Flex SDK
The nice folks at 360|Flex (with sponsorship from Adobe) recorded our presentations in San Jose Aug 18-20th 2008. I'm planning to transcribe the talk and perhaps post some better screencasts for the middle part of the talk. I had many specific examples prepared that floundered somewhat on stage. Also, a friendly attendee suggested that posting about Eclipse/Flex Builder 3 shortcuts would be good, so I'll do that. There are so many things that I planned but didn't include!
The best part of the talk is the first 8 minutes, at 0:45, and 1:01 where I show the Star Wars of Flex development. I also showed a few utilities that I've developed: a class browser, a stack inspection tool (to find method callers), and a performance profiler. I'll be getting these together and posting the source within the next 2 weeks.
I am speaking at 360|Flex San Jose in August and you should come! 360|Flex is a great conference that really supports the Flex community. It's a great place to meet other developers (and even some designers), to learn, and to have a great time. I'll be talking about the Flex SDK source code and how to improve your development by reading it (and understanding it). The conference runs from August 18-20, 2008 and August 17 (Sunday) is a full day of free training.
I'll be discussing the class hierarchy, the internal compositional classes, and the importance of interfaces. I will tear apart some components and offer suggestions on using them and better ways to design similar components. I will touch on the Flex component lifecycle, skinning, inheritance, custom components, list classes, and containers.
Lastly, I will discuss the Flex SDK API, how it is written today, how it will be evolving in Flex 4/Gumbo and what else Adobe needs to change! I will explain ways to use more DRY (don't repeat yourself) development practices using better componentization and compositional classes.
I am speaking at 360|Flex San Jose in August and you should come! 360|Flex is a great conference that really supports the Flex community. It's a great place to meet other developers (and even some designers), to learn, and to have a great time. I'll be talking about the Flex SDK source code and how to improve your development by reading it (and understanding it).
I'll be discussing the class hierarchy, the internal compositional classes, and the importance of interfaces. I will tear apart some components and offer suggestions on using them and better ways to design similar components. I will touch on the Flex component lifecycle, skinning, inheritance, custom components, list classes, and containers.
Lastly, I will discuss the Flex SDK API, how it is written today, how it will be evolving in Flex 4/Gumbo and what else Adobe needs to change! I will explain ways to use more DRY (don't repeat yourself) development practices using better componentization and compositional classes.
I plan to post some more teasers on my blog (http://jonathanbranam.net) so people who don't know who I am or what I'm talking about can get a better sense of the session and why they should (or shouldn't) come.
The Flex SDK is a large body of code that Adobe has released under an open source license. Reading the Flex source code is one of the best habits to develop as a Flex developer. The code provides insight into what Adobe engineers were thinking during development and how they expect their components to be used. The code is also intended as a blueprint for implementing your own components.