For a good part of 2009 I had the extreme pleasure of working with Intridea on an open source AIR application for their Present.ly microblogging service. Present.ly provides a secure and private way to share updates among members of a company, without them being visible to the outside world. The service has a Twitter-compatible API so tools built for Twitter can be adapted to Present.ly (with a few small modifications). You can learn more about the service and how it’s different from Twitter on the website, specifically the tour. I recommend watching this video for a brief introduction to what the service is all about.

This was a great project to work on and the people at Intridea were just awesome to work with. They allowed me to do the development without any distraction or micro-management. The application already existed when they got in touch but they wanted to change a few things and also update the codebase to a more standards based approach since the app is open source. The codebase now uses Cairngorm and Flex Unit and is also fully commented for ASDoc. It also used Degrafa for some of the view. I’d really like to thank Dave at Intridea for the opportunity to work together, it was a great experience and I really enjoyed working on the application.

You can visit the page for the AIR client here. The app is available for download and you can also browse or download the source code from github.

Intridea also has several other applications for the Present.ly service including a really cool web based application, an iPhone app and an Android app to name a few.

Take a minute to check out the Present.ly service. It was mentioned as Best-Bet Collaboration Tool by Inc. Magazine and also won an WebWare 100 Editor’s Choice Award. Intridea is a pretty cool company doing some exciting things!! You can sign up for the Present.ly service here.

Here is a list of over 50 Flash Platform developers that share great information and resources through their websites and blogs. From Adobe employees to independent developers all of these individuals have contributed very useful material to the community. Hopefully this list will help you discover some new developers and information. I check their blogs pretty regularly and I recommend you check them from time to time as well. Here is my list of 50+ Important Flash Platform Developers.

UPDATE: please contact me to add anyone I missed. I’m open to expanding this directory/list for sure!!! Sooo many great Flash Platform devs out there and they’re all so helpful and nice!! It’s an awesome community for sure!!

Samuel Agesilas
Designgineer. Creator of Saffron UML editor.
http://twitter.com/samuelagesilas

Aral Balkan
Designer, developer, author, teacher, entrepreneur, and performer; a Renaissance Geek with a passion for designing user experiences and a desire to make the world a better place through technology and oratory.
http://aralbalkan.com/

Luke Bayes
Since early 1998, Luke Bayes has worked with companies such as America Online, Microsoft, Applied Materials, Entertainment Arts, Hewlett Packard, PowerBar, RockShox, Levi’s, Macromedia and Adobe to deliver an expansive set of distributed applications, business tools, and instructional content. He is the coauthor of the Certified Macromedia Flash MX Developer Study Guide and two Macromedia Flash Developer Certification Exams. He is a frequent speaker at industry events, has served on the steering committee of the San Francisco Macromedia User’s Forum and is cofounder of both AsUnit, a tool set for Flash Application Developers, and the San Francisco Design Patterns Study Group.
http://www.lukebayes.com/

Jens Brynildsen
Jens has been working with Flash since version 3 came out. Since then, he’s been an active member of the Flash community. He’s created more than a hundred Flash games (thus the name of this blog) but he also makes web/standalone applications, does workshops and other consulting. With the help of some good friends in the community, he maintains the site Flashmagazine.com.
http://www.flashgamer.com/

Thomas Burleson
Thomas Burleson has been building consumer and e-Commerce software solutions for more than 20 years. During the last 4 years, Thomas has provided product development skills and senior leadership for Universal Mind; one of the largest RUX and Web2.0 consultancy firms. In Oct 2008, Thomas joined Ustrive2
http://www.thomasburleson.biz/

Christian Cantrell
Christian Cantrell is a Product Manager and Application Developer on the AIR team. Really nice guy and an awesome developer.
http://blogs.adobe.com/cantrell/

Mike Chambers
Mike Chambers has spent the last eight years building applications that target the Flash runtime. During that time, he has worked with numerous technologies including Flash, Generator, .NET, Central, Flex, and Ajax. He is currently the Principal Product Manager for developer relations for the Flash Platform at Adobe. He has written and spoken extensively on Flash and Rich Internet Application development and is coauthor of the Apollo for Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide, Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) for JavaScript Developers Pocketguide, Flash Enabled: Flash Design and Development for Devices as well as Generator and Flash Demystified.
http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/

Andre Charland
Andre Charland is the co-founder and CEO at Nitobi Inc. He’s been at the forefront of Web 2.0 software development for almost a decade and is an expert on the next generation web. Andre is an advocate for usability and user experience and speaks regularly about how to keep users engaged and active on websites or web-based application. Most recently Andre presented on the Adobe AIR Tour throughout Europe. He’s also been a speaker at the Voices That Matter web design conference, Adobe MAX, JavaOne and AjaxWorld. Andre is the co-author of “Enterprise Ajax”, published by Prentice Hall last summer and is the lead blogger for O’Reilly’s InsideRIA.com.
http://blogs.nitobi.com/andre/

Christophe Coenraets
Senior Technical Evangelist at Adobe Systems. Really nice guy!
http://coenraets.org/blog/

Critter
Creator of SeesmicAIR. Tattooed and pierced developer. Down to earth and keepin it real.
http://critterscode.com/

Jen DeHan
Jen deHaan was raised by wolves in the deep woods of the Canadian north. Later in life, Jen worked with Flash as a deseloper, then wrote about Flash for five versions, and then worked on stuff that didn’t include much Flash. She came to her senses in 2007 by rejoining the fabled Flash team at Adobe as a QE, focusing on the good stuff—Motion (on timelines). Jen enjoys long walks in the rain pondering how many times she can use the word Flash in a bio, and admits that after numerous years in California she is no longer addicted to Tim Horton’s coffee.
http://blogs.adobe.com/jdehaan/

Peter DeHan
Peter deHaan currently works for Adobe on the Flex SDK QA team. Peter also contributes to the Flex Examples blog. In my opinion Peter has one of the best jobs in the world!
http://blogs.adobe.com/pdehaan/

Eric Dolecki
Old school Flasher. Currently works at Bose, in the R&D Design Center. Interested in: AS3, AIR, Flex Builder 3, Spry, Dojo, SVN, Eclipse, MTASC.
http://www.ericd.net/

Mike Downey
Mike Downey is Director of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft where he focuses on platform adoption of Microsoft Silverlight and related technologies.
http://madowney.com/blog/

Brandon Ellis
Flash/Flex/RIA/web/.net/SQL developer, 45, married, kids. Likes: C#, Flash, Flex, AIR, web standards, punk rock, beer, hot peppers, vegetables, cycling, skateboarding, cartoons. Dislikes: people who don’t use their turn signals, people who have something to say about everything, empty beer bottles.
http://www.brandonellis.org/

Yakov Fain
Managing Director at Farata Systems. Adobe Certified Instructor. Java Champion. Author. Leads the Princeton Java Users Group.
http://flexblog.faratasystems.com/

Eric Fikes
Internets, Skateboarding, Ice Hockey, and the family. Lead Technologist for Atlanta based design firm Wiretree.com
http://ericfickes.com/

Dan “polyGeek” Florio
Dan Florio – aka polyGeek – is a freelance Actionscript Flex/Flash/AIR developer living fulltime in a 35′ RV with his wife. Creator of RunPee.com
http://polygeek.com/

Jesse Freeman
A homeless Flash Developer from NYC.
http://flashbum.com/

Eric Garza
Technical Architect at Adobe Consulting.
http://www.questioveritas.com/

David Gassner
Owner at Bardo Technical Services. David also did the Flex training for Lynda.com. He’s a really great guy and a great trainer. I learned a lot from his videos.
http://www.bardotech.com/

Ely Greenfield
Ely has been a developer at Macromedia / now Adobe for over 10 years, with an extended vacation in the middle working for the best little startup you probably never heard of, E-Quill. Over the years he’s worked on a variety of different products and technologies, from Desktop authoring tools to multimedia engines, Web Applications to browser add-ons, Workflow engines to Platform technologies. He currently works with a bunch of very smart engineers designing and developing the Flex SDK — the core compiler, framework , and MXML language for Adobe’s next generation RIA technology.
http://www.quietlyscheming.com/blog/

Chris Griffith
Flash developer at Qualcomm, Inc. Also co-manager of the San Diego Flash Users Group and an author for InsideRIA.
http://chrisgriffith.wordpress.com/

Romke de haan
Devloper focusing on Cocoa Touch, Flex, AIR, Flash technologies. Romke also does Motion, Design, Art & Music.
http://www.romkedehaan.com/

Alex Harui
Principal Engineer at Macromedia/Adobe. He runs the great blog Alex’s Flex Closet.
http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui/

Shannon Hicks
Cold Fusion and Flex developer.
http://www.iotashan.com/

Jeff Houser
Computer programmer, a business owner, a musician, an author, a recording engineer, and loves old school style adventure games.
http://www.jeffryhouser.com/

Scott Janousek
Scott Janousek is a Flash and Flash Mobile developer currently working in the Boston area of the United States. In addition to his experience with mobile development, Scott has an accumulated ten years of diverse software engineering and Web consulting background, and several of those years were dedicated to the creation of interactive multimedia, including CD-ROMs, DVDs, webcasts, kiosks, RIAs, and web sites.
http://www.scottjanousek.com/

Lawrence Job
Founded an international new media startup known as GridFusions.
http://twitter.com/lawrencejob

Chafic Kazoun
Chafic Kazoun is the founder and Chief Software architect at Atellis, and is widely considered one of the world’s top experts on Flex (outside of the Adobe Flex engineering team). He has worked with Flash technologies since 1998 and with Flex since its inception, and he has a deep understanding of the internals of the Flex framework. He maintains a busy speaking and consulting schedule. When he’s not busy developing solution-based applications, Chafic is actively involved in the Flash community, delivering presentations at numerous conferences including Adobe’s MAX, Flashforward, FITC, Spark Europe, and MXDU. He is also the contributor of numerous published works and is the author of Programming Flex 2.0, a book recently released by O’Reilly Publishing. He is also an Adobe Community Expert, and shares his thoughts on his blog http://www.rewindlife.com.
http://rewindlife.com/

Colin Loretz
Colin is an entrepreneur, web developer, designer, thinker, dreamer and cyclist. Project Manager and Force.com Developer at Twelve Horses. Co-founder of Reno Collective.
http://colinloretz.com/

Joey Lott
Joey Lott is a founding partner of The Morphic Group, a Flex and Flash consulting company. At The Morphic Group Joey serves as a technology director, building some of today’s most innovative Flex applications and advocating for the use and adoption of agile software development methodologies. He has written many books on Flex and Flash-related technologies, including Programming Flex 3, ActionScript 3 Cookbook, Adobe AIR in Action, and Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns.
http://www.themorphicgroup.com/

Peter Martin
Senior Technical Architect at Adobe Systems. Senior Technical Architect at Adobe Consulting. Senior Technical Architect at Adobe (formerly Macromedia).
http://blogs.adobe.com/pmartin/

Sean McCracken
Head of Research and Development at Influxis, AS3 coder, Flash Media Server dude, Dad of 2 coders2be, Husband, Dog and Cat owner!
http://themindofseantron.blogspot.com/

Josh McDonald
Twitterer, Flexcoder, Maroon, Designer, Java lover, That loud-mouthed Aussie yob, Blogger, Problem solver, Contributor, Cricket Fan, Lousy photographer, Great cook.
http://flex.joshmcdonald.info/

Grant Michaels
CAD and CAM engineer, dj, producer, 2nd shooter, & solo web developer.
http://grantmichaels.wordpress.com/

Ali Mills
ActionScript programmer with solid experience using the technologies that power rich internet experiences.
http://www.alimills.com/

Jonathan Moore
With a strong focus on innovation, technology, and customer experience Jonathan utilizes a broad skill-set spanning strategic marketing, art direction, interactive design solutions, motion design, and innovative development to bring projects to life. Jonathan is passionate about emerging and fresh methods to creatively communicate a client’s message. Jonathan has worked closely with clients such as Activision, Disney, Lexus, EA, Ford, Infiniti, Chevrolet, Adobe, Motorola, Warner Brothers, and Mattel over the past eight years. Through direct involvement with the projects, Jonathan’s work has been recognized by AIGA, Adobe, ADDY Awards, FWA – Favorite Website Awards, Flash In The Can, STEP Inside Design, SXSW Interactive Festival, Webby Awards, and numerous books and magazines.
http://www.newezra.com/

Stacey Mulcahy
The one and only Bitch Who Codes. Old school Flasher. Super cool developer!!
http://bitchwhocodes.com/mt/

Rober Penner
super talented ActionScript developer. Author of Programming Macromedia Flash MX. Original author for many of the easing equations used in ActionScript.
http://www.robertpenner.com/

Juan Sanchez
Experience Architect for EffectiveUI. Graduated from California State University, Chico, with a B.A. in Communication Design. Juan’s background is primarily in print design, branding, and advertising, however, his skills have quickly expanded to include Web technologies like HTML, CSS, Flash, and eventually Flex. Creator of Scalenine and founding member of Degrafa.
http://scalenine.com/

Ryan Stewart
Rich Internet Application Evangelist for Adobe. Colorado Avalanche fan. Backpacker, rock climber and hiker.
http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/

Ben Stucki
Ben Stucki is an independent Flex developer and consultant with a background in standards-based web development. After a long love affair with Flash experimentation, Ben got his hands on Flex and created some of the first custom Flex components available on the web. Today Ben continues to post sample code through his blog and contributes to many well known open-source Flex projects including FlexLib, Degrafa, and OpenFlux.
http://blog.benstucki.net/

Jeff Tapper
Jeff has over a decade of experience developing Internet applications for a myriad of clients, including Harley Davidson, Toys “R” Us, IBM, Dow Jones, American Express, and Morgan Stanley. As an instructor, he is certified to teach all of Adobe’s courses on Flex, ColdFusion, and Flash development. He has been working with Flex since the earliest alphas of Flex 1.0. Jeff has worked as author and technical editor for several books, including Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source and Breaking Out of the Web Browser with Adobe AIR, and sits on the editorial board of Web Developers & Designers Journal.
http://blogs.digitalprimates.net/

Andrew Trice
Andrew Trice is the Principal Architect for Flex & AIR for Cynergy Systems, based in Washington, DC. He specializes in data visualization, client-server architectures, object-oriented principles, and rich application development. He has been developing for the web for over 10 years, with over eight years development for the Flash platform
http://www.tricedesigns.com/

Josh Tynjala
Josh Tynjala discovered Flash in late 2004 as an intern working for a marketing company in Duluth, Minnesota. Flash Player provided the perfect way to combine his degree in Computer Science with his lifelong interest in visual arts. In 2005, Josh moved to California and established his first blog, Zeus Labs, to begin sharing his ideas and experiments. Around the same time, Macromedia released the first public previews of Flash Player 9 and Flex 2. Excited and driven to jump immediately into the future of Flash, Josh earned some recognition with one of his early AS3 experiments, a Flex app that used binary sockets to connect Flash Player to AOL Instant Messenger.
http://joshblog.net/

Chad Udell
Currently employed at The Iona Group, a multimedia agency located near Peoria, IL. There he designs, develops and manages web and interactive projects and the client relationships that go along with them. Chad has developed web presences for Caterpillar, Tyson Foods, Rawlings, Worth Sports, Maui Jim Sunglassess and many more B2B and B2C web sites along with creating interactive experiences for museums like the Museum of Science and Industry and Shedd Aquarium and numerous other tradeshow and kiosk installations. In Chad’s free time he is an instructor in web and multimedia for Bradley University, focusing mainly on standards based web design. Many of Chad’s students have gone on to become successful designers or developers in their own right and he’s proud to have been part of their success.
http://visualrinse.com/

Simon Wacker
Simon is 21 years old and loves working as a freelance (web) developer. Simon is studying computer science and mathematics at the university in Karlsruhe, Germany. His main interests are programming, juggling and reading.
http://www.simonwacker.com/

James Ward
James Ward is a Technical Evangelist for Flex at Adobe and Adobe’s JCP representative to JSR 286, 299, and 301. Much like his love for climbing mountains he enjoys programming because it provides endless new discoveries, elegant workarounds, summits and valleys. His adventures in climbing have taken him many places. Likewise, technology has brought him many adventures, including: Pascal and Assembly back in the early 90’s; Perl, HTML, and JavaScript in the mid 90’s; then Java and many of it’s frameworks beginning in the late 90’s. Today he primarily uses Flex to build beautiful front-ends for Java based back-ends. Prior to Adobe, James built a rich marketing and customer service portal for Pillar Data Systems.
http://www.jamesward.com/blog/

Steven Webster
Director, Technology and Innovation at Adobe Systems Incorporated. Technical Director at Adobe Consulting. Practice Director, Rich Internet Applications at Adobe Consulting.
http://blogs.adobe.com/swebster/

Aaron West
For the past eight years Aaron has been heavily involved in the Web development space building enterprise-level, database-driven Web applications and leading technology teams. Aaron is incredibly passionate about what he does and attempts to inject his enthusiasm and love for technology in everyone around him.
http://www.trajiklyhip.com/

John Wilker
Community Evangelist for EffectiveUI. Organizer for Ignite Denver, an O’reilly Ignite event. Co-host of The Flex Show. John is a really, really nice guy!!
http://johnwilker.com/

Dan Wilson
Principal partner of DataCurl LLC, Dan Wilson runs the consulting practice and TheHealthChallenge.com, a health and wellness product for organizations. Before launching DataCurl, Dan held numerous senior program and development positions in such industries as Technical Consulting, Health Care, Online Publishing and Government Contracting.
http://www.nodans.com/

Update 08/03/09: I’d like to congratulate Nephi and Brian for their participation in the book giveaway. They nailed the answer and emailed me in record time. I’ll be sending out your books this week. Great work guys!! Thanks to everyone else who sent in the answer and checking out the sample PDF.

The kind people at Packt publishing got in touch and turned me on to a pretty cool book covering Flex 3, BlazeDS, LCDS and Java titled Flex 3 with Java. They were cool enough to send me a couple of extra copies of the book that I am able to giveaway to the Flex community! The first two people to email me the key features of E4X as described in the sample chapter available for download as a PDF will win a free copy of the book. (Unfortunately only US candidates are eligible for this giveaway.)

I’ve only had a chance to review some of the book so far, you can check back later for a more in depth review. I checked out the chapters on BlazeDS and LCDS a little and there is some pretty good info available.

You can get more information on the book by visiting the Packt website. You can also download Chapter 5: Working with XML, you’ll need it for the giveaway.

Here is some additional info on the book from the Packt website:

This book provides comprehensive information on various aspects of Flex 3 and ActionScript 3.0. These include developing simple applications, handling events, creating custom components and events, using RPC services, integration with Java and BlazeDS, styling and formatting, and how to package and deploy Flex applications.

You will start with downloading, installing and configuring Flex 3 SDK and Flex Builder 3 and learn basic concepts such as what MXML and ActionScript are, understanding UI components, controls, compilers, and more. Further you will develop simple applications and slowly advance into more depth where you will learn advanced concepts such as creating custom components, debugging, integrating with Java, using RPC services, styling, internationalizing, and deploying Flex applications, and more.

One of the things you’re really going to love about this book is that you will develop a full-blown e-commerce application using a combination of Flex 3, ActionScript 3.0, BlazeDS 3.2, and Java. At the end of the book you will have the knowledge and experience needed to develop Rich Internet Applications.

I’d like to thank Swati at Packt again for getting in touch and sending along the books for me to review and do the giveaway. Good luck to anyone participating in the book giveaway and thanks for stopping by. Hope you’re all having a great weekend, and don’t forget to get your Flex on

Here are ten iPhone games worth checking out. The first one I got was the classic Pac-Man. Then I moved along to more of the arcade classics: Centipede, Space Invaders and Frogger. I played most of these games on Atari or in the Arcade growing up in the 80s.

Sifting through the other newer games specific to iPhone can be a bit daunting, or it was for me anyway. I took the plunge with Crazy Penguin Catapult 2 and was very pleased. Some of the great peeps on Twitter saw me posting about playing these games and pointed me to Fieldrunners and a few other killer titles. Fieldrunners is simply awesome, I’ve been playing it quite a bit lately. I also checked out a skateboarding game by Vans, geoDefense and Radial 50 Lite.

I’ve ranked these games below along with a few others for anyone else interested in checking them out. The point of all this for me is to of course have fun but also research some of the existing games for development purposes. I’m still on the edge regarding getting involved with iPhone development but these games have definitely inspired me.

1.) Fieldrunners
This is my favorite game at the moment. It’s great!! This game requires some level of planning and strategy. Tip; build a maze with your towers!

2.) Centipede
Pretty similar to the arcade classic. The “Arcade” mode is a little different than I remember but pretty close to the original. The “Ultra” mode is awesome!

3.) geoDefense
This game is like Fieldrunners. The graphics are unreal. This game is quickly growing on me. The “medium” levels are no joke. They just dropped the price on this game to .99, you have no excuses so check it out.

4.) Penguin Catapult 2
Very fun to play and the penguins are fun characters. I’m stuck at level 43 though atm. This is a really great game. I started with the Lite version and had so much fun playing that I purchased the full version.

5.) Pac-Man
The arcade classic. Really fun game. The controller needs to be bigger though.

6.) Brick 3D
Kind of like 3D pong or breakout in a way. Really fun game and it’s growing on me. The graphics are pretty awesome on this one too.

7.) Frogger
Another classic here. Pretty much the same as I remember from the Atari. This game needs to supply a controller though. Using your finger to control the frog isn’t that great imo.

8.) Radial 50 Lite
This game was suggested to me by the author via twitter. It’s pretty cool and a decent game for free. Not really my personal favorite style of game but it’s very functional, the graphics are great and it is pretty fun.

9.) Space Invaders
This is a pretty good remake of the uber famous classic. My main gripe is the speed that you’re able to fire lasers. It seems very slow which makes game play a little boring. Fix that and I’d be playing this a lot more.

10.) Vans Pool Service
I wish I liked this game more. I may just need to play it more but it’s just not that fun to me. The controls seem awkward and I’m not sure if I like the interaction style that’s currently being used. I’ll probably try to spend some more time with this game because I really want to like it more and it was expensive.

I have a list of about ten or so other games that I may review. Let me know if you found this post useful at all and leave a comment with any thoughts you may have. Also please let me know if you have any favorite iPhone games (or apps) that I can check out.

Flash decompilation is a touchy subject to many people. There is the unethical aspect that quickly comes into focus when talking about decompilation. There is a time where having a solid tool to handle decompilation is critical. If you’ve ever lost an FLA or had one become corrupt then you know this need well. Another legitimate use of decompilation is learning how a particular effect or a piece of functionality was created.

So as a disclaimer I’ll have to say that I do not advocate stealing another businesses or developers work. Businesses spend considerable amounts of money to conceptualize and build breathtaking applications. Developers spend countless hours coding, debugging and testing and many times they become attached to the codebase. It’s unethical at best to steal from another business or developer. Just don’t do it, ok?

In the world of software development and specifically web development decompilation is however unavoidable. If you develop an application you should always be prepared for the chance that it could be reverse engineered. It may not be ethical but it is always a possibility.

Now with all of that out of the way lets take a look at an awesome application that can be used to decompile and reassemble SWF files. Trillix is very, very impressive. I’ve used a few different decompilation utilities over the years when FLAs corrupted on me or were misplaced. Trillix stands up to the competition. Some of the features and functionality are, well, amazing.

The code decompilation is pretty good. You can customize the syntax coloring which is cool. The real power of Trillix is its ability to convert an SWF back into an FLA. I only converted a few simple SWFs back to FLA but the results were stunning. The FLAs that get reassembled appear to be pretty usable and intact. This functionality would be a life saver if you lost an FLA or had one corrupt on you. Another great use for Trillix would be if a client didn’t have the FLA and came to you with change requests for their application. Trillix also had sophisticated funtionality to extract resources from SWFs including graphics, audio and MovieClips. Trillix can also convert SWFs to EXE projectors. Another powerful feature is the ability to edit the internal assets of an SWF and then save out an updated version of the SWF.

Other than the ability to decompile AS3 source there may not be a ton of functionality for Flex developers. I’d highly recommend Trillix to Flash developers though. The price of 80$ is definitely worth it to have a tool this powerful around. If you were ever in the need for a FLA recovery tool you’d be extremely relieved to own a copy of Trillix.

These individuals have all inspired and/or helped me at one point in time. I’d like to take a moment to point them out and say thanks. I’ve personally either worked with, met or digitally communicated with all of these peeps. They have all helped me greatly and their insight is fantastic. You should check out their blogs or follow them on twitter to gain great Flex development advice, code, tutorials, articles, etc. Thanks to all of you very much!!!!

Laura Arguello
Laura and I worked together on an article on the Mate framework for Flash Magazine. She was instrumental in providing technical reviews and input regarding the details of the framework. Laura is the CTO at ASFusion. She specializes in RIA development using ColdFusion and Flex. She regularly gives presentations at tech conferences and user groups. She is a Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Developer and the manager of the Orange County Flex User Group.
Check her blog: http://www.asfusion.com/
Check her side project blog: http://www.mangoblog.org/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/instante/

Matt Chotin
Matt provided input and feedback on both the Flex Best Practices articles I authored for the Adobe Developer Connection. In addition he reviewed and provided input and feedback for the Flex 4 Overview article I authored for InsideRIA. Matt is a Product Manager for developer-focused technology after having been a software engineer for 6 years. He is the Product Manager of Flex at Adobe.
Check his blog here: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mchotin/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/mchotin/

Eric Feminella
Eric and I have worked together on several Flex and AIR projects together and he’s also provided mentoring to me. Eric is one of the best Flex developers I’ve ever worked with and one of the nicest guys ever.  Definitely an extra special thanks to Eric!! Eric is a Software Architect specializing in providing quality solutions and services for enterprise and consumer class RIAs targeting the Adobe Flash Platform and associated technologies.
Check his blog here: http://www.ericfeminella.com/blog/

Adam Flater
Adam and I started chatting on twitter in early 2008. He’s provided tons of great help and guidance on Flex, Java and design patterns to me ever since. Adam is a Technical Architect and Evangelist at Roundarch. His career has been centered on building innovative graphical user interfaces and research of emerging technology. He is also a contributor to InsideRIA and the creator of Merapi.
Check his blog here: http://adamflater.blogspot.com/
Folllow on twitter: http://twitter.com/adamflater/

Kevin Hoyt
I’ve seen several presentations by Kevin at Apollo Camp, the LA AIR Bus Tour and Flex Camp Orange Country. Kevin is probably my favorite presenter. He provides what seems to be effortless presentations that are easy to understand, interesting and just plain cool. Kevin is a Platform Evangelist with Adobe, and is actively involved with both the Flash and JavaScript communities.
Check his blog here: http://blog.kevinhoyt.org/
Follow in twitter: http://twitter.com/parkerkrhoyt/

Andy Powell
Andy is pretty much a guru in my book when it comes to Flex / server integration and development. Andy has answered a number of my questions about Java, BlazeDS and Spring integration for Flex development. Andy is a RIA developer located in the metro Atlanta, GA area.  He is currently employed by Universal Mind where he builds really cool applications with tools like Java, Adobe Flex, Adobe ColdFusion, Adobe Spry, Hibernate, Spring, & other cool technologies.
Check his blog here: http://www.infoaccelerator.net/blog/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/umandy/

David Tucker
I first noticed David’s work when he created the blog series on learning Cairngorm. He did such a great job it was amazing. He provided written explanations, code example and videos. Kudos man, I still send people there to learn about Cairngorm. David Tucker is a Rich Internet Application developer, author, and trainer. David currently serves as a Software Engineer at Universal Mind. In addition, David also blogs regularly at InsideRIA where he produces the Weekly RIA RoundUp podcast. David also recently completed the AIR 1.5 Cookbook (with a great group of co-authors) and the Lynda.com series, AIR for Flash Developers.
Check his blog here: http://www.davidtucker.net/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/mindmillmedia/

Sean Voisen
I have to send extra special thanks to Sean because he is the one that first got me into Flex development in 2006. I had looked at Flex in 2004 and 2005 but never really got into it. At that time I was doing a lot of Flash based work but Sean helped me see the light. Sean is a really cool guy and a pleasure to be around. Sean works with a lot of different technologies and probably wouldn’t classify himself as a Flex Developer. Sean has been a teacher at the Art Institute of California and has worked with companies like AOL and Adobe.
Check his blog here: http://voisen.org/
Follow on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/svoisen/

Jesse Warden
I’ve been a fan of Jesse, or jesterxl since 2003. Back in the Flashcoders mailing list days. I first noticed Jesse because he would answer what seemed like an endless amount of Flash and ActionScript related email threads. He emailed me once in 2003/2004 and helped with a question I had posted. I’ve been a huge fan of Jesse ever since. Jesse also hooked me up with the team at Enablus where I did some Flex development in 2008 and 2009. Jesse is a professional software design & development consultant. His background is in multimedia, blending art & programming together. If it’s cool, and computer related, he wants to be involved. He is currently a Flex & Flash Architect at Roundarch.
Check is blog here: http://jessewarden.com/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/Jesterxl/

Rich Tretola
I first started talking to Rich online in 2007 when he did some testing of an AIR app I had developed at that time. He provided very helpful guidance and insight to resolve some issues with the app I was having. Rich also has provided a much appreciated stream of patience and input for articles that I’ve authored for InsideRIA. Thanks again Rich!!! Rich has been building Internet applications for over 10 years and has worked with Flex since the original Royale beta version of Flex in 2003. Other than Flex, Rich builds applications using ColdFusion, Flash, and Java. Rich is highly regarded within the Flex community as an expert in RIA and is also an Adobe Community Expert. He runs a popular Flex and AIR blog at EverythingFlex.com, is the community manager of InsideRIA.com and was also a speaker at the Adobe MAX 2007 conference in Chicago and the MAX 2008 in San Francisco. He will be speaking again this year at MAX 2009 in LA.
Check his blog here: http://blog.everythingflex.com/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/richtretola/

Last August I began researching and exploring the new features and capabilities in the next version of Flex, Flex 4 Gumbo. Adobe has been posting nightly builds of Flex 4 since last summer. Gareth Edwards was nice enough to help me to get set up and compiling the SDK at the time. Juan Sanchez was doing some initial blogging and Ely Greenfield released the infamous video demonstrating the new skinning techniques soon to be available. The Overview of Flex 4 (Gumbo) article was originally started as a presentation I was building in late August / early September. (I may still port the content back into a presentation in the near future. The InsideRIA Conference is coming up and a Flex 4 preso might be a good candidate for the “Call for Papers”.)

I’ll have to say this article was a labor of love. We made it through prefix and namespace issues, code updates and also various other updates to the product time line, etc. I really enjoyed working on the article and am very, very pleased that it’s finally been released into the wild. I’d like to thank Rich Tretola for his patience and help during the authoring process and would also like to send out a gigantic thanks to Matt Chotin for the time he provided to review the article. I’d also like to thank Deepa for all of the awesome content on the Adobe Open Source site, my article would not exist without it.

The new Flex 4 landscape is rich with features and improvements. Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst will empower a new sect of designers, devigners and deselopers into the world of Flex based development for the Flash Platform. I’m very excited to see what my Flash brethren bring to the table using Catalyst. I’m also very excited about the Unit Testing automation that’s available and many other developer centric updates that have been included in the Flex 4 framework and in Flash Builder.

When I first started looking into the code for how the new Spark component architecture is structured I got all warm and fuzzy. Spark totally separates the component logic from the view markup which should really standardize component development and also enable a whole new level of skinning and UX for Flex application development.

Anyone looking to upgrade their Flex 3 applications to Flex 4 please get in touch. I’m really excited to start talking about the possibilities of upgrading and refactoring to the new framework. I’m currently working on a Flex 4 application example that makes use of Cairngorm and the new version of Flex Unit so check back for that soon.

Here’s the link to my article, I hope it provides a decent overview of what’s available in Flex 4:
http://www.insideria.com/2009/06/overview-of-flex-4-gumbo.html

It should be an exciting week and the buzz about the beta release is already getting crazy! Here are a couple of important links:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex4sdk_whatsnew.html
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/

http://www.ashorten.com/2009/06/01/flash-builder-and-flash-catalyst-betas-now-on-labs/

Happy Flexing!!!

When developing Flex and/or AIR applications there are a handful of tools that really make the difference between a good project and a great project. They are all very valuable and provide stability and clarity for the RIA development process; or at least they have for me. From Unit Testing to SVN utilities to frameworks and libraries I’ve found the following ten items to be very useful and helpful. I’d even go so far as to say these are critical for quality Flex RIA development; but as Les says: “It’s just a matter of opinion.”

Cairngorm
Cairngorm is the lightweight micro-architecture for Rich Internet Applications built in Flex or AIR. A collaboration of recognized design patterns, Cairngorm exemplifies and encourages best-practices for RIA development advocated by Adobe Consulting, encourages best-practice leverage of the underlying Flex framework, while making it easier for medium to large teams of software engineers deliver medium to large scale, mission-critical Rich Internet Applications.

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/cairngorm/Cairngorm

Download: http://download.macromedia.com/pub/opensource/cairngorm/cairngorm2_2_1-bin.zip

Flex Unit
FlexUnit is a unit testing framework for Flex and ActionScript 3.0 applications and libraries. It mimics the functionality of JUnit, a Java unit testing framework, and comes with a graphical test runner.

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexunit/FlexUnit

Download: http://download.macromedia.com/pub/opensource/flexunit/flexunit0_9.zip

Subclipse
Subclipse is an Eclipse Team Provider plug-in providing support for Subversion within the Eclipse IDE. The software is released under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0 open source license.

http://subclipse.tigris.org/

Eclipse update site URL: http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.6.x

Eclipse
Eclipse is a multi-language software development platform comprising an IDE and a plug-in system to extend it. It is written primarily in Java and is used to develop applications in this language and, by means of the various plug-ins, in other languages as well – C, C++, COBOL, Python, Perl, PHP and more.

http://www.eclipse.org

Download: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

ASDoc
ASDoc is a command-line tool that you can use to create API language reference documentation as HTML pages from the classes in your Adobe® Flex® application. The Adobe Flex team uses the ASDoc tool to generate the Adobe Flex Language Reference.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=asdoc_1.html

Flex Ant Tasks
The Adobe® Flex® Ant tasks provide a convenient way to build your Flex projects using an industry-standard build management tool. If you are already using Ant projects to build Flex applications, you can use the Flex Ant tasks to replace your exec or java commands that invoke the mxmlc and compc compilers. If you are not yet using Ant to build your Flex applications, you can take advantage of these custom tasks to quickly and easily set up complex build processes for your Flex applications.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=anttasks_1.html

Installation: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=anttasks_2.html#224215

Degrafa
Degrafa is a declarative graphics framework open source licensed under MIT.

http://www.degrafa.org

Download: http://www.degrafa.org/code/

as3corelib
The corelib project is an ActionScript 3 Library that contains a number of classes and utilities for working with ActionScript 3. These include classes for MD5 and SHA 1 hashing, Image encoders, and JSON serialization as well as general String, Number and Date APIs.

http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/

Download: http://as3corelib.googlecode.com/files/as3corelib-.92.1.zip

Flex SDK coding conventions and best practices
Coding standards for writing open-source Flex framework components in ActionScript 3. Adhering to these standards makes the source code look consistent, well-organized, and professional.

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Coding+Conventions

Flex Language Reference
The Flex 3.3 Language Reference provides syntax and usage information for every element in the ActionScript™ language. It documents all elements in Adobe® Flash® Player and Adobe® AIR™ that are officially supported by Adobe.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/

The world of Flex development is pretty big and it’s expanding all the time. There are many types of applications that can be built with Flex from dashboards to widgets, media playback utilities to Enterprise RIAs and don’t forget interactive kiosks and Internet aware desktop applications. One of the most common questions that I get asked is: How/Where do I learn Flex? I think one of the keys to mastery is a successful learning path. I also think that a solid foundation goes a long way. We’ve all heard the phrase: “crawl, walk, run…”

Here are some resources that helped me learn Flex. They are organized in a somewhat sequential fashion.

Beginner

Lynda.com

• Flex 3 Beyond the Basics
• Flex 3 Essential Training
• Flex 2 Advanced: Using Data Services

O’Reilly Programming Flex 3

Adobe.com

• Flex SDK coding conventions and best practices
• Flex Examples Blog
• Adobe Flex Developers Guide
• Developing AIR applications with Flex

DClick Adobe Flex Coding Guidelines

CFlex, Community Flex

Using ASDoc

Intermeditate

AtTest (practice exam engine for Adobe Flex Developer Certification)

Flex Certification

Flexlib (open source user interface components)

Flex Unit

Subversion

• Subclipse
• TortoiseSVN

Creating Flex components

Developing Flex RIAs with Cairngorm (Steven Webster, Adobe Consulting)

David Tucker

• Getting Started with Cairngorm – Part 1
• Getting Started with Cairngorm – Part2
• Getting Started with Cairngorm – Part 3
• Getting Started with Cairngorm – Part 4

Mate Framework

• Mate website
• Mate: Event driven framework for Flex (Article for Flash Magazine by Sean Moore)

Adobe Flex Community Expert program

Papervision / Away3D

MXMLC

Flex and SWC files

Degrafa

Advanced

Livecycle

Flash Media Server

Flex Charting

ILog Charts

Particle Systems

Flint (more particles)

Paul Ortchanian (scripted 3D, particles, bezier)

Flex Modules

Flex Profiler

Flex Ant Tasks

BlazeDS

Misc. Resources:

Mike Chambers blog

Ryan Stewart blog

Kevin Hoyt

Eric Feminella blog

Ted Patrick blog

Lee Brimelow blog

Flex Show

Adobe Developer Connection

Adobe Edge Magazine

Flex.org

Adobe Feeds

Flex Camp

Farata Systems Training

Comtaste (Flex training)

Beyond Flex

Spring

Hibernate

MySQL

Oracle

JPA

Ant

Java

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

VTC – Design Patterns videos

Continuous Integration

Agile software development

SCRUM

UML

TDD

Test Driven Development by Example

How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters

The Spring framework is not new, it’s been around since mid 2003. In very simple terms Spring is a framework to help build Java (and .NET) applications. Spring helps organize and orchestrate the source code for Java applications. Spring can be used with any Java application including Java web applications.
This is beneficial to Flex applications that communicate with server side Java web applications. In addition, Flex developers can now use the new Spring BlazeDS Integration provided by Spring with BlazeDS projects. Check out the awesome blog post and video by Christophe Coenraets for a walk through of the Spring BlazeDS Integration. His example project should get you up and running pretty quickly.

After reviewing the example that Chris provided I wanted to take things s step further and integrate Hibernate and MySQL into the project. I wrestled with the JAR’s, the classpath, the Spring and Hibernate XML markup, and the Hibernate Annotations for a while and then realized that I needed to get a firm understanding of some Spring fundamentals. Manning’s Spring in Action was recommended by a colleague and so far has been really shedding some light.

I was able to create a simple Spring project (no Flex, no BlazeDS, no Hibernate… yet) to help me understand some of the core Spring concepts. The IoC Container and AOP are two very important pieces of the Spring framework. This very simple project only utilizes the IoC Container. Aspect Oriented Programming is very cool and I also recommend checking it out. AOP is not covered in this example. (Check out cross cutting concerns.)

There is a simple Ant task to compile, jar and run the application. You’ll also need the latest version of the JDK for this application.

You can download the project using a Subversion client using the following URL:

http://seantheflexguy.com/applicationcontextex/

You can also download a zipped version of the project here:

http://seantheflexguy.com/java/ApplicationContextExample.zip

To run the project navigate to the directory where you downloaded the project, and extracted if you grabbed the zip. Then from the project root using a Terminal or Command Prompt issue the command: ant to compile and: ant run to run the application.

The first version of the application used a BeanFactory. This second version uses the ApplicationContext class instead. BeanFactory is in Spring’s core module, it’s the main Spring container that provides DI. The ApplicationContext module builds on BeanFactory providing additional capabilities such as: internationalization and validation support and access to the application event lifecycle.

The Simple Spring Example Project should help you understand the most basic level Spring mechanics. The only JARs required by the project are spring.jar and the commons-logging-1.1.1.jar, both are included with the project. The Ant build file will set the CLASSPATH for these JARs, if you bypass Ant make sure to set these on the CLASSPATH prior to compiling the application.

So far Spring really looks like a powerful way to organize and manage Java application development. You should take a moment to check it out. Also be sure to check out the Spring BlazeDS Integration.