FLANTURE

Playcrafter - Flash Games Playground 4 Kidz

2008-07-23T17:32:00.000-07:00

Already reported by ReadWriteWeb and Ryan Stewart, Playcrafter is new Flex based web application, portal that allows users to create new worlds (games) using predefined objects with simple drag-and-drop technique. Playcrafter is best for kidz under six years old. That's my impression, off course, but as always I just might be wrong.

You should use term 'creating games' very loose if you have big plans with this new acquired tool. If you do succeed and you create some kind of 'game' with Playcrafter, I don't wanna know about it. We'll see how things will develop in future, but right now you have a chance to win few awards too like PS3, XBox360, Wii or $100 in games downloads. Wait, what? You can create a game and then buy it? Oh, great! Totally new concept, something the web has crying for. Something is fishy here, I knew I should watch that intro video. But I didn't.
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SEOed Flash, first steps

2008-07-20T16:31:00.000-07:00

Among web developers with SEO (search engine optimization) on their mind, Flash was always a black sheep technology, something to avoid at any cost. Actually, many developers started to hate Flash because of bad search engines visibility. I’m not sure how anyone can hate a particular technology, but many are capable for that, and even claim that they don’t have “Flash” on their computer. I suppose this is the reason why Flash Player is present on only 99% of desktop computers.

Few weeks ago, Google announced improved Flash indexing and started with implementation right away. This is result of joined effort between Adobe, Google and Yahoo! To make Flash SWF file format more search engines friendly. Bots now see every textual content within Flash file, but also URL’s within Flash files are discovered too. Bots can’t index FLV files and Flash files loaded via JavaScript remain hidden.

Reactions to optimized Flash were both positive and negative, but I must notice that many people are concern about how thing are developing right now, even though everybody think global idea behind SEOed Flash is great. Aral wrote about it and he asks if Flash indexing is revealing too much?

My concern goes in slightly different direction. If blog / website has Flash based widget with links to other pages, (like my Bookshelf Widget on right sidebar with links to Amazon books pages) suddenly, I have dozens of new outgoing links and I wasn’t aware of this until few days later page rank dropped from awesome 7 to medium 5! To be honest I don’t know if this is exact reason for page rank drop, but this is what I suspect. Does Google’s PR algorithm take in account links from Flash files?

I wonder how will Flash haters react to dynamic content and RIA’s indexing and what will happen when search engines start to make no difference between Flash websites and “regular” ones?

Flash on the Beach 2008

2008-07-14T16:45:00.000-07:00

This year, Flash on the Beach, the most important Flash Conference in Europe will start one month earlier than in 2007. Location is Brighton, UK from 28th sept - 1st oct. Some of the confirmed speakers are: Peter Elst, Grant Skinner, Keith Peters, Mike Chambers, Lee Brimelow, Aral Balkan, Neil Webb and many others. Popular workshops will happen the day before main conference: Papervision3D and ActionScript 3 for Designers.

Here is just a glimpse from FOTB 07, demo of Diesel CS4 and IK (inverse kinematics) tween engine.

Since all tickets will be sold out long before conference start, how about live streaming?
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Adrian's XML Flash Photo Gallery

2008-07-11T15:50:00.000-07:00

Someone asked for simple, clean and not expensive Flash Photo Gallery. Here is one where you can add / remove photos without using Flash, but instead, you use plain text editor. Gallery can display jpg, png, gif and swf files.

Gallery features and details...

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Flash Bookshelf Widget Improved

2008-07-08T15:27:00.000-07:00

What is bookshelf widget? It is small Flash file designed for blog sidebar, which allows you to offer your readers additional blog related products like books, images, etc. While saving space, bookshelf widget contains links to books / products details page on Amazon or any other online store.

Flanture Flash bookshelf widget is ongoing work-in-progress. I know this widget is not best one out there, it doesn’t have mirror or 3D effect, but WTH, I made it! Entire file, with images is very small 61 kb. This version has some improvements.

New features:

- Categories and category navigation. Besides Flash category (7 books), I added two new categories, Ajax with 6 books and just for fun Blogging category with 4 books.
- Images are now also links, same as “more info…” button links. Rotation of images inside categories is now present.
- Tiny visual differences like navigation arrows, background color and dimensions.

There is not XML based version for this one. Full customization is possible.

Download Bookshelf Widget v1.5
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Flash Scale Menu Explained

2008-07-05T07:20:00.000-07:00

It seems that my expectations were to high when I thought this post is enough to explain how Flash Scale Menu works. One visitor, Francesco has convinced me indirectly to post complete Flash scale menu tutorial. Please, read first just mentioned posts to find out what we are talking about here.

Open new Flash document. Create few menu items (movie clips). For the sake of simplicity, let's say we have 5 items. Name movie clips instances item1, item2, ..., item5. You can name movie clips whatever you like, it doesn't matter. In the first and only frame of main Timeline enter 18 lines of code. This onEnterFrame is the only function needed for menu to work properly.

Now let's talk math. We use common math formula to find d - distance between mouse pointer and center of menu item. Dx is radius of circle inside which xscale and yscale properties of menu item change. Amount of change is equal to subtraction dx-d, thus when d=0 and mouse pointer is in the center of menu item, scale is biggest. In this case 100+(70-0)=170. When mouse is on the circle itself, change is 100+(70-70)=100, which means scale is 100 - no change! You can experiment with different values for dx. It depends on dimensions of your menu items movie clips.

Remember that registration points of menu item movie clips have to be centered. That's all. Share this explanation/tutorial if you like it. Thanks.

Mashups via Flex and AIR

2008-07-02T06:27:00.001-07:00

Mashup applications combine and / or transform data from different sources into unique user experience. Sources may include but are not limited to public APIs, web services and data feeds like RSS and Atom.

Imagine what are the possibilities for combining data from Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Flickr, Twitter, Del.icio.us into single desktop application. Indeed, imagination can become your main tool for creation. No technical boundaries, no platform limitations. With knowledge in HTML / JavaScript or Flex / ActionScript you are already cross-platform applications developer, but haven't yet realized it.

Best of all, to get started, you don't need expensive courses and IDEs. You need Flash Player 9 (free), Flex 3 SDK (free), Adobe AIR SDK (free), runtime and examples source code (free). The only thing you will really need is this book.

Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction to Mashups
Chapter 2 Technologies to Mash With!
Chapter 3 An Introduction to Flex
Chapter 4 Flex Components
Chapter 5 Flexing Your Muscles
Chapter 6 Performance Management in Flex Applications
Chapter 7 Debugging Flex 3: The Tried-and-True, Plus the New
Chapter 8 Getting the Most out of APIs
Chapter 9 Mashing Up Functionality
Chapter 10 SWX: A Native Flash Data Format
Chapter 11 Taking It to the Desktop
Chapter 12 Developing for the Desktop with AIR
Chapter 13 Adding More Desktop Elements to the Web
Chapter 14 Building a Desktop Experience
Chapter 15 Completing the Experience

more details...

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Free RIA eBooks and upcoming community

2008-06-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed that AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is RIA (Rich Internet Applications) in reverse? Honestly? Anyway, back to free AIR (RIA) ebooks. Mike Chambers is responsible for this idea. Website is ToString , project that will host books about RIA. All website content will be under creative commons licenses.

Translators are welcomed to contribute. There is already one chapter of Adobe AIR for JavaScript Developers Pocket guide free ebook translated to German, Swedish and Polish are on their way. More info about project from Mike Chambers.

Support this wonderful idea : digg it ! thanks

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AS3.0 gurus + Creative Flash Websites

2008-06-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

Latest poll question on Flanture was: Rate your AS3.0 knowledge? Results are:

Guru 25%
Advance 25%
Average 25%
Greenhorn 12%
Zero 12%

As always, results are questionable for two reasons. First reason is nobody can force you to say the truth or you are subjective and second reason is low number of voters, off course. It has something to do with statistics, more votes closer to the real results. However, if we overlook those two reasons, 75% of Flanture visitors have average or above average knowledge of ActionScript 3.0. I didn’t expect that much, but this info is interesting.

Also wanted to mention, if you have time to spare, check 21 Incredibly Creative Flash Websites

Blog Stats Using ColumnChart

2008-06-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

One of the main advantages of using Flex to display blog stats, besides effects and style is ability to dynamically load data as RSS feed or web service. When this is not an option, like with Sitemeter’s basic plan I’m using, more static solution is available with XML file or even simple embedded Array inside MXML file.


  
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" width="500" height="300">

 <mx:Script><![CDATA[
    import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
    [Bindable]
    public var stats:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection([
       {Month:"Jul07", Uniques:435, PageViews:622},
       {Month:"Aug", Uniques:1189, PageViews:1652},
       {Month:"Sep", Uniques:1937, PageViews:2698},
       {Month:"Oct", Uniques:1901, PageViews:2508},
       {Month:"Nov", Uniques:1698, PageViews:2426},
       {Month:"Dec", Uniques:2054, PageViews:3074},
       {Month:"Jan", Uniques:2751, PageViews:4175},
       {Month:"Feb", Uniques:2963, PageViews:4299},
       {Month:"Mar", Uniques:3336, PageViews:4783},
       {Month:"Apr", Uniques:3926, PageViews:6053},
       {Month:"May08", Uniques:4082, PageViews:6241}
      ]);
   ]]>
 </mx:Script>
 <mx:Style>
  ColumnChart{
   fontFamily:Verdana;
   chartSeriesStyles:ser1,ser2; 
  }
  .ser1{
   fill:#F7FA9D;
  }
  .ser2{
   fill:#147CCC;
  }
 </mx:Style>
 <mx:Canvas width="480" height="280" horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0" backgroundColor="#98c8de">
  <mx:ColumnChart x="10" y="60" id="columnchart1" dataProvider="{stats}" height="210" width="460" showDataTips="true">
   <mx:horizontalAxis>
          <mx:CategoryAxis
               dataProvider="{stats}"
               categoryField="Month"
          />
       </mx:horizontalAxis>
       <mx:series>
          <mx:ColumnSeries
               xField="Month"
               yField="Uniques"
               displayName="Uniques"
          />
          <mx:ColumnSeries
               xField="Month"
               yField="PageViews"
               displayName="PageViews"
          />
       </mx:series>
  </mx:ColumnChart>
  <mx:Legend dataProvider="{columnchart1}" x="367" y="-1"/>
  <mx:Text x="10" y="10" text="Flanture Blog Stats" fontFamily="Verdana" fontWeight="bold" fontSize="15" enabled="true"/>
 </mx:Canvas>
</mx:Application>

TreeMap Flex Component

2008-06-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

Standard Tree Flex component is useful when in need to display hierarchical data as an expandable tree. Josh Tynjala has developed more advanced component with similar functionality, TreeMap Flex component. Currently in version 2.0 beta, which means bugs are unavoidable. This component is published as open source. More info and code on google code pages .

TreeMap uses 2D canvas to display relevant data rather then simple hierarchical list in Tree component. Component has advanced data descriptors and custom node and branch renderers. This opens new space for new functionality ideas. Excellent work.

Flanture on pipes

2008-06-14T05:39:00.000-07:00

Yahoo pipes is powerful tool for creating web services mushups. For someone with several blogs, pipes allows you to combine feeds of all blogs and present it within single output. Here is example how to connect several feeds in one. I have used all 3 Flanture blogs to do this.

Pipes interface is intuitive and easy to understand. Results are ready to use in seconds.

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Exams are 4 egomaniacs

2008-06-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

Is it really important to get that Certification banner and make your blog have more authority? I don’t know, but I think it’s impossible to pass the Exam and not to put proof of it on your blog / website / portfolio. Anyone forgot to do it? Take a look what happened to Yakov Fain after taking Flex Certification Exam . And he is right in his conclusion: "Memorizing method signatures and other information that is just one click away in the real world and remembering these things does not make anyone better programmer". If you are still stubborn to take that test, get this practice exam engine for Flex 2.

I still wonder what happened to Web Developer’s and Designer’s Journal (now Flex) and why there isn’t new issue for a year? (or there is?) Not everything in life is web2.0 and some old habits are not replaceable. I like to read paper magazines and even holograms won’t change that. You can still get some old issues in PDF format, by subscribing to free newsletter or use big G to do it: "allinurl: sys-con /mx/ filetype:pdf" without quotes. Ajax, Java and dot Net magazines in query variations. Don’t mention it.

If you want to receive updates from this blog, consider subscribing, via reader or email. I send full posts. Also take a poll on right sidebar: rate your as3.0 knowledge. Thanks.

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Flex 4 Developers Book

2008-06-05T16:13:00.000-07:00

Here is another great Flex book: "Flex for developers" by Sas Jacobs and Koen De Weggheleire. Subtitle is “Data-Driven Applications with PHP, ASP.net, ColdFusion and LCDS”, but actually this book is great for beginners who want to learn Flex 3 and ActionScript 3.0 through number of real world examples.

Book consists of 3 parts, where first part Flex Application Basics is 330 out of 575 pages. You will learn how to create custom flex components and how to use XML in Flex Builder among many other things.

Part 2 and 3, Data-Driven Applications and Livecycle data services are extra chapters for more advanced learners. They introduce case study projects with PHP, XML, ColdFusion and ASP.net.

more details...

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Simple Flex Effects Example

2008-05-28T02:15:00.000-07:00

Open Flex Builder and go to File > New Project > Flex Project and name your project as MyEffects. In Design view take new Panel to the stage, set ID - mPanel , title – My Effects, Horizontal align – center, Vertical align – middle. Now inside this new panel, drag Image component. Set ID – mImage, scale content – true. Move to Category View for Image component, within Style choose center horizontalAlign and middle verticalAlign. Create assets folder inside your project, insert any image and for Image component, set Source for that image.

OK, we created our playground and we can open our box with toys. Let’s try Zoom effect first. Just below Application tag, insert Zoom tag like this:

< id="over" duration="100" zoomheightto="1.3" zoomwidthto="1.3">

Everything is simple here, but you also have to add another property inside Image tag:

rollOverEffect="{over}"

In this way we have made connection between two tags Image and Zoom with over ID. In the same way you can add rollOutEffect or any other like this:

< id="”out”" duration="200" zoomheightto="1" zoomwidthto="1"> and
rollOutEffect="{out}" as Image tag property.

You may notice different duration properties, which means, as you expected, that rollOut will last twice longer than rollOver. Insert another tag, Blur tag for mouseDownEffect:

< id="down" duration="1000">

In order to apply more than one effect on one action we need to use Parallel tag. If we put Zoom and Blur tags between Parallel tag, give new tag id – over while deleting Zoom and Blur id property. Something like this:

< id="over">
< duration="100" zoomheightto="1.3" zoomwidthto="1.3">
< duration="1000">
< /mx:Parallel >

Don’t forget also to delete mouseDown property or you will get an error. You can combine several effects for same action. It’s up to you to decide when is enough. You can choose between AnimateProperty, Blur, Dissolve, Fade, Glow, Iris, Move, Pause, Resize, Rotate, SoundEffect, Wipe, Zoom.

download source

p.s. this is post number 100!

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It’s all about votes

2008-05-25T14:49:00.001-07:00

In last 30 days I have asked you few questions via Polls in order to know you better. I hope that this can help me write more about stuff most interested to majority of my readers because this blog covers wide area of interests mainly inside Flash Platform.

What have I learned?

Almost all of Flanture readers who voted on first Poll are first time comers. Now, I can’t say I don’t have returned visitors because number of RSS subscribers on this blog grows every new month, but I do have full feed that’s true. I have learned that most of the traffic comes from search engines and from Adobe feeds also, but only on days with new posts. Bigger presence in social networks required.

I have also find out that Flanture blog navigation is ‘bad’ for 33% of visitors and ‘can be better’ for 66% of them, but also that blog template is important, but after content.

Finally and most important question I asked was: ‘What do you want to read on Flanture?’ and results are:

Flash Tutorials 36%
Flex Tutorials 27%
Flashlite 9%
General programming 9%
Web Development 9%
All above 9%

This clearly shows that two out of three Flanture readers wants to read more Flash / Flex Tutorials and this is just about right direction for this blog, but that doesn’t mean that other subjects will be totally forgotten. Polls are going to continue, so please feel free to participate and in some sense decide about Flanture content. Thanks.

Catchy title about Astro

2008-05-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

Off course I’m gonna write about Astro! It’s a big news, everyone writes about it, so why should I be exception? Astro is code name for next version of Adobe Flash Player 10. While still in beta, meaning not much support, new features are known and explained on Labs .

While others are in agony for new info about FP10, some are already way ahead, testing and writing tutorials, like senocular on drawing API.

Non-developers don’t need to do anything yet, since beta is just that – beta, but they do need to prepare themselves for totally new experience FP10 enhancements are bringing. If you are still eager to try FP10, you will need to first uninstall previous FP versions and don’t expect many demos just yet.

Download Flash Player 10

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Flex components styling

2008-05-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

Flex applications are known by their default theme. Changing default colors and fonts of Flex applications is called styling. Everything you can do with HTML, you can do also with Flex, because main responsibility for styling is on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). You can create your CSS file directly typing code in your MXML file using Style tag or using external CSS file.

In Flex Builder, best practice is to create ‘assets’ folder within your project and create new CSS file, let’s say ‘mystyle.css’. Then you make reference line to include that file with Style tag, source property:

source="/assets/mystyle.css"

If you want easier way for styling your components, try Flex Style Explorer . This free online tool will help you achieve visually awesome results in no time. When you are finished playing, copy CSS code and paste it in previously created mystyle.css file. You can even run the Flex Style Explorer inside of Flex Builder or download SWF and run it from desktop. Great!

Now let’s take a look at example simple navigation . We have ViewStack and LinkBar components. Using Flex Style Explorer I altered LinkBar appearance, which is also possible for every Flex component.

Here is CSS code:

/* CSS file */
LinkBar {
borderStyle: outset;
borderColor: #999999;
horizontalGap: 12;
separatorWidth: 2;
letterSpacing: 1;
cornerRadius: 0;
backgroundAlpha: 1;
backgroundColor: #0099cc;
separatorColor: #333333;
rollOverColor: #006699;
textRollOverColor: #cccccc;
textSelectedColor: #ffffff;
disabledColor: #ffffff;
fontSize: 10;
fontWeight: bold;
dropShadowEnabled: true;
shadowDistance: 4;
shadowDirection: right;
}

download style

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Flex example: simple navigation

2008-05-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

Coding in Flex is possible in different ways, which depends on habits and personal style. Someone likes pure code, simple text editors and messing with compiler, while others are much happier with heavy IDEs. Flex Builder has more to offer with both styles, source coding and design approach.

Next example shows how to create simple navigation with just few lines of code. We use natural combination of two tags ViewStack and LinkBar. ViewStack has four Canvas tags and every one of them includes one Text field. Just to make difference between Canvases text fields have labels Home, Portfolio, About and Contact.

Connection between ViewStack and LinkBar is made with properties. ViewStack has id property with value “myViewStack” and LinkBar property dataProvider with same value. Grab source code below.

Download source.

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From yesterday, Flanture is part of Flex Bookmarks, very nice Flash directory.

AIR for JS developers free ebook

2008-05-05T08:56:00.000-07:00

First of all if you didn’t noticed now is the right time to start with Adobe AIR, when 1.0 is out and stable and you have one more reason for this if you are JavaScript developer. That reason is Air for JavaScript developers pocket guide free ebook which you can buy in paper or download for free in PDF file format. The book is published under Creative Commons 3.0 license, meaning you can copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work. Book has 204 pages packed with general introduction writings about AIR, but also has mini-cookbook inside which covers topics from Windowing and File API to Embedded Database and Networking.

On right sidebar I have asked you another poll question: What do you want to read about on Flanture. Feel free to give your answer and contribute. This is 4th poll in this series and many more will come. If you feel like writing for Flanture and you find yourself in some aspect of Flash Platform, submit your article and I will publish it as guest blogger’s post. Your writings must be unique and exclusive for this blog.

Flanture also feels quite happy about new Blogger’s feature - scheduled posting. It is one of those things when you say something like: This is invented just now? It’s better now than never.

Learn Flash Video

2008-04-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

Flash CS3 Video book is written by Tom Green and Adam Thomas. Tom Green is professor of interactive multimedia in Toronto, he is working with Community MX and he contributes to Adobe Developer Center. Adam Thomas is a professor of rich media and web development. He runs Robin Hood Tech web studio. Here is a shorten list of what you will learn from this book by chapters:

Best practices of using the Flash CS3 Video Encoder
How to create the FLV Playback component

How to use video and audio clips in a Windows Movie Maker project
How to prepare video projects for Flash video

How to create an FLV file using Flix Pro
How to preview an FLV file

How to use the FLV Playback custom UI components
How to use a Video object in Flash
How to use ActionScript3.0 to add components at runtime

How to create an Alpha channel video in a video editor
How to create reflected video

How to apply simple effects to video
How ActionScript is used to programmatically add filters and blend modes to video

How to use ActionScript to create and apply masks and masking effects
How to use the Tween class to animate masks

Used the color tools and filters to create an iPod ad
Used SWFObject to place a Flash SWF file in a web page

Used a series of movieclips to trigger FLV file playback
Discovered how to play a sequence of videos

How to create a simple webcam feed
How to use a webcam to detect motion

Learned how to embed cue points in an FLV file using the Flash Video Encoder
Discovered how to use components and ActionScript to navigate through an FLV file

Learned how to author video applications for a cell phone
Discovered how to convert a Flash movie to a QuickTime video

May I help you with finding developers?

2008-04-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got this comment:

Need 10 Adobe Flex engineers:
1. You should have this skill set: "Adobe Flex + C#/Java + SQL Database".
2. You have to be living in United States, United Kingdom, Australia or Canada.
3. Work part time (through the Internet) OR full time with us (on site at our client's office).
4. Please send us your resume, expected salary, full time or part time, etc.

Busycode Inc. is a top Adobe Flex outsourcing service provider who develops Flex/AIR applications for clients.
Visit http://www.busycode.com , you will see we are all about Flex engineer, Flex programmer, Flex coder, Flex specialist and Flex expert. If you are Mr. Flex or Miss Flex, join us now!

It is great if you have flex / flash or whatever jobs positions and you want to find good developers, but leaving a comment here on Flanture is not the right way. Do it properly! I know that this blog is on first page of Google for “Flash jobs” and because of this now you have opportunity to find excellent programmers for your projects.

From today you will be able to search for your employees with Flanture for 1$ / day. For more info contact via email or leave your comment and I’ll get back to you asap. Your job link will be placed on sidebar of this blog. Full description on Flanture Jobs. Thanks!

Gumbo receipts

2008-04-21T07:43:00.001-07:00

For this special meal you will need some special ingredients, mostly not yet discovered. Since this is still work-in-progress receipt, some elements may change a lot. You will need enormous patience, strong wit and alien determination.

How to prepare

Take some easy customization of Flex applications. Mix it with component and skinning architecture for a very long time. In the separate dish adjust the MXML language to support states and transitions. Improve existing experience-oriented features such as states, effects, and layout. Keep in mind that you will have to make your Gumbo compatible with Flex 3.

Cook everything until late 2008, when you will have to open the oven and try some in a form of beta 1. If everything is OK, keep cooking until 2009. Serve while hot!

Enjoy your Flex4 experience

Singularity is Green 2

2008-04-18T06:03:00.000-07:00

Find out how all these people congregate in Singularity !

Real-world Flash Jobs

2008-04-14T01:05:00.001-07:00

If we think about Flash Platform, there is huge number of different, smaller or bigger areas where you can become an expert. For beginners this is very important, because it is impossible to become programming guru for everything, even after few years of learning and development. New technologies are appearing very fast and amount of knowledge is increasing exponentially.

Let’s mention 3 versions of ActionScript, then very trendy AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), ColdFusion, Flashlite, Flex, etc. Off course, all these technologies have something in common and at least basic knowledge and understanding of few of them is needed, but for starters it is even more important to choose specific area as primary one.

If you are interested to find out which technology knowledge is most wanted, you will need to check some of the job boards out there, or start with 'the monster list of freelancing job sites'. Some of the positions you might be interested in are:

- Flash developer / programmer
- Flash web designer
- ActionScript games developer
- Mobile Flash developer
- Flex developer
- Air programmer
- ColdFusion developer

You will need 3 things to start with personal development: good Internet connection, free time and curiosity. Everything else you will find on the web. Here is one tip for you. Check those job websites and register for few of them. A lot of them don’t require registration fee. Take a look what kind of jobs are in the offer so you can feel work in real world. As registered user, sometimes you will be able to download source code files which employers upload. You don’t have to bid for the project, it’s enough for you to try solving the problem. In this way you easily gain confidence and experience you will need.