Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers

Today Midnight Coders and SapphireSteel Software announce a technology partnership to provide a uniquely powerful solution to integrate the Adobe Flash Platform with Microsoft .NET. When it comes to building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for the .NET environment, developers prefer to use the Visual Studio IDE. Up until now, Visual Studio was easier for pure Microsoft environments (such as for Silverlight client to .NET services), but Silverlight doesn’t have nearly the installed base that Flash has (99% of all Internet-enabled desktops). marco casario

Yesterday SapphirSteel Software has released the final version of Amethyst, the Flex development plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio. For the first time, Visual Studio users have access to a full suite of integrated development tools for the Adobe Flash Platform,” says Huw Collingbourne, Director of Technology at SapphireSteel Software, “Amethyst gives Microsoft developers the ability to design, code and debug Flash and Flex applications without being forced to use an unfamiliar IDE. marco casario

I've read a comment on a solution of mine published on the Adobe Cookbook (as part of O'Reilly's Flex 4 Cookbook): Adding a drop shadow to a custom chrome window I've updated the example and tested it against Flash Builder 4 and AIR 2.0 SDK. marco casario

The Flex Addon for Spring Roo aims to raise the bar for developer productivity in building Spring-based RIAs with a Flex client by meeting the following goals: Provide the fastest way to get a Spring project configured to use Spring BlazeDS Integration set up and running. Eliminate the need to manually perform repetitive tasks such as keeping ActionScript and Java domain objects in sync. Automate round-tripping code-generation of Flex artifacts with a focus on letting developers do what they do best - write code. marco casario

I've read a comment on a solution of mine published on the Adobe Cookbook (as part of O'Reilly's Flex 4 Cookbook): Adding a drop shadow to a custom chrome window I've updated the example and tested it against Flash Builder 4 and AIR 2.0 SDK. marco casario

Adobe has released an update to Flex 4 SDK as well as to the Flash Builder 4. These are the list of bug fixed in Flex SDk 4.1 by the Flex team and Flash Builder 4 Update. It has been added minor enhancements to the SDK such as the Flex mirroring and bidirectional text. You can download the Flex 4.1 SDK manually or you can use the update system of Flash Builder 4 to update the IDE and the SDK automatically marco casario

We got two great announcements from Adobe today: Flash Player 10.1 AIR 2 Flash Player 10.1 closes its beta phase and it is finally available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux! Here are some of the new features in Flash Player 10.1 marco casario

I've just received this email from O'Reilly. It's a great deal and I thought to share it. You can buy our latest Flex 4 Cookbook at 9.99 USD : http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596805623/ It's a one Day Only offer (5/21/2010). Only $9.99. Choose any O'Reilly ebook from our list of over 2,000 titles. marco casario

Kevin Lynch has just announced the availability of a new HTML5 Pack for Dreamweaver CS5 at the Google I/O Day 1 Keynote. CTO of Adobe has also showed a CSS 3 Animator tool, how to export a SVG file from a vector graphic created with Adobe Illustrator and the roundtrip with Dreamweaver that supports HTML 5. marco casario

Kevin Lynch has just said that the Flash Player will embed the new open source VP8 coded at the Google I/O Day 1 Keynote. CTO of Adobe has also showed a CSS 3 Animator tool, how to export a SVG file from a vector graphic created with Adobe Illustrator and the roundtrip with Dreamweaver that supports HTML 5. Isn't that cool ? Can't image what he's gonna show at the MAX 2010 ! marco casario

It has been announced right now the open source video codec project WebM: The WebM project is dedicated to developing a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone. The WebM launch is supported by Mozilla, Opera, Google and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors. WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web. WebM defines the file container structure, video and audio formats. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska container. For more information about WebM, see the FAQ. marco casario

I just found this great piece of information about resizing Flash Catalyst components with custom skins on the Adobe Technotes. What’s covered: • Resizing and modifying wireframe components • Resizing components with custom skins • Resizing a single instance of a component with a custom skin • Scaling and resizing components generated by Flash Catalyst using Flash Builder • Scaling paths from Flash Catalyst in Flash Builder • Creating “liquid layouts”, or making a Flash Catalyst application scale marco casario

Display Bitmap Data in a Graphic Element Problem You want to display a raster image within a graphic element. Solution Use the BitmapImage element or supply a BitmapFill to a FilledElement-based element and set the source property to a value of a valid representation of a bitmap. Optionally, set the fillMode of the graphic to clip, scale, or repeat the image data within the element. marco casario

I've spent several days presenting the new Flex 4 features for many of our enterprise clients. As it's simple to understand, most of the time is dedicated to the brand-new Flex 4 List based components. Spark List-based components bring a lot of new topics to consider when developing Flex 4 applications: the DataGroup container, virtualization, the dropdown list, custom item rendere and more. One cool thing about DataGroup is that it supports virtual layouts. As each time I show this topic I get many questions, I've promised myself to write some posts to explain what a virtual layout is. DataGroup container replaces Repeater container. Taht's a good move from Adobe because the Repeater often comes up with memory leaks. Virtual layouts allows you to create only objects that need to be shown onscreen and to recycle item renders. So it's just a matter of how item renderer are created and handled by the layout. marco casario

I'm writing this post just to give more information about my latest topic titled "Flash Catalyst limits the import of files bigger than 15 MB". Thanks to Terry Hemphill of Adobe, I discovered that the 15MB was a limitation of Flash Catalyst Beta 2, not the final version. Reading this piece of information from the Adobe Flash Catalyst Technote I've learned there's a table that you can refer to ensure you are adhering to the limits on imported art files marco casario