Articles by Flex News Desk

Clear Toolkit for Flex Goes Private Beta

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 06:41:00 EDT

Clear Toolkit 3.0 is a set of components, code generators, and plugins created by software engineers of Farata Systems that they were using internally in multiple Flex enterprise projects. This toolkit will be available free of charge.

Flex 4 SDK News

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:00:00 EDT

Yesterday, a new component architecture and feature specifications were provided to the Flex SDK open source developer community. The Flex team targets three primary teams: design in mind, developer productivity, and framework evolution.

Upcoming events for Flex developers

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:00:00 EDT

AX 2008 conference is the main event for people interested in the software made by Adobe. MAX North America will take place in San Francisco MAX-2008 in November and the session schedule is published. This year its agenda includes more fifty sessions about Flex. Two more Flex events are scheduled this year.

Adobe Releases Significantly Enhanced LiveCycle ES

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:00:00 EDT

Adobe has released a substantially enhanced BPM/RIA solution. While LiveCycle suite isn't new software, its popularity increased in June of 2007 when the entire suite started to run on the same J2EE server and the RIA components were introduced. Today, over 5,000 enterprises use LiveCycle in financial services, government, manufacturing, and other verticals. Flex developers will enjoy easier integration with this powerful BPM software.

AJAX RIA News Desk - TopQuadrant Delivers TopBraid Live 2.0

Wed, 21 May 2008 16:45:00 EDT

TopQuadrant has announced the general availability of TopBraid Live 2.0, a semantic application deployment platform that simplifies the creation of web services to a 'click and connect' process. Users can connect data from RDF stores, relational databases, spreadsheets, email, RSS feeds, as well as data in HTML and XML formats, without the need to understand programming languages. A new Flex API creates graphical 'information spaces' as the output, which allow users to browse dynamic information by following graphical links.

Adobe Flash Player 10 Public Beta Now on Adobe Labs

Thu, 15 May 2008 07:00:00 EDT

Today, Adobe announced the immediate availability of Adobe Flash Player 10 beta as a free download from Adobe Labs. Adobe Flash Player 10 beta, code named 'Astro', builds on the capabilities of the world's most ubiquitous application runtime with new support for custom filters and effects, native 3D transformation and animation, extensible rich text layout, and GPU hardware acceleration.

Adobe and Industry Leaders Establish Open Screen Project

Thu, 01 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Today, Adobe announced the Open Screen Project, supported by a group of industry leaders. The project is dedicated to driving rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics.

Flex on Wall Street

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:00:00 EDT

If you are evaluating technologies for your next rich Internet financial application, do not miss this one day event 'Flex on Wall Street' that will take place in New York City on April 18, 2008.

Communigate delivers Pronto!

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:00:00 EDT

CommuniGate Systems, the leader in carrier-class Rich Media Internet Communications, today announced the availability of Pronto! 2.0, the latest version of its powerful, yet lightweight Unified Communications user interface framework built with Adobe® Flex® 3, deployed in the browser with Adobe Flash® Player and to the desktop with Adobe® AIR.

Application Built in Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Verb Exchange announced a deal with interface design specialist, Nitobi, to develop the desktop and web interfaces for Tabrio, a new way to stay in touch with anyone, anywhere. Verb Exchange and Nitobi will work together to enhance the Tabrio user experience, making Tabrio feature-rich.

ILOG Ships Graphical Visualization Tool for Flex

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:15:00 EST

ILOG. a member of the OpenAjax Alliance, announced that its graphical visualization offering for Adobe Flex, ILOG Elixir, is shipping with feature and sales channel enhancements. ILOG Elixir, available now, was warmly received by the Adobe Flex community during its Beta period.

AOL, eBay, NASDAQ, New York Times, Deutsche Bank, Nick.com, Sharp Take To the AIR

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 04:30:00 EST

Question: What do AOL, eBay, NASDAQ, The New York Times Company, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group's Nick.com, Sharp Corporation and others have in common? The answer is that've all launched pioneering Rich Internet Applications deployed on Adobe AIR, to coincide with the official release today of AIR 1.0.

Adobe Flex Rules, Everything Else Drools

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:30:00 EST

The article is basically 'Flex rules, everything else drools'. It goes on and on about the good things about Flex, while giving only cursory coverage of Flex drawbacks. Meanwhile, it's just the opposite regarding the other technologies, going on and on about drawbacks, and giving only cursory coverage of advantages. Case in point, Yakov says that Java Swing development is 'hugely expensive'. Nonsense. First, NetBeans is completely free, and NetBeans has the wonderful Matisse GUI designer, making the development of great looking Swing UIs a snap. Second, there is JavaFX, which is an XML based declarative scripting language that is used to quickly build rich Swing UIs super easy, and is very similar to MXML/Action Script, as is featured in Yakov's beloved Flex. Third, there is a plethora of third party libraries and controls in the Swing ecosystem, that further extends Swing capabilities, and makes Swing development easier.

Building Rich User Interfaces in Dreamweaver

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 03:00:00 EST

Web application developers and designers often give up on building rich, interactive user interfaces because they lack the JavaScript skills to make it happen. AJAX development power tools - including Dreamweaver, Spry and off-the-shelf AJAX components - make it easy to build rich user interfaces in AJAX with no JavaScript coding. Andre Charland will demonstrate how to install, set up and configure extensions to Dreamweaver, and will use them to build simple, rich interface AJAX apps.

Discovery Channel and EffectiveUI Launch Earth Live

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST

Earth Live is an application that EffectiveUI has created in collaboration with Discovery channel. The application helps people to learn the world by engaging them with a more effective UI, so complex information such as climate change can be digestible by a regular person. The application uses digital imagery so the user can interactively create a climate picture of the planet Earth. The UI offers several layers, and you can load the content of the layer (i.e. rain) onto the 3D image of the globe.

RIA Development on the Microsoft Stack Using Flex

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:00:00 EST

ASP.NET AJAX is a natural candidate for RIA development under the .NET framework. However, there are other complementary or even alternative technologies that are worth your consideration. This session will start with a brief market overview and outline the pros and cons of some of the emerging and established frameworks, particularly JavaFX, Silverlight, and Flex. We will then dive into hands-on labs for delivering applications using Flex and .NET. You'll see specific implementations utilizing web services, FlourineFX (open source Flash remoting) and WebORB (commercial Flash remoting). We will also discuss delivering desktop applications using Adobe AIR, streaming video over the web, and engaging your audience with audio/video chat. Basically all the must-have features of today's Rich Internet Applications.

How Do You Pick the Right Technology for Enterprise Rich Internet Applications?

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:45:00 EST

We are entering an era of Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and many enterprise development managers are facing the dilemma - which way to go - remain with tried and true Java or .NET or experiment with such newcomers as AJAX, Flex, Silverlight, or JavaFX. While the Internet brings a lot of noise where 'it's cool' is the most popular definition, this presentation is an overview of what's out there on the enterprise RIA market. We'll talk about the pros and cons of using various techniques and technologies for the development of the front end for complex distributed systems.

RIA Tookits, Frameworks and IDEs: How Do You Really Choose the Right One?

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:45:00 EST

This session will address issues to consider when selecting an AJAX toolkit and the most effective IDE for the implementation. It will identify the 30-40 UI components most commonly used in business and mission critical software applications that can be used as a benchmark for evaluating various toolkits, then explore the top evaluation criteria including component behaviors, customization, flexibility, frameworks, licensing and documentation. Attendess will be provided with a comparison survey for the 6-8 most widely used AJAX UI component libraries. Further discussion will address how to select the appropriate IDE once a commitment has been made to a AJAX UI toolkit.

Flash Player Will Remain the Best Deployment Platform for RIAs

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:30:00 EST

In our annual round-up of technology predictions, Yakov Fain - editor-in-chief of SYS-CON's Flex Developer's Journal - says 'Flash Player will remain the best deployment platform for rich Internet applications. While Microsoft is trying to come up with a competitive delivering platform for RIA, it?s not going to happen in 2008. Silverlight 1.0 is a good start, the next version (1.1) will be even better, but it?ll take time to release a product that can do more than streaming multimedia.'

Boost Productivity of Your Flex-Java Project with Log4Fx Component

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:30:00 EST

It's hard to overestimate the importance of having a good logging facility when you develop distributed applications. Did the client's request reached the server-side component? What did the server send back? Add to this inability of using debuggers while processing GUI events like focus change, and you may need to spend hours if not days trying to spot some sophisticated errors. That's why a commercial-grade logger is a must if you work with an application that is spread over the network and is written in different languages such as Adobe Flex and Java.

Mozilla Prism: A Competitor for Adobe AIR?

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 08:00:00 EDT

Mozilla Labs announces 'a series of experiments to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability models as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur'.

RadView Unveils Product for Load Testing of Adobe Flex 2 Applications

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 09:00:00 EDT

RadView Software Ltd. has announced that its WebLOAD Professional has become a full-featured product to load test applications developed with Adobe Flex 2 software and the AMF3 protocol. WebLOAD's support for Adobe Flex covers all phases of load testing and enables users to record, edit, parameterize and load test their Flex applications.

Adobe to Acquire Virtual Ubiquity

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:00:00 EDT

Adobe has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Virtual Ubiquity and its ground-breaking online word processor, Buzzword. The acquisition furthers Adobe's commitment to foster a vibrant ecosystem for rich Internet application (RIA) development that delivers breakthrough experiences built on Adobe AIR.

PassAlong Networks, Cynergy and Adobe Flex Power Next-Generation Digital Music Applications

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 06:45:00 EDT

Media distribution developer PassAlong Networks and Cynergy Systems, Inc., have announced a series of media products based on Adobe Flex technology. The partnership includes PassAlong's OnTour concert information widgets and the Speakerheart artist-controlled music management and promotions platform; additional music showcase and playlist widgets are currently in development.

A New Public Beta of Flex 3 Is Available

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:00:00 EDT

At Max 2007, Adobe has announced availability and the list of new features of the second public beta release of Flex 3 SDK and Flex Builder 3. Below is a quote of this announcement. 'Check out these important new features in Flex 3 beta 2

Adobe Flex Builder 3 Price Changes

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:00:00 EDT

New packaging and pricing will be available for Adobe Flex 3 when it ships early in 2008. It'll become available in two editions: Adobe Flex Builder 3 Standard Edition and Adobe Flex Builder 3 Professional Edition.

Adobe's Annual Developer Event MAX 2007 Opens in Chicago

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:15:00 EDT

Today is the first day of the MAX 2007 North America, the main Adobe event of the year. The conference was sold out - the registration has been closed at the mark of after 4300 attendees. Apparently, the conference organizers where caught by surprise - attendance of the previous MAX conferences was under 2500 delegates. Visit the blog of the conference for daily coverage and videos. There will be two more MAX reruns this year one in Barcelona and one in Tokyo, if you are planning to attend, register in advance. According to Ted Patrick, a technical evangelist from Adobe, the next year?s MAX will take place on November 16-19 in San Francisco.

Flex Developer Bootcamp Starts in Santa Clara, California, at AJAXWorld 2007 West

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 13:00:00 EDT

Another 'Flex Developer Bootcamp' is in full swing here today at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, as SYS-CON Events presents the latest in the 2007 series of this sellout one-day program of hands-on learning about Flex...not by talking about it as much as by doing it.

Flex Developer Bootcamp Starts in Santa Clara, California, at AJAXWorld 2007 West

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 04:00:00 EDT

Adobe Flex Will Be Bundled with BEA Workshop Studio

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 20:00:00 EDT

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 infrastructure for high-performance enterprise mash-ups. Further, every Workshop Studio developer will now have access to Flex technology for building RIAs.

Adobe to Present "AJAX in a Desktop World" Session at AJAXWorld

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 22:00:00 EDT

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 extend rich Internet application (RIA) development outside of the browser using AJAX with Adobe AIR Adobe's cross-operating system application runtime. The concepts that will be introduced include native windows, native drag-and-drop, native clipboard support, local file IO, and persistence to a local database.

Lightstreamer to Debut Real-Time Flex Data Capability at AJAXWorld Conference & Expo

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:45:00 EDT

'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 Flex.

Adobe AIR, Google Gears, Slingshot... The Fat Client Is Back!

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:45:00 EDT

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 some serious drawbacks. Is history repeating itself? Will the surge of interest in fat clients be disruptive to the Web and RIA technologies? This presentation will examine those possibilities and provide advice on when, if ever, developers should use Fat Client technology.

How to Build a Rich Media eLibrary with AJAX & Flex

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:45:00 EDT

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 used to build a rich media eLibrary designed to deliver large volumes of PDFs seamlessly to clients on multiple devices and platforms without the need for client-side software. We will discuss the project requirements, stakeholder needs, and technical challenges and will focus on the user experience as it applied to the creation of this eLibrary.

AJAX Enterprise Reporting: Challenges and Solutions

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:45:00 EDT

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 users to customize their reports on the fly by applying styles, grouping, filters, formulas and exporting reports to Microsoft Excel. In this presentation you'll see a live demo of a rich reporting component that can be used with any AJAX application.

"Another Excellent Flex Resource" – Flex Developer's Journal

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 07:45:00 EDT

'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 or considering Adobe Flex.

SYS-CON Media Launches Flex Developer's Journal

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:30:00 EDT

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 named the founding editor and editor-in-chief of Flex Developer's Journal.

SYS-CON.TV Live From Times Square: Eclipse.Org Adds SOA, AJAX, and Flex Tools

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:30:00 EDT

Eclipse Foundation Executive Director Mike Milinkovich and Instantiations CEO Mike Taylor headed a live webinar produced by SYS-CON.TV in the Reuters television studio overlooking Times Square in New York. The topic was RPC, and the discussion was moderated by Eclipse Developers' Journal Editor-in-Chief Bill Dudney and SYS-CON Publishing Director Jeremy Geelan.

FDJ Editor-in-Chief Yakov Fain: "The World Is Changing – RIAs Have Reached Wall Street"

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

'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 Street...and Adobe Flex is well placed to allow Java developers to ride the RIA wave.

AJAX Version of ClearBI Web Reporter for Adobe Flex Will Be Unveiled at AJAXWorld

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:45:00 EDT

Farata Systems has announced the production release of ClearBI 1.0, a Web reporter and business intelligence engine for rich Internet applications. While ClearBI 1.0 is targeted for Adobe Flex and Java developers, the upcoming ClearBI 1.1 is a rich reporting component that can be used with any AJAX application.