It is me or has the name of this blog suddenly appear as if were a premonition from 2+ years ago that has now come true. It seems like everything lately is about Flex and the integration of the Adobe product line with Flex.


Maybe I should start predicting lottery numbers

Professional Flex 2

Here is the final table of contents for Professional Flex 2 which is due to start shipping shortly.

I just saw an amazing presentation on the new Flash Component Kit for Flash CS3 which shows Flash content as a full fledged citizen within Flex applications. Not only is it super easy to compile your Flash CS3 content for Flex, but Flex Builder will use the content seamlessly.

Key Features that I can remember:

• Ability to access Flash content natively within Flex using any Flex container
• Flash content can be used as a skin
• Ability to define events from within Flash content which can be accessed from Flex
• Bounding boxes to define the space the Flash content will occupy within the Flex application
• Flashframe labels can be accessed from Flex using state management
• and more that I can’t remember, anyone else who watched the Connect demo, please add comments.

Will be available Monday 4/23/2007 at http://labs.adobe.com

And Yellow Dots within Flex (Inside Joke)

My article on Flex 2 Metadata tags “Telling the Compiler how to Compile” is now available in the current issue of the Web Developer’s & Designer’s Journal. Check it out on pages 26 - 31. You can read it here.

Artemis is a community focused project aimed at bringing external libraries to the Flex / Flash environment. The goal of Artemis is to provide features in the Flex / Flash desktop application domain that are not currently available. The Artemis framework allows a developer to create their own custom libraries (currently written in java with plans to support other languages) that integrate with a Flex / Flash Apollo application.

For Flex Developers:
Artemis provides a way for developers to collaborate on building extension to the Apollo framework. Nearly any java API can be encapsulated in an Artemis Library and exposed to an Apollo application through the Artemis framework.

For Java Developers:
Throw away your Swing UIs. Artemis brings the UI capabilities of Flex to java developers. Look for samples coming to our web site that will compare ease of use and functionality between a Flex UI and a Swing UI. No more Grid Bags!

I am currently testing Artemis and will post my experiences as soon as possible. Please post any comments on your experiences with Artemis here as well.

UPDATE: I was able to run the screen shot application successfully on both Windows XP and Mac OSX 10.4.9. For Mac, you will need to get the Java 6 download from Apple’s ADC site which is free to join.