EVOL.reverse

Here are the slides for the “Flex Development” presentation I delivered today at BarcampPortugal.

Updated Wordpress to 2.1.3 and also Dokupress to work on this release (two lines change).

Adobe open-sourcing the Flex framework

Adobe is open-sourcing the Flex framework. It seems this release will include not only the Flex Framework, but also the mxmlc compiler and debugger, which is great news. Like Luke Bayes said, “This is really exciting news, thanks to whoever made this call!”

Flash Boundary Collisions

This week I had to develop a Actionscript3 app that involved floating objects around the screen and boundary collisions. In Actionscript this is normally done via the enter_frame event but a small detail is needed. When you check if the object is colliding against the wall, before inverting its route, you should place the object at the boundary width/height (respectively for left-right collisions and top-bottom collisions). I published a small demo example of the result effect which looks nice I think..

Apollo First Steps

I’m making my first steps with the Apollo runtime from Adobe. Apollo is a cross-platform runtime that’s allows the development of desktop apps based on Flash and Flex. I developed a quite small app that sends that e-mail through a php webservice based on a form that is submitted by the Apollo app. Just for starters as you can see but fun. It was a breeze to develop.

Some cool Apollo applications I’ve seen this week:

• gskinner.com time tracking application - the screenshots look great. I’m anxious to download it and try it.
• Ascension Music Player - Mike Chambers from Apollo team launched the source and an AIR file for Ascension. Apollo Ascension is an Apollo based mp3 player and music explorer. Very good looking.
• And of course the apps listed on Adobe Labs as Apollo Applications Samples.

• RubyOnRails (1.1) and Flex (2.0): Part I
• RubyOnRails (1.1) and Flex (2.0): Part II
• flexonrails.net blog

Actionscript 3 + Flex Builder 2 + Adobe Flash 9 Public Alpha

Today I had a problem reading a string from a XML file that had a ‘\n’ (newline) in it. The workaround that worked was to use html entities to represent the newline, e.g. :

<f1 value="Hello!&#10;Welcome to&#10;this application" />

and then use the .htmlText property for the TextField:

textfield.htmlText = string;

• MDM Zinc - to create a serious application that involves file operations or Windows controllers like Media Player, IE, etc.
• Tweener class @ Google Code - for creating tweenings and other transitions. Support sequences.
• flexcoders @ Yahoo! Groups - discussion about developing Rich Internet Applications using Macromedia Flex.