A compilation of O'Reilly Media's information about Flex, a collection of technologies for the development of rich internet applications based on Adobe's Flash platform, from news, books, conferences, courses, community, and reports. Copyright O'Reilly Media, Inc. http://oreilly.com/flex/ 2009-11-11T10:57:12-08:00 O'Reilly Media, Inc. no O'Reilly Media, Inc. webmaster@oreillynet.com http://www.insideria.com/2009/11/eager-loading-in-actionscript.html

Last week, I wrote about the Lazy Loading design pattern. There's not much written about its opposite, Eager Loading, in ActionScript 3. The reason for this is simple–true eager loading can't be done in AS3 itself, it has to be...

Amy Blankenship 2009-11-11T10:57:12-08:10 http://www.insideria.com/2009/11/post-5.html

In this post, we will walk through the steps to create an interactive chart with a Google-Finance-esque interaction.

Andrew Trice 2009-11-05T20:31:30-08:11 http://www.insideria.com/2009/10/multi-touch-and-the-flash-plat.html

One of the big announcements at MAX this year was Flash on devices. As the capabilities of devices change, so do the capabilities of the platforms we use to build our applications. One of the latest trends is Multi-touch. In this post, I'll try to shed some light on the upcoming multitouch capabilities in AIR 2.0 and Flash Player 10.1.

Andrew Trice 2009-10-16T18:01:23-08:12 http://www.insideria.com/2009/10/easy-flex-skinning-with-firewo.html

I'm as excited as anyone about the prospect of Flash Catalyst, but I recently discovered that skinning in Flex 3 is down right easy. When I first was learning Flex, I had Studio 8, so I managed to completely overlook...

Amy Blankenship 2009-10-02T14:25:50-08:13 http://www.insideria.com/2009/10/potomac---bringing-osgi-modula.html

OSGi is taking over the Java world. The modularity features offered by OSGi have become so popular that it seems like all the major Java enterprise applications and frameworks have adopted OSGi or have plans to. Products and frameworks such as Eclipse (and therefore Flex Builder), Spring, Websphere, Guice, Weblogic, and JBoss all use OSGi. Even organizations such as NASA have adopted OSGi. So what is OSGi and why is it so popular? This article will try to answer those questions and introduce you to Potomac - the new OSGi inspired framework for Flex.

Chris Gross 2009-10-01T13:09:57-08:14 http://www.insideria.com/2009/09/flash-developer-guerrilla-work.html

Advance Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. Each AFT is designed to be quickly digested, usually only taking a few minutes to get up and running, and contains valuable information you can directly apply to your next Flash campaign. In this AFT I will go over - Setting Up The Flash Developer Guerrilla Workflow.

Jesse Freeman 2009-09-22T07:58:24-08:15 http://www.insideria.com/2009/09/bringing-football-highlights-t.html

In the spirit of tonight's first NFL game of the season, I decided to put together an example that integrates feeds from NFL.com and brings it directly to your desktop. This is a basic example that demonstrates how to use Flash Builder's data wizards to consume data from a public rss feed as a HTTPService.

Andrew Trice 2009-09-17T13:30:53-08:16 http://www.insideria.com/2009/09/a-flex-developers-guide-to-use.html

If you've been following the news in the web and/or RIA industry at all lately you've undoubtedly come across two little letters, U and X. UX of course, is the abbreviation for the big trend in application development right now known as User Experience. You've worked hard to become a great developer. You've learned the best practices to write bulletproof code, you've even mastered a crazy framework. Now it's time to go to the next level, you need to create an exceptional experience that matches your solid code.

Tim Todish 2009-09-15T09:32:47-08:17 http://www.insideria.com/2009/09/do-you-speak-flex-part-two-rec.html

It’s imperative to identify what your requirements are and the number of resources that you’ll need to address them. You must determine what your team needs to accomplish before you begin to assemble it, otherwise you risk redundancy, inefficiency, and slowed or stalled projects. It sounds elementary, but this step can save you a lot of headaches later on.

Ben Elmore 2009-09-09T13:27:46-08:18 http://www.insideria.com/2009/09/flex-profiling.html

This video excerpt is from Colin Moock's Lost ActionScript 3.0 Weekend Course 2. In Course 2 of this unique DVD training series, you'll learn intermediate to advanced ActionScript 3.0 programming concepts. World-renowned ActionScript guru and educator Colin Moock presents...

Colin Moock 2009-09-06T12:59:45-08:19 http://www.insideria.com/2009/09/50-most-usable-rias.html

We applied two simple criteria to identify the 50 most usable RIAs: Number 1: Does it adhere to the 10 basic usability principles? Number 2: Is it really rich? Developing a product with Ajax, Flex, or Silverlight doesn't inherently make it rich. A usable RIA will embody these six principles: Make it Direct, Keep it Lightweight, Stay in the Page, Provide an Invitation, Use Transitions, React Immediately.

Theresa Neil 2009-09-02T18:26:36-08:20 http://www.insideria.com/2009/09/10-tips-for-flex-application-p.html

We're going to keep this post lean and mean, and get down to business with 10 Tips that will keep your Flex applications fast, lean, and responsive. Read on to see the list.

Andrew Trice 2009-09-01T20:56:49-08:21 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/debugging-actionscript.html

This excerpt is from Colin Moock's Lost ActionScript 3.0 Weekend Course 2. In Course 2 of this unique DVD training series, you'll learn intermediate to advanced ActionScript 3.0 programming concepts. World-renowned ActionScript guru and educator Colin Moock presents this intimate...

Colin Moock 2009-08-30T11:02:27-08:22 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/flex-components-101---enabling-keyboard-support-in-uicomponent.html

If you ever build your own custom components that extend UIComponent, you'll no doubt run into this scenario... Even if you add event listeners for keyboard events, or if you override the keyDownHandler function, you may find that your keyboard events aren't being handled by your component instances. Setting focusEnabled, mouseFocusEnabled, or tabEnabled don't seem to do the trick either... Don't pull your hair out! It's an easy fix. Read on to see how.

Andrew Trice 2009-08-25T23:29:42-08:23 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/flex-forcecom-creating-a-publi.html

Flex and Force.com are a powerful combination for building data-driven web applications. As a faithful reader of InsideRIA, you’re probably already aware of Flex and its leading role in the evolution of rich Internet applications, but you may be less familiar with the Force.com platform. It is, in short, the same platform that underlies the well-known salesforce.com customer relationship management (CRM) and salesforce automation (SFA) software. These applications "run in the cloud," hosted on servers which are secured and maintained by salesforce.com, and accessed via the web on personal computers and mobile devices.

Michael Epstein 2009-08-25T08:28:41-08:24 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying.html

I use frameworks in my Flex code, and so should you. There is some debate today about whether there is any utility in using frameworks in Flex. The argument against frameworks is generally that they are unnecessary, constrain development style, and add lots of useless overheard to applications. I use frameworks in my Flex code because I want my code to be as valuable as possible, because I want to be as profitable as possible.

Greg Owen 2009-08-20T18:56:07-08:25 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/poll-results-which-flex-framew-1.html

We asked you which frameworks you would like to see discussed at Adobe MAX this year and you responded with Parsley, Mate, Swiz, and Pure MVC as the top frameworks you would like to hear more about. Surprisingly Cairngorm came...

Rich Tretola 2009-08-16T05:26:41-08:26 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/flexs-most-serious-competition.html

It won't be ready for prime time this year, and probably not next year, but the HTML5 specification is firming up and current implementations suggest a that HTML5 will be a strong platform for RIAs. People familiar with other versions of HTML might assume that Flex would have a few advantages over HTML5: AIR (no browser required) and data services (distributed computing.) The neologism 'coopetition' might be an apt term for the relationship between HTML5 and Flex.

Mike Slinn 2009-08-14T13:56:22-08:27 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/do-you-speak-flex-part-one-bui.html

With the release of Flex 4, misconceptions abound regarding Flex, and there has been a general reluctance to build Flex development teams internally. These are that Flex resources are scarce, and that teams need years of experience, must be large, expensive, and comprised of all-stars. However, I've found that with a few exceptions, the opposite is generally true and that nearly any organization can afford to build an effective team. This series of articles intends to debunk mistaken notions and help organizations realize the power and accessibility of this skill set.

Ben Elmore 2009-08-13T10:01:54-08:28 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/summer-of-flash-episode-5---ri.html

Rich Tretola joins us to talk about how InsideRIA works and his sessions at MAX. We also discussed the need for choice in Flex frameworks (read: micro-architectures) and some of Flash Player on mobile devices.

Garth Braithwaite 2009-08-13T01:01:39-08:29 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/kiss-my-app.html

You're probably familiar with the acronym K.I.S.S, Keep It Simple, Stupid. Let's face it, our lives our complicated enough. As designers and developers of software applications we have a unique opportunity to reduce some of those complexities by building applications that help make people's lives easier but also by making those apps as simple and easy to use as possible.

Tim Todish 2009-08-10T13:57:12-08:30 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/new-poll-which-flex-frameworks.html

InsideRIA has some exciting news about Adobe MAX that we will be sharing very soon. In preparation for one of our planned sessions, we would like to know which Flex Frameworks (micro-architectures) you would like to see us debate in...

Rich Tretola 2009-08-06T11:57:43-08:31 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/getting-started-with-spark-ski-1.html

Picking up where my last post about Spark skins left off, this post will show you how to add transitions to the skin of our previously created button.

Jason Fincanon 2009-08-05T09:59:38-08:32 http://www.insideria.com/2009/07/summer-of-flash-episode-1---si.html

This episode we get a chance to chat with Simeon Bateman and pick his brain on his recent projects. We discussed continuous integration servers, the name space change in Flex 4, and the open source nature of Adobe Flex.

Garth Braithwaite 2009-07-31T16:27:33-08:33 http://www.insideria.com/2009/06/flex-4-data-wizards-make-life.html

Connecting to data with Flex 4 and Flash Builder is now easier than ever. In this post, we'll walk through a simple scenario that will connect a Flex application to a web service, and we will barely write any code.

Andrew Trice 2009-07-30T17:25:49-08:34 http://www.insideria.com/2009/07/printing-with-flex.html

Printing is not really a strong point of Flex. Have you ever tried to print complex documents? Do reports always look fuzzy and take forever to actually print? On the quest to print high-quality reports with Flex I wanted to...

Jan Poehland 2009-07-24T16:59:17-08:35 http://www.insideria.com/2009/07/getting-started-with-spark-ski.html

One of the new features in Flex 4 is Spark skins. The spark.skins package is part of the Spark namespace and, as noted in Adobe's Flex 4 LiveDocs, "Custom Spark skins are MXML files that define the logic, graphic elements, and other objects that make up a skin for a Spark component." So what does that mean to you? I hope to get you started in learning the answer to that question in this post.

Jason Fincanon 2009-07-20T15:27:50-08:36 http://www.insideria.com/2009/07/flex-4-overview-slides-posted.html

A few weeks ago I gave a talk with Andy McIntosh at Adobe Camp Denver on some of the new features in Flex 4. The conference was fantastic. I've embedded the slides and links to our examples in this entry. Enjoy!

RJ Owen 2009-07-17T17:55:56-08:37 http://www.insideria.com/2009/07/flash-on-the-beach---interview.html

Flash on the Beach is fast approaching this year, tickets are selling out faster than ever and we're promised this is going to be the best yet! But don't just take my word for it, I managed to wrangle a few minutes from John Davey, organiser and head honcho of Flash on the Beach, to ask him a few questions about why this is one of the hottest events on the conference calendar.

Dan Thomas 2009-07-16T02:26:41-08:38 http://www.insideria.com/2009/07/flex-silverlight-job-trends.html

Here are the results of a query on RIA job trends on indeed.com: One naturally has many questions about the data: what geographic area does it represent? How are duplicate postings handled? ... and so on, however the trend lines...

Mike Slinn 2009-07-10T06:26:28-08:39