Category: Flex

The Ribbit $100,000 Killer App Challenge

I know that all the talk of the weakening economy has you down, but guess what? There is a way to pocket a ton of cash by doing what you probably already do well: building an application using Flash, Flex, or AIR that uses the Ribbit platform. Ribbit has announced the $100,000 Killer App Challenge. This contest will award $100k in prize money to developers in five categories who submit applications that use Ribbit technology.

Ribbit allows you to very easily build voice enabled Flash applications, so even if you don’t sign up for the contest, this is some very cool technology to play with. But come on, if $100k in prize money doesn’t give you an incentive to try it out and build an app, I don’t know what will!

I am also happy to announce [in a slightly evil and sarcastic tone] that along with Lee Brimelow and Matt Chotin, I will be one of the three judges for the contest. There is a little less than three months left in the contest, so you better hurry and sign up, and get working on your app! And just as a note, this contest is open to US AND non-US residents.

Another TwitterCamp Update

Just a quick update that a new version of TwitterCamp is available (see http://www.danieldura.com/twittercamp.) This is a pretty major release, as it adds support for the new Twitter search API, and removes the requirement for you to authenticate, or for people who want to post to the application to follow you. All they have to do is follow the search terms that you input into the application.

Also, I added a configuration panel for more easily updating the skin. Now you do not need to recompile the application to re-skin TwitterCamp. Just launch the configuration panel which appears on launch, or can be accessed through the context menu.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for features. Of course, now I need to spend a little time focusing on the upcoming Moderator update.

AIR Tips and Tricks – Video, Slides, and Code

For the past few months the crew here at Adobe, along with a few other brave adventurers, spent a total of more than four weeks traveling throughout Europe educating developers in many countries on AIR. My presentation for that trip was called ‘AIR Tips and Tricks’. Below I have included a ZIP file of all the source code for those presentations along with a PDF of the slides. Mike Chambers has also posted a video of the presentation as well, which was recorded in Munich.

Want to Hack on the Flex Compiler?

One of the great things about the new Flex open source project, is that it isn’t just the framework that has been opened up. We have even pulled back the covers on the compiler. Today, Matt Chotin posted on the open source wiki what used to be an internal document that describes how the Flex compiler, usually known as mxmlc, is architected. So if you are looking to hack around on the compiler, fix bugs, or even add functionality, check out that link.

You may be wondering to yourself though, what can I actually do with this information? One great example is the new Flex code coverage tool called Flex Cover written by Joe Berkovitz. The tool basically adds functionality to the Flex compiler so that the bytecode it outputs contains information about what code has been executed. You can then take this information to generate a report which allows you to see which lines of your ActionScript code actually executed during that session.

So what are you thinking of using this information for? How about instrumenting the compiler to do some code optimization? Or maybe just fix that compiler bug that keeps annoying you? How about adding an entirely new feature to Flex? Now that it is all open source, go ahead and try it out!

Heading to Europe for the onAIR Train Tour

As you may have heard, we are soon to head out on the first leg of the onAIR Tour in Europe. This time we will be sporting backpacks and making our way from city to city the European way, via trains (instead of our much beloved bus.) We have high expectations for this tour, we are already seeing amazing registration numbers. So if you have not registered, you will want to do it soon so you aren’t left out.

Register at the onAIR Tour website.

AIR and Flex Presentations and Code Samples

I have been pretty slack in posting this. Over the past few months I have been busy presenting on AIR and Flex at numerous events such as the onAIR Bus Tour and Adobe MAX. I have just finished cleaning up and compiling all of the examples and the presentations that I have been showing.

There are two presentations, compiled as PDFs. Most of my AIR presentations are a variation of the one below. I have also included a Flex Builder presentation that I gave here in Europe at the Beyond Boundaries events we held in Amsterdam and Brussels. Along with the presentations is an archive of Flex Builder project archives that contain most of the code I have showed.

Enough talking, here are the files:

Flex Ranks High in Mailing List Traffic

Matt Raible at Raible Designs has posted an interesting chart that ranks open source web framework’s mailing list traffic. Flex ranks second right behind Ruby on Rails. I am not totally sure of the methodology of the data gathering used for these charts, but I wonder how Flex would rank if the forums on Adobe.com were also added to the list. In any case, it shows how quickly the Flex community is growing!