Flex Team

April 11, 2008

Info on our first Flex 4 theme

As you may have heard, the next version of Flex is codenamed "Gumbo" and we are beginning to get out information on the kinds of things we're thinking about. One of our themes is called "Design in Mind" and I have now posted information on the open source site to try to set the context for what we're looking at. Over the next few weeks, engineers will be putting up specifications and blog postings about the kinds of things we're looking at as part of this theme. More themes will get their intros over time as well.

Given that we're only a few months into even thinking about this release, it may be the earliest that we've put out anything substantial on a release that admittedly is still a ways away.

Follow the Flex 4 development plans here. (Note: opensource.adobe.com will be down for maintenance on Saturday April 12, be forewarned).

Posted by mchotin at 03:25 PM | Comments (4)

March 31, 2008

Flex Builder for Linux Alpha 3 Now Available

To coincide with the AIR Linux beta. Download here.

Posted by mchotin at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)

February 25, 2008

Follow-up on Flex Builder 3 Serial Numbers

Here's the update on the serial numbers. We have identified the problem in the system that prevented serial numbers from getting into the system to allow FB Pro serial numbers to be sent out (FB Standard are working fine). Our team is going to let things propagate over night and test very early in the morning. We will hopefully be live by Noon PST on Tuesday 2/26 (tomorrow). Once we are live we should be able to generate emails to everyone who had bought who was waiting on a serial. However, feel free to check the download center for your serial occasionally starting at 8am PST in case the email generation is delayed.

Once again, we're really sorry for the inconvenience. I know how it feels to get that new toy and find out batteries weren't included :-)

Update at 9am EST: all serial numbers are up and customers should be able to get their serials from the download page.

Posted by mchotin at 07:18 PM | Comments (18)

Serial Numbers for Flex Builder 3

Just wanted to post a quick note apologizing for the issues we're having with serial numbers with Flex Builder 3 Professional. We are currently working with our operations team to get the issue resolved. Apparently the system does not have serials loaded for FB3 Pro, so everyone is getting a notice saying to contact customer service. DO NOT WORRY. This should all be straightened out soon and you will be able to log back into the site to get your serial number without needing to contact customer service.

Additionally, if you have installed the release build and are getting a notice about the trial having expired, you will need to remove your old license.properties file from the beta. Simply delete the file found here:
Windows: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Adobe\Flex\license.properties
Mac: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flex/license.properties

Posted by mchotin at 01:10 PM | Comments (14)

December 13, 2007

Flex Beta 3 Released - And More Good News

The final beta of Flex 3 has been released on Labs. This new release focuses on overall quality and performance, providing a final look at Flex Builder 3 and Adobe AIR prior to launch. There is also a new release of the Adobe AIR runtime. Get them while they're hot!

We also announced the opening of the AMF specification (download the AMF spec) and a new, open source product called Blaze DS. Blaze DS is "the server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology that enables developers to easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real-time to Adobe® Flex™ and Adobe AIR™ applications for more responsive rich Internet application (RIA) experiences." Ever wanted to build an RIA that included real time data? Now you can, with a completely open source based solution. (Download Blaze DS now.)

The release of Blaze DS follows our other open source initiatives, like the open sourcing of the Tamarin virtual machine to Mozilla, and the Flex framework, compiler and debugger.

Posted by flexteam2 at 07:23 AM | Comments (53)

November 01, 2007

Flex Builder 2 New Pricing - Where Is It?

Today is the day that Flex Builder starts selling at the new lower price. However, a quick visit over to the Adobe store shows that the price hasn't changed - so what gives? Well, sometimes in large companies its hard to align schedules with everyone. In this case, the update schedule for the store and our new re-pricing didn't fall on the same date. The online store will be updated next Thursday, November 8th, and will reflect the new pricing. You can purchase Flex Builder today from any authorized resellers at the new lower price, or you can purchase online through the Adobe store and have your money refunded to you.

The new pricing for Flex Builder is: Flex Builder 2 – US $249 (reduced from $499) and Flex Builder 2 with Charting – US $699 (reduced from $749). Regional pricing will align with these new lower US prices.

Posted by flexteam2 at 08:50 AM | Comments (12)

September 30, 2007

Beta 2 Baby!

We're pleased to announce that Flex 3 Beta 2 is now available! Head on over to Labs to check out what we've got going on. This also means that AIR Beta 2 is available which is pretty cool.

To see what's new in Beta 2 you can read Matt's updated article and check out the updated Flex 3 Feature Introductions which has great videos and writeups of most of the features we've introduced in Flex 3.

Enjoy the newest build, and stay tuned for even more exciting info coming out of MAX.

Posted by mchotin at 10:39 PM | Comments (4)

August 29, 2007

Make sure to test your Flex apps with the latest Player

We need your help in doing compatibility testing with your Flex apps and the latest Player 9 (Moviestar). We've already had some customers point out a change in XML behavior that also affects the Proxy service that comes with LCDS. The proxy issue can be addressed by simply recompiling your application with a new rpc.swc that we have in the nightly builds or by recompiling to not use the HTTPChannel and instead use the AMFChannel.

However we need to know how many apps this issue (and any others that you may find) affect so we can take corrective action. In the XML case we are strongly debating whether to leave the breakage in because we think it should affect a small number of users and the bug fix is extremely important and difficult to conditionalize. Feel free to make your voice heard here.

So please, test your apps, and if you find any issues make sure to file them right away at http://bugs.adobe.com/flex. Mark your bug as an injection so we're aware that it represents a change in behavior.

Posted by mchotin at 08:37 PM | Comments (11)

August 20, 2007

360Flex (Seattle) Flex Framework Deep Dive Session Slides

From Deepa:

Thanks to everyone who made it out to my talk, Flex Framework “Nitty Gritty”, at 360Flex in Seattle. I was very impressed and excited by the Flex knowledge in the room and had a wonderful time speaking and sharing (and learning!). My slides would be well augmented by David Coletta’s incredible notes taken during my talk. Also, these notes have been translated into Chinese if you need that!

If you enjoyed the advance nature of this talk, be sure to check out my session at MAX where I’ll be talking developers through approaching and implementing framework customizations. It’ll be technical, code heavy and awesome!

Flex Framework Nitty Gritty Slides

Posted by mchotin at 01:12 PM | Comments (1)

June 19, 2007

Learn More About Flex and Salesforce.com

If you're interested in Salesforce.com, and how Flex can be used inside Salesforce.com applications, then you should attend a session that Flex evangelist James Ward will be presenting next Wednesday. James and Adam Gross from Salesforce.com will introduce you to the free Flex Toolkit for Apex (Salesforce's developer network).

The Flex Toolkit for Apex was one of the joint announcements from Adobe and Salesforce back at the Web 2.0 conference in April. Many Flex and Apollo developers will find this toolkit just the thing for creating rich internet applications, with a built-in database in the cloud.

Posted by flexteam2 at 11:21 AM | Comments (2)

June 18, 2007

Small Update on Flex 3 Pricing/Packaging

We are not announcing final packaging or pricing, but I wanted to try to clear some things up that we've seen on the forums and mailing lists.

1) The Flex SDK remains free
2) The charting components and Advanced DataGrid will be part of the Flex Data Visualization Package. This package will remain a commercial offering from Adobe, and source will only be available to those who have an appropriate license. You can use your Flex 2 Charting serial number to remove the watermark and view source during the beta. During the beta we are only shipping the datavisualization.swc as part of Flex Builder, but you can copy the SWC from there to other SDK installations.
3) There will be upgrades available to go from Flex Builder 2 to Flex Builder 3. Pricing is not announced but we think you all will be happy with it.

Hope this helps!

Posted by mchotin at 01:43 PM | Comments (25)

June 12, 2007

Flex 2 wins eWEEK Excellence Award

We're pleased to announce that Flex 2 has won an eWEEK Excellence Award in the Application Development category.

Congratulations are also in order to the Acrobat Connect and Acrobat 8 Professional teams for being finalists in the Enterprise Collaboration and Productivity Applications categories respectively!

More info here.

Posted by mchotin at 09:40 AM | Comments (2)

June 10, 2007

Flex 3 Beta is Here!

We are very pleased to announce that the first public beta of Flex 3 is now available on Labs! At the same time we are releasing the public beta of the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and the beta of Flash Player 9 Update 3. 3 releases chock-full of goodness. Since this is the Flex team's blog let's focus on Flex. Here's what we've got:

1. Betas for Flex 3 SDK and Flex Builder 3
2. Nightly builds for the Flex 3 SDK and Flex 2.0.1.
3. Open source infrastructure including the new public bug system and planning wiki.
4. A new car! (just kidding)

We have a number of resources for you to learn about Flex 3 on the Labs wiki including links to the documentation and introductions to the new features via writeups and videos! And what are those new features? Well Ted has been sneaking them all week, but just to reiterate some key ones:

• Built-in support for Adobe AIR
• code refactoring
• memory and performance profilers
• SWF file size reduction using a persistent framework cache in Flash Player
• advanced datagrid
• CS3 and Flex integration

So what are you waiting for? GO GO GO!

P.S. As a favor to me (Matt) please go read my introductory article, I want to be at the top of the Dev Center stats for the month!

Posted by mchotin at 09:08 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

April 25, 2007

Flex Going Open Source

We've announced some exciting news: we are planning to open source the Flex SDK! Soon not only will the framework source be available (like today) but the source for MXMLC, FDB, and the AS3 compiler will be available as well along with a ton of other pieces. This is a continuation of efforts you have already seen from Adobe starting with Labs, the free SDK with available source, and Tamarin. Now we are inviting the development community to participate more directly in the evolution of Flex. The transition will take time, but we think it's going to be exciting for all of our existing and new customers.

You can learn more here: http://www.adobe.com/go/opensourceflex

One of the things you'll see on that site is a link to a forum we've created for folks to discuss. We encourage you to subscribe and participate in that forum for any questions and comments you might have.

More to come over the next few months!

Posted by mchotin at 09:03 PM | Comments (1)

April 23, 2007

Flex Component Kit for Flash CS3

We're pleased to announce the availability of the Flex Component Kit for Flash CS3 on Labs. This prerelease software works with Flex Builder 2.0.1 or Flex SDK 2.0.1 and the just released Flash CS3 (sorry, trial downloads aren't available quite yet, but you know you want to buy it anyway). The final version will be a feature of the next version of Flex, codenamed "Moxie."

We're especially excited about this feature because it demonstrates our commitment to improving the workflow between designers and developers and the integration between Adobe products. Flash content can now easily be a first-class citizen in a Flex application. Simply have your Flash symbol extend our new UIMovieClip class and you're ready to go. Some highlights:

• Flash components can live in a Flex container and all layout will work
• Flash component frame labels are integrated into the Flex state and transition system
• Flex Builder will code-hint properly for your Flash component, simply add the SWC to your library path
• Simple JSFL commands are available to set up new documents as well as publish the Flex-enabled SWC

Please go to Labs and check it out!

You can also see a presentation from Glenn Ruehle during a recent Tech Wednesday introducing the component kit and providing examples.

Posted by mchotin at 02:00 PM | Comments (16)

March 20, 2007

Flex Data Services Renamed to LiveCycle Data Services

The next generation of Flex Data Services has been renamed to LiveCycle Data Services 2.5. There is now a public beta available for download.

The new name change reflects an important expansion in the use of FDS. While LiveCycle Data Services will provide enhanced integration with Adobe’s other LiveCycle server products, it will continue to be available separately, serving both Flex and now Ajax developers.

LiveCycle Data Services 2.5 has lots of exciting and important new features like improving Data Service Messaging performance, integration of RIA and PDF, J2EE portal integration and new capabilities that are important to future Apollo application development including local data caching and offline messaging.

Please go to http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/livecycle_dataservices2_5/ to learn more and download the beta.

Posted by mchotin at 06:04 PM | Comments (5)

March 15, 2007

Flex Module for Apache and IIS on Labs

We're pleased to announce the Labs availability of the Flex Module for Apache and IIS. This provides web-tier compilation of MXML and ActionScript files on Apache and IIS web servers. It means that you can rapidly compile and test a Flex application by simply requesting the main application file from a web browser, similar to working with server-side scripting languages like PHP, ColdFusion, JSP, or ASP.

This module installs directly into the Apache web server or IIS, you do not need Tomcat or another J2EE server for this functionality. It runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux; and the only other thing you need is a JRE.

Please note that this is not an implementation of FDS, it is only for MXML/AS compilation.

Go to Labs and check it out!

Posted by mchotin at 07:10 PM | Comments (6)

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 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)

January 30, 2007

Ajax Data Services and FABridge Update on Labs

AJAX Data Services is a new JavaScript library that lets you access the powerful messaging and data management capabilities of Flex Data Services directly from JavaScript. With this library, you can integrate application clients built using Ajax technologies with the same back-end data services used by Flex application clients. This means that data from Flex applications can now be automatically synchronized with other Ajax applications, ensuring that both users see the most current, accurate information.

Significant updates have also been made to the Flex-Ajax Bridge (FABridge), which, as you know, allows JavaScript-enabled components to interoperate with Flex-enabled components embedded in the same web page.

Using both FABridge and the new Ajax Data Services library, you can now leverage the full benefits of both the Flex programming model and Flex Data Services, providing full interoperability with existing or new Ajax applications.

Both of these libraries are planned to be added to upcoming versions of Flex Data Services.

Posted by mchotin at 11:21 PM | Comments (2)

January 29, 2007

Help the Flex team plan for the future

Now that Flex 2.0.1 is out the door, the team is deep in planning for future releases. To make sure we’re focusing on the right things, we need to hear more from the community, so if you’re using Flex please take a few minutes to fill out a short survey.

The survey can be found here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=801873200349

As always, we appreciate your valuable feedback.

Thanks,

The Flex team

Posted by flexteam2 at 12:05 PM | Comments (5)

January 24, 2007

2 new Flex utilities on Labs

We've placed 2 new utilities on Labs this afternoon.

First, some Flex Ant tasks which should be useful to everyone who does command-line or automated building of Flex applications (source is included). Second, the Flex Compiler Shell (FCSH) which s very useful for those not using Flex Builder to compile their apps on a regular basis.

You can get lots more info on the Labs pages. We hope you find these useful and feel free to send feedback!

ETA: A special note of thanks should go to Summer '06 intern Spiros Eliopoulos who did the majority of the work on the Ant tasks. Spiros, you rule!

Posted by mchotin at 11:30 AM | Comments (10)

January 17, 2007

Flex Developer Certification is Here!

Well it took a little while but you can now become an Adobe Certified Expert in Flex 2! As of this posting the Adobe web site isn't updated but the most important info is in the Exam Preparation Guide (this is a local copy so the most up-to-date version will eventually be on adobe.com).

You can register for an exam via Thomson Prometric today and Pearson VUE will be available in a few days. The exam costs $150 US or local currency equivalent.

Go get certified!

Posted by mchotin at 12:39 PM | Comments (10)

January 05, 2007

Migrating to 2.0.1 With ColdFusion Extensions

Summary: If you've created projects with the 2.0.0 version of the ColdFusion Extensions for Flex Builder, you need to add -context-root "" to the additional compiler arguments in order to compile with 2.0.1.

The whole story: With the 2.0.1 compiler we've made a change intended to help users understand when they need to set a context root setting. That's a setting that's critical to set correctly in order for your Flex client services to work with a Flex Data Services or ColdFusion server.

Previously we defaulted this setting to an empty string, which worked fine for simple, standalone ColdFusion installations, which completely hide the concept of a J2EE context root/path from you. However it was wrong for every other server case. This caused a lot of pain for FDS customers because their services would simply not work and there was no indication that the context root setting was the cause.

So, for 2.01 we do the following:

1) ColdFusion projects default the context root to an empty string, as before.

2) All other projects produce a compiler error if the context root is not set, when needed.*

*The context root setting is needed whenever parsing a services-config.xml file that uses it as a variable, as do the default services-config.xml files that ship with FDS and ColdFusion.

So, in theory everything should work as it did before for ColdFusion projects, projects that don't use FDS or CF would be unaffected, and only FDS users would get this new, helpful compiler error. And in practice, yes, ColdFusion projects created with the main New Flex Project wizard work exactly the same without any migration steps.

Except we missed one case. The ColdFusion Extensions, an optional install on top of Flex Builder, add another wizard called the "ColdFusion/Flex Application Wizard", a.k.a. the CF SuperWizard. This guy does everything from creating the project to populating it with code that accesses your database backend via ColdFusion. Upon upgrading to 2.0.1, projects created with this CF SuperWizard in 2.0.0 will start producing this compile error:

The services configuration includes a channel-definition 'my-cfamf' that has an endpoint with a context.root token but a context root has not been defined. Please specify a context-root compiler argument.

To fix this, you'll need to perform this small migration step on each SuperWizard-created project, either before or after you upgrade to 2.0.1:

1. In Flex Builder, right-click the project in the navigator and select Properties.
2. Select the Flex Compiler page.
3. In the additional compiler arguments field, append this:

-context-root ""

Please note: Do not use an equals sign. The correct syntax is -context-root "", NOT -context-root="".

One other note. If you are using a J2EE ColdFusion installation, that is, you selected a WAR/EAR install instead of a standalone "Server" install when you installed ColdFusion, then you will need to set the context root to the actual context root you deployed the ColdFusion WAR/EAR to, rather than an empty string. For example:

-context-root "mycontextroot"

So, sorry for the trouble ColdFusion Extensions users! We introduced this change rather late in the 2.0.1 release cycle and just missed this case. To be clear, this does not affect ColdFusion projects created with the main New Flex Project wizard, only those created via the CF/Flex Application Wizard in the CF Extensions that you must install separately.

Posted by tomlane at 11:49 AM | Comments (3)

Flex 2.0.1 is here (OSX support, bug fixes, and much more)

Just before the holidays, the Flex team put the finishing touches on an important update to the Flex products, and now we’re happy to say that Flex 2.0.1 is available on the Adobe web site. The official announcement isn’t for a few days, but you can get the bits starting now.

In addition to fixing lots of bugs, the 2.0.1 release adds some great stuff to Flex, including:
* Flex Builder support for OS X (PPC and Intel) and Eclipse 3.2
* Support for automated functional testing, including Mercury QuickTest Pro integration
* A number of new features in the free SDK, including modules, dynamic CSS, and native support for FlashType encoding.

For a more complete rundown, see the Logged In article by Matt Chotin in the DevCenter.

How do you get it?
If you’re already a Flex Builder or Flex Data Services customer, you can download the updaters from the Flex support center.

If you’ve been waiting for Flex Builder on the Mac, you can buy a copy now from the
online store. The Mac version will be available through all of our other channels shortly.

You can also download the free trial or the updated version of the free Flex SDK (http://www.adobe.com.go/tryflex).

Is it safe to migrate?
Applications developed with Flex 2.0 should recompile seamlessly with 2.0.1, but make sure you look through the release notes for any gotchas.

We hope you enjoy the update and look forward to seeing the results.

Posted by flexteam2 at 05:46 AM | Comments (8)

December 13, 2006

Flex Charting Survey

Do you use charts in Flex or do you think you may in the future? Please take 2 minutes to take a survey on possible chart types and enhancements for a future release. It's two questions and will take you to flex.org when complete.

Posted by mchotin at 09:14 PM | Comments (6)

November 30, 2006

FDS Stress Testing Framework (Beta) Now Available

Available on Labs.

Info cribbed from the Labs page:

The Flex Data Services Stress Testing Framework helps Flex developers using Flex Data Services load test their Flex 2 applications. Flex Data Services offers a number of data transport channels for communicating between a Flex client and the Flex Data Services server. These channels include RTMP(s), AMF(s) and HTTP(s). Most commercial load testing tools rely on data being sent over HTTP and less performing implementations of the AMF protocol (usually AMF0). Flex Data Services enables developers to leverage HTTP in addition to the latest and highest performing version of AMF (AMF3) and data push with RTMP. As most load testing tool vendors have not yet released support for RTMP(s) or the latest version of AMF(s), the Flex Data Services Stress Testing Framework allows Flex developers to load test their applications that use RTMP and AMF3 without needing to use a commercial testing tool.

Adobe is currently working with a number of testing tool vendors to implement all of the data transport protocols available in Flash. In addition to partnering with testing tool vendors, we are providing the following load testing framework to enable Flex Data Services developers to load test their applications. The Flex Data Services Stress Testing Framework is currently in beta form, but available for testing and evaluation. Please download and test the framework and provide us your feedback.

Posted by mchotin at 10:53 PM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2006

Flex support for 3rd-party editors

We know that not everyone uses Flex Builder, especially folks on a platform where Flex Builder doesn't exist. The Flex SDK is designed to provide everything you need, even if you want to remain in the editor of your choice. What we don't provide however is productivity tools like syntax definitions for other popular editors like Emacs, Vim, and TextPad.

So we'd like to encourage the community to build up libraries for supporting 3rd-party editors, and we'll be happy to point folks to them via flex.org.

Here are some starting points. If you know of something we should be monitoring please let us know via the comments.

Emacs: ActionScript Mode (AS2 I think)
Vim: actionscript.vim
TextPad: Some AS1 and AS2 syntax files

Posted by mchotin at 04:18 PM | Comments (15)

A Message from Flex Marketing

There have been recent questions asking Adobe for more visibility into our marketing investment for the Flex product line. We want to take this opportunity to give the community a better sense of what we’ve been doing and where we are going.

The first thing we want to emphasize is that we think a successful community is the best marketing of all, so we’ve invested heavily in ways to make developers successful. Examples of this approach include the Quick Starts, training curricula (and upcoming certification program), early releases of features like ASDoc on Labs, and new components like the AutoComplete Text Input on the Flex Exchange. While these may not seem to be obvious marketing efforts, if the community is successful we then have ready-made evangelists who can spread the word and that is the best form of marketing.

From a more traditional standpoint, the Flex marketing team has been hard at work focused on reaching out to the community to drive developers (existing and new to Adobe) to trial the Flex product line. So far our efforts have driven over 475,000 developers to the developer center and over 100,000 developers have downloaded a copy of the Flex SDK or Flex trials.

Many developers have also joined us on our Live and eSeminar series where we have held over 25 live seminars around the world, and hold eSeminars 3 times a month (info here). We were also happy to have over 17,000 developers attend the Flex session during the Adobe Virtual Developer week last June, which we plan to run again early next year. Our July launch event in Korea was attended by over 1000 developers. In August, Adobe sponsored a Sys-con "Real World Flex' event in New York City where we had over 200 people attend, and over 12,000 people have viewed replays of the sessions at http://www.flexseminar.com/. You may also have seen one of the Adobe Evangelists (Ben Watson, Christophe Coenraets, James Ward, Ted Patrick and our ColdFusion guru Ben Forta) promoting Flex at over 50 tradeshows, seminars and developer events over the past 6 months. In the last few weeks we’ve had a very successful launch of the Japanese version of Flex Builder. Of course MAX is coming up and Flex has a huge presence at the conference.

Our PR team has been working hard to reach out to all of the key tech-pubs around the world, gaining Flex coverage in eWeek, Network Computing, ITWeek, ComputerWorld, InfoWorld, InfoWeek, DexX, and CRN to name just a few, with coverage in over 100 online and print tech pubs around the world.

Additionally, we’ve been working with industry analysts at Gartner, Forrester, Burton Group, Red Monk, etc. to make them aware of Flex. And it makes a difference. Our Flex booth was mobbed at this week’s Gartner ITXpo in Orlando, Florida after Ray Valdes mentioned Flex positively in his session (more). Richard Monson-Haefel at Burton group has blogged positively about Flex (more). So has Jim Governor at Red Monk (more).

Next let’s provide an update on some open source projects that are getting traction in other communities outside traditional Adobe communities.

The PHP RIA SDK by Adobe has a mailing list with about 80 people on it, and 4 or 5 community members who contribute regularly to samples in the SDK. We are working with those community members to post items up on the Flex Developer Center for PHP developers. We are a Gold Sponsor at the PHP Zend Conference later this month, and Mike Potter, an Adobe evangelist, will be speaking and showing off Flex to that audience. The SDK release was mentioned in a major PHP magazine this month.

There is also a Ruby on Rails RIA SDK by Adobe that we're working on, again as part of an open source project with a mailing list of 87 people. There are many community sites popping up in the RoR community dealing with Flex, including http://www.flexonrails.net and a future book.

We're working on a new evangelism project targeting university students. We have our first university focused session tonight at the University of Ottawa, and have a university focused website ready to launch at http://www.therabbithole.net/. This program is moving ahead slowly but surely, with more events scheduled across Canada next month.

On the advertising side, we’ve already run over 10 million ad impressions and sent opt-in promotional emails to over 1 million developers around the world. New interim banners are now running throughout all our online sites. These include: Ajaxian, Artima, CMP, CNET, Code Project, DevX, Federated Media, FTP, Inform IT, IT Toolbox, O’Reilly, SysCon and The Server Side. These banners are INTERIM only and were developed as a replacement for what we internally called the "Pretty Boy ads" while we wait for the next generation of our banners to be tested and developed. If you are interested in being part of our focus group please send an email to Sydney Sloan, ssloan”at”adobe.com , with "Focus Group Participant" in the subject and we will try to get as many of you in the focus group research as possible.

We also have a project underway to test new advertising messages (to replace and/or augment the "Go Beyond Ajax" theme) and to update the Flex landing page on Adobe.com to be more focused on developers. We are also working hard to improve the trial download experience and how developers should be spending their first 30 minutes with Flex, much like what Christophe Coenraets has done on his blog.

This is not an exhaustive list of the activities we've been driving to promote Flex, but as stated earlier, for Flex to be REALLY successful we need the support of the community -- we need you talking, building killer apps, writing blogs, publishing articles and telling your friends and family just how cool it is to develop apps in Flex. We welcome your ideas on how to promote Flex, including the bumper stickers and tattoos approach! In fact, we’d like to encourage you to be creative in coming up with ways to spread the word about Flex. Please send us any and all marketing ideas, including ideas to promote

1. Flex to the Mac developer community,
   
2. Flex to the Linux community,
   
3. Flex to the Flash community,
   
4. Flex to the <insert other developer community here> community.
   

If we end up using your idea or a part of your idea in a future campaign (or we just think it’s really cool) we’ll send some Adobe/Flex schwag your way AND give you credit on a site like flex.org.

The best way to get ideas to us is to respond in the comments to this blog entry (or at least refer to your own blog entry here so we know about it). We look forward to seeing what you can do!

Posted by mchotin at 01:53 PM | Comments (29)

October 03, 2006

Send us publicly viewable Flex apps

The Flex team is constantly looking for Flex applications that we can use for a variety of purposes. One crucial purpose is our ability to test existing applications against newer tools (like for example a new Player on a new OS) to make sure everything is kosher. If you have an application that we can reach please let us know via the comments. If you'd prefer not to publicize your URL but still want us to test, you can send the information to me at mchotin AT adobe DOT com.

Of course we'd love to see public apps for other purposes too, like demonstrating the building power of the Flex community! Would folks be interested in an application registry similar to what flexcoders.net started for developers?

Posted by mchotin at 04:55 PM | Comments (24)

August 31, 2006

How to order printed Flex docs

Folks have been asking how to get printed copies of the Flex docs. I received this information:

Today customers can order the docs via the Adobe store by calling +1-888-724-4508, for international call the local number for Adobe purchasing listed on the website.

When calling you can ask for the Flex and Flex Builder documentation sets or can also ask for SKUS: 38036679, 38036690. The cost is $50. US. The docs will be available on the Adobe on-line store by October 12 for electronic purchase.

Posted by mchotin at 08:34 AM | Comments (15)

August 17, 2006

Flex Builder on Mac will support Intel and PPC

The Engineering team has authorized this announcement.

There is no announced beta or release date at this time.

Posted by mchotin at 12:31 PM | Comments (17)

August 07, 2006

Comparison of Flex Data Services and Flash Remoting

Mike Nimer posted an article a week ago comparing Flash Remoting and Flex Data Services implementations of the same app. You can see that post here.

Damon Cooper gives a little more background on the process of creating that kind of app, using the CF wizards included in 7.0.2.

Posted by mchotin at 02:38 PM | Comments (4)

July 31, 2006

New Quick Starts Available

The Developer Center adds Quick Starts on a regular basis. Today we have 3 more, focusing on user interfaces:

Creating item editors
Using data providers
Adding drag-and-drop support

Check out all the Quick Starts here.

Posted by mchotin at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2006

SpringFactory for Flex Data Services

Jeff Vroom is the architect for Flex Data Services and has posted a SpringFactory to the Adobe Exchange in the Flex category.

We're hoping that we'll be able to keep posting useful nuggets there so keep an eye out (and note that other members of the community are posting as well).

Posted by mchotin at 09:44 AM | Comments (6)

June 30, 2006

Flex Builder on the Mac

There have been many questions over the last few days as to Adobe's intentions for releasing Flex Builder on the Mac. As part of our continuing effort at transparency here is a short list of questions and attempts at answers. Let us preface this by saying that we have only begun the planning phases of the next release(s), so many of these answers will be incomplete until we've had some more time (and sleep).

Q: Is there going to be a Flex Builder release for the Mac?
A: Yes

Q: Why wasn't it released with the Windows version?
A: We began by developing Flex Builder for both Mac and Windows at the same time. However during development we ran into a number of issues that were specific to OS X and needed to be addressed in Eclipse itself. Fixing those issues would have meant delaying the overall schedule, so we decided to focus on finishing the Windows release before returning to the Mac in a follow-up. In the meantime the Eclipse community has been working on Eclipse 3.2 which fixes a number of the issues we ran into earlier. This makes the likelihood of a timely Mac release that much better, and we're looking forward to continuing to improve Eclipse on the Mac.

Q: When will Flex Builder for the Mac be available?
A: We are still in our planning phases but we are hoping to have a public beta on Labs this year and the production release early next year. One can imagine a particular event in October where we'd be thrilled if we could launch the beta, but we simply don't know our timelines yet. We can say that a whole lot of Flex Builder engineers just received shiny new toys to help in this pursuit, while Product Management received nothing. Not that Product Management is jealous.

Q: If I buy Flex Builder for Windows can I transfer that license to the Mac when it comes out?
A: Honestly we're not sure yet, we still need to figure this out. We'll need another few weeks to answer this, hopefully before the trial expires.

Q: Will Flex Builder for Mac run on PPC, Intel, or both?
A: We're very excited about the new Intel-based Macs (at least the engineers who received them are, PM is still not jealous) and at minimum we will be supporting that platform. We'd be interested in getting your feedback on the importance of supporting PPC given how quickly the Intel is getting adopted. Feel free to leave feedback here.

Q: What about Flash Player 9 on the Intel for Mac?
A: You can grab a beta version of that Player here: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/public_beta

Q: What do I do in the meantime if I have a Mac?
A: Download and use the free SDK. A number of developers have come up with workflows for building Flex applications using the Mac; we'll try to put together a more comprehensive list of them in the next few days.

Posted by mchotin at 03:48 PM | Comments (57)

June 28, 2006

Flex 2 changes between Beta 3 and Release

Sorry these aren't coming out in a more official document but here are many of the changes we made between Beta 3 and the Released product. The formatting may not be perfect here because it's from a different HTML doc that may not be blog friendly :-)

New and modified features

This section lists new and modified features in:

• Flex SDK 2
• Flex Data Services 2
• Flex Builder 2
• Flash Player 9

Flex SDK changes

Flex SDK 2 changes include the following:

• Functionality changes
• API changes

Functionality changes

Samples, etc.

• New samples in GMC: Photoviewer, Hybridstore, Flexstore UI updates
• HTML templates for Player detection & history management added to SDK in resources directory

General

• Removed childrenCreationCompleteEffect. We no longer need this event because creationComplete will fire at the correct time when our container has a creationPolicy of queued or none.
• Removed all references to modelChanged. It is now collectionChange
• Popups didn't work as renderers. Implemented owner/owns API change to support ownership.
• The drawRoundRectComplex() API is being removed from the player. A new GraphicsUtil class is being added to the mx.utils package. It has a single method, drawRoundRectComplex(), with the same signature as the player API with the addition of a graphics parameter as the first argument.
• Promoted more internal subcomponents from mx_internal or private Developers wanted more access to enough internal subcomponents.
  
  • Button: textField
  • ComboBase: textInput
  • MenuItemRenderer: icon, label, branchIcon
  • Panel: titleBar, titleTextField, statusTextField, controlBar
  • TabNavigator: tabBar
  • TileListItemRenderer: label, icon
  • ToolTip: textField
  • TreeItemRenderer: label, icon, disclosureIcon (which was previously named disclosure)
  • We also decided to rename the 'text' property of BaseListData to 'label' because it is produced by itemToLabel(). This change should affect only people who have implementated drop-in renderers.
    
    
• Adding content coordinate APIs.
  The Flash player has two coordinate systems: local and global. Flex introduces a third: content. We were already using content coordinates for placing components inside absolute layout containers. For example, placing a Button at 0, 0 inside a Panel puts the button in the upper-left corner of the content area. This checkin formalizes the concept and provides functions for converting to/from content coordinates. Content coordinates also take scrolling into consideration. For example, if you have a scrolling container that is scrolled down 100 pixels, the content coordinates will be 100 pixels - any chrome height lower than local coordinates.
  New functions: contentToGlobal, globalToContent, contentToLocal and localToContent. These point conversion functions are similar to globalToLocal/localToGlobal, except they convert to/from content coordinates.
  New properties: contentMouseX, contentMouseY. These read-only properties return the mouse position in content coordinates.
• ApplicationControlBar changes:
  • Floating mode has been changed to normal mode.
  • The metadataReceived event has been removed. The event is still dispatched but is not supported. Using this event in MXML returns a compilation error.
• DataProvider APIs are no longer in the list classes. For example, you can no longer call myList.getItemAt(index). Instead, call myList.dataProvider.getItemAt(index).
• IFocusManager now contains a getNextFocusManagerComponent method.
• UIComponent - Added a new public property called visibleRegion:Rectangle, which describes the visible area of the component, including dropshadows.
• Flex now supports type-selector inheritance.
• The mx:Model tag now requires well formed E4X XML.

  
  For example, a single root node is now required.

  For example,
  
  
  
  <mx:Model id="checkoutInfo">
  
  <root>
  
  <billingName>{billingName.text}</billingName>
  
  <billingAddress>{billingAddress.text}</billingAddress>
  
  <billingCity>{billingCity.text}</billingCity>
  
  <billingState>{billingState.text}</billingState>
  
  <billingZip>{billingZip.text}</billingZip>
  
  <deliveryDate>{deliveryDate.selectedDate}</deliveryDate>
  
  </root>
  
  </mx:Model>

Application

• The application background gradient now uses backgroundGradientColors and backgroundGradientAlphas for styling instead of fillColors/fillAlphas. If backgroundGradientColors are undefined (which is the default), they will be calculated based on backgroundColor. This means you no longer need to set fillColors (or backgroundGradientColors) when setting backgroundColor unless you require specific control over the gradient colors

Charting

• *Style changed to *StyleName in charts
  
• maxSize for axis renderers now correctly take into account the title
  
• PieSeries, PieChart, and GradientEntry styles and properties now range 0-1 instead of 0-100
  
• pieseries and gradient values now range 0-1 instead of 0-100
  
• Axis.name is now Axis.displayName
  
• axis renderer properties are now typed as IAxisRenderer

ComboBox

• Added new style properties - explicit skin values for editable ComboBox: editableUpSkin, editableOverSkin, editableDownSkin and editableDisabledSkin along with an arrowButtonWidth style. This makes editable an explicit skin state, rather than implied.

Date Chooser, Date Field

• Added new styles backgroundColor and backgroundAlpha to DateChooser.
  
• Added new property formatString (consistent with DateFormatter) to DateField
  
• Added two API's monthSymbol, yearSymbol in Datechooser, DateField
  
• Made DateField dateToString() and stringToDate() functions public again.

Effects

• Add a new "tweenStart" event to Tween. This event bubbles up to TweenEffect and MaskEffect.
  
• TweenEffectInstance.createTween goes from mx_internal to protected
  
• In an override of the EffectInstance.play() method of a Tween effect, you now do the following to create the Tween object:
  
  

  GMC

  
  

  
  
  	  // Create a Tween object. The tween begins playing immediately.
  
        var tween:Tween = createTween(this, startVal, endVal, duration, minFps); 
  
  	 

  
  

  Beta 3:

  
  

  
  
       // Create a Tween object. The tween begins playing immediately.
  
       var tween:Tween = new Tween(this, startVal, endVal, duration, minFps); 
  
  	 

  
  

  This lets the tween use the tweenStart, tweenEnd, tweenUpdate events, lets it play backwards, and initializes any easing functions.

  
  
• Several properties in CompositeEffectInstance were changed from protected to mx_internal.


• The changeEffect metadata effect trigger will be removed from Accordion.as and ViewStack.as. Users can use the showEffect and hideEffect triggers on the children of the ViewStack or Accordion as a replacement.
  
• MaskEffectInstance.as
  
  
  
  • Added a new protected property called actualTargetBounds:Rectangle. This is used by the subclasses to figure out the size, start position and end position of the mask.
    
  • Added a new parameter (bounds:Rectangle) to the protected function defaultCreateMask and the public function createMaskFunction.
  
  
  
  

Events

• The "mouseDownOutside" and "mouseWheelOutside" events dispatched from a popped-up UIComponent are now FlexMouseEvents, not MouseEvents.
  
  All code involving these events now uses the event type constants MOUSE_DOWN_OUTSIDE and MOUSE_WHEEL_OUTSIDE in FlexMouseEvent. (MOUSE_WHEEL_OUTSIDE was previously called MOUSE_SCROLL_OUTSIDE, but no code was actully using it. It should be called MOUSE_WHEEL_OUTSIDE because the Player has a MOUSE_WHEEL event type.)
  
  The metadata for these events was wrongly on PopUpManager, moved it onto UIComponent where it belongs.
  
• added new static property to EventPriority
  
  We need to add a new enum value to mx.core.EventPriority. This new enum value will be called CURSOR_MANAGEMENT and will have a value of 200. This will allow us to have a higher priority over the default.
  
  CursorManager now listens to the mouseMove events in the capture phase with a priority of 200.

FlashType

• Added four new styles to support FlashType, the whizzy font renderer formerly known as Saffron.
  
  
• They are named fontAntiAliasType, fontGridFitType, fontSharpness, and fontThickness. All are inheriting styles, and their default values are defined on the global selector.
  
  
  
  
  • fontAntiAliasType sets the antiAliasType property of internal TextFields. The possible values are "normal" (flash.text.AntiAliasType.NORMAL) and "advanced" (flash.text.AntiAliasType.ADVANCED). The default is "advanced", which enables the FlashType renderer if you are using an embedded FlashType font. With "normal" you get the kind of embedded font renderering that we've been seeing up to now. This style has no effect for system fonts. For more information, see the documentation of the TextField and AntiAliasType classes.
    
  • The other three styles are specific to FlashType rendering and therefore have meaning only when fontAntiAliasType is "advanced" and you are using an embedded FlashType font.
    
    
  • fontGridFitType sets the gridFitType property of internal TextFields. The possible values are "none" (flash.text.GridFitType.NONE), "pixel" (flash.text.GridFitType.PIXEL), and "subpixel" (flash.text.GridFitType.SUBPIXEL). The default is "pixel". For more information, see the documentation of the TextField and GridFitType classes.
    
    
  • fontSharpness sets the sharpness property of internal TextFields. The possible values are Numbers from -400 to 400. The default is 0. For more information, see the documentation of the TextField class.
    
    
  • fontThickness sets the thickenss property of internal TextFields. The possible values are Numbers from -200 to 200. The default is 0. For more information, see the documentation of the TextField class.
    
    
  
  
  
  
• Note that because these are CSS styles, you can use them flexibly in the same way that you use fontFamily, fontSize, etc. For example, a particular Text component could use subpixel-fitted FlashType rendering of New Century 14 at sharpness 50 and thickness -35 while all Buttons could use pixel-fitted FlashType rendering of Tahoma 10 at sharpness 0 and thickness 0. These styles apply to all the text in a TextField; you can't apply them to just some characters and not others.

Image

• 
  

  new style on Image component called "brokenImageBorderSkin" (skin, Class).
  
  Default value is mx.skins.halo.BrokenImageBorderSkin. It draws a border around
  
  the image control when it's in the "broken image" state (useful for Zorn Design View
  
  and generally).

  
  

Label

• Significant enhancements to, and implementation changes in, Label. These changes don't require any app revisions.
  
  
  
  
  • Removed the autoSize property. It was a misnomer, was inconsistent with other components, and was buggy in that it could cause an app to come up blank due to an infinite layout loop. To replace it, Label now respects the horizontalAlign style. For consistency, Label also respects the other relevant layout styles, namely verticalAlign, paddingLeft, paddingTop, paddingRight, and paddingBottom.
    
    
  • Moved the implementation of the 'selectable' property from Text into Label (its base class) so that you can have a selectable Label if you want one. But Label is still non-selectable by default, while Text is selectable by default.
    
    
  • Exposed the 'truncateToFit' property of Label so that if you don't want truncation you can have clipping instead. And the truncation indicator ("...") is now a localizable string so that you can use a Unicode ellipsis character if you are using a font that has it.
  
  
  
  

Menu

• Changes to MenuEvent:
  
  
  
  • MenuEvent change has been renamed to itemClick
    
  • MenuEvent menuItemRollOut has been renamed to itemRollOut
    
  • MenuEvent menuItemRollOver has been renamed to itemRollOver
  
  
  
  
• Added addChildAt() / removeChildAt() to IMenuDataDescriptor.

Text

• Change in measurement of Text when width isn't specified. This may require some apps to specify a width or maxWidth for Text if they were relying on the old algorithm.
  
• The textField property of Label, Text, TextInput, and TextArea is now protected rather than mx_internal.
  
• Promote textWidth, textHeight, and getLineMetrics to public interface on text components.


• TextInput and TextArea no longer dispatch a valueCommit event when the text property changes as the user types, cuts, and pastes (because this triggers premature validation).


• The UITextFormat class has two new String properties, antiAliasType and gridFitType.

Tree

• Added a method to the descriptor interfaces: Tree.hasChildren(item, model). This tests for the existance of children which is more strict than descriptor.isBranch

VideoDisplay

• 
  

  Video display now supports the following border styles:

  
  
  
  
  • backgroundAlpha="1.0"
  
  
  • backgroundColor="0x000000"
  
  
  • backgroundImage="undefined"
  
  
  • backgroundSize="undefined"
  
  
  • borderColor="undefined"
  
  
  • borderSides="left top right bottom"
  
  
  • borderSkin="ClassReference('mx.skins.halo.HaloBorder')"
  
  
  • borderStyle="none"
  
  
  • borderThickness="1"
    

    The default background color is black.

    
    
  
  
  
  

Compiler

• The show-coach-warnings compiler option is now show-actionscript-warnings.


• The show-dependency-warnings compiler option is now for internal use only.


• The asc/mxmlc command-line option -es3 was renamed to -es.


• The Flex compiler now enforces static type checking for operands when running in warning mode.

API changes

• The CursorEvent class was removed.


• The DefaultBindingProperty and DefaultTriggerEvent properties have been removed.


• ControlBar: Removed the unused backgroundSkin style.


• Button: Removed the cornerRadius style because it already includes SkinStyles.as.


• ComboBox: Removed @private from the dropdownBorderColor style.


• Menu: Removed the unused defaultIcon style and the inherited selectionDuration and useRollOver styles.


• MenuBar: Removed the unused selectionDisabledColor, textRollOverColor, textSelectedColor, and useRollOver styles.


• NumericStepper: Removed the obsolete trackSkin style and all code relating to the stepTrack.


• TextInput: Removed the disabledColor style, which was already included from TextStyles.as.


• Tree: Removed the unused defaultIcon style and the inherited selectionDuration style.


• VideoDisplay: Removed @private from the metadataReceived event.


• ListBase: Removed defaultIcon from the IS_ITEM_STYLE set.


• SystemManager: Removed @private from the resize event.


• The signature of ListBase.isItemSelected() changed from
  
  
  
  public function isItemSelected(item:IListItemRenderer):Boolean
  
  
  
  to
  
  
  
  public function isItemSelected(data:Object):Boolean

Flex Data Services 2 changes

• The default names of the Flex Data Services configuration files have changed. Notably, the top level Flex Data Services configuration file is named services-config.xml by default. The table below outlines each of the default file name changes from Beta 3 to GMC:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Beta 3	GMC
  flex-enterprise-services.xml	services-config.xml
  flex-remoting-service.xml	remoting-config.xml
  flex-proxy-service.xml	proxy-config.xml
  flex-messaging-service.xml	messaging-config.xml
  flex-data-service.xml	data-management-config.xml

  
  
  
  


• RPC Services (WebService, RemoteObject and HTTPServices) - The
  makeObjectsBindable property is now honored by all RPC Services... anonymous Objects are wrapped in mx.utils.ObjectProxy instances and Arrays are wrapped in mx.utils.ArrayCollection instances.


• An mx.rpc.events.InvokeEvent was added to RPC Services. This event is fired when a remote request is made from an RPCService.


• The legacy <mx:RemoteObject> endpoint attribute was added back to the MXML API of RemoteObject. It allows the developer to compile a RemoteObject based application without a services configuration file. The endpoint is expected to be a fully qualified URL to a Flex Data Services 2-compatible channel endpoint and the request will always use the AMFChannel for URLs starting with http and SecureAMFChannel for URLs starting with https. The request will not send a channel-id so it is up to the user to ensure that it is appropriate to contact the the RemotingService destination via AMF.


• ItemReference is now the return type for createItem and getItem. This requires no code changes but provides clients with a mechanism for detecting when the reference item is removed from another client. It also allows you to release a specific reference to an item retrieved via createItem or getItem in case you have more than one reference to the same item managed in a client.


• A Flex Data Management Service change for assemblers that return references to lazy associations: In beta 3 your assembler had to return the complete state of all referenced items. Now, if your association tag is marked with lazy=”true”, you only need to return instances of the referenced objects where the id properties are populated. The rest of the state is not accessed. When the client fetches the value of the referenced item, your assembler’s get method is called to retrieve the referenced item. This also fixes a problem with the hibernate assembler in beta 3 where it would do a deep traversal of the entire object graph. Now, as long as your FDMS destination sets lazy="true" on the associations, Flex Data Management Service will only do the traversal it needs to fetch the ids of the referenced items.


• The
  DataService.metadata property was removed.


• mx.rpc.AsyncToken.responder was updated to handle multiple responders and be consistent with mx.collections.ItemPendingError. Instead of setting the single responder property on an AsyncToken, you call addResponder to add a new IResponder implementation to the token, and accesses the responders property to get the Array of responders.


• The enterprise_rb.swc file was broken up into rpc_rb.swc and fds_rb.swc.


• All deprecated properties and methods were removed.


• You can now specify a connect timeout value in services-config.xml <channel-definition/> properties like so:
  
  <channel-definition id="..." class="...">
  
  <endpoint uri="..." class="..."/>
  
  <properties>
  
  <connect-timeout-seconds>1</connect-timeout-seconds>
  
  </properties>
  
  </channel-definition>
  
  
  
  You can also set this on a channel directly in AS like:
  
  myChannel.connectTimeout = 2;


• Performance update to support a fixed RTMP endpoint worker pool size. The default behavior is the same, which is to use a cached thread pool that grows as needed with no upper limit. To set an upper limit on the pool size, use the max-worker-threads tag, as the following example shows:
  
  
  

  <channel-definition id="qa-rtmp-ac" class="mx.messaging.channels.RTMPChannel">
  
  <endpoint uri="rtmp://10.132.64.63:2266/eqa/rtmpac" class="flex.messaging.endpoints.RTMPEndpoint"/>
  
  <properties>
  
  <max-worker-threads>10</max-worker-threads>
  
  ...
  
  
  

Flex Builder 2 changes

There were no significant changes in Flex Builder functionality between Beta 3 and GMC.

Flash Player 9 Changes

• flash.utils.getBaseClassName() is now getQualifiedSuperclassName()


• The flash.text.TextField class has the following new methods:
  
  
  
  • public native function get useRichTextClipboard ():Boolean;
  
  
  • public native function set useRichTextClipboard(value:Boolean):void;
    

    In order for the text field from which the text is copied to copy the formats, and in order for the field to which the text is copied to receive the formats, useRichTextClipboard must be true in both places.

    
    
  
  
  
  

Posted by mchotin at 09:07 AM | Comments (11)

June 27, 2006

Flex 2 Released

The Flex team is proud to announce the release of the Flex 2 product line. Well over 100 people have been involved in building the Flex 2 SDK, Flex Builder 2, Flex Data Services 2, ColdFusion Updater, and Flash Player 9. Their work is now available for your downloading pleasure. As part of the Flex 2 launch we are pleased to simultaneously start the Flex team's weblog. Flex 2 has been a massive undertaking and there's a lot to talk about (and possibly some issues you'll encounter). We'll use this blog to communicate information that can't be found in the regular docs or on adobe.com.

Our main objective with this blog is to begin a dialog with our users. As you experience problems please log the issues here. As we hear your issues and as we see patterns we'll report on the most significant ones, post any workarounds and let you know how and when we can fix the issues and get the new bits pushed publicly. We want to be responsive and we want to be transparent. So, please check back here and please stay involved.

We'll also try to share some of our plans for future releases and get feedback from the community as to where we should be focusing. This just the beginning of the open relationship we'd like to have with the Flex community.

In the meantime, here's a few places for you to go:

Download Flex 2!
Check out a new gateway to all things Flex at flex.org.
View all the new material at the Flex Developer Center.
File feature requests and bugs on the wish form.

Continue to check back at this blog in the coming days. We look forward to sharing with you!

Posted by mchotin at 08:40 PM | Comments (25)