Flex Team: February 2007 Archives

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February 27, 2007

Flex Ant Tasks Updated

The Flex Ant tasks have been updated. When the compc or mxmlc tasks fail, Ant now throws a build error, and we also fixed some minor problems in the included build.xml. Go download the updated version if these would apply to you.

Posted by mchotin at 10:37 AM | Comments (2)

February 12, 2007

The Flex Team's Component Plans

There have been requests for public guidance on what components Adobe will be releasing in the future, especially since there are developers who would like to make or extend components on their own without then having Adobe duplicate their efforts. In that spirit we'd like to share our current thinking.

Note that these are forward-looking statements and therefore subject to change, but best represent our plans at the moment. The primary component areas we are focusing on include:

  • Enhancing the List-based components by adding functionality common to data grids and trees in other component libraries
  • Making enhancements to the existing Charting components (and their core framework), with a focus on expanding the API to afford greater control over axes, skinning, data hints, and other decorations.
  • Investigating new types of navigators in order to provide a best of breed solution for organizing information and processes.
  • Including some of the specialized text fields now available on the Exchange (e.g., autocomplete and masked input)

While there are many opportunities for both free and commercial components, there are several areas where we would particularly welcome community contribution, including:

  • Specialized components that address a particular UI need, such as a drawing surface
  • Components that provide better I18N support than is currently available in the core component library (e.g., the DateChooser/DateField controls)
  • Contributions to the scheduling framework currently posted on Labs
  • Utility libraries, adding to what is already available in as3corelib (http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/); e.g., an XPath implementation building on top of the AS3 XML class that supports the W3C spec
  • Themes
  • Sample applications that demonstrate one or more concepts (big or small)
  • Flex Cookbook entries (http://www.adobe.com/go/flex_cookbook)

On a related note, we do intend to incorporate the recently released Ant tasks for the Flex Compiler and the Flex Compiler Shell into the SDK at some point in the future.

We hope that this helps clarify our plans. If you would like to double-check with us before beginning a new component or enhancing an existing one you can feel free to email Matt Chotin. With that said, in keeping inquiries confidential we will not be able to share whether we know if another party is already working on the same or similar component. We encourage you to use the public mailing lists and forums to investigate whether an investment in a particular component would be worthwhile.

Stay tuned for even more news on how Adobe intends to provide insight into future versions of Flex!

Posted by mchotin at 05:57 PM | Comments (8)

February 09, 2007

Flex Campaign for Java Developers to launch on Monday

We’d like to inform you of an upcoming Flex Developer segment campaign for Java developers, featuring Java industry influencer and author, Bruce Eckel, set to launch Monday, February 13th, with a BIG BANG! The goal of our campaign is to introduce Flex to the millions of Java developers out there who are struggling with building beautiful, engaging and dare we say “sexy” UIs.

One of the keys of the campaigns is focused communications from developers to developers, to talk in their specific language, which in this case is Java. James Ward , Christophe Coenraets and Bruce Eckel are the key spokespeople. Bruce’s latest blog, Hybridizing Java , is already getting positive response in the blogosphere, and Christophe’s new 30 minute test drive is a key application that will introduce developers to Flex and get them interested and hopefully hooked. And James, well, James is going to be everywhere Java developers live as he is booked for every JUG, Posse and Roundup we can book him into over the next four months, with Christophe providing backup support for those days he is double booked!

Following is a more detailed overview of the key elements of the campaign.

ONLINE & EMAILS
Our online campaign will run from February 12th to the end of March, canvassing the 13 most popular java sites with high frequency driving millions of impressions. The ads will be running on: JavaWorld, JavaLobby, Java.net, The ServerSide.com, JavaPro, DMXzone, O’Reillly OnJava.com, Dev Shed, Slashdot, Dr. Dobbs portal, InfoQ, FTP Online, JDJ, Artima developer, Earthweb and The Code Project.

We will also be sending targeted emails to over 100,000 developers who subscribe to JavaLobby and JavaPro.

EVENTS
You’ll see Adobe at most of the major java related events over the next few months, including local JUG meetings, industry events and developer tours. You can see the most updated list on the Flex events page.

Java User Group Tour – we will attend over 15 local JUG meetings and conduct a 2nd Day Hands On training session in select cities
Confirmed w/dates
• Seattle – 1/16 & 1/17
• Mountain View, CA – 2/7
• San Francisco, Adobe Hands On Session 2/8;
• Kansas City – 3/14
• Cincinnati – 3/19 & 3/20
• San Jose, Adobe Hands On Session, 3/22
• Anne Arbor – 4/3 & 4/4
• Sacramento – 4/10
• Phoenix – 4/11
• Portland – 4/24
• San Diego, CA – 05/15
• Houston, TX – 06/27
• North Carolina TriJUG –July 16 & 17

Confirmed without dates:
• Orlando, FL
• Gainesville, FL
• Palo Alto, CA


eSeminars - monthly eSeminars on “Flex for the Java Developer” featuring Bruce Eckel and James Ward.
• February 27th
• March 27th
• April 24th
• May 22nd

3rd Party Java Events
• eBay Free Flex Conference: March 5-7th 2007 in San Jose. Ted Patrick will be speaking at this event.
• Java Posse Roundup, March 6-9. James Ward attending.
• QCON Enterprise Conference: March 12-16th in the UK. We will have a booth and Christophe Coenraets will be speaking at this event.
• SUN Tech Days: March 19-21st in Paris, France. Gold Sponsor including Keynote session, booth, full registration list.
• AJAXWorld: March 19-21st in New York City. We will be a platinum sponsor, partnering with Cynergy. Christophe keynote, 3 speaking sessions and a 10x20 booth.
• SD West: March 19-22nd in Santa Clara. James has a speaking session and a 10x10 booth.
• O’Reilly eTech: March 26-29th in San Diego. Mike Chambers and Duane Nickull will be speaking at this event and we will have a demo pod.
•Web 2.0 Expo: April 15-18th in San Francisco. We will be a platinum sponsor, and will have a speaking session and a 10x20 booth.
• JavaOne, http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/index.jsp. May 8-11: Sponsor, booth and will have an offsite event featuring Bruce Eckel.
• BEA Dev2Dev Days World Tour: 25 locations worldwide reaching over 25,000 developers


We would like to thank many of the developers out there who have helped us in building this strategy, providing feedback on our messaging, advertisements and strategy.

Sincerely,
The Flex Product Marketing Team

Posted by flexteam2 at 08:28 AM | Comments (10)