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  • MAX Conference Sessions Becoming Available Online
  • Inaugural BHAM-FUG Meeting
  • Adobe MAX 2008 Opening Session
  • Revisiting the Flex whiteBox issue in Flex 3
  • One Mind, Now Universal
  • After Effects: Looping Banquet Video
  • Proceed With Caution: Adobe Flex Inline Functions in Loops
  • Local Adobe CS3 Event
  • Revisiting the Flex whiteBox issue
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MAX Conference Sessions Becoming Available Online

Posted on December 14, 2008 | Filed Under Adobe Flex, Software Engineering

Ted Patrick and his fellow Adobe evangelists have started posting recordings of the recent Adobe MAX conference sessions online at Adobe TV. Each session features a recording of the presentation/slideshow video and session speaker(s) audio.

There are a handful of sessions available now, with more coming in the next few weeks. I would recommend three sessions in particular once they become available. I attended them and they were great sources of info.

• Flash Player Internals (also discussed how the new Google SWF search support works)
• Using C++ Libraries in Flash Player and Adobe AIR (Alchemy Cross Compiler)
• Introduction to Flash Catalyst (Thermo) and the Next Generation of Flex (Gumbo)

Inaugural BHAM-FUG Meeting

Posted on December 13, 2008 | Filed Under Adobe Flex, Local Happenings, Software Engineering

I participated in the first meeting of the new Birmingham Flex Users Group this past Thursday, December 11th at the Hoover Public Library. Things got off to a great start with discussion of the attendees’ backgrounds and possible discussion topics for future meetings.

Personally, I plan to present topics on memory management, bookmarking/deep linking, and project workflow based on my experiences as part of an Adobe Consulting team on the Verizon Wireless Media Store, new product and technology announcements from last month’s MAX conference (which I attended), “Why Flex?”, and others.

Adobe has also kindly provided free books, shirts, backpacks, pens and other items as giveaways that will be offered in future group promotions and meetings as door prizes.

If you are in the Birmingham, Alabama area and interested in learning about Flex, the “Adobe Flash Platform” (as it was branded at MAX) or Adobe technologies in general, I encourage you to join us at a future meeting!

Adobe MAX 2008 Opening Session

Posted on November 17, 2008 | Filed Under Adobe Flex

“MAX - Connect. Discover. Inspire” is the theme of this year’s gathering. The Adobe CEO is now on-stage introducing the conference. He just said this is the largest MAX to date, over 5,000 attendees.
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Revisiting the Flex whiteBox issue in Flex 3

Posted on May 24, 2008 | Filed Under Adobe Flex

I expected the Container.whiteBox issue (discussed here and here) to be resolved with the release of Flex 3, but readers have pointed out that the issue still exists. With this in mind, I decided to offer another solution to the problem. The technique used in this solution is referred to as Monkey Patching. I first saw the technique described by my fabulously talented UM coworker, Doug McCune.
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One Mind, Now Universal

Posted on January 16, 2008 | Filed Under Adobe Flex, Software Engineering

I have decided to take on an exciting new challenge in 2008. I’ve joined the ranks of Universal Mind, the preeminent Adobe technologies consultancy in the RIA development arena.

UM has some very exciting things going for them, including being added to Inc. Magazine’s 500 Fastest Growing Privately Held Companies list in 2007, seeing multiple prominent Flex developers come onboard in recent months, and work on several prominent projects underway in 2008. The Universal Mind slogan, “High Impact Consulting”, says it all.

I believe that an incredible success story is going to be written for this company. I am both thrilled and humbled to be joining such a dynamic, knowledgeable team. Wish me luck!

Proceed With Caution: Adobe Flex Inline Functions in Loops

Posted on October 21, 2007 | Filed Under Adobe Flex, Software Engineering

I recently ran into a problem with Adobe Flex inline functions that I want to share with you. I spent a good part of a day trying to find the problem in my code only to discover an unexpected ECMAScript-spec’d behavior was to blame. Take heed of this if you use inline functions inside a loop.

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Revisiting the Flex whiteBox issue

Posted on April 29, 2007 | Filed Under Adobe Flex, Software Engineering

A few months back, I posted about a hardcoded whiteBox display object in the mx:Container object. I ran into a problem with my workaround after posting about it, but I forgot to post an update on how to deal with it.

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Now syndicated on Flex.org aggregator

Posted on December 7, 2006 | Filed Under Adobe Flex

My blog has been added to Adobe’s Flex.org blog aggregator. If you haven’t visited my site before, come take a look. I’ve documented multiple Flex bugs (verified by Adobe) including workarounds where available, app skinning issues and workarounds, Flex and RoR integration and other RIA goodness. Welcome, one and all!

Serious about Adobe Flex development? If so, you need AEDS

Posted on November 30, 2006 | Filed Under Adobe Flex

I’ve been working with Adobe Flex for about six months now. Prior to that, I had done some occasional work with Flash for the past few years. I believe in investing time in training to learn the “right” way to do things, so I started off by subcribing to lynda.com and watching their Flex training videos. We also purchased a copy of Total Training’s Flex series as well.

These resources were great starting points, but it didn’t take long before I found myself diving into things that went beyond the topics covered by the training courses. For the past couple of months in particular, I’ve done countless web searches trying to find answers on the flexcoders list and Adobe user-to-user discussion forums. I’ve also posted a few messages, many of which received no replies. It’s understandable with a new technology like Flex 2. The users with questions far outnumber the users with answers.

This week, we decided to look into the paid support programs offered by Adobe. They offer the Adobe Enterprise Developer Support program for $1,495 per year. If you are trying to develop a commercial offering, are under a tight deadline or can justify it by any other means, the value of this program FAR outweighs its cost!

I’ve already had a few rounds of correspondence with my Adobe Support Engineer and gotten answers to questions like he was sitting in the office next to me. I’ve been really enjoying working with Flex now that I have a direct line to the answers to my questions. So, take my advice…if you’re trying to get up to speed on Flex quickly, get with the program!

Flex: Using custom scrollbar skins? You’ll run into this problem!

Posted on November 30, 2006 | Filed Under Adobe Flex

I’m working on a custom look for an Adobe Flex app and ran into a hard-coded annoyance. The mx:Container class has a hard-coded “whiteBox” shape that is used to (wait for it!) display a white box in the bottom-right corner of the container’s content area if both horizontal and vertical scroll bars are being displayed, as seen below. Keep reading if you want to know how to fix this…

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