The Summer of Flash Page on My Site
I just wanted to point folks to the Summer of Flash Podcast page on my blog. I thought it might be good to have a place on my site where the podcast that features Garth Braithwaite, Stacy Mulcahy, Zach Stepek, and myself droning on and on about the Flash Platform. The "info" links are to the InsideRIA site pages that Garth put together for us, but I wanted to put all the information in one place so that I can refer people to it.
I totally enjoy recording this podcast. It is so much fun and honestly it's almost therapeutic for me. I don't work in a work site environment where there are a lot of Flash and Flex developers. In fact, I am the only one in the office who does that type of work, so getting to "hang out" online with the Summer of Flash crew is pretty healthy.
I want to thank the people at O'Reilly who have been so supportive. This was their idea and I feel lucky to have been asked to come along.
Oh, boy. Did I just say that hanging out with Stacy was healthy? What was I thinking?
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Summer of Flash Podcast Episdode 1
I am pleased to announce that the first episode of O'Reilly's InsideRIA Summer of Flash podcast has been released.
In this episode, Garth, Stacy, Zach and I discuss the recently released Flash Catalyst Public Beta and what we like and dislike about the product.
We're continuing to record episodes and have lined up a few people from the Flash Platform to waterboard... er, grill for infor... er, interview about all things Flash.
If you have any thoughts, ideas, questions or requests, feel free to leave them in the comments for my entry here or at the entry on the InsideRIA site.
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Introducing Leif Wells, Editor-in-Chief of Flex Authority Magazine
I'd like to officially announce my new role in the Flex community; I am now the Editor-in-Chief of Flex Authority magazine. Flex Authority was started last year by House of Fusion and currently is in production for Issue 3.
Back in February 2008, I was helping my friends Tom and John with 360|Flex Atlanta by allowing them to send packages to the Roundbox Global office so that they wouldn't have to pay the insane storage fees at the conference site, which happened to be a couple of miles from our office. Needless to say, the pile of boxes got fairly impressive fairly quickly. Adobe sent posters and t-shirts, there were boxes of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" , and a ton of other stuff.
Then a call came in from Judith Dinowitz requesting assistance transporting some printed materials, fliers for the attendee bag they were having printed in Atlanta to avoid some difficult shipping costs. I believe that is the first time I had heard about Flex Authority. Judith confirmed that it was in the works and that they were going to launch the magazine in the middle of 2008. My reaction was, as with a lot of things that promote the community I work in every day, "What can I do to help?"
And help I did. I was Technical Editor for several articles in the first issue, authored a "10 Questions with..." column with Adam and Dave from the Merapi project , and even took the time to write a couple of filler pieces at the eleventh hour. I was excited about Flex Authority and hopeful for its future.
Flash forward to January 2009. Judith calls me to discuss a change in the magazine management; the position of Editor-in-Chief was open. She said that my name had risen to the top of the list of candidates. She presented me with an opportunity, one that I was sure I'd regret letting pass.
The Editor-in-Chief position at a magazine the size of Flex Authority isn't a high paying gig. In fact, I am not getting paid at all. The position requires a lot of reading and re-reading of articles, balancing grammatical and technical corrections while considering the author's voice, herding cat-like authors, technical editors and copy editors who are balancing full-time jobs (and lives) with a magazine schedule; it's not an easy job. Sure, I'll avoid the stereotypical publishing industry traps like hard drinking, chain smoking and womanizing, but those activities actually sound like rewards compared to these responsibilities.
So, why did I agree to become Editor-in-Chief of Flex Authority?
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Flex and Localization: Setting the default new file encoding in Flex Builder
[Note: I recently presented at 360Flex San Jose on the topic of localization (L10N). During that session, several questions were asked that I did not have the answers to. Over the next few months I will be attempting to answer all of those questions and more.]
In Flex, resource bundles are used to provide localization features — that is, the ability for your application to provide the user with a different language and regional preference — to your applications. All Flex applications start up with US English as the base language here in the United States of America. Even Flex Builder's default compiler options includes "-locale en_US" making it possible for you to begin localizing your application.
The "gotcha" that hit me the first time I created a resource bundle for localization in a Flex application was the file encoding. The default file encoding setting in Flex Builder (Eclipse) is ISO-8859-1, which if you use is ok for English, but if you choose to copy this file and use it for someone to translate your English text to, say, Spanish it could cause you some problems. For instance, I had a main.properties file that I was translating line by line with Google Translate (I know, lame) from English to Spanish. When I had completed the process and saved the new file, boy was I disappointed. All the special characters that Spanish uses were replaced by triangles with question marks. Converting that ISO-8859-1 file to UTF-8 with the tools at hand made things worse. My choice at the time was to start over from scratch making certain that my English file was UTF-8 and then all my future copies would also be UTF-8.
And, of course, when I told this sad story during my presentation at 360Flex San Jose an attendee asked "Isn't there a preference setting for that inside Flex Builder?" My response at the time was, "I'm sure there is but I have not found it." But I have now!
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Flex Builder: Vote For Templates! (Retracting My "Snippets" Recommendation)
Earlier this week I wrote a paragraph about the merits of adding the Snippets view into Flex Builder. I would like to retract that statement and apologize to anyone who followed my advice.
You see, my experience with snippet-like features was with the Flash Development Tool (FDT) plug-in for Eclipse. FDT does not function like the Snippets that I was recommended. In fact, the plug-in I recommended is basically unusable and could be considered harmful.
With FDT, as I recall, you would create your templates in a basic text field then name and save them. When you needed that "snippet" of text, you'd type the name and hit a specific key combination and the "snippet" would appear, replacing the name that you typed. If your "snippet" had variables, dynamically places in the "snippet" to type text, your cursor would appear immediately in that space and as you typed, every place that that variable appeared would update. Ultimately, it came down to you taking the time to create the right kinds of templates for you to really reduce your coding time and effort. Pretty nice, huh? Check out the JSEclipse templates. They use this method of creating snippets.
I assumed that Snippets, at least the plug-in that I was re-recommending via another blog's post, operated in the same manner. But no, woefully not. It's a usablility nightmare. DO NOT USE IT. I'd give you more details but it would be a waste of time — it's that bad.
So, here I go again: let's bring true coding templates to Flex Builder! It's issue FB-11842 in the Flex Bug and Issue Management System (log in required, but worth the time). Please vote for this feature. It may actually save you a week-end or two a year. Think about that.
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Vote for Flex Builder Source Formatting (or Pedro)
I was reading a blog entry on Flex Builder Enhancements at InsideRIA last night and thought that I would bump the entry and my comment up to the surface for more exposure. RJ Owen's article laments features that are available from the Java Developer Kit and not a part of the Eclipse project itself, thus not immediately available for Flex Builder users. He cites useful features like "TODO", Snippets, Mylyn integration, and a fix to the Open Resource menu bug (something I had never run into). The article also links to where you can acquire these enhancements. All of these features are worthy of mentioning to my team here at Roundbox Global.
Snippets was one of t ne features that I was used to using in Flash Development Tool (FDT) back when I was doing Flash development on a regular basis. This feature allows developers to use templates to help speed up common coding tasks. If you want to be able to have code created for you via Snippets, you first create the template, then in your code type the string associated with the template and "bam" the code is there. All you need to do then is tab through the template variables you set up and enter the data you need. OK, so, it isn't that simple, but once you set it up and get it into your workflow it's powerful.
The comments for the article featured a few people fired up about the lack of source formatting. I mention the lack of this feature privately a while back and could never raise anyone's temperature. But someone else had thought enough about the feature to have entered a bug into the Flex Bug and Issue Management System over at Adobe. The issue, FB-8297, deserves the attention of anyone who wants source formatting in Flex Builder. At this time, the issue has 22 votes but I now feel certain that more people are interested than that.
Although FB-8297 is listed as a "Minor Enhancement", I am certain that Adobe's engineers will look at this issue as more than minor because it isn't just formatting ActionScript code similar to how Java code is structured; this task will require ActionScript, MXML and ActionScript+MXML all to be formatted by Flex Builder, something that is more than what the JDK is able to do. In the issue's comments, I've added some further enhancements to the issue — like making sure the "x" comes before "y" in the MXML which is something that drives me nuts during code reviews.
If you want this feature, vote for it.
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Adobe Tells Me That My Code Sucks!
Adobe Tells Me That My Code Sucks!
Ah, bad habits. We all have them. In our lives and in our code. We let things slide. We don't clean up after ourselves. We assume that things are correct just because they work.
Well, not any more. Thanks to the heads up from Adrian Parr (I hate you for this, Adrian! I could have remained ignorantly blissful), Adobe has put us all on notice; Adobe has finally published Flex SDK coding conventions and best practices as part of their Open Source Flex initiative. I say "finally" because I believe that this is the very first time the mothership has begun setting some standards and coding Flex. Sure, there have been conference sessions and blog posts about this subject, but not this in-depth nor as specific.
Reading through the first few screens of this unfinished document I am already seeing things that I am doing incorrectly, according to this guide. Although I am quite certain that this guide is intended to standardize coding expectations for developers contributing to the Flex SDK, I am planning to begin following Adobe's advice more ridgedly in my own code in the future. In fact, I am recommending that this document be part of a guide for standard practices at my workplace. It makes a lot sense for me to make this recommendation because, ultimately, this guide is geared towards making it possible for large groups to code by one standard.
My worst habit? See the section labeled "Miscellaneous nomenclature." Ugh.
Which bad habits do you hate seeing from your team's code?
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Flex LiveDocs: Two Minor Annoyances
Generally speaking, when I am working in Flex I have LiveDocs open. There is, quite honestly, no way I can store the depth of information that the Flex SDK or LiveDocs contain. Life is much easier when you have a reference.
Today, I am looking at I18N, or Internationalization. There is a whole section of content in the LiveDocs located here. The content is concise and informative. But I have two easily remedied complaints about the system.
1) Navigation at Page Bottoms: The I18N section has several pages. Some pages are fairly short. The second page is very long. If you navigate to the bottom of the page and wish to continue to the next page (a natural inclination), you must scroll all the way back to the top of the page to find the next page button. Sure, you could use the left-side navigation, if it has opened up properly — often if you navigate to the page from a search engine link the left-side navigation does not open up to reveal the section you are viewing. I don't mind long pages, but if I am navigating between several pages trying to understand what the LiveDocs are trying to tell me, this navigational omission irks me to the point of opening each page in separate tabs.
2) View Source and Examples: Uh, hello? Sure, having the code in-line on the page is helpful, but ultimately when there are several files involved, being able to right-click and select "View Source" is mighty handy. In the I18N example, there is an example at the bottom of the second page (yes, the bottom... see annoyance #1) that basically shows me how to change languages at run-time. But since the example requires several files, it is a little difficult to see if I am setting it up correctly. If I could view the source for the example, which would include the resource files that are required, I would have fewer questions. People learn in different ways. Some people learn by reading the descriptive and instructive language in the LiveDocs pages. I tend to learn more by reading code.
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Flex Camp and Flex Seminars Next Week in Costa Rica
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| Adobe,
the Adobe logo, AIR, ColdFusion, Creative Suite, Dreamweaver, Flash,
Flash Lite, and Flex are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. |
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360Flex Atlanta + Adobe = Special Event
Yeah, if you live here in Atlanta you should already be attending this event because you're attending 360Flex Atlanta right? It's a great conference focused on your favorite RIA platform? All for only $480.00 (and you get to sleep in your own bed and miss out on those tiny airline seats with no leg room).
Well, if you can't gnaw off the business-hours ankle chain your employer welded to your desk, then here's your chance to mingle with people just like you! 360Flex has invited members of the Atlanta design and development community to a little get-together being held at Stats Sports Bar not far from where 360Flex Atlanta is being held. Yeah, that does mean adult beverages. Yummy.
So come out and see what's up. But you need to RSVP. Get your details here, here or here, but RSVP.
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