Recently in flex.org Category

Today we launched a new Flex.org website that is now more focused on community resources. The old Flex.org was focused on getting developers up and running with Flex and Flex Builder - we think that the Flex product pages and the Flex developer center are doing a great job for that right now. We decided to take the old community page from Flex.org and create an entire site around that page.

The new site features Flex focused content aggregated from a number of sources. For news, we get information from Digg or DZone's flash-flex tag. We aggregate job information from SearchCoders, RIAJobs.org, FlexGigs and Dice.com. We aggregate podcasts from the Flex Show and RIA Weekly.

Community members can add their own components, themes and other software to the site. User group members can add their own user groups to the site, and anyone can add events to the site, such as upcoming Flex Camp events, training events, user group meetings, and conferences. Finally, the site also has a list of Flex consultants that are available to help with Flex development.

There are a few RSS feeds that you can subscribe to from the site. The main RSS feed has a list of Flex news and information from around the web. The Flex Jobs RSS feed has a list of Flex jobs available. The Flex Podcast and Videocast RSS feed has a list of Flex focused podcasts and videocast episodes. Finally, the Flex Showcase RSS feed continues to highlight cool Flex applications that developers are building and adding to Flex.org.

We've received a ton of great feedback on the launch of the new Flex showcase at Flex.org. Did you know that there are over 90 live Flex applications in the Flex Showcase already, and we only launched a few days ago! Thanks very much for everyone who has sent feedback either via blog comments or email.

We're working on implementing the new features for the showcase, but we were able to do one thing yesterday that a lot of people requested.

We've removed the new Flex Showcase from launching in a new window, and now have it on the same page as the old Flex showcase, at flex.org/showcase/. Doing that solves a few problems. First, it makes it easier to see all the Flex applications - you don't need to click on a link to see anything. Secondly, this solves a problem with launching new windows in Firefox that were opening up in the pop up window for some people.

Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming. And if you haven't added your application to the Flex Showcase yet, what are you waiting for? (Flex based AIR applications are also welcome!)
-Mike Potter

Today we launched the new Flex Showcase on Flex.org, and are using a Flex based application created by Teknision for the UI. Finally, a Flex application on Flex.org! The new Flex showcase is powered by Drupal, an open source PHP framework on the backend. The project has taken 4 months to complete, but we're really happy about the new look to it.

The showcase improves on a number of areas from the previous showcase. First of all, developers can manage their own applications - you decide on the screenshots, description, title etc... Secondly, you can put much more information into your entry. The description field can be longer than the few lines we had, you can have multiple screenshots and longer titles. Lastly, you can easily categorize your application based on your industry, and what technology you're using. If you can't find categories to describe your entry, you can always add as many tags as you like.

Visitors to the Flex Showcase will notice that its really easy to filter based on technology or industry, so you can now find that Flex and Java application in the financial services sector to show as a sample of what can be done. Tags are another way of easily finding applications - you can now find all the video applications easily.

Visitors will also be able to add comments to the applications, as well as vote for them if they like them. A small way to provide feedback on the applications that are in the showcase.

The original showcase had over 120 entries in it, and we've moved about 75 of them over to the new showcase. If yours isn't in the new one, feel free to add it now, and let the world know how many Flex applications there are.

What do you think of the new Flex Showcase?

-Mike Potter

Just a quick note that I've made a small change to the Flex.org website. You can now subscribe to an RSS feed for all the Showcase applications. The feed will include every item on the Showcase page. This is an easy way to keep up to date with items that we add to the Showcase. If you'd like to submit an application, just tag it with "flex.org" on del.icio.us.