Ask a Jedi: Flex released - where do I go next?

Jason asked a very interesting question considering last night's releases by Adobe.

If you were a CF developer, but wanted to start working with Flex 3 (having little or no experience with it) how would you go about starting? There are a dizzying array of links, tutorials, etc out there (lots of older CF and Flex versions). I like to focus on getting up and running with CF 8 and Flex 3, for obvious reasons. You know of a good place to start?

So you are right - there are a crap load of links out there. It can be a bit daunting. I'm sure I'll get a lot of comments here, but here is my thinking.

First off - if you are 100% new to Flex, I would not worry about ColdFusion right now. Blasphemy, I know, but seriously, if you are going to learn something completely new, you want to start simple. The Flex documentation doesn't cover communicating with back end systems till chapter 38. I'd get comfortable with Flex's controls first. At the end of the day, whether you have real data populating a drop down or fake data, that's a trivial concern.

Speaking of the docs, download the Developer's Guide PDF. It weighs in at a mighty 1,328 pages. That's a lot of reading material to keep you busy.

As for classes, I've been though the Adobe Flex 2 class. It kicks butt. I'd be shocked if they have a Flex 3 class yet, but in general, Adobe Certified instructors/classes are very high quality. It wouldn't hurt signing up for a class either.

So getting back to ColdFusion, the documentation talks about the multiple ways Flex can access server side data. You will, most likely, want to use Flash Remoting. That is covered in "Using RemoteObject components". When you see RemoteObject, think Flash Remoting. What's nice about ColdFusion (among many other things) is that you can simply reuse the CFCs you've been (hopefully) writing already.

Anyway - I guess my main point is - I'd not focus on hooking up Flex to ColdFusion right away. I'd instead spend time on getting the basics first. I'm open to criticism on this though.

Comments (11) Feb 25, 2008 11:41 AM Views: 1305

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Nice post Ray (yet another that seems highly relevant to my current thinking - your Facebook one comes at the *perfect* time).

I keep hearing lots of CF guys talking about Flex so it does seem to be something many developers are getting behind. I just haven't got my head around how it works yet, but it's good to not have to think about the CF immediately.

I think my initial thoughts were it would be like developing a flash application, but I assuming now it's more like a development bridge to a Flash movie which takes care of generating all the graphical 'stuff'.

One of the things to put on the 'To Learn' list me thinks.
# Posted By James Allen | 2/25/08 12:16 PM
Think of it as learning AJAX.

You're really focused on learning about the client. ColdFusion only comes into the picture when you actually have the client working and can start exchanging data.
# Posted By Justin | 2/25/08 12:46 PM
Plus, seeing as how CF is really just a means to access a dB backend (unless you're using AIR, which you may have a local SQLite dB and probably won't need CF at all), there really isn't a whole lot of reason to start trying to learn the CF interaction at the beginning. I worked through the book, Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source by Jeff Tapper. Lots of really useful information in it, and doesn't go too in depth.
# Posted By Gareth | 2/25/08 1:25 PM
I would recommend taking a class, Mike Kollen offers some good courses through UCI, they are online, recorded if you miss a class, he has all sorts of examples and he is a Adobe Certified Instructor. He teaches a lot of Boeing employees, the only draw back is that the courses tend to be a little slow for me. I tend to learn more just by reading the documentation and reading blogs from the Adobe Evangels/Community. His courses are a great way to get started though in my opinion.

http://mikekollen.com/blog/
# Posted By Joshua | 2/25/08 2:23 PM
I have to agre with Gareth. When I first started using Flex I was asked to convert some of my existing CF apps into Flex ones. Jeff Tappers book was really helpful. I must admit though, I have found that the best way for me to learn is buying working through some examples from books, then trying to build something myself.
# Posted By Sam | 2/25/08 3:05 PM
I just saw that Lynda.com now has AIR Essential Training and Flex 3 Essential Training on their site as of today.
# Posted By Jeff Self | 2/25/08 3:18 PM
Ok..I have the latest Eclipse 3.3.0 and the latest Flex 3 SDK.

For the life of me I can't figure out how to get Eclipse to add the Flex 3 perspective.

Can someone please help me? thanks :)
# Posted By Chris | 2/26/08 3:08 AM
You said SDK - but did you also get the Flex Builder Plugin? If so, you can change perspectives by clicking on the box doohicky on the right side of your screen, where you probably see CFEclipse. Or click Window, Open Perspective.
# Posted By Raymond Camden | 2/26/08 6:02 AM
I'll join the chorus in recommending Jeff Tapper's book.
# Posted By Brian Swartzfager | 2/26/08 6:57 AM
I've got the book myself - but didn't get a chance to really dig into it yet. It seems to be good though from what I glimpsed. Plus I know Jeff personally. The guy is a) damn smart and b) damn nice.
# Posted By Raymond Camden | 2/26/08 8:13 AM
Looks like Jeff Tapper's Flex 3 book is coming out March 28th:

http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Flex-3-Training-Source...
# Posted By James | 2/26/08 11:20 AM
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