Flex has a short learning curve for Java developers, who will find that there are a lot of familiar language constructs and patterns. It also provides excellent remoting capabilities for Java programmers, allowing transparent data transfer between ActionScript and Java 1.4 data types. ...

My message to Flex team is simple, 'Guys, you did a great job with Flex framework, but it's out of the cage now, and people are actually using it as a foundation for their professional work. You can't just change API whenever you fill like it. This is not a green field situation anymor...

Adobe and BEA have announced partnership across four products. Under the terms of the agreement, BEA will bundle Adobe(R) Flex(TM) Builder(TM) 2 software with BEA Workshop(TM) Studio, empowering developers to rapidly build cross-platform RIAs that integrate with SOA and Web 2.0 infrast...

BEA will bundle Flex Builder 2 with BEA Workshop Studio. Adobe will distribute evaluation licenses of WebLogic Server, with Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite. LiveCycle can be deployed with WebLogic in a wide range of applications, from mission critical clustered environments to single ...

Flex has gotten popular lately because of its rich GUI capabilities. It also comes in handy with HTTPService and Web Service components connecting to back-end servers to fetch and update data. But using this mechanism to talk to the back-end server requires formulating a unique service...

Yesterday, Microsoft has released Silverlight 1.0, its tool for creation Rich Internet Applications. I've seen the Silverlight demos at Redmond, WA earlier this year, and they are very impressive. Now we are talking about some competition to Adobe Flex and Flash Player. I use the word...

AJAX developers brought Web 2.0 to the browser. Now they can leverage their JavaScript and HTML skills - as well as the IDEs they are familiar with and already use - to build the next generation of desktop applications that span platforms. Scott Fegette of Adobe will demonstrate how to...

With the recent rise in popularity of web technologies such as Ajax and Flash, it has become possible to create richer user experiences on the web. Even though these technologies are not actually new, we are now seeing their widespread adoption. One of the hallmarks of this experience ...

SYS-CON Events announced today that 'AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 West' main sponsorship opportunities are now sold-out! Limited number of expo and event sponsorship opportunities that are still available are expected to be completely sold before the end of the month. The new spons...

I will be teaching a one day Bootcamp course on Ajax at the AJAXWorld Conference in Santa Clara, California on September 23, 2007. Details are at http://ajaxbootcamp.sys-con.com I will be expanding the Ajax construction tools section from the Ajax Bootcamp I taught in New York at the S...

'The new Flex SDK was requested by several of our customers, to leverage Lightstreamer Server for both AJAX and Flash/Flex applications, and we are now glad to publicly release it,' said Alessandro Alinone, CTO of Lightstreamer, as the comapny released today a new client SDK for Adobe ...

Adobe has published statistics on the penetration of Flash Player 9 as of June 2007. The numbers look pretty good - over 90 percent of the users in mature markets have it already installed. 90% is not a 100% and not even 98% that Flash Player 8 already enjoys. Since the penetration spe...

The need to support off-line capabilities has driven some RIA providers back to the fat client platform. For example, Adobe AIR, Google Gears, and Slingshot are all examples of this trend. The fat client offers a lot of advantages over RIA technologies such as AJAX, but there are also ...

A Real-World AJAX Project Presenting richly formatted or legacy documents in as part of a rich internet application can be challenging, particularly when there is a large volume of information to present. Using a real-world project as an example, this session will discuss how Flex was ...

Reporting is one of the most important but complex to implementation aspects of enterprise AJAX applications. This session covers several major reporting challenges and will offer a solution to those challenges. It's not a trivial task to create an AJAX application that would allow end...

'This is great news as it means yet another excellent Flex resource,' blogged Rich Tretola on his 'Everything Flex' blog in response to the announcement by SYS-CON Media last week of the launch of Flex Developer's Journal as an online technical publication for developers that are using...

So how do you write Flex Builder Tracer Bullets knowing that Flex can be a RAD tool and Tracer Bullets are good to do? Flex Builder can render MXML components pretty accurately, whereas ActionScript components are not so accurate. This means you can see, in the Design View, your applic...

We've created an editorial advisory board for Flex Developer's Journal that includes well known members of Flex community. Our goal was to bring together people who work with Adobe Flex in the trenches and are specializing in Flex best practices, enterprise development, mobile devices,...

On August 16, 2007 SYS-CON Media has launched Flex Developers Journal, an online technical publication for developers that are using or considering Adobe Flex as a technology for creating rich front ends for Web applications. While in the past SYS-CON was publishing Flex-related articl...

SYS-CON Media launched today its newest developer title, Flex Developer's Journal, (flex.sys-con.com), the first and only independent magazine serving Adobe Flex developers worldwide. Yakov Fain, the well-known RIA expert and the author of the best-selling book Adobe Flex & Java, was n...

There's been a lot of talk in the ColdFusion community lately about the newly released Flex 2. If you're new to Flex or haven't tried it yet, this article provides an introduction, from a ColdFusion developer's perspective, to what Flex is and is not.

Some things that I learned early in my career that originally helped me succeed, I believe are now hurting me in job interviews. One of the pros to typing via dynamic languages and forgiving compilers such as ActionScript 1.0, Ruby, JavaScript, and others is that you can quickly code t...

'The world is changing,' Flex Developer's Journal editor-in-chief Yakov Fain told the audience at SYS-CON Events' Real-World Java Seminar in New York City today. 'Financial institutions are starting to hire Web designers.' The world of rich Internet applications has made it to Wall Str...

AJAX developers brought Web 2.0 to the browser. Now they can leverage their JavaScript and HTML skills - as well as the IDEs they are familiar with and already use - to build the next generation of desktop applications that span platforms. Kevin Hoyt of Adobe will demonstrate how to ex...

Adobe's LifeCycle Data Services ES offers developers powerful capabilities. Some of this software's capabilities, specifically server push, can be developed with relative ease using a utility class that has been around in the Flash APIs for a great while, and without having to pay lic...

Several months ago I posted some articles on my blog about Flex 2 components and accessing/modifying their BitmapData. In one example, I sent the BitmapData to the server and saved it as a JPG file, and I've been asked numerous times since...

Some people take the dog for a walk, others go play a round of golf. Not Christophe Coenraets. His idea of a good time is to illustrate Flex 2 / JMS integration by extending a simple 'realtime feed' application that he built a while back! Web Developer's & Designer's Journal is proud t...

Flex 2 and the Flash Media Server are a match made in heaven. By combining the two technologies, streaming Flash videos at my office has become a nice part of my daily routine and a good excuse to add another monitor to my desktop. Whether your musical genre taste is classical or rock ...

AJAXWorld 2007 West will take place on September 23-26, 2007, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, California, and will offer a new dedicated 'iPhone Track.' Another dedicated track will offer a comparative education opportunity for conference delegates on emerging RIA...

I'll be running a new special interests group on Rich Internet Applications for New York Software Industry Association. We are going to cover Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, AJAX, JavaFX, OpenLaszlo and more. I invite you to attend our first meeting on Oct 9,2007, where I...

Flex is a complete set of tools to develop rich Internet cross-platform applications based on the Flash platform. With Flex, you can create applications that not only have the 'wow factor' necessary to please clients and users alike, but the 'usability factor' necessary to make your ap...

I'm going to postpone the second part of my RSS aggregator article to tie this column into this Flex-themed issue. Have no fears, though, it will be back in full force in the next issue. Flex, as I'm sure most people know, is a way for programmers (you, me, and us) to create Flash movi...

'It takes a village,' said Cynergy vice president Dave Wolf (pictured) most recently at AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East, 'to build an engineering team capable of writing world-class Rich Internet Applications.' You cannot create the right atmosphere in a 'cubicle farm,' he conten...

Adobe's LiveCycle software is designed to allow some 60 Illinois state agencies and 3,800 counties, municipalities and school systems to automate the completing and processing of forms. The goal is for the state to increase convenience for citizens and reduce costs for itself.

Can afford to take just one day off, get out of your cubicle and see what other people up to these days? Is J2EE still in favor? What's this ESB is about? Have you even heard of using Flex as a Web front end of your Java applications? Do not miss an event in NYC this Monday, that is cr...

Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced the immediate availability of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection software. Adobe Production Premium CS3 is a comprehensive collection of integrated cross-platform post-production software tools...

In short, unless my findings are incorrect, Silverlight, as it stands now, with no support for data binding, service consumption, or basic UI controls, is a worthless steamy pile. I just took a huge step in Flex's direction.

Multi-threaded video decoding. The VP6 video decoding will now be performed in a separate thread if a multi-core system is detected while the main thread does rendering and post processing of the video. 1080p video decoding is now possible on dual core machines.

Adobe Systems released the beta version of Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), formerly code named Apollo. Adobe AIR is a cross-operating system application runtime that allows developers to use HTML/CSS, Ajax, Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex to extend rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the d...

I'm very satisfied with this great software. It garantees great performances, expecially at low and very low bitrate. The only defect I found is the lack of a command line mode. If you have to set up and launch the encoding on a remote computer or if you need to integrate FME in a pre-...