The Official Flex Team Blog

Learn about Flex and Zend at PHP User Groups

2008-09-30T14:59:22Z

The Adobe technical evangelism team will be hitting the road in October talking about our recent announcement with Zend. PHP developers who are interested in learning about Flex and Zend should join Kevin Hoyt, Danny Dura, Ryan Stewart and Christophe Coenraets as they show developers how to get started with Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR and Zend.

Here is the schedule for this user group tour:

October 1st - Boston PHP User Group (Kevin Hoyt)

October 1st - LA Adobe User Group (Christophe Coenraets )

October 2nd - San Francisco PHP Meetup (Danny Dura)

October 2nd - Seattle PHP User Group (Christophe Coenraets )

October 8th - Triangle PHP User Group in North Carolina (Danny Dura)

October 11th - Miami PHP User Group (Danny Dura)

October 14th - Dallas PHP User Group (Danny Dura)

October 14th - Portland PHP User Group (Ryan Stewart)

October 16th - Utah PHP User Group (Ryan Stewart)

October 16th - Cincinnati PHP User Group (Kevin Hoyt)

November 4th - New York PHP User Group (Kevin Hoyt)

November 6th - Montreal PHP User Group (Kevin Hoyt)

Danny Dura will also be doing a session at the PHP Works Conference in Atlanta on November 13th.

If you can't make any of those dates, then try to join us at MAX North America in San Francisco. Or you can learn more about Flex and PHP using Zend from the Flex developer center.

Flex in a Week - Day 4 posted and exercises fixed

2008-09-26T18:44:20Z

I know that a lot of you have been anxiously waiting for the remaining training. We just posted day 4. There is a lot of content for day 4 so this will take you longer to go through than the previous days. We have also incorporated your feedback to fix the exercises. We also have some of the day 5 videos ready but we are waiting till we have everything for day 5 available. My best guess is that day 5 will be available by end of next week. Day 5 will be all videos and will probably not be as long as the first 4 days.

I also want to give you some perspective on the delays. Creating training of this quality and size is very time consuming. When we had the first three days, we had a choice of waiting for all the training or posting what we had. We went with the second option. This has given us a chance to incorporate your feedback. Given the number of people who have gone through the first three days, we think we made the right choice by posting what we had.

Please continue to give us feedback. We are reading it though we may not be able to respond to each and every comment.

Adobe and Zend Announce Collaboration

2008-09-16T16:37:18Z

Today Adobe and Zend entered into a collaboration to bring together the flexibility, productivity and enterprise reliability of PHP and Zend Platform with the user experience benefits of the open source Flex framework. This collaboration will deliver technologies, content and services to make it easy for enterprise developers to build web applications using Flex on the client and PHP on the server. (Read the official press release.)

Adobe has joined the Zend Framework project and will work with the framework community to optimize communication between Zend Framework and Adobe Flex applications. Adobe has contributed support for the open, binary AMF format for exchanging data between Flex applications and PHP applications to the Zend Framework.

In addition, Zend and Adobe plan to optimize the experience for developers using their respective development environments. Zend Studio and Adobe® Flex Builder, both built on the open source Eclipse platform, provide robust coding, debugging, and testing tools for professional developers.

As part of this announcement, Adobe has also redesigned the PHP page of the Flex developer center, and will be contributing articles and videos to that page, as well as the Flex page on Zend Developer Zone.

If you're interested in running Zend Studio with Flex Builder in the same version of Eclipse, we recommend using the standalone version of Zend Studio and the plugin version of Flex Builder. Install Zend Studio first, then install the Eclipse plugin of Flex Builder.

The latest version of Zend Studio (6.1) is built on Eclipse 3.4, so installing the Eclipse plugin of Flex Builder doesn't work perfectly. When you install Flex Builder, you'll receive an error - don't worry, that's OK. Just follow the instructions to get Flex Builder working properly - launch Zend Studio, then go to Help -> Software Updates -> Manage Configuration, select "Add an extension location" in the right hand pane. In the browse dialog, select the Flex Builder plugin folder, and everything should work fine.

We're really excited to be working with Zend and being part of the Zend Framework. Most of all, we can't wait to see all the great applications that developers build with PHP and Flex.

Updated RSL for Flex Data Visualization 3.0.1

2008-09-05T20:25:58Z

Due to a bug in our signing process it appears the cacheable RSL for the datavisualization components in Flex Builder doesn't work in 3.0.1. We have updated the RSL and made it available here. Go ahead and replace it in your Flex Builder 3.0.1 installation and you'll hopefully be set.

Awesome Flex and AIR Apps for Students

2008-09-02T20:44:31Z

Areez Gangji, an intern here at Adobe, has written an article about the top 10 Flex and AIR applications for students. The article covers such great applications as Timetoast, Craig's List Desktop, Adobe's own Acrobat.com and more. Read the article, and if you're interested, help Digg it up.

Flex and PHP Training Now Available

2008-08-28T15:28:21Z

The team at PHP Architect have recently announced a new course for Flex and PHP training. The course is split into 7 units and lasts 19 hours, covering everything that a PHP developer needs to know to get up to speed with Flex, including an introduction to Flex and Flex components, and how your Flex application talks to PHP. There's also a session on Adobe AIR, and extending your PHP applications to the desktop.

Developers taking the course will get a first hand look at Flex - the actual application delivering the material was recently rewritten with Flex. As well, the August issue of PHP Architect magazine has an article about creating a chat application with Flex and PHP. Finally, there's a talk about Flex and PHP at their PHP Works conference in Atlanta, from November 12th - 14th.

Flex developer who use PHP on the server have had a lot of great news lately. Andi Gutmans blogged about Adobe supporting the Zend Framework by providing AMF support to the Zend Framework just a few weeks ago.

Adobe Student Reps for RIAs

2008-08-19T01:13:16Z

Adobe is looking for Adobe Student Reps for RIAs. Adobe Student Reps receive community recognition, speaking opportunities in some Adobe sponsored events, access to Adobe resources (presentation slides, information posters, contact with AIR and Flex team) and some funding available for approved events. If you are a passionate about RIAs and willing to help your classmates to know more about RIA technologies, you should consider joining this program. This is a great opportunity to get to know the Adobe team and to network with other reps.

The application form is available here. Note that you must be registered and logged onto flex.org to view and fill this form.

This week's Gumbo specs posted

2008-08-12T23:33:51Z

A new round of specs are posted on the Gumbo site. Check out the revised Gumbo Component Architecture whitepaper, the Gumbo Skinning overview, along with specs on the Range, Track Base, Slider, Spinner, and Numeric Stepper classes.

Flex 3 Wins Best of Open Source Award

2008-08-06T00:41:40Z

We are very pleased that Flex 3 has won Best Open Source developer tool for RIAs as part of InfoWorld's Best of Open Source Software Awards.

Help us continue to be the best by staying connected on the Flex Open Source site and contributing in the various ways we have listed.

Upgrade now and get your August 2008 Flex t-shirt

2008-07-31T18:55:34Z

We are offering a free limited edition t-shirt to the first 500 people who upgrade to Flex Builder 3 starting August 1, 2008. Hurry and purchase the upgrade from the Adobe store to get your t-shirt. We hope that this will give you the extra push to upgrade soon and have access to the latest features of Flex Builder and the Flex framework.

Note that you must purchase the upgrade from the Adobe store to be eligible for this offer. After you purchase the upgrade, you will receive an email giving you further instructions on how you can specify the gender and size for the t-shirt.

Adobe Contributing AMF Support to Zend Framework

2008-07-31T15:02:27Z

Today we’ve shared an overview of our proposal to include AMF support in the Zend Framework. This new component of the Zend Framework will allow PHP developers to build Flex applications that run in the browser using Flash Player or Adobe AIR and communicate to the server using AMF.

The proposal gives PHP developers an Adobe sponsored AMF project, bringing AMF interoperability closer to what is available for ColdFusion and Java developers. (Adobe released the AMF specification in December of 2007.)

Wade Arnold, who runs the AMFPHP project, is leading the Zend Framework work for Adobe.

For PHP developers who aren’t using the Zend Framework, there are other AMF solutions available, including AMFPHP, WebORB for PHP, SabreAMF and a native PHP extension called AMFEXT.

Andi Gutmans, CTO of Zend, has a few more details on his blog. We’re really excited to be joining the Zend Framework family – joining IBM, Google, Microsoft and others who are contributing to the framework.

Adobe is a platinum sponsor of the Zend Conference, September 15 – 18 in Santa Clara. We'll have a few sessions there that will talk about this new Zend Framework component.

Flex in a Week is available

2008-07-28T23:21:46Z

Flex in a Week is a week-long, video based online training program for developers. This self-paced program is free and is intended to help developers accelerate their Flex learning. The training will eventually be a full 5-day program, however we are launching with the first three days which will provide developers with enough learning to get them started using Flex. We will complete the remaining two days of content over the coming weeks.

Please help us promote this valuable new training resource by blogging about it and by including a link in your email signatures. This program should play a key role in increasing Flex adoption.

We are also looking for feedback. Please let us know what you think of this training.

AIR For Flex Developers Training from Lynda.com

2008-07-25T19:21:14Z

Steve at Lynda.com emailed me to let me know of a new course they have up at Lynda.com for Flex developers. "AIR for Flex Developers is David Gassner's follow-up to his AIR Essential Training course, and takes a deeper look at how Flex Builder 3 and the Flex 3 framework can be used to build cross-system desktop applications with Adobe AIR. David examines every point of integration with the host operating system, including working with the local file system, creating and maintaining local databases, and managing native windows and menus."
You can get a free demo and check out the table of contents of this course.

If you're looking for Flex training, Lynda.com is a great spot to start. Adobe has recently made some free Flex video training available on the Flex developer center, and Total Training is another great resource.

This Week in Flex - YouTube Style

2008-07-24T14:15:21Z

Lyora MacRae, an intern on the Adobe developer marketing team, has begun publishing a weekly video called "This Week in Flex", where she highlights two or three stories from the Flex community and a cool application from the Flex Showcase on Flex.org. She's onto her third episode this week, and is getting much more comfortable in front of the camera.

Check out This Week in Flex on the AdobeFlexTV YouTube channel, which includes her weekly videos, and other good Flex and AIR videos that she's found on YouTube for you.

This Week in Flex Episode 3:

This Week in Flex Episode 2:

Gumbo Docs and Specs pushed this week

2008-07-23T18:35:50Z

ASDoc
MXML 2009 (update to MXML)

Enjoy!