Flex4/FlashBuilder4/Flash Catalyst Links
It's been a busy day. I've twittered/re-tweeted a bunch of these links, but thought I'd do a quick blog entry concerning some links that I think may be important for folks taking a look at the new goodness released today on Adobe Labs. Most likely some of these links repeat the same content, but I hope folks find it helpful.
- First off, check out this video by Tim Buntel: Flash Builder 4 (is it FlashBuilder or Flash Builder?) beta 4 for ColdFusion developers. It is a 12 minute video that you can easily watch during your lunch hour covering stuff specifically for ColdFusion developers.
- This next article, Network Monitor in Flash Builder 4 covers the... wait for it... I'm about to say it... the Network Monitor. Ok, sorry for the silliness. This is, without a doubt, one of the cooler parts of Flash Builder 4. It totally removes the need for tools like ServiceCapture or Charles.
- If you are like me, you may be a bit overwhelmed by the changes in Flex 4. This article: Differences between Flex 3 SDK and Flex 4 SDK beta can help you digest some of what has changed. Personally I'm finding the namespace changes to be quite significant. I'm going to have to digest this a bit before I really get it.
- This is probably a bit of a repeat, but there is a Dev Center at Adobe just on ColdFusion and Flex: Learn Flex and ColdFusion
- Check out these tutorials from Adobe Labs.
- Lynda.com, AKA the people who turned me down (not that I'm bitter, really!) announced free video tutorials on Flash Catalyst. More information may be found here: http://www.lynda.com/flashcatalyst
- Next - while this isn't a "Learning" type link, I wanted to share it. Ted Patrick is looking for community involvement in creating Catalyst skins. I sent him one, but I think it melted his computer. (Keep me away from design toools!) More information on his blog post: Where community and Catalyst meet
That's it for now. My plans are to review the changes in Flex 4 and hopefully write up a more detailed blog post. As I said, it is a bit overwhelming. But folks - now is the time. The Flex/Flash platform looks incredible now. If you are one of those ColdFusion folks who haven't taken the chance to learn Flex, now is the time. Do it. And if I can help in any way, let me know.
New on Adobe Labs
Just a quick blog post to summarize and link to the new stuff released today on Adobe Labs.
CoComo - Provides abilities to add video/audio sharing in your Flex apps.
Pixel Bender - An image and video processing infrastructure with runtime optimization on heterogeneous hardware.
Flash Platform - Links for Gumbo (Flex 4) and Catalyst (Thermo).
Alchemy - Translates C and C++ code into ActionScript.
Flash Player 10 - Specifically for Solaris and Linux.
And so it begins - first MAX Announcements
The conference hasn't even started yet (well, registration has, pre-events,etc) and we already have some news out there in the wild. First, it looks like AIR 1.5 has been released. You can get it here: http://get.adobe.com/air/. You can learn more about AIR 1.5 in this DevNet article: Introducing Adobe AIR 1.5. Thanks goes to Flashthusiast for sharing the news.
Over on FlashMagazine.com, they have an article on other news in regards to Flash. Probably the most interesting bit is that Thermo now has a proper name: Flash Catalyst. CoCoMo is now in public testing and Flash Media Server has a new update.
I'll be blogging from the keynote. The email I got today had this to say:
Opening General Session-Vectors of Innovation
There are three tectonic shifts in how software is developed and experienced around the world. Adobe Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Lynch, explores the three vectors of innovation through an engaging multimedia presentation, featuring guest speakers from well-known brands.
Look for my 'live blog' (basically an entry I keep updating) in a few hours. It sounds like the CF stuff will be tomorrow, but I think today will be quite interesting as well. (Just please no mobile, Adobe, I beg you! ;)
Adobe Connect failure on the Mac - apologies to the Connecticut UG
So - if you tried to attend my presentation tonight, you saw it was a complete and utter failure. Whenever Connect opened, all I saw was a blank white screen. I connected to my PC via RDP, went to the meeting, and confirmed it was working fine there, but no go on the Mac. I did a reboot and it didn't help. Finally one of the members suggested I load Connect in the browser with ?launcher=false.
Finally - I saw some UI. I was about to begin my presentation when I noticed that I didn't have the Presenter plugin. I've run Connect meetings all year long, but ok, whatever. I clicked. The app reloaded. No go. I tried in FF and Safari, and nothing seemed to change.
I'm very frustrated now - and of course more than a bit sorry that the Connecticut group didn't get to hear my presentation. Connect has been flakey on my Mac before - but mainly just random crashes 2-3 times an hour. I've never had a total failure like this before.
Can anyone offer any advice? I believe I still have a room open to me on one my accounts (oh, and while I'm complaining, has anyone else noticed it's hard to find the URL to the admin portion of Connect?) so I have a place where I can try.
Ask a Jedi: Flash, ColdFusion and FIle Uploads
Asa asks an interesting question. I wasn't going to answer as Flash isn't my area really, but I had an idea and I figured I'd suggest it. Please feel free to correct me if this is dumb. Anyway, here is the question:
I'm trying to make a file unloader using Flash & ColdFusion. I have a flash file embedded on a page that let's the user select a file, which is then posted to a ColdFusion page for upload. The problem is that the Flash player doesn't post cookies on file uploads, so the ColdFusion page that's getting posted to is under a new session. Is there a way to append the cfid to the url and have ColdFusion use that session instead of making a new one?
So I was a bit surprised by this. I can't imagine why Flash would not do a 'normal' request and pass along the cookies. That being said - I think I know a way to do this. When you generate your HTML code to embed the Flash SWF, you can pass along the session.urltoken value via flash vars. The Flash app could read this and use it when it does its POST.
Right?
Any Flash users out there want to chime in? (I'm sure I must have at least one Flash guy reading the blog. He probably sits next to the one Photoshop guy reading my blog. ;)
Adobe Developer Week
Wow, I just found this out myself, but it may be old news. Next week Adobe is hosting a week full of developer sessions you can attend via Connect.
Topics cover ColdFusion, AIR, Flex, Flash, and other items. If you can't sign up for a session (or be there when it happens), Adobe will be providing recordings 5 days later.
Again - wow!
Another charting option: XML/SWF Charts
A few weeks ago I blogged about an alternative to ColdFusion's built in charts, Google's Chart API. This week I discovered another alternative, XML/SWF Charts. This isn't a free option, but they have a free license with limitations and the price for a "full" copy is only 45 bucks for a single domain. It works pretty easy too.
Boeing 787 Launches
Ok, so I don't normally blog about Flash, but I noticed quite a few posts on MXNA today about the new Boeing 787 web site and how it uses Flash. The Flash part is nice and all, but I'm a real nut for airplanes so I encourage folks to check it out:
The coolest feature? Well, the coolest looking feature? Check out the video of the dimming windows. Nice.
If I can make one comment on the Flash, the site was well done and all, very slick, I just wish there was a mute on the front page video. I hate it when sites do audio and don't give you a mute option. The other portions of the site do have audio controls at least. I'm still waiting for Adobe to add a mute control to Flash for cases where the developers forget.
RIAForge hits 200!
The title says it all - RIAForge just released its 200th project. Other stats for those of us who are stat junkies:
Total Active Projects: 200
Total Views: 791967
Total Downloads: 63040
Total Verified Users: 1647
Updates in past 24 hours: 5
Unique Logins in past 24 hours: 45
New users in past 24 hours: 22
(And yes, I'm still looking for a way to slap AdSense up there without Adobe noticing!)
Flash 9 for Linux
I don't blog often about Flash or Linux, but for those who care, you can now get Flash 9 for Linux.