 4.0 that they don’t have right now.

First off Thermo! Thermo will be new tool for the Flex developer community. It’s going to make it incredibly easy for a designer to design an application so the developer only has to code the actions to the design. It will help separate the development stage from the design. Having a work flow like this makes the end RIA a better performing application, which is also visually stunning. It allows the developer to concentrate on one thing and one thing only, development; vice versa for a designer.

Fig 1.0: Screen shot of the Main interface for Thermo

Improvements will also be made to MXML to make it even easier to develop with. Improvements such as new components, for example new vector primitive graphic tags. These tags will help in developing custom components as you will be able to draw primitive shapes directly through MXML.

Of course there are going to be improvements to the framework so that overall performance will be increased.

I think the 4.0 version will be released around the same time as CS4 as the interoperability will be amazing.

It is still a while off before the actual release of the next version, but this is for sure, Adobe is going to amaze us with the new capabilities and improvements.

July 5, 2008
Tags: Flex, MXML, RIA, Thermo