Here is the <a href=”http://blog.everythingflex.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/proflex2toc.pdf”>final table of contents</a> for <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470102675/002-4312150-6440857?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=everythingfle-20&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creativeASIN=0470102675″>Professional Flex 2</a> which is due to start shipping shortly.

Key Features that I can remember:

• Ability to access Flash content natively within Flex using any Flex container
• Flash content can be used as a skin
• Ability to define events from within Flash content which can be accessed from Flex
• Bounding boxes to define the space the Flash content will occupy within the Flex application
• Flashframe labels can be accessed from Flex using state management
• and more that I can’t remember, anyone else who watched the Connect demo, please add comments.

Will be available Monday 4/23/2007 at http://labs.adobe.com

And Yellow Dots within Flex (Inside Joke)

My article on Flex 2 Metadata tags “Telling the Compiler how to Compile” is now available in the current issue of the Web Developer’s & Designer’s Journal. Check it out on pages 26 – 31. You can read it here.

Artemis is a community focused project aimed at bringing external libraries to the Flex / Flash environment. The goal of Artemis is to provide features in the Flex / Flash desktop application domain that are not currently available. The Artemis framework allows a developer to create their own custom libraries (currently written in java with plans to support other languages) that integrate with a Flex / Flash Apollo application.

For Flex Developers:
Artemis provides a way for developers to collaborate on building extension to the Apollo framework. Nearly any java API can be encapsulated in an Artemis Library and exposed to an Apollo application through the Artemis framework.

For Java Developers:
Throw away your Swing UIs. Artemis brings the UI capabilities of Flex to java developers. Look for samples coming to our web site that will compare ease of use and functionality between a Flex UI and a Swing UI. No more Grid Bags!

I am currently testing Artemis and will post my experiences as soon as possible. Please post any comments on your experiences with Artemis here as well.

UPDATE: I was able to run the screen shot application successfully on both Windows XP and Mac OSX 10.4.9. For Mac, you will need to get the Java 6 download from Apple’s ADC site which is free to join.

Meeting Date:
April 17th, 2007
Meeting Time:
6:30 PM

Location:
LANTech Training
The Pyramids,
3500 DePauw Blvd.
Pyramid 3, Floor 2
Indianapolis, IN 46268
Speaker:
Rich McGillicuddy, Cetani Corporation

Meeting Topic:
Creating MXML Components

They both look the same, although the pure html version will automatically show the page title in the window title.  They both function the same.  The big difference is that the pure html AIR file is 112k while the flex html version is 256k.

Not sure what is to be learned here, it was just more to satisfy my own curiosities.

Here are the 2 applications:

PureHTMLTest.air

FlexHTMLTest.air

Well I finally got around to building something with the new Yahoo Flex API’s.  In this example, I am using the  Yahoo Weather API to display a few of the many weather properties that are available via this API.  This application uses shared objects to store the user preferences, the Timer class to fetch new results per the user refresh setting, as well as the Distortion Effects from Alex Uhlman.

Here is the application running in the browser

Here is the same application packaged in an Apollo AIR file.

In case you missed this the other day. There are 3 new Apollo cheat sheets released for free by ActionScriptCheetSheet.com.

Here are the links:

Apollo mx.controls & mx.core Cheatsheet

Apollo flash.display & flash.events Cheatsheet

Apollo flash.filesystem, flash.html & flash.system Cheatsheet

Details:

Location: Red Lion, 5th Ave in Seattle WA

Date: August 13-15, 2007

Price: 360.00

Link to tutorial:
http://flnotes.wordpress.com/2007/04/05/flickrin-ver-10-flex-flickr-apollo-mashup-tutorial/

Link to sources:
http://www.ashwineedash.com/download/Flickrin_1_src_files.zip

Link to application:
http://www.ashwineedash.com/download/flickrin1.0.zip

I built this component to allow an icon to be added to each Accordion Header where the icon is dependent on the current state of the Accordion. There are 3 possible states that are tracked, up, down, and selected. The upIcon is displayed whenever the pane is above the selected pane. The downIcon is displayed whenever the pane is below the selected pane. The selectedIcon is displayed when pane is the selected pane. See the image below.

Sample Syntax (Basic with default icons):

<eflex:AccordionIcons>
<mx:Canvas label=”Canvas”/>
<mx:VBox label=”VBox”/>
<mx:HBox label=”HBox”/>
</eflex:AccordionIcons>

Sample Syntax (Advanced with custom icons and selectedIndex):

<eflex:AccordionIcons
upIcon=”@Embed(source=’assets/icons/arrowUp2.gif’)”
downIcon=”@Embed(source=’assets/icons/arrowDown2.gif’)”
selectedIcon=”@Embed(source=’assets/icons/arrowSelected2.gif’)” height=”200″
selectedIndex=”1″>
<mx:Canvas label=”Canvas”/>
<mx:VBox label=”VBox”/>
<mx:HBox label=”HBox”/>
</eflex:AccordionIcons>

Run this demo

View/Download Source

Docs

I have updated my a-store with new categories for CS3.

CS3 Individual products – Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, PhotoShop, etc.

CS3 Suites – Master, Web Standard, Web Premium