« April 2006 | Main | June 2006 »
May 31, 2006
Learn from the Kiwi Team
Check out the Kiwi Team Blog where all sorts of good information is being posted. Brian Riggs has just added a great introduction to the architecture involved in a large Flex app. Definitely worth a read.
Posted by mchotin at 09:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 15, 2006
Samples on the Adobe Developer Center
I wanted to point out a preview of what's to come for Flex 2 samples on the Developer Center. We've just posted a description of the SDK Dashboard sample and provided a link to the running version.
When Flex 2 launches we're hoping to get every sample that ships with the product (both SDK and FDS) its own description on the Developer Center along with links to a running version of the app (where you can view source). We're hoping that this exposure to the sample code along with more detailed descriptions about what the sample shows and why it's important will be one of many steps in improving our resources for the developer community.
Every description that's posted (and every README shipped with the samples) will have a description of the app, features highlighted from the framework and FDS (if appropriate), and any additional implementation notes that might be important.
The dashboard example is short, but if you've downloaded Flex 2 Beta 3 check out the restaurant sample README.html and you'll see more.
Feel free to post comments on the README format and contents here.
Posted by mchotin at 09:33 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
CF plus Flex is Rad!
I've never been a huge fan of RAD. But that's largely because I'm not interested in building the kinds of apps for which RAD tools are generally used. My apps are never just "get it done," I tend to want to do it "my way." Right or wrong, it's the way I've been. With that said, you should check out the stuff that the CF team has been working on. Taking RAD to a whole new level by bring CF together with Flex in a nifty little tool.
Check out Damon's blog post and also the Captivate demo!
Posted by mchotin at 09:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 09, 2006
See JBoss Mail using Flex 2
Anyone want to help super evangelist James Ward on the JBoss Mail Client? Learn about the JBoss Collaboration Server and the role that Flex is going to play in it!
Posted by mchotin at 09:07 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Another Ely Component
Ely has complained that I don't care about him because I don't link to his blog posts with new components. It's really not because I don't care, it's because I feel bad that I never write stuff that looks so cool. Check out his latest and you can understand why I feel inferior.
Posted by mchotin at 05:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 08, 2006
Beta 3 Baby!
Posted by mchotin at 08:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 07, 2006
New Role, Same Team
In April 2003 I had been at Macromedia for two months working on a very small team investigating possible new business opportunities around data visualization. We had a small J2EE backend piece and a Flash frontend written in AS1. It was my first exposure to programming in Flash and I admit I wasn't too fond of it. Ely Greenfield had some tricks that helped me wrangle it into my Java-disposed mindset, but in general the development model wasn't much fun.
Then I found out that we had a team working on creating a new development model for Flash, a project codenamed Royale. My little team was asked to check it out and see if it was something that we might be able to build our product on. Well, rather than just check it out it was decided that we should contribute some real time to the product, help define the requirements and maybe even contribute a little coding. We thought maybe we'd spend 6 weeks building one feature (mine was this small thing called data binding) and then go back to our small project, only this time having a better platform on which to build it.
It is now 3 years later and I never went back to that small project, instead devoting the time to building this thing we now call Flex. It's been incredibly rewarding and I'm hoping that when we release Flex 2 the larger community will appreciate all of the work that has gone into creating it. When you look at all of the pieces that make up the Flex ecosystem there are well over 100 developers, quality engineers, writers, managers, evangelists, marketing folks, and [insert job here] involved. A team I'm proud to be a part of.
So when the opportunity came up for me to move from being an engineer into Product Management it seemed like a great way for me to expand on my contributions. I've spent a lot of time informally being a liason with the community through this blog and my posts on flexcoders, but now we're hoping to formalize that a little bit as I get the opportunity to meet with more customers and feed those interactions back into the team as we figure out what we need to do moving forward. I'll still keep a technical bent to the role, but I won't be spending my time fixing bugs or developing new features.
So if you notice the number of flexcoders posts going down it's because my brain will be slowly atrophying as I move away from the details of our vast offering. But hopefully I'll still be able to interact with many of you as we decide where we should take our incredible platform.
Posted by mchotin at 12:59 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack