Flash Player 10 beta, code name Astro is out.
I just checked out a great video by Lee Brimelow on http://gotoandlearn.com that will get you up and running with Flash Player 10. Here is the link. http://www.gotoandlearn.com/player.php?id=73.
You can check out the Adobe Labs site for instructions for setting this up and using Flex Builder if you would like to go that route.
Alright guys…… I launched a new web site yesterday. Some of you that are in my contacts list via gmail may have already gotten an invite so if you did then you can disregard this post.
First up thanks to all of you that make this user group possible. Without it I think my skills as a developer would not be where they are today for sure. In an effort to get more exposure in the languages that I develop in and also to allow for opportunities for you guys to teach, learn, and grow in the development community, I have started Coder Resource.
If you are sick of yet another Social Network I totally understand. My goal here is to leverage this site to open more opportunity for the local user groups and individual programmers that have not yet found a local community to be a part of. This may also open opportunities for meeting developers that are willing to come and teach us some new things or in the case of some of you that are really good at what you do….. you may find that other groups or businesses may want you to come and teach them some of your kick ass ninja coding skills !
The site is set up in a way where you can do a couple of things. There is a blogging feature so that you can write a small blurb and link back to your own site if you like or write a full blown article. I don’t really care as long as you 1. benefit from using it and 2. the community comes away with some little bit of info that helps them all. There is also a video feature for posting small clips if you like of something that you figured out. If you have a longer video tutorial I would encourage you to link to your own server if it is a fairly large file.
The other feature of the site that I like is you can set up your own group so if you do join and you don’t see a group for your specific language interest then please start a group. I have already set up a CF, Flex, and PHP group. I know some of you are .NET programmers and I am sure there are some other programming interests out there that I don’t know about.
Again thanks for taking the time and I hope this new site benefits you in some way. Let me know your thoughts and suggestions if you have any at all.
Feb 12th, 2008: Thermo, Flex4 and MXMLG are slated to bring exciting new capabilities to Flex eventually, but what if you could use some of these new features in your projects today? At this months meeting, Ben will be demonstrating the Degrafa and OpenFlux frameworks. Degrafa is a declarative graphics framework (similar to MXMLG), which allows developers and designers to create rich, custom graphics without the need to know AS3 or the Flash graphics API. OpenFlux takes Degrafa a step further by introducing a new component model (similar to changes rumored to be in Flex4), which allows developers to create entirely new custom components with minimal effort.
Bio of presenter: Ben Stucki is an independent software developer in Nashville, TN. He might have had an average, every-day job selling retail electronics or installing cable, but he doesn’t. He designs and develops bleeding edge web applications using Flex 2, ActionScript 3, C#, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Apparently he’s pretty good at it. He speaks at user group meetings just to rub it in.
Meetings usually start around 6:00 or 6:30 at the latest. All meetings are held at DealerSkins unless noted otherwise. Here are the directions.
Acrobat Connect for anyone that can’t make it. http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/p48923740/
This is totally unrelated to flex… that is until Apple opens up the iPhone to run SWF files. I just installed a new plug-in for the 615Flex web site. This will allow any of you to browse this site using your iphone. It should automatically know that you are using an iPhone to browse the site and it will switch to an interface that has more of an iPhone interface look to it.
Let us know what you think!
The Nashville Flex User Group has been going strong. We started up around July of 2007. It has taken a bit to organize but the last two meetings have been great.
At this time I am looking for presenters. If you know AS3 and Flex or anything flex related we would really like to hear what you have to say and how you use this great technology.
What are the benefits of speaking at our meetings you say? Exposure of course. We will archive your presentation on our site, post an article about your presentation our blog and your blog or site, and anything else we can do to help get you noticed. On top of that you get the satisfaction in knowing that are helping the Nashville Flex user group grow and it’s members excel in there learning of Flex and AS3.
If you are not local to Nashville…… that is ok! We have an acrobat connect account and you can do your presentation from anywhere in the world if you like.
Please contact Matthew Wallace (me) if you are interested in helping the group grow and present us with some great insight on Flex and related technologies.
Our next meeting will be on Sept 10th at Dealer Skins. The Speaker will be Ben Throop. Ben is pretty new to Flex and will be bringing a new perspective to you guys that are just getting started. If you are wondering what Flex is or if you are unsure why you should use flex in the development of web applications then you should be at this meeting. More info on the Meetings Page.
Join us via acrobat connect at 6:15 http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/nash615flex091007/
Here are some of the topics Ben will be discussing - Topics may change based on the turn out and what you guys would like to hear about
Flex Camp is a series of conferences designed to help you understand more about Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR. Stay up to date with the latest Flex Camp events on this page or on the
I just had a really good video conference with the Adobe reps that deal with the Flex User Group Managers. They are putting together what they are calling “Flex Camp in a Box”. They should have the info available by the end of the week they say and will give me more info as soon as they have it so that we can plan on having our own Nashville Flex Camp if we like.
Also there will be more information to follow but they are actually hopping to provide funding for the groups. They we possibly be supplying us with funds for renting conference areas, refreshments and possibly some SWAG. Soon as I know more I will post it for you guys.
In the mean time here are some links from http://flex.org showing some video from the Flex Camp in San Francisco in July of 07.
Keynote Presentation - Watch it | Slides in PDF
Keynote demos: Mixbook, Sliderocket
Flex and CS3 Integration - Watch it
What’s in Flex Builder 3 - Watch it
Getting Started with Flex and AIR - Watch it
I’ve recently started using Adobe Flex, and so far I really love it. Since I’m unable to design my way out of a wet paper bag, having pretty little components available like the datagrid has made me very happy.
Today i’m going to talk about my new friend remoteObject(), and since I am primarily a ColdFusion developer, i’ll be discussing specifially how to use it within a CF application. Those of you using other server side languages may want to stick it out, if for nothing more just to see how beautifully Flex can separate your view from your model. As far as the Flex side of things, it’s pretty similar between platforms anyhow. In this tutorial, I will show how to use remoteObject() to connect to a ‘user’ object on the server, and then display the results from this object in a flex datagrid.
I am totally not a coding guru just yet, but I have my eyes on the prise and I hope to one day know my stuff, but for now I will admit that I have a little trouble understanding some simple tasks that most programmers would not have any trouble with. We all know and love Textmate. The great text editor for the Mac. Heck I even use it to write my blog posts. You have to check out the blogging bundle if you have not used it for that it is great.
As soon as I got Textmate I started using it for all my actionscript. At the time the bundle was only for AS2. Now that I am starting to dig into AS3 and Flex it would be great to start coding using this editor. It launches way faster than Flex Builder or Eclips. There are some draw backs. The biggest being that you do not get the code hinting quite as much as you do with Flex Builder, but still it is a great tool to work in. In the next few steps I will show you how to install SVN (subversion) client for your Mac so you can utilize all the bundles and updates that are currently being developed for Textmate and most importantly there is an AS3 / Flex bundle that you can download.
