Latest News from Adobe Flex Journal

Virtualization Conference & Expo 2009 West: Call for Papers Deadline June 30

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:45:00 EDT

Now held three times a year, in New York, Prague, and Silicon Valley, the organizing principle of each International Virtualization Conference & Expo remains the same: our aim is to ensure, through an intense and carefully chosen program of technical and strategic breakout sessions, that attending delegates leave each Conference with abundant resources, ideas and examples they can apply immediately to leveraging Virtualization, helping them to maximize performance, minimize cost and improve the efficiency and flexibility of their Enterprise IT endeavors.

Vizioncore Named Bronze Sponsor of SYS-CON's Virtualization Expo

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EDT

Leading the way in providing software solutions that extend, enhance and improve virtual environments, Vizioncore Inc. has grown into an industry leader which is helping thousands of organizations maximize their ROI from their investments in virtualization. With a comprehensive set of solutions that automate complex processes and address IT challenges of P2V/V2V conversions, disaster recovery, storage optimization, process automation and provisioning, and performance monitoring and chargeback, Vizioncore helps organizations leverage virtualization to achieve new levels of productivity and efficiencies in their IT systems.

Security Soapbox – Decompile Flash/Flex

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:15:00 EDT

Having built/architected/developed/consulted many Adobe Flex applications and being one of the first certified Flex instructors in the world, I've seen a lot of Flex applications. Some good, some bad. But no matter how many applications or who I'm talking to, I always stress the importance of securing proprietary information. By securing, I mean don't put it [...]

What's The Design's Share in RIA?

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:45:00 EDT

This weekend I read a blog by a well known person in Flex community and found a very interesting phrase there:"If you take a careful look at Catalyst it flips the % of design and development work within an app. Where development was 80% of an app, it is now 20% and Design/Interaction was 20% is now 80%". Is it really so?

Will PR Firms Survive The Social Media Avalanche?

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:00:00 EDT

Blogs are relatively new, if you consider the mass of the population. At a cocktail party less than a year ago someone I was talking to from the financial industry (a stockbroker) told me, "You know there is something called a ‘blog' and people who write blogs are called bloggers?" I said yes I know. Today, the mass of the population knows "blogging" as their Facebook pages, and 99.999% of the blogs being written are never read by anyone except the blogger's family and friends. This means two things. Not everyone has to write a book, sing, or blog. The ones who have something to say in their blogs will evolve into more professional platforms. The social media platforms that do not exist today will be created to serve the professional community of writers and bloggers.

Adobe Tries Commercializing Its Online Software

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:30:00 EDT

Acrobat.com, Adobe’s nascent, still-evolving online productivity software, moved out of public beta Monday and into its first foray into commercialization, ahead of any similar move into the cloud by Microsoft. The base widgetry will still be free but Adobe has created two paid subscriptions meant for business users that add capacity and capabilities to the otherwise freebie software.

Adobe AIR Has Been Installed On Over 200 Million Computers In Just 16 Months

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EDT

I've missed the Flash Camp Keynote in San Francisco where Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch mentioned that AIR reached over 200 million installs. The Adobe AIR Team blog wrote that the Acrobat.com application provided with Adobe Reader continues to be one of the most popular applications. Unfortunately in Italy AIR applications are not so populare and well accepted by enterprise companies (this is the market I work for) and I guees we'll have to wait more time in order to see the same penetration you're reporting in US.

Did You Notice Our Subscribers List?

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:15:00 EDT

Did you notice our subscribers list update? Now, you can receive Graphic Mania all posts and and free resources updates right to your email address, in full HTML and images. You can save the images and backgrounds you need directly to your computer and get the free resources download links saved to your email for further [...]

Cloud Computing Expo Live: Sun's Incubation Platform

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:45:00 EDT

Broaching the hugely valuable enterprise market can be very intimidating for young startups. Large enterprises can be reluctant to work with smaller companies due to concerns about scalability and support. Sun Microsystems realized there is an opportunity here – Sun can supply a uniquely scalable cloud infrastructure that meets enterprise demand for support and reliability at a price-point that won't break the bank for startups.

Adobe's Major Update to Acrobat.com

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:30:00 EDT

“Acrobat.com is poised to become the online destination for team collaboration, with the tools business people need to get work done faster, together, from anywhere. Our customers have moved from e-mailing multiple versions of documents back and forth to collaborating on documents directly in a fluid online environment,” said Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president, Adobe’s Business Productivity Business Unit. “Over the next 12 months, we will continue to add powerful yet simple-to-use team collaboration capabilities that establish a new way to work, while removing barriers to getting work done within and across companies and around the world.”

GM's IT Restructuring Does Not Convince Me

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:40:00 EDT

Information Week has published an interview with GM’s CIO discussing the impact of the bankruptcy on the two-billion-IT operations of this huge corporation. After reading this article, I’m pretty sure that GM’s IT is doomed. The chances are slim that they will turn themselves into leaner and agile organization as it should be in 21st century.

Morgan Stanley Raises the Bar for RIAs Using Adobe Flash Platform

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:15:00 EDT

Morgan Stanley have launched a comprehensive online trading tool called “Matrix” which allows their customers to get closer to the trading floor than ever before; the application enables them to view live pricing, get informed opinions for market professionals, review historical market data and make derivatives and foreign exchange trades in real-time, directly from their [...]

Data Access for RIAs

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:22:00 EDT

ZapThink just produced a good report on the state of Web 2.0 tools entitled "Evolution of the Rich Internet Applcation Market." In the report, Jason Bloomberg and Ron Schmelzer of Zapthink highlight a critical gap in most RIA solutions: the inability to access data from within the UI. They then point to this as a major source of competitive advantage for Adobe

Enterprise Development with Flex

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:15:00 EDT

I'm finishing writing a book for O'Reilly "Enterprise Development with Flex". It's my 6th one. Yesterday, I got an email from a person asking if I'd like to write a new book on software. Here's what came to my mind

Learn more on Flash Catalyst, Flex 4 SDk and Flash Builder 4

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:39:00 EDT

Adobe has planned three free online seminars next week that will walk through the new features of Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst. (thanks to Mike Potter for the news) Here's the schedule of the events:

Adobe and Broadcom Bring HD Flash Video to Intel Atom Processors

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:00:00 EDT

Broadcom and Adobe Systems announced an engineering collaboration to enable hardware accelerated playback of high definition (HD) Adobe Flash technology based video content on platforms powered by Intel Atom processors. This collaboration paves the way for rich, seamless entertainment experiences on Intel Atom processor enabled netbooks and nettops, offering users new options for accessing and engaging with Web content from popular online providers worldwide.

Adobe and NVIDIA Announce GPU Acceleration for Flash Player

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:00:00 EDT

NVIDIA, and Adobe Systems announced that they are collaborating as part of the Open Screen Project to optimize and enable Adobe Flash Player, a key component of the Adobe Flash Platform, to leverage GPU video and graphics acceleration on a wide range of mobile Internet devices, including netbooks, tablets, mobile phones and other on-the-go media devices.

Creating Layered PDFs with Escape Calls to the PDF Converter Printer

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EDT

The PDF format allows creating groups of mutually exclusive layers where showing one layer will automatically hide the other. These are called radio-button groups and defined using the RBGroups PDF keyword. One can also define which layers are visible by default and which are hidden, for example: /RBGroups [[ 11 0 R 13 0 R]] /ON[ 11 0 R] /OFF [13 0 R] indicates that layers 11 and 13 are grouped and that layer 11 is visible by default whereas 13 is invisible.

Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst Betas Now on Labs

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:15:00 EDT

Today, we announced that the first public beta releases of Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder (previously known as Flex Builder) are available on Adobe Labs. “Design in Mind” was one of the core themes for this release, and these tools, together with the updated Flex 4 SDK, deliver on that to make it easier than ever create high fidelity, rich Internet applications that target the Flash Platform.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Productivity

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:00:00 EDT

Pushing the boundaries of integration and productivity New Adobe Creative Suite 4 software features radical workflow breakthroughs and hundreds of innovations to advance the creative process across print, web, mobile, interactive, film, and video production.

Say Goodbye To Bad UI Thanks to the Cloud

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:45:00 EDT

New entrants, however, have a great opportunity to leverage UI and user experience to make their management apps more sticky and to appeal to a broader market. For example, the Bluebear guys have built a snazzy, intuitive multi-hypervisor virtualization management tool written in Adobe AIR. If I’m an SMB who is dipping my toe into the waters of virtualization, maybe a tool like this makes it easier for me to get started. Or take a company like Cloudkick, that is looking to “make the cloud easier to use an accessible to everyone.” That’s a great misson statement, and one that’s certainly achievable given the software development technologies available today.

Adobe AIR for Linux Alpha Now on Adobe Labs

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced that the pre-release alpha version of Adobe AIR software for Linux® operating systems is available on Adobe Labs (www.adobe.com/go/airlinux). The Linux community of developers can now use proven Web technologies, such as HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash® and Adobe Flex® software, to build rich Internet applications (RIAs) that deploy to desktops across operating systems. RIA developers can extend the reach of their desktop applications on Adobe AIR to Linux users without writing additional platform-specific code, providing access to innovative, branded desktop applications that were previously only available to Mac and Windows users.

Adobe Flex 4 Goes to Public Beta

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Many Flex and Flash developers were waiting for these news for a year. The public Beta 1 of new Flash Builder 4, Flash Catalyst and Flex 4 SDK (previously codenamed Gumbo) has been released by Adobe. First, about the name change. What used to be known as Flex Builder is Flash Builder now. The reason for such re-branding is clear to me. Adobe wants separation between free open source software (Flex) and commercial IDE that can be used for building content for Flash Player VM.

Adobe Announces New Flash Platform Tools

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:45:00 EDT

“People are now expecting the same richness and ease of use in their workplace applications that they have in their daily Web experiences, but companies today are faced with strained development resources and less time to create intuitive applications,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “The new Adobe® Flash® Platform tools help solve this challenge..."

Rejected MAX Proposals and Advanced Flex Events

Sat, 30 May 2009 08:06:00 EDT

Yesterday, my colleague and I received notifications from MAX 2009 (the main Adobe annual conference) organizers that started with words “We regret to inform you…we were forced to make difficult decisions, which topics would

Register for Flash Camp UK, June 16th

Thu, 28 May 2009 17:08:00 EDT

Following on from the success of the previous Flash and Flex Camp events held in London, it's great to see that the forthcoming event, to be held on the 16th June, is happening outside of the capital, in Birmingham. Flash Camp is a community run event, supported by Adobe and a number of other sponsors. It [...]

Adobe's New Flex Presentation Tool: Acrobat Presentation

Thu, 28 May 2009 16:00:00 EDT

I've just discovered (don't know how old it is) this new presentation web tool released by Adobe on Acrobat.com Labs. Acrobat Presentation is a Flex application that adds to Adobe's online collaborative offerings (with Buzzword). Presentation allows you to create slides using the PowerPoint metaphor with the following features

Advanced Flex Workshop Is Coming to Toronto and London

Thu, 28 May 2009 13:14:00 EDT

This advanced Flex workshop has been very well received in New York City and Boston. The next destinations are Toronto (July) and London (September). These are some of the topics covered during these two days of immersion into the Flex and AIR

Growth by Leveraging Adobe Scene7

Thu, 28 May 2009 08:45:00 EDT

Adobe announced that House of Fraser, a premium U.K. department store group with 62 locations across the U.K. and Ireland, has achieved higher conversion rates, increased average order size and greater customer retention with the Adobe® Scene7® hosted rich-media platform.

Flex Developer's Journal: 360Flex Show Report

Fri, 22 May 2009 05:25:00 EDT

Three days of the best conference for Flex developers went by fast. I’ve been attending this great event for the first time, and in the future, I’ll try not to miss this #1 gathering for Flex developers. While Adobe MAX is a lot larger...

AJAX World RIA Expo: Flash Builder Sounds Good To Me

Tue, 19 May 2009 11:00:00 EDT

So I'm back from a trip to Tokyo and the first news I read is that Flex Builder 4 (codename Gumbo) will be renamed to Flash Builder! Ryan have written an explanatory post (read the full "Flex Builder “Gumbo” is Being Renamed Flash Builder" article)about the motivations that drove Adobe to this change. And I totally agree with him when he has said that it's now clearer that the tools for creating Flash content are independent of frameworks or other parts of the Flash Platform. Moreover I trust Adobe's decision. It demonstrates us many times that it knows what it does. But you know what it means to me ?

Adobe AIR Is Cool and Not So Cool

Sun, 17 May 2009 11:14:00 EDT

Adobe AIR is cool because 1. AIR allows you to perform all I/O operation with the file system on the user's desktop. 2. AIR allows you to sign applications and version application. 3. AIR offers an updater to ensure proper upgrades of the appl

Adobe Flex: Prefixing Fx

Sat, 16 May 2009 10:00:00 EDT

Flex framework’s current stable version is 3.x and the Flex team at Adobe is actively working on getting the version 4.x ready this year. At this time, the core SDK of Flex 4, codenamed Gumbo, is evolving through an open source process. From peeking into its initial version, it looks promising as there are serious attempts to create a clean separation of behavior and presentation in the components, apart from the tons of nifty enhancements throughout the framework. (I promise to write about some of the forthcoming features soon)

Adobe Flex: Next Stop 360 Flex Indy

Sat, 16 May 2009 09:30:00 EDT

Starting Monday May 18, 2009 fun begins at Indianapolis. No, not the car race; its 360 Flex! 360 Flex is a unique and special event for many reasons, namely: Its the one and only event dedicated completely to Flex (and AIR). Its an informal event that is run for te community, by the community. Till this edition, there wasn’t [...]

Will Adobe's 'Strobe' Light up Custom Media Player Development?

Fri, 15 May 2009 18:15:00 EDT

Being a big fan of streaming media, I have quite a selection on my desktop from RealPlayer, to Windows Media, to YouTube favourites, to Adobes quite interesting Media Player and even Miro. I would have Hulu too if it supported content streaming outside t...

Federal Cloud Capability RFI Released by U.S. Government

Thu, 14 May 2009 08:00:00 EDT

I'm happy to be able to disclose today that the Federal Government of the United States released its cloud computing RFI earlier this afternoon. Enomaly was fortunate to have been included in recent consultations with the government, and we've been impressed by the vision of this administration and the speed with which they've taken action.

Answering Questions of Ukrainian Programmers

Tue, 12 May 2009 17:09:00 EDT

During my recent visit to Ukraine I made a presentation in the local offices of Microsoft on various RIA technologies.After that, I've given a couple of interviews about outsourcing, careers of immigrant programmers in the USA and more.

The New York Times Launches Enhanced Version of Times Reader Powered by Adobe AIR

Mon, 11 May 2009 14:20:00 EDT

Today, the New York Times Company and Adobe launched a new version of the Times Reader—the electronic version of the newspaper with online/offline capabilities, powered by Adobe AIR. The enhanced version of Times Reader 2.0 resembles the printed paper even more closely, and content is updated every five minutes or even more often if users choose, with the latest news from the New York Times.

Five Free Mashup Tools You Should Know About

Sat, 09 May 2009 14:00:00 EDT

Do you want to create a visual dashboard from existing widgets? Try a front-end mashup tool. These tools make it easy to create a personal dashboard that tracks your stocks, local weather, the time in 51 timezones and the current price of titanium.

Enterprise Development with Flex

Fri, 08 May 2009 09:14:00 EDT

O'Reilly has published an excerpt from the upcoming book on enterprise development with Flex.

Anark Accepted as Adobe Solution Provider

Tue, 05 May 2009 10:05:00 EDT

Anark Corporation has announced that it has been accepted as an Adobe Systems Incorporated Solution Partner. Adobe's Solution Partner Program is designed for companies that provide solution-based sales, system integration, services, or extended products based on Adobe technology.

New Adobe Video Component for Flex

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:00:00 EDT

Alongside the release of Flash Media Server 3.5, we also shipped a Flex-compatible version of the FLVPlayback component. If you've ever looked at the VideoDisplay component in the Flex SDK you'll know that it's not exactly feature-packed, so it’s great that we now have an enhanced version - the FLVPlayback component has the

Development Considerations and Best Practices

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:00:00 EDT

This is part 4 in a series of posts publishing extracts from a forthcoming Adobe whitepaper, which outlines a high-level set of best practices that should be considered at the outset of a project, based upon some of the common mistakes that are made when undertaking a RIA project.

Creating Adobe AIR Native Menu with Flash CS4

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:00:00 EDT

Menus are an integral part of your life as a software user. You find them on the Web, in desktop applications, on your own operating system, and even on mobile devices like cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) . You often don’t realize how important menus are when you use them. It’s so obvious to have them that you only realize how important they are when they aren’t available. On the Web, you normally have menus regarding the browser, which allow you to access the content of the site you are using. You rarely have menus that give you access to the specific commands and functions of the website. However, things are changing slowly with the advent of Web 2.0 applications, and menus—not only browsing menus but those specifically related to the web application—are becoming more and more frequent. As Flash web developers, you have the following options to create menus for your applications: Adding items to the context menu provided by Flash Player Creating your own menus Both options work very well, but the option of using Flash Player’s context menu doesn’t give you much flexibility. The other option requires a substantial amount of time and effort to obtain valid results if you create the menus for your web application from scratch. When you develop Adobe AIR applications with Flash CS4, you don’t need to worry about how to offer advanced functions with a menu. The framework itself provides various solutions to choose from according to your needs. AIR implements two new classes that aren’t available for Flash Player in a web environment in the flash.display package : NativeMenu NativeMenuItem These classes allow you to create native system menus to use as application menus (on Mac OS X systems), window menus (on Windows systems), pop- up menus, and context menus.

Flex Training in Boston: Discount Coupons

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:00:00 EDT

We'll be a two day training workshop "Flex for Architects" that will take place in Boston, MA on May 21-22, 2009. During registration at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/295389518, enter the discount code flex100 to get $100 of the tuitiion.

Where Next For the Flash Platform? You Tell Us…

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:30:00 EDT

As part of last month’s Flash Camp, we worked with .net magazine (also known as Practical Web Design in the US) to bring five experts from the Flash community together to talk about what’s next for the Flash Platform. .net have written up a great feature article from the roundtable, which is available in the May [...]

Adobe Flash Platform for Business Adds New Resources

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Even though Flash has evolved considerably since the days of just creating animations and interactive content, I often hear that developers have to “sell” the Flash Platform to their clients, especially in corporate environments where the project represents the customer’s first exposure to Flex or AIR.

Adobe Flash Platform Diversity From SAP to Facebook

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:45:00 EDT

One of the things I like most about my job is that one minute you can be talking about SAP and the next Facebook! The diversity in the types of experiences that can be delivered on the Flash Platform and the developer communities that are embracing Flash continues with the announcement this week that Adobe and [...]

Have You Submitted Your Proposal For Max'09?

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:15:00 EDT

Tomorrow is the last day for submitting papers for Adobe's main conference called Max'09. I've submitted two proposals - one's called "Practical Design Patterns in Flex", and the other one is titled "Data Synchronization.

Twelve Amazing Vector Tutorials

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:15:00 EDT

Learning Adobe Illustrator is one of the important skills that every designer should have, it will help you in creating unique designers and more capabilities to deal with lines and paths than Photoshop and other bitmap software. The below is a collection of the most amazing vector tutorials that will take your skills to another level. How [...]