A little over a year ago Adobe opened the AMF spec. Now Adobe has announced it will be opening the RTMP spec! Wahoo!!! This is big news for Flex developers! For those that don’t know, RTMP is the streaming protocol used for streaming video and audio in Flash Media Server and for streaming data in LiveCycle Data Services. The spec is expected to be published first half of this year.
A new episode of Drunk on Software is available. In this episode we talk with Ryan Knight about Enterprise Flex Applications and the open source Anvil project. Let us know what you think!
At CodeMash 2009 I was able to participate in a panel discussion about Rich Internet Applications, Flex, Silverlight, and Ajax. The panel was moderated by Richard and Carl from the .NET Rocks! podcast. Also on the panel was Josh Holmes and Jesse Liberty from Microsoft and Leon Gersing. It was a fun panel - especially since we enjoyed some fine whiskey during it! But also because it’s great to see how we all have common goals - we all want software to be better no matter what the underlying technology is.
The Flash Platform (Adobe AIR, Flash Player, Flex, etc.) has become a mainstream software development platform. This is very exciting but also leads to me getting a boat-load of email. That is great! I love hearing from the community and answering questions. I do respond to every email I get - even if it takes a year! I am frequently asked about partnerships. It seems that everyone who is building products or services related to the Flash Platform wants to know how they can help Adobe and how Adobe can help them. I love getting these emails because as the ecosystem around the Flash Platform grows, the Platform itself grows. But due to my often high latency in responding to email I figured it would be good to document many of the Flash Platform Partner resources that are already out there. Here they are…
Episode 6 of the Drunk on Software video podcast is now available! This one is a bit long but dives into a lot of good information. I frequently get the same sorts of questions from developers, IT managers, and architects about Flex. Jon and I discuss those questions in this episode. Let us know what you think!
February 25 - 27, 2009 Bruce Eckel and I will be hosting a Flex / Adobe AIR Jam in Crested Butte, Colorado. Anyone who needs to learn Flex or take their Flex programming skills further will enjoy the atmosphere and methodology of this event. Attendees can:
Well… The RIA Cowboy is now a published author! As of today you can purchase First Steps in Flex!
It was a great privilege to work on this book with Bruce Eckel. Much of my foundation in OO programming came from reading Bruce’s Thinking in Java book. Writing about Flex with him is like an amateur golfer being able to play a round with Tiger Woods. Luckily Bruce is patient and willing to teach novices like myself. Starting with a short book was a good way for me to begin learning about the process of writing books as well as learn about the significant time commitment required to finish a book. While First Steps in Flex is only 140 pages, I now have a much greater appreciation for those who have written much larger technical books!
At Dreamforce 2008, Salesforce.com’s annual conference, I co-presented a session about integrating Adobe AIR and Flex with Force.com. A recording of that presentation is now available. Let me know what you think.
Jon and I have posted Episode 3 of the Drunk on Software video podcast. In this episode we talk about some of the real world performance issues with Flex’s ArrayCollection. We’ve also created a few demos which illustrate how in some cases ArrayCollection is 26 times slower than Array:
Let us know what you think.
Oliver Marks is reporting that Oracle has released five new CRM Gadgets built using Adobe AIR and Flex! At Oracle OpenWorld 2008 I had the chance to record a video of these new gadgets. Check it out:
This is a great innovation in the usually boring CRM software space. Great job Oracle!