Flex

Last week I was doing an impromptu session at Slivafug when I discovered Easing Functions in Flex. I love it when after almost three years with a technology I can still just stumble across something amazingly cool! Easing functions allow you to apply non-linear motion to effects. There are many types of effects which you could apply easing functions to, but I’ve only touched the surface by playing with Move effects and Series Interpolation on charts. I’ve created a little demo application to show off Flex’s built-in easing functions:

Tonight I’m speaking at the BayCHI / SV JUG in Mountain View - Starts at 7pm, but you need to either get there early or pre-register if you haven’t already done so.

Bruce Eckel on “Hybridizing Java” with Flex

Screencast of Bruce Eckel and I creating an expressive application using Flex, Hibernate, and XFire

Christophe Coenraets’s new Tomcat based Flex Test Drive

New Yahoo Group just for us Java Flexcoders

Back in the day Swing was so cool because you could make your app look like a napkin. Of course most of us don’t think much about desktop apps or applets anymore, so the Napkin craze faded away. But I’m here to say that The Napkin Skin is back and better than ever! And now it’s based on web technology that people actually have and use. For more info about how Eylon Stroh created this work of art, check out his blogs:

This Thursday night you can meet the Flex team at the SF Adobe office. Come and hang out with the people who actually write classes like UIComponent (8406 lines), Container (5055 lines), and DataGrid (4884 lines). And you can also meet people who have never written an AS class longer than 100 lines - like me! Get all the details and RSVP:

http://flexteam.eventbrite.com/

Also coming up February 7th I am presenting on Sexy Web Apps with Java, Mozilla Tamarin, and Flex in Mountain View.

This past week I spoke at the CodeMash conference. It was a really great event full of stimulating conversation. Even more fun than trying to surf in the wave machine was an Open Spaces style session that Kevin Dangoor (creator of TurboGears) and I hosted. We had planned to just sneak off into a corner and turn Ely Greenfield‘s DisplayShelf component into a TurboGears Widget. However, word quickly spread that we were going to do this and everyone wanted to watch as we coded. We had a bunch of fellow geeks huddled around every spare laptop and monitor we could find. I shared my screen with VNC so that everyone could watch what Kevin and I were doing. It was by far the best geek-out session I have had in a long time! Check out a screenshot of the DisplayShelf widget in a TurboGears application, showing a picture of our geek-out session:

Continue reading to learn more about what we built, how we built it, and how you can use it…

I’m sitting in Caribou Coffee in Ann Arbor Michigan looking out at beautiful ice covered trees glistening in the sunlight. It’s Jan 17th 2007 and this day is going down in history! Today is the day Flash Player 9 was officially released for Linux! This is HUGE! The web allows anyone with a PC to engage with information and others. Flash has always pushed the limits of how that engagement happens, most recently with video. Even though many Desktop Linux users prefer free software, Adobe has still committed to making Flash work on Linux. I think this is noble. Do you see MS or Apple doing this with their platforms? By having Flash 9 for Linux, Desktop Linux is made all that much better. I have been using Linux as a desktop since ‘96 and without Flash I would be missing out on some pretty amazing stuff. Some will say “But Flash isn’t Open Source”. You are right. But if you don’t want to run proprietary software, rather than complain, go help Gnash. Ok, now that I’ve espoused my religious views, lets move on to the cool stuff!

Back in November I did a presentation at The Web Sig (now Silicon Valley Web Builder). Due to a bad Camtasia setting the Apollo demos don’t show up though. Sorry. Let me know what you think.

Update: You can download the source code for this screencast here.

Recently Bruce Eckel and I had the chance to record a screencast of us pair programming with Flex & TurboGears:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/eckel_video.html

The results were great - a fantastic UI on top of a simple back-end! Both Bruce and I learned a lot creating this screencast and I hope you will enjoy watching it.

The buzz around Flex at JavaPolis last week was unreal. It’s great to see so many Java developers get excited about the sexy UIs you can so easily build with Flex! I even had numerous people approach me throughout the week and show me some cool Flex app they built in their first day of Flex programming. Java developers everywhere are falling in love with Flex!

All the Flex / JavaPolis blogs not listed on my previous post:

Christoph Rooms and I have been showing off Flex all week at JavaPolis. Everyone is loving it! Check out the crowd of people watching demos and winning shwag (click the image below to see more pictures from JavaPolis):

Also we have had numerous people blogging about Flex at JavaPolis:

• JavaPolis - Building Sexy Web Apps with Flex
  • POJO Mojo and Sexy Flex
    • Flex at JavaPolis
      • Flex at JavaPolis 2006

        • James Ward and Christoph Rooms at JavaPolis

        This week at the conference Jon from BEA even built a Flex app with vi and the free Flex SDK! Nice work Jon!