Feature planning survey for Flex framework and tooling

Our product teams are running a survey in order to help them decide on the features they will implement in the next versions of Flex SDK, Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Professional.

If you want to influence this process then please go here and complete the survey.

September 30, 2010 | Filed Under Others | 1 Comment

BlackBerry Tablet OS supports Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.5

Great news for the Flash community: today, at BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco, RIM announced that the BlackBerry Tablet OS will support Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.5. And I don’t mean you’ll be able to install them at some point in time. No! They will be available right out of the box.

In fact, Adobe AIR is so tightly integrated, that even the apps launcher and as well as the apps on the tablet are built on AIR 2.5.

Now that’s a nice present for all the Flash developers out there and it’s not even Christmas :). I mean on top of the desktop and Android 2.2, now you have BlackBerry tablets to target with the same tools and skills. And more importantly with virtually the same code base.

Furthermore, in the coming weeks RIM will make available the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK: a collection of tools to help you build and package AIR apps for BlackBerry Tablet using Flash Builder and Flash Professional. The AIR 2.5 SDK will be available soon on http://labs.adobe.com (still in private beta for now).

If you are a Java developer and you want to get started with Flash Builder, ActionScript 3, and Flex then you’ll find useful this resource: http://www.adobe.com/go/bbtabos

Last week, I was highly impressed by Samsung’s Android 2.2 based tablet. Now, I have to see this one before buying a new device!

September 27, 2010 | Filed Under AIR, Mobile | 2 Comments

The perfect Flex and PHP book

If you follow my blog or sessions you probably know that I’ve been writing about Flex and PHP integration since 2008. And during this time, one of my mantras has been to look at the topic
through the eyes of a PHP developer. Thus most of my articles/sessions are answers for this question: what do you need to know to be successful with Flex if you are a PHP programmer?

Earlier this year I thought that it would be pretty cool if I’d put all this experience into a formal book about this topic. While I haven’t started yet :D, I have spent time thinking about the content. And to tell you the truth I have yet to fill in some blank spots before starting the work.

Thus I would like to ask you this question: what does the perfect Flex and PHP book look like for you? Your comments will be much appreciated!

Later Update: Almost forgot to remind you about my session at MAX LA 2010: Flex & PHP – beyond the basics. If you plan to attend, I’d be happy to meet you in person. See you there!

September 27, 2010 | Filed Under Books | 10 Comments

About User Experience

I recently returned from vacation. I spent about two weeks on a Greek island trying to stay away from computers among other things :D. I had to fill up all the spare time I had with something (I mean there is a limit on how much time you can spend sleeping, eating, talking, or swimming). Reading something interesting is definitely both enjoyable and useful. So, I took two books with me: one on Flex and another one on user experience.

And what a delightful surprise was the one on user experience. If you build software products or web applications then you should definitely read Bill Buxton’s book. “Sketching User Experiences”. It doesn’t matter if you are a designer, a developer, or a program manager. This book will most likely surprise you on many levels. My personal interest on the subject is quite obvious: I wanted to better understand the design process and different techniques you can use. Also, I was looking for a different angle to understand why so many Flash projects shine when it comes to user experience. Well, Buxton thinks that what happens between states is as important as what happens in each state (trust me there are so many interesting lessons, this is only one small example). In other words the way you design the transitions is important for the overall experience.

I think this is one important reason for why so many Flash projects are so brilliant. Think about it. If your background is in developing web applications then you are trained to see the application as a graph of pages. The user chooses some item from the menu and boom, a new page is displayed. On that page he clicks on a link and boom another page is displayed. Every time you destroy the current page and bring up the next page in a succession.

When you build Rich Internet Applications, you tend to take into consideration the space in between the states as well the states: what happens while a particular piece of the application is loading or what happens when a user chooses the Contact section. Animations, transitions, lazy loading, and modularizing the app – all come together in order to shape the overall experience.

The second book wasn’t that good. Hence my advice to you: when you know you’ll have time to really focus on reading and understanding what you’re reading, don’t take with you only one book. Never! Take at least two. Because this is a fact: only one of them could be the worst book you’ve read lately :D

What great books on the subject of user experience have you read?

September 20, 2010 | Filed Under Books | 4 Comments

My 2010 MAX Session

There are many ways to keep track of the passing time. Some of us, with less imagination :D, use calendars. Others prefer to count children/grandchildren and I’ve been told that there is a new breed that uses a dot notation suffixed by Beta. Still some of us use MAX notation: for me this is the fifth MAX and I can’t wait to go there and enjoy the show. Talking about a show, if you haven’t seen Serge’s latest masterpiece, maybe you want to check it here: MAX Unaward.

Getting back to me (sorry Serge) this year I finally have the opportunity to speak on the subject I enjoy the most: Flex and PHP integration. If you want to find more, I’ll wait for you on Wednesday, October 27, 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM.

Of course I am not the only one packing my bags for MAX from the EMEA team. Serge Jespers will do a session on creating assets for mobile component skins with Flash Catalyst. Michael Chaize and Anne Kathrine Petteroe will talk about real-time collaborative dashboards for mobile and desktop. Mike Jones will take a deep dive on Flash Pro CS5 while Tom Krcha will speak about the ins and outs of creating P2P multiplayer games. If your type of talk is more about architecture, then you shouldn’t miss Piotr Walczyszyn’s session on dependency injection frameworks. And finally, our boss, Enrique Duvos will have a lot of fun with layouts in Flex 4.

That’s it folks! See you soon in LA!

September 16, 2010 | Filed Under Conferences | Leave a Comment