Blog in Black » NZFXUG

Flash Platform Code Camp Wellington 2010

kai — Sat, 01 May 2010 02:47:55 +0000

We’re doing it again – Flash Platform Code Camp Wellington is back:

Flash Platform Code Camp Wellington – the 2010 Edition!

Mark the date: Saturday, 4th of September 2010

Venue: Natcoll Design Technology in Wellington’s CBD

This is a community event from and for Developers and Designers and organised by the Flash Platform User Group New Zealand with lots of support from the Creative Suite User Group Wellington.

We’re moving into a new venue that allows us to cater for more attendees and we’re going to have 2 parallel tracks this year! You haven’t been at Flash Platform Code Camp 2009? Have a look at the agenda and presentations from last year to get started!

Come along and learn about Adobe’s Flash Platform and creative tools for building Rich Internet Applications: Flash, Flex, AIR, Flash Catalyst, Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash Builder, BlazeDS, LiveCycle DS, LiveCycle Designer and lots more. This is also a place to meet and greet, share cool stuff, try out new technologies and code together with other like-minded people.

Registration opens soon…

Flash Platform Code Camp Wellington 2010 is a post from: Blog in Black

Book review: O’Reilly short cuts – Introduction to Flex 2

kai — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

O’Reilly has a series of so called “Short Cuts”, PDF e-books that introduce new technologies or major updates of those in a brief, compact way. Introduction to Flex 2.0 by Roger Braunstein is such a “Short Cuts” title and comprises 88 pages full of valuable information for the upcoming Flex developer

The author bascially starts explaining the basic concepts of Flex 2, the relationship between MXML and ActionScript and then dives into some more details.

The first chapter is about ActionScript 3 and I can really recommend it as a wrap-up of the particular way Adobe has morphed the language coming from an AS 1 or AS 2 background. It contains information on the Virtual Machines, the new E4X enginge and topics such as methods, properties, classes, reflection etc. It’s not an introduction into OO, but it will give you a good grasp on what you need to know if you want to work with AS 3.

Chapter 2 is particularly on Flex. You’ll learn to differentiate between Containers and Components and you’ll have a look at event handling, data binding, basic MVC concepts in Flex and accessing data from Flex applications.

The third and also the fifth section of the book cover very general topics such as Effects and Transitions, Cursor Management and charting. But Roger also introduces validation and formatting and discusses internationalization along the way.

Stop, I’ve missed one chapter, haven’t I? Right, chapter 4 is actually about extending Flex, i.e custom UI components, custom styles etc. Given that that chapter just spans 10 pages, it’s extremly compact and obviously just gives you a view down from 30,000 ft on the different options.

Wrap-up: The book is good and a very handy little tool to have, but do not expect it to be a tutorial to learn Flex from the scratch – that should be obvious, given that it has 88 pages.

So, who is this book useful for? I’d say for people who consider moving to Flex 2 or 3 from Java, Flash or earlier versions of Flex; but also for the not-that-tech-savy manager person who wants to get a better understanding what Flex and the whole RIA fuzz is about. You could also give it to your dev team leader if you want to get her/him interested in the technology.

ISBN: 978-0-596-55003-5

Book review: O’Reilly short cuts – Introduction to Flex 2 is a post from: Blog in Black

New Zealand Flex User Group: 1st meeting

kai — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Mark the date in your calendars – Our new, young and fresh NZ Flex User Group is holding its first meeting in April.

Date:
17th April (Tuesday)

Location:
Outsmart offices
The Gallery
22 Stable Lane
Newton
Auckland

Time:
6pm till 8pm

Contact for the night:
Campbell Anderson
021 767247 (in domestic NZ number format)

All details and more information on speakers, giveaways on the NZ FXUG meeting site.

The May meeting will take place in Wellington – stay tuned folks!

New Zealand Flex User Group: 1st meeting is a post from: Blog in Black