Know Free Launch

Adobe released a bunch of good stuff yesterday. It's pretty huge. Not mentioning it would be like forgetting to tell your wife you like her new haircut; tactless and just plain dumb.

• Adobe AIR 1.0: Bringing Flex, web programming, and Rich Internet Applications in general to the desktop.
• Flex 3: The latest release of the Flex platform, a powerful GUI toolkit sitting on top of the rich Flash rendering engine.
• The open-sourcing of both the Flex SDK and BlazeDS (back end services for Flex and AIR applications)

Meanwhile, I'm still putting together technical pieces on a Flex app I've written; expect that to start dribbling out here soon. Like the crumbs that multiply on my shirt as I eat my breakfast; at first it's just a couple of crumbs, but pretty soon you've got a whole scone there in its component parts.

Eventually, I want to be able to write pieces that help describe the work we’ve done on Flex, the features we’re working on, the future plans, and the inner details that help people understand how to use it most effectively.

But hey, I just got here; I don’t know any of that stuff. I’ve been developing graphics software for my entire career and hacking the internals of desktop Java for the last several years, and I am very familiar with desktop client technology in general, but the whole stack offered by Flex is completely new to me. I will, I’m sure, eventually learn all of the fun internals, and when I do I’ll execute on the plan above.

But until then, I’ll be coming up to speed on Flex, Flash, AIR, ActionScript3, and everything else I need to be able to help out on the Flex team. And as I do, I thought it would be useful to post interesting things that I discover, applications that I’m working on, and random thoughts on Flex development to hopefully help others on a similar learning curve.

Maybe you’re a Java developer, trying to learn about Flex. Or maybe you’re a Flash developer, interested in Flex’s GUI toolkit. Or maybe you’re new to desktop development and are checking out the various technologies available. Or maybe you did a Google search on “acid reflux”, ended up here and haven’t a clue what I’m talking about.

In any case, stay tuned for future postings here where I’ll talk about some of the things I’m working on and interesting things I find out about the platform as I cruise along.