360flex - Wednesday keynote

Started off with a talk about the Adobe development team for AmGen - a bicycle race tracking application. It incorporates live video, flickr content, and GPS tracking integrated with Yahoo! Maps.

This app was built by 3 people in 6 weeks. (Note: this is an incredibly short turnover. Impressive!)

Talked to their development cycle and some best practices, and recommendations for iterative application dev cycle.

Next Flex

I think this is what everyone came to see - what's coming up in the next version of Flex? Codenamed "Moxie" and "Borneo", release dates will be in 2007. Since it's still in development not all of the features are guaranteed to find their way into the final release.

Creative Suite 3 includes Flash, Fireworks, Illustrator, and Photoshop. All of these products will be tightly integrated with Flex.

Fireworks has a Common Library that includes Flex Components. This gives designers the ability to build comps - including Panels, scrollbars, and other elements - apply colors and styles - and export to MXML. (File, Export, MXML & Images) The resulting code can be pasted into new or existing Flex projects.

Borneo

The upcoming version of Flex Data Services is code-named Borneo. It will include better scalability, LiveCycle integration, and web services.

Moxie

The upcoming version of Flex Builder is code-named Moxie. Better language intelligence, profiling, design view enhancements, data integration, enhanced datagrid and list functions... just a few things that were done well in FB2 are going to be even better... or were overlooked... are high on the list of priorities.

There is a "rename function" option; go to an instance of use and in the background FB will parse your application and rename all other instances. This works for methods, variables, etc.

Code mapping includes the ability to search for all instances of usage for an element name - cross class!

Memory optimization options including variable space tracking.

Flex & Apollo

An Eclipse plug-in for Flex is coming soon. Apollo camp will be 3/16 at the Adobe campus (hint, hint).

Extending Flex

A lot of work is being done outside Adobe. Private companies (ESRI, Farata, and Yahoo!) and the community (flexlib) are working to extend the capabilities of Flex.

• ESRI demo'd a mapping app
• Farata demo'd a business reporting app
• Yahoo! term extraction application was shown
• flexlib is a great open source repository on Google Code. See sample components here

Flex API Posters

Soon these will be available online. They are working with distributors who will have the ability to drop ship them directly when orders are placed. Linkage coming soon!

What's next?

Interest for another 3-day Flex conference (360Flex) in August is high.

Possible usergroup tour for 1-day Flex trainings (120Flex) - perhaps 101 or 201 level?

Big thanks to everyone that made 360flex possible, and a huge success!

eBay Stuff

eBay is hiring. Wanna build cool Flex and Apollo apps for eBay, working from their campus in San Jose?

Hosting an eBay developer conference in Boston later this year.

Libraries for eBay/AS3 BETA are being released... NOW! Go to Adobe Labs to download the good stuff!