The World Wide Web According to …

Hello World,

AboutWeb LLC in partnership with Adobe Systems will be hosting Flex Camp 2008 on February 13th. Flex Camp 2008 is a FREE one-day boot camp style event geared towards those who want to learn how to harness the Power and Functionality of Flex 3!

A special Adobe AIR presentation has also included in the agenda (given by yours truly).

Continental breakfast will be server in the morning, lunch will be served around noon, an Open Q & A session featuring all the presenters will be held towards the end of the day, and very informative presentations will be given throughout the day.

Did I mention that all of this  is FREE?!!

Although this event is limited to 70 seats, I’m sure you won’t want to wait to register. So here’s the URL;

http://flexcamp.aboutweb.com/

See you then!

Ciao 

Hello World,

This morning I attended the Adobe RIA Pre-Release Tour at the DC location. This event was hosted by Fig Leaf Software (the producer of the WebManiacs conference coming this May). and sponsored by AboutWeb and Carahsoft. After Steve Drucker gave us a “warm” introduction and thanked us for coming on the coldest day of the year, Adobe Product Marketing Manager Dave Gruber was our first host for the event.

Here are some of the highlights from Dave Gruber’s presentation (9:00a);

• Servers/Services included Scene 7, Flash Cast, ColdFusion, and LiveCycle.
• Adobe Technologies have reached over 700 million OCs and over 200 million devices. Can you say s-a-t-u-r-a-t-i-o-n?
• Thermo is a new tool that will allow designers to bring together thier assets using one tool and produce output that the developer can use to further build the app.
• The Harley Davidson Genuine Motor Accessories Customizer was one the the more impressive sites that showcase the use of Flex. (see http://www.harley-davidson.com/pr/gm/customizer/launchCustomizer.asp)
• Adobe Flex Builder 3 pricing/upgrade; Standard – $249/$99, Professional – $649/$299.
• The professional edition includes; Memory and performance profilers, Charting components, Advanced datagrid, Automated testing.
• Flex 3 IS open source and is available under MPL. (see opensource.adobe.com/flex)
• BlazeDS, Flex remoting and messeging, IS open source and is available under LGPG v3 (see opensource.adobe.com/blazeds)
• Flex Builder 3 Enhancements/Additions: Enhanced Constrints, Advances DataGrid, CSS Editor, Charting Enhancements, Advanced Data Visualization, Web Services Introspection, added Data Wizards for ASP.NET, Java and PHP, and much more.
• Every wonder why move back to the desktop? Total control of the user experience, desktop consistency, Rich media support, Network resilience, desktop access to services.
• A question was asked about the size of Adobe AIR. Here is a quote from an Adobe FAQ; “The current size for Adobe AIR is just over 10 megabytes. It is important to note that the runtime only needs to be downloaded once.”
• They committed to release early 2008. (before your Flex 3 beta expires!)
• A question was asked; “Could I associate a file my AIR app created with my AIR app?” The answer is yes. (here is an example – http://www.senocular.com/air/tutorials/fileassociation/).
• There were a lot of questions about Security with a Flex 3/AIR application. Tim found an URL for a security white paper. (see http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/air/air_security.pdf and http://livedocs.adobe.com/labs/air/1/devappsflex/help.html?content=security_1.html)
• There are some limitations for AIR version 1.0; No USB API, no access to native libraries or executables, limited printing support, limited localization.

Here are some of the highlights from Tim Buntels’s presentation (12:05p);

• He posted a series of URLs pointing to some important resources;
  • BlaxeDS:
    • http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/blazeDS/faq.pdf
  • AIR:
    • http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air
    • http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/air/air_security.pdf
  • Flex
    • htp://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex
    • http://bugs.adobe.com/flex
    • http://www.adobe.com/go/flex_cookbook
    • http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flex_sdext.html
    • http://www.flex.org
• He and his team has been focusing more on Flex 4.
• It is “likely” that Flex 4 will be used with the upcoming Flash Player version 10.
• He showed us some examples of using external skins and css to style Flex components. It was really some cool stuff whether you are a designer or not.
• He showed us an example of the Advanced DataGrid component; multiple column sorting and column grouping (treeview display).
• He also demonstrated the Profiler and Refactor feature of Flex 3.

It was a wonderful morning meeting old and new friends and listening to Dave and Tim talk about Flex and AIR. The end of the meeting was punctuated with prize giveaways, copies of Adobe Flex, an iPod nano, and several Adobe bags. Of course if you didn’t win a prize, there was always the free pens and markers at the sponsor desks.

Ciao