When? 18:00.
Where? IBL Software Engineering
Further details about event are at groups.adobe.com or at emglare.com.
Feel free to join meeting.
24. May 2011
26.5 – AUG – Bratislava – CS5.5, Android and more
21. May 2011
aDevCamp Prague – slides and links
Mobile first! Plynulý workflow - AIR
View more presentations from Juraj Michálek
Box2D Engine: Box2D, Lee Brimelow – GotoAndLearn()
Web: aDevCamp.cz
17. May 2011
Smooth workflow for mobile development
World of mobile devices is quite complex. Increasing number of operating systems and platforms is spliting market and making it harder to implement app that works across different devices.
Thankfully there are some good solutions. Flex development team made a huge step forward and they prepared tools for whole workflow.
If you’re interested in mobile development take a look at this video from Edge newsletter.
I’ll show part of this workflow also this week in Prague at Android Dev Camp. So feel free to stop by. We can discuss many topics related to mobile and Flex/AIR. 
17. May 2011
Quality in Flex/ActionScript development
Sergei Sokolov wrote article about Using automated tools across the lifecycle to develop higher quality Flex applications.
He explained some tools and approaches how to build better Flex based software.
I’d like to add some of my notes to this topic:
1. The key factor for reaching good quality of Flex products is learning. Flex is platform and it is evolving. Therefore it is imperative to learn new approaches to solve some problems.
2. Automation is very important. Flash Builder is bundled with support for Ant. That is not enough. Continuous integration should be implemented via tools like Maven using FlexMojos. Without this point everything is useless, because you’ll end up with mixing different versions of Flex SDK with your framework. Thanks to Jenkins and FlexMojos you reach stability in SW production. We already launched Jenkins CI for open source ActionScript projects – you can find some details at corlan.org.
Here is small example how to use FlexMojos.
3. Teach developers how to use FlexUnit. Companies tend to buy cheaper version of Flash Builder which has no support for FlexUnit. Investing few more bucks could give them very handy tool. See lynda.com or tv.adobe.com for lecture about FlexUnit. There are also other helpful tools like FlexMonkey, etc.
4. Different tools. Flash Builder is great, but real development power comes with combination of Flash Builder with IntelliJ Idea Ultimate. Those two tools together could speed up development and improve code quality. Also test automation has good implementation in IntelliJ Idea.
5. Flex PMD. This could help team which deals with new developers. Often it is hard to guess level of skill of new developer in the team. Using Flex PMD could help with measuring and detecting anomalies in his code style
6. Get rid of Not Invented Here Syndrome. There are many small useful frameworks which could help to improve Flex productivity, like Swiz, RobotLegs. Knowing those frameworks could save hundreds of development hours. So give a space to developers to learn new approaches.
I prefer small frameworks with less singletons inside. Some Flex frameworks are overflowing with singletons. Do not use sw with too much singletons, it will bite you and maintainability of your Flex product will drop to zero. Just a friendly warning at the end 
In my opinion this is the core of producing real good and stable Flex software.
4. May 2011
FlashBuilder 4.5 – CTRL 1 – Quick Assist
New CS5.5 is here. You can download it from adobe.com.
I strongly recommend to test it. CS5.5 contains many useful features.
One very interesting feature for Flex developers is hidden behind CTRL 1 keyboard shortcut.
CTRL 1 opens Quick Assist tool. It’s context dependent. Quick Assist could help you with some routine tasks in development.
It is worthy to mention that there is also CTRL 3 shortcut. This shortcut came from Eclipse and it helps you to quickly invoke anything what IDE provides.
Adobe announced upcoming version of CS 5.5. In my opinion they should change the name to CS 6, because new features are very powerful.
jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap in Dreamweaver. If you’re short on thime, just check 5th minute of video. Greg Rewis is showing how to run jQuery Mobile app on Android.
There are great news for PHP developers. Adobe announced FlashBuilder 4.5 for PHP. Simpler workflow and better integration of Flash/Flex apps with PHP code base.
FlashBuilder 4.5 has also great support for mobile development. Check out this article.
FlashCatalyst has new features. See the video:
Absolutely great job Adobe!
8. April 2011
Adobe User Group Slovakia
AUG Slovakia has new twitter account @AUG_Slovakia.
You can find further information about this group at: slovakia.groups.adobe.com
2. April 2011
Molehill – Who is behind 3D stage?
Adobe is expanding possibilities of 3D apps implementing by Molehill low level 3D API into Flash Player.
Who is behind this technology?
Here is small interview with Sebastian Marketsmueller and Grayson Lang.
You can find out more about Molehill at labs.adobe.com.
26. March 2011
From Illustrator to Windows Phone 7 application
Adobe AIR is quite advanced platform for building mobile applications. We can take our graphic assets, put them into Catalyst project. We can add some logic and interaction in Flash Builder. The only problem is that actual version of AIR does not support Windows Phone 7. Adobe said that engineers are working on that, but there is no official support yet. Maybe soon, who knows?
The question is how to build app for Windows Phone 7 using our graphic assets. Good news. We can reuse all graphic assets from Illustrator, Photoshop or files in FXG format.
The workflow for WP7 is similar to workflow for Adobe AIR, just tools are little bit different.
We can follow these steps:
- create assets using Photoshop, Illustrator or Catalyst.
- grab developer tools from create.msdn.com
- import assets to Expression Blend 4 and design application layout, save the solution
- open solution in Visual Studio and add some logic
- run application on device or in emulator
Here is small video which demonstrates this workflow:
26. February 2011
Apps for Google Android – Video
Video recording from my talk about development of applications for Google Android is available at mojandroid.sk.
This video is available thanks to Fero Chovaňák.
