Great Flex Podcasts/Resources through iTunes

I just thought I'd share some good iTunes podcasts/resources that you can subscribe to, that will enrich your knowldge of Flex. A great way for you to casually listen to video and audio podcasts while commuting on the train, or during your downtime, if you have an iPhone, iPod or iPad, or even on your laptop. Adobe themselves have official podcasts:

  • Adobe Developer Connection - contain HD video how-to's with a lot of Flash/Flex content, as well as Coldfusion
  • Flex in a Week - is a fantastic HD tutorial package that gives you free training in Flex 4. Another official Adobe release, which is available to view through Adobe, or to download via iTunes.
  • Flash Catalyst 1:1 - provides Flash catalyst tutorials in HD, which is handy for those of you who want to explore the designing phase, divorced of the actual development.

There are also some audio podcasts, which are not Adobe's but rather unofficial. 
  • The Flex Show - seems to be quite regular, with a lot of interviews, something more casual than the above training material, so I'd recommend subscribing to.
  • Flextras - made by the same folks as the Flex Show, has some nice tutorials and how-tos, great supplement to their main show.

Hope this helps, and if anyone else has any more shows they would recommend, please don't be shy.

Filed under: Adobe Flex
 

How to work with FlexPMD

FlexPMD is one of those open-source projects in the thriving community that is Flex, that I find to be quite useful, especially for the enterprise world. Essentially, this tool, which could either be an eclipse-plugin, embedded within ant or through other third-party tools, is an auditor that aims to improve code-quality, traversing your ActionScript/Flex directories and spots out bad-practice code, with the ability to add your own custom rules.

It's sister tool which also comes in the package, FlexCPD, detects copy/paste code which might seem 'suspect' utilising theJavaCPD engine to detect such duplications. Upon running these tools, you get a detailed report in XML or charted via Hudson/Sonar, to assist in finding the code, realising the trends and so forth.

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Filed under: Actionscript Flex
 

AIR 2.0 NativeProcess API - What’s It Good For? > O'Reilly Publishing

 

While there are a few examples available for connecting AIR applications to native operating system processes today, most of them are basic "Hello World" examples, or happen to be purely theoretical. I've only come across oneor tworeal world examples of applications that leverage this functionality in a meaningful way. In this article, I'm going to talk about the DropFolders application which uses AIR 2.0 NativeProcess APIs to make working with HandBrakea more streamlined, hands-off process.

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Filed under: Air Flex
 

Sharify: Shareware-ize your Air/Flex Apps

 With Sharify, you can earn money from your Adobe Air/Flex apps, by monetizing them through a shareware, and set licensing fees according to your business propositions. Pretty cool...

By simply integrating their swc library into your application, then calling a method to listen for an event and handling it, you can choose your own payment methods and only pay 3% of each of your license-issuing to Sharify and keep the rest. It's a lot better than what you may get at Apple, and with the Android platform also looking to include Air capabilities, you look set to sell cross-platform and gain maximum exposure.

With Sharify, you also have a neat control panel that will allow you to manage your licenses, transfer licenses (if a user for example changes computers), issue free and beta testing licenses, view stats on users, how many are on trial, how many have upgraded and so forth. They are currently in alpha testing, and are allowing users to test via invite only, but I dare say watch this space, as I can see some really neat things coming out of it.

Filed under: Adobe Air Flex Web Development
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