Flex 360 - Day 1
Monday was the official first Day of the Flex 360 conference here in Atlanta, GA and so far it has been a blast. I took some classes on FlexUnit, Custom Components, the Ribbit API and building a brand as an independent developer. Then after the classes we had the Adobe party that was the party to mark the release of Flex 3, AIR and Blaze DS. ...
The first class I took was on Flex Unit, a unit testing library for Flex, Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3 files. I got to see a good workflow for using it, including automation using apache Ant. I also learned about a relatively new testing framework called dpUnit that I really want to check out. It's created by the guys at Digital Primates.
The second class I took was about creating polished custom components. In this class the presenter used the example of FlexMDI, a window management system that he was a part of creating, to show some of the important things you need to take into consideration when creating a reusable component. A great presentation and I got to see some of the inner workings of an awesome library for flex.
The third presentation I went to was about the Ribbit API, a way to handle telephony through flash. With this system you can make and receive calls, as well as make and receive messages. There are also some new features of the system coming through the pike. It will be fun to see what I can create with this API.
The final presentation was led by a Doug Mccune and from Scale Nine, Juan Sanchez. It was all about building the brand that is you. It reinspired me to build the Daryl Ducharme brand. Let's just say, I think I will be blogging more about Flex, AIR and other fun related topics.
After that we walked over to the Stats sports bar for the Adobe party to celebrate the release of a few products in the Flex family. Don't forget the official launch of Flex as an open source project. This party had a ton of people and we all were talking Flex, AIR and related issues. It's nice to just be able to geek out sometimes. Some people played Rock Band and Guitar Hero until they closed the private lounge area we were in. Good times, I just wish I had a chance to talk to more of the people at the party. Well, there are 2 more days to this conference. I better get to bed so I can get the most out of all the sessions tomorrow.
