Reading Beyond The Lines

Straight off the press! – you can now download the public preview releases of the next versions of the Flex SDK, Flash Builder, and Flash Catalyst on Adobe Labs.

 The Flexteam Blog post describes the releases in good detail. But, here’s a quick list of links to various learning resources to help you get started:

 Intro articles written by the product managers 

• What’s New in Flash Builder “Burrito” – by Andrew Shorten
• What’s New in Flex SDK “Hero” – by Deepa Subramaniam
• Mobile Development Using Flex SDK “Hero” and Flash Builder “Burrito” – by Narciso Jaramillo
• What’s New in Flash Catalyst “Panini” – by Doug Winnie

 Samples, tutorials, and videos  

• Build Your First Mobile Flex App – Twitter Trends
• Flex Test Drive for Mobile – Build a mobile application in an hour
• Videos on some of the big new features
• Interesting sample apps

 Updated product documentation

• Using Flash Builder “Burrito”
• Using Flex “Hero”
• Developing Mobile Applications with Flex “Hero”
• ActionScript 3.0 Reference
• Adobe Flash Catalyst “Panini” documentation

 In the next few posts, I’ll be deep-diving into the features and their associated documentation. Until then, download the preview releases of all three products from Adobe Labs and get started!

Several people have been asking for links to the online ColdFusion documentation, so although the links are available in my Getting Started with ColdFusion Builder post, here are the links, again.

Installing Adobe ColdFusion Builder (HTML | PDF)

Using Adobe ColdFusion Builder (HTML | PDF)

Personally, it’s been a very fulfilling experience to write the documentation for a version one product. The Help pages are open for commenting, so bring on the feedback – I’m looking forward to it!

If you are upgrading from a Beta release of ColdFusion Builder, make sure that you uninstall the Beta software before installing the released product.

And if you are using ColdFusion Builder with a workspace from a Beta release, make sure that you clean and reinitialize the workspace before installing the release version of ColdFusion Builder.  

Complete details about installing ColdFusion Builder and cleaning and reinitializing the workspace is available in the Adobe ColdFusion Builder Installation Guide.

If you are looking to download a trial version of ColdFusion Builder, look no further than: http://www.adobe.com/go/trycoldfusionbuilder

We have a host of resources available online to get you started with ColdFusion Builder.

• Basic FAQs about ColdFusion Builder

• Features available in ColdFusion Builder
   

• To learn about the top features, system requirements, and known issues of this release, read through the ColdFusion Builder release notes

•  ColdFusion Builder documentation is available online at:
  http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusionBuilder/Installing/index.html

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusionBuilder/Using/index.html

 

• To get you started with various tasks in ColdFusion Builder, see Getting Started with ColdFusion Builder.

•   For more ColdFusion Builder getting-started articles and tutorials, see the ColdFusion Developer Center.

So what are you all waiting for? Get started with ColdFusion Builder right away!

Search is key to the Adobe Community Help Client (CHC).  You can specify various search and filter options in the CHC and search across different Help packages and search locations.

Select Help > ColdFusion Builder Help to launch the Adobe Community Help Client. In the CHC, click Search Options to display the following Search locations:

Local Help – Use this option to search the Help packages downloaded to your desktop. Click Filter Results to narrow down your search results to a specific book in the Help package.

Note that you can search Local Help only if the downloaded Help packages are fully downloaded. A good way to check if the Help packages are downloaded is by going to Edit > Preferences > Local Content. The status for the ColdFusion Builder and ColdFusion docs should read as “Current”.

Adobe.com – Use this option to search for reference content across all online resources available on adobe.com, including Developer Center articles, tutorials, and knowledgebase articles.

Community Help – This search is cumulative of all the resources available on adobe.com as well as the most relevant content contributed by experts from the Adobe community.

Happy searching!

A new Help system – Adobe Community Help Client - has been introduced in the ColdFusion Builder Beta 3 release.

Community Help Client (CHC) is an AIR application that is configured with ColdFusion Builder to provide ColdFusion Builder and ColdFusion 9 Help content. The Help content is served directly from the web. So, when you open the CHC for the first time, an Internet connection is needed. You can then download the Help content to your desktop to use and search offline.

To launch the Adobe Community Help Client, within ColdFusion Builder, select Help > ColdFusion Builder Help.

Some of the key features of the Community Help Client are:

• Up-to-date definitive reference content online and offline
  
• Relevant content contributed by experts from the Adobe community
  
• Ability to comment on, rate, and contribute to content in the Adobe community
  
• Content updates and feature enhancements without reinstalling the AIR application

 To learn more about the Community Help Client, see http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/communityhelp/.

One of the nice new features of ColdFusion Builder Beta 3 is the support for AIR application development.

To get started with creating an AIR project, do the following:

1. In ColdFusion Builder, select File > New > Project.
2. In the Create Project wizard, select HTML projects > Adobe AIR Project.
3. Follow the next screens in the wizard and click Finish to create your AIR project.

You can then run or debug, package, and sign the AIR application.

Read Developing AIR applications  in the ColdFusion Builder User Guide for detailed information.

It’s been just a few minutes since the ColdFusion Builder Beta 3 release has been made available on Adobe Labs.

Read through the What’s New section of the Release Notes for a quick glimpse of what we have to offer in this release.

Updated Beta documentation is available online:

Installing ColdFusion Builder (HTML|PDF)

Using Adobe ColdFusion Builder (HTML|PDF)

Well, if you are, this post is just for you.

The Learning Resources group at Adobe is conducting a brief survey to learn more about how customers get information about using Flex. The many ColdFusion developers out there who use Flex, we’d be particularly interested in getting your feedback.

Click the link below to take a quick survey on the following topic:

Creating data-driven applications in Flash Builder 4

Thanks, in advance. We really appreciate your participation in this survey!

If you’ve been visiting the ColdFusion Help pages lately, the version pods should have caught your eye.  To begin with, let me explain what a version pod is – a version pod looks like a sticky note and contains links to other versions of the documentation.

A version pod lets you quickly navigate between different versions of the documentation – all from within the Help system. For example, if you’re in the ColdFusion 8 Help system, the version pod will offer you links to ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion 7 documentation.

If you find the pod distracting, you can simply hide the pod – by clicking the little triangle highlighted below, and, presto, the pod’s hidden! Clicking the triangle again, unhides the pod.