The Official Flex Team Blog

The new reduced price for Flex Builder is now available on the Adobe.com online store, and is also reflected on the Flex product page. As a reminder, Flex Builder is now available for $249 US. Similar price reductions should be in effect on all the international stores as well.

Facebook announced a new ad service today that allows products and companies to create pages on Facebook. Not wanting to waste any time, we’ve setup a page for Flex on Facebook. Check it out and check out the Flex Facebook Group while you’re there too.

Today we announced that we will be making Flex Builder free for students and faculty. We’re still working out the final details, but soon students will be able to download Flex Builder at no charge. A simple form will have to be filled out, along with proof of enrollment, and then you’ll be granted the ability to download Flex Builder with Charting at no charge. Look for more details on the Flex Developer Center in a few weeks time. We’ll be posting more details in the official Flex Facebook Group when they’re available.

Are you looking for a chance to meet the Flex engineering team in person? Are you starting out with Flex and wanting to learn more about it? Are you an experienced Flex developer and looking to meet other Flex developers, or even present sessions at a Flex event? If any of these apply, or you’re just interested in Flex, then FlexCamp is where you want to be. This free event is taking place on July 27th at the Adobe San Francisco office. Like Apollo Camp a few months ago, this one night event will provide you with technical sessions and great networking opportunities. You bring your laptop: we’ll provide the pizza, drinks, beer and gifts.

The event is divided into two sections: the first half of the night are 1 hour sessions from Adobe, going over the vision for Flex, what’s new in Flex 3, how we see designers and developers working together, and building out Flex based AIR applications. The second half of the night is up to you. We’ve setup a wiki where you can sign up to present sessions: anything goes, as long as its related to Flex (or AIR). I’ve already signed up to do a session on PHP and Flex.

You need to register for the event in order to attend, and of course registration is free. We expect this event to fill up very quickly. Members of Adobe Flex User Groups and our Facebook group were informed of the event earlier, so if you’re looking for an inside track on future events, you should join a user group or the Facebook group.

We’ve made a small but significant change to the Flex SDK today, on the heals of announcing that its now open source. You no longer need an Adobe ID to download the Flex SDK. You can get it immediately by heading to this page and then accepting the license terms. You won’t need to register for anything, or even provide your email address. You’ll only have to click a checkbox to accept the legal terms, and then click to download the file. If you’re linking to the Flex SDK, please update your links to http://www.adobe.com/go/flexsdk2_download. Note that all the links on Flex.org have been updated.

Today I’m pleased to announce that we’ve launched a new version of the Flex.org website. The site has been redesigned with the purpose of making it easier for people to get started with Flex. There are pages for a number of backend languages, including ColdFusion, Java, .NET, PHP and Ruby on Rails.

The showcase page is brand new, with screenshots and descriptions of applications built with Flex. Add yours to the showcase by adding it to del.icio.us with the “flex.org” tag (also a great way to monitor Flex applications).

FlexSearch.org has been integrated into the site, with the support of Clint Modien, who ran the old site. You can find it at flex.org/search/.

There’s now an Amazon powered bookstore that allows you to easily find Flex and ActionScript books from Amazon. You can find it at flex.org/books/. Other documentation is easily found from flex.org/documentation.

Finally, we’ve also got a form that you can fill out to get a set of the ActionScript and MXML posters. Its taken far too long for that to get up, but its there now. If you want a set, head over to flex.org/posters/ and fill out the form.

Thank you very much to everyone who provided feedback on the new site. Your help is greatly appreciated. I look forward to following the comments over the next few days as we plan future improvements to the site.

Mike Potter
Flex Developer Marketing