I am back from webDU and quite groggy today, but I wanted to get my slides up online for those who wanted a copy. From this point forward I am going to be posting all of my slides on slideshare. As time permits, I will also post the balance of the better presentations from the last year online there as well.

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I attend the majority of the North American Flex conferences, so I tend to meet up with the same presenters every few months. After a while, they all become friends, you have all of your geeky rants and you begin to learn how others approach problems. That is part of what makes webDU so much fun for me. It is almost entirely new crowd of people to meet, engage in harsh framework debates (sorry Robin) and learn from. I heard a lot of new ideas, saw several new approaches to solving Flex based problems and had the opportunity to have my somewhat stubborn mind changed by some creative arguments. All in all, it was a worthwhile event full of great attendees and speakers alike. Thanks to Geoff and Julie for their unending hospitality and dedication to this event.

On the plane on the way home, I started thinking about webDU as a set of bookends to the speaking engagements in the last year. It has been a pretty intense year. All of these conferences have been worthwhile and informative, but the most unusual, and frankly fun, was RIAPalooza in Chicago. This event occurred as a collaboration between Microsoft and Adobe, facilitated by a dedicated group of folks, especially our 'Key Grip' Michael Schaffner, and graciously hosted by the ITA (Illinois Technology Association).

At RIAPalooza, Josh Holmes, RIA Architect Evangelist for Microsoft, and I put on a session entitled Best and Worst Practices Building a RIA. The session used Josh's slides as talking points, from which we expounded until they kicked us off the stage. It was a great time and Josh is a bright guy. Despite coming at the same problem from two different perspectives, we seem to agree on the focus of both efforts.

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In any case, the spring speaking season is officially over. I get to spend some time at home now and catch up on all of the things that have been put on hold. See you all in August at 360 Flex San Jose.

Today at webmaniacs I presented a two-hour hands-on session on advanced component development to a great group. The topic was aggressive and we made it through the balance of the content, but it just wasn't possible to make it all the way through.

So, attached to this message is the power point theory presentation, the hands-on steps and the project to create the simple ZoomStrip app. The app basically just allows you to scroll horizontally through a series of images defined in a dataprovider, zooming and centering the selected photo.

To demonstrate skinning, the caption appears in a style though-bubble tooltip.

dpUInt started as an internal project needed to test frameworks we were developing. FlexUnit was falling short for us and we couldn't build an enterprise component framework without a way to test it continually and reliably. It worked for our needs, so we documented some of it, provided some examples and put it online for the community. Now the community seems to be adopting it quickly, which is fantastic, but our to-do list of features and extensions is growing faster than we can tackle it.

So, we are looking for contributors. People who are serious about helping us take the next dpUInt release (the actual 1.0 version) to a better place with more support for automated build systems, automated test running and to realize the integrated code coverage tool completely.

If you have some spare cycles for a worthy testing framework in need of additional love, please let us know. Join the google code group and give us a hand..

Okay, so since the last time I managed to blog, I had an excellent time presenting 'Dense and Hot' in Milan Italy for 360 Flex. It was a great time with a great bunch of presenters. I am looking forward to what Tom and John manage to do with their next conference. Cheers Guys.

I presented at a few events for Adobe and BEA, Flex Camp Wall Street, the Boston Flex Incubator group and the new Chicago Flex User Group. This week I am out in San Jose for the Adobe Community Summit and learning about the amazing things Adobe has in the pipeline. All I can say, is the next year is going to be exciting.

Next week I am presenting a hands-on lesson in advanced component development and skinning at WebManiacs. Followed closely by 'Dense and Hot' at webDU in Sydney Australia.

And just to bring things back around to the beginning, I will be presenting a brand new presentation at 360 Flex San Jose in August. It's an hour and twenty minutes on the internals of data binding, which will, in my professional opinion, be absolutely awesome.

Attached to this post are all of the slides I have been promising. Next week I will post the WebManiacs slides.

To all those that made these past events great, thanks, each of these events was fantastic in its own way. I hope to see the rest of you at WebManiacs and 360 Flex.

Labriola

The last few weeks have been rough. Serious client projects, exploring unexplored territory in the Flex/FMS and Flex/Java realms, way to many hours in front of computers that seem to get slower with every key I type. The weather sucks in Chicago and simply refuses to become spring.

But a shipment from Peachpit on Wednesday helped bring me out of my manic death spiral. The Flex 3 Training from the Source Books arrived. Less than a month after the release of Flex 3, the new book (another collaboration between Tapper, Boles, Talbot and I on the authoring side. Berling and Thomas on the editing) managed to make its way to the shelves.

We started working on this book at the last FlexManiacs (now WebManiacs) conference, so almost a year ago. Books take an impossibly long time to do well, and I am hoping this one works for those that choose to buy it. There are new lessons on modularizing Flex apps, AIR basics and using the profiler as well as countless small reworks and additions throughout the remaining lessons.

Right now Tapper and I are actually working diligently on our AIR book and trying to stay in front of an 'aggressive' schedule for completion. The timing is actually really good as I leave for 360 Flex Milan in a week and this will give me plenty to do on the plane.

So, for those of you who are in, or might make it to Europe, I look forward to seeing you soon. I plan on lugging a handful of these books over the Atlantic to give away to those who ask. For those of you on the fence about going to 360 Flex, just register already. They just announced that day one is actually free for everyone, now you have no excuse. It is going to be another great Flex conference and I am anxious to see it play out.

Labriola

360 Flex Milan is in one month. For all of you considering whether or not to attend, register right now! The Atlanta version of this conference just completed last week and was absolutely wonderful. The sessions were fantastic, the sense of community was very strong and we all learned something from each other. Flex and AIR are very important technologies to the evolving world of RIAs. Don't miss the opportunity to learn so much from both the speakers and your fellow attendees. Also the first five people that find me in Milan (and remember to ask) will get copies of our upcoming Flex 3 and AIR books:

• Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source
• Breaking Out of the Web Browser with Adobe AIR

Now, despite the fact that the conference will be in English and that written Italian has never been my best skill....

--

360 Flex Milano tra un mese.

Per tutti quelli che intendono partecipare all'evento, registratevi ora! La conferenza di Atlanta si è conclusa settimana scorsa ed è stata assolutamente favolosa!. I sessioni sono stati fantastici, con forte coinvolgimento di tutti i partecipanti, ognuno di noi ha avuto modo di apprendere qualcosa di nuovo dagli altri.

Flex e Air sono tecnologie molto importanti per l'evoluzione del mondo di RIA. Non perdete l'opportunità di imparare molto dai relatori e i partecipanti.

Anche le prime cinque persone che si ricordi di chiedere saranno consegnate le copie dei mie nuovo libri di Flex 3 e AIR.

• Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source
• Breaking Out of the Web Browser with Adobe AIR

Labriola

Okay, so Atlanta wasn't actually all that warm this week, but I still had a great time at 360 Flex Atlanta. Tapper and I did a grueling all day Flex 101 session on Sunday. It was, in Jeff's word's, 'brutal' as the class material provided was really designed for about 20 individuals, and we had 72. Nonetheless, I think everyone walked away with some new knowledge and hopefully a few ideas on how flex could be used in future projects.

I also hung out and helped a little in Dan Wilson's 'Creating an XML Reader Application in Flex' which went off very well despite a few Internet access problems at the hotel. These two sessions collectively provided a great base for those trying to learn Flex and a really incredible amount of hands on experience for a conference this size.

Next, I spoke briefly about dpUInt and our upcoming beta of the flex-hibernate adapter at a great break out session on open source projects in the Flex community. I encourage everyone to learn about these awesome projects that only exist because of a huge number of volunteer hours from a lot of talented people.

• dpUInt
• Degrafa
• OpenFlux
• Flex Lib
• the MDI windowing project
• Merapi
• Yahoo! Flex Apis

Finally, I gave an hour and twenty minute long presentation on the first few hundred milliseconds of your Flex Application startup. It was a great, geeky session with gems of knowledge held in vast detail on the effort undertaken by the Flex framework on your behalf. It had a particular focus on living in harmony with the framework rather than fighting it on every step.

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It was a hell of a lot of fun, so feel free to look at the slides and, of course, attend 360 Flex Milan.

Labriola

A year or so back, I wrote a component for Jeff Tapper called the QuadDividedBox. It works as if an HDividedBox and VDividedBox had a baby.

For the most part, it is just an intense modification of the DividedBox code, but you get four quadrants and can rescale the view area to give each a specific amount of screen real estate. It support liveDragging, respects things like the minHeight and minWidth of each child, supports maximizing a quadrant and even allows skinning of the drag icon.

Jeff didn't end up needing it for his project and since we are all hanging out under the same metaphoric roof these days, I thought I would post it online for anyone interested to use.

The compiled version has viewSource enabled, so just click on the image and get what you need.

Enjoy, Labriola

Next Sunday, Jeff Tapper and I are going to be handling the Flex 101 at 360 Flex Atlanta. While we have worked together for quite some time, it will be the first time Jeff and I actually teach together. We have drastically different styles but immense respect for each other's knowledge, so this should be a hell of a lot of fun. So come join us and we'll pick up lunch.

Then on Tuesday, I get to present 'Dense and Hot' my hour-long introduction to the first milliseconds of your Flex Application. This is the first time I am doing this presentation and it should be pure geeky goodness.

Most sessions I do are aimed at the purely practical. That's because most of my knowledge comes from reverse engineering so I take a very harsh, survival approach to knowledge. (Figure out what you need to know and remember how to find what you can't carry with you)

However, this session is just for fun. It's a ton of really cool information, and while it has practical implications, the session itself is about knowledge for geeky knowledge's sake. So come listen to, participate with, make fun of, or simply grab a beer with, me at 360 Flex Atlanta. (And if you can't make this one, we can always meet up at 360 Flex Milan)

Labriola

On Wednesday the 23rd, I filled in remotely for Kevin Hoyt during Flex Camp Omaha. While I wasn't able to meet any of you in person, I hope the remote presentation at least conveyed some of the excitement I feel about BlazeDS.

You can find the slides below or download them here.

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Labriola