Adobe Developer Week is back, next week, March 24th thru 28th. Topics cover AIR, ColdFusion 8, Blaze DS with twenty sessions spread throughout the week.
Lots of AIR / Flex 3 stuff as well as three ColdFusion sessions!
It was an enjoyable discussion with some differing opinions and looks like being the first of an ongoing series of roundtable format shows. Next week's edition will cover's New Atlanta's announcement of BlueDragon J2EE going open source, among other things.
You can download episodes (sorry, "editions") from the site or subscribe via iTunes.
It'll be a big event - we have around 150 RSVPs so far across the three groups!
- 6:30pm for food / drink / networking
- 7:00pm for the main presentation from Ted Patrick, Adobe's Technical Evangelist for Flex
The raffle will include:
- iPod Nano
- Flex Builder 3 Professional ($699 value - when released)
- CS3 Web Premium Suite ($1,599 value!!)
Due to the popularity of this event, we will be in the "Town Hall" open space inside the security area so you must RSVP using the BACFUG web site - http://bacfug.org/ (scroll down - the RSVP link is below the meeting information)
Direct RSVP link.
About this presentation:
Flex 3 and AIR are getting close to launch and in preparation, Ted Patrick from the Adobe Flex/AIR product team is traveling to select cities to show off the great new features and help prepare us for this exciting launch.
Flex 3 is a feature-packed release, adding new UI components like the advanced datagrid and improved CSS capabilities; powerful tooling additions like refactoring; and extensive testing tools including memory and performance profiling, plus the addition of the automated testing framework to Flex Builder.
Adobe AIR is game-changing in so many ways, extending rich applications to the desktop, enabling access to the local file system, system tray, notifications and much more. Now you can write desktop applications using the same skills that you've been already using to create great web apps including both Flex and AJAX.
Don't miss out on the opportunity to see and hear about this highly anticipated release of Flex 3 and AIR during this special pre-release tour. Plus, in addition to giving away some one of a kind Flex/AIR branded schwag, we will also be raffling off a copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional (pending availability), a full commercial copy of CS3 Web Premium and an iPod Nano at this event!
About Ted Patrick:
Ted Patrick is a Technical Evangelist for Flex at Adobe Systems. He worked with Flash since FutureSplash Animator and watched its evolution from animation to application.
Ted helped Macromedia/Adobe with the development of ActionScript 3, AVM2, ASC compiler, and Flash Player 9 for some 18 months prior to Flex 2's release.
Prior to joining Adobe in May 2006, he provided consulting services at PowerSDK Software and Cynergy Systems.
Ted is a serial entrepreneur having successfully started-up 4 times and raised over 7 Million in VC funding for companies he founded.
3 companies have been successfully sold to other businesses and one was sold to a publicly traded company in 2001. Ted is actively involved in the Flex development community and works at Adobe to define the future of rich media.
We will be raffling off some incredible prizes:
- Flex Builder 3 Professional (shipped after launch)
- CS3 Web Premium
- Apple iPod Nano
Read the BACFUG website for more details and make sure you RSVP (on the BACFUG website) since the meeting will take place inside the security perimeter at Adobe's San Francisco building!
AIR Beta 3, AIR extensions/updates for Flash CS3 and Dreamweaver CS3, Flex 3 Beta 3, BlazeDS, Brio Beta, Flash Player 9 Update...
Good grief!
I just installed the new Flex Builder plugin but won't get a chance to put it through its paces for a few days. The AIR installer is sitting on my desktop and I'm just about to install the updated Flash Player. Oh, and I have my Brio account but haven't had time to play with that either. Maybe Adobe think we need something to keep us busy over the holidays?
Check out Adobe Labs to see what you might be missing!
We all got together early in the summer and came up with the tracks:
- Architecture and Design in Software
- RIA - Flex / AJAX / AIR
- Frameworks A-Z
- Process and Tools
- Platform: Database Tuning & (Application / System) Security
- Tony Hillerson - Offline/Online Features of AIR
- Charlie Arehart - Hidden Gems in CF8
- Michael Smith - Using your Whole Brain for Developers
- Paul Kenney - Test-Driven Development with ColdFusion
- Sean Corfield - Design Patterns and ColdFusion
- John Paul Ashenfelter - Pragmatic ColdFusion: Build, Test, Deploy
- Matt Chotin - Introduction to Flex with ColdFusion
- Introduction to Design Patterns
- Advanced Design Patterns
- Integrating ColdFusion with .NET and other Microsoft technologies
- Publishing and consuming Web Services
- Interface-driven design (interface = API)
- Introduction to AIR
- Data synchronization techniques with AIR
- Designing for multiple user interface technologies
- Designing for code reuse between AIR and Flex
- Real-time data management with LiveCycle Data Services
Soon we'll be posting a general call for speakers. Watch this space!
Remember that registration is already open for cf.Objective() 2008!
See this blog post for more details on the speaker selection process.
Monday:
- Flex best practices
- General Session
- Working with persistent data in AIR
- Using AIR APIs
- Local database access with AIR and data sync strategies
Tuesday:
- General session
- Leveraging ColdFusion with AIR applications
- Building AIR applications using AJAX and Aptana
- AIR security
- INSPIRE: Design Patterns and ColdFusion (me!)
- Sneaks
Wednesday:
- Practical patterns in Flex
- INSPIRE: Making Buzzword
- Using CFEclipse for ColdFusion development
- Creating new Flex components
- Introduction to LiveCycle Data Services for Flex developers
- ColdFusion powered AJAX
See you in Barcelona next week?
Remember to RSVP on the BACFUG website so that Adobe security have your badges ready when you turn up.
7pm, 601 Townsend St, San Francisco (as usual).
You can build AIR applications easily with Flex using the beta of Flex Builder 3 but you can also build AIR applications with HTML.
You need the AIR SDK (again, from Adobe Labs) and a text editor (and access to the command line to run the adl and adt SDK programs to run and package AIR applications respectively).
Of course that might be a bit more work than you want to do. In which case, install Aptana - either standalone or as a plugin for Eclipse / Flex Builder - and then install the AIR plugin for Aptana. Now you simply create a new "Adobe AIR" project, fill out the application information wizard, select your JavaScript libraries (it assumes you are building an AJAX application) and off you go!
There are quite a few changes between the Apollo Alpha (aka "M3") and the new AIR (aka "M4") builds so you'll have to make some source code changes to rebuild your Apollo apps. It's not a big deal - I had my Apollo app - an administrative console for a website - up and running as an AIR app in just a few minutes. Despite the new Flex 3 SDK, my (recompiled) Flex apps and my new AIR app seem to work just fine with my existing CFMX 7 and CF 8 sites.
And tomorrow I get a whole day of training on AIR so I'll have more to say in the next few days.
If you haven't seen Buzzword - which they've demo'd a few times now - check out the screen shots on their main web site. It's very, very slick.
I think it's very interesting to see projects like this switching from proprietary architectures that are locked into a single operating system to a de facto cross-platform standard - that is based on an open source virtual machine - as a way to not only reach other platforms but also, according to the buzz around Astra, to improve performance.
Creating a desktop client like this also validates Adobe's approach with Apollo, bringing Flash (and HTML) applications to the desktop in an integrated, cross-platform manner. It's not clear how Trillian is achieving their desktop presence - details are very sketchy right now - but this would be an ideal use case for Apollo and should seed this concept in a lot of minds.
If making an Apollo Chat Client, or Flickr Image Viewer, or News Aggregator for the desktop is all you can imagine, then expand yourself.Folks at the MAX keynote saw much more than this already including, I think, two of the items from the next line in Tony's article:
Start with a Bitmap Image Editor, MP3 Player, Document editor, SWF compiler, Web Browser, Vector Illustration program, etc. Time to bust out file format documentation for the thousands of file types out there!
