Flex best practices – Part 1: Setting up your Flex project article

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/best_practices_pt1.html

Flex best practices – Part 2: Development practices

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/best_practices_pt2.html

If you would still like the Powerpoint preso email me and I’ll send it along.

There was an example application that I wanted to share as well. I’ll post it on this blog in the very near future. It utilizes many of the practices and standards covered in my presentation and the articles. I’d like to provide a little info or blog post at least along with the example…soon….

I’ll be giving this same presentation on Flex Best Practices in March at the OC Flex Users Group. Thanks to ASFusion for the invite!!

Thanks again to everyone who made it out last night. The audience was really great and had great questions and a great discussion. I appreciate everyone’s time and feedback. Thanks to Dolores for all of the help getting ready for the preso too!!

Here is a short passage from the article:

“In this article, you will learn how to manage assets so that your application’s dependencies will be well organized. I will also discuss widely accepted ActionScript 3.0, MXML, and CSS coding standards currently being practiced by the Flex development community. I’ll review ASDoc, a tool that you can use to create API language reference documentation as HTML from your application’s source code. In the application architecture section of this article I’ll show techniques that you can use to help define the blueprints for your application’s foundation. I will cover some of the application development frameworks that are available to Flex developers and discuss when it makes sense to use them and when it does not. Lastly, I will cover best practices for unit testing so that you can test your codebase and ensure the code will perform consistently.”

2007 was an AWESOME year for Flex and AIR. 2008 should continue this trend. Here are several different technologies and other items I plan on monitoring going into 2008. Some of these are bleeding edge, others are fundamentals which we’ve been studying for years.

“I’m sure that Flex skills will be one of the hottest skills to have in 2008.” – Yakov Fain

ActionScript 3.0
Essential ActionScript 3.0
Personally I plan on digging into the nitty-gritty details of the language. This includes refining knowledge of Errors, Events, Exceptions, Interfaces, Bitmap API, Display API and Namespaces to name a few. I’ll be reading Essential ActionScript 3.0 to do so.

Adobe AIR
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/
The first full release of AIR should be coming in 2008. With the rapid growth and massive interest already I cannot even speculate what 08 will bring for this exciting, young technology.

Adobe Astro
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Astro
“The next major release of Flash Player, codename “Astro,” was first previewed at Adobe MAX 2007. The preview highlighted a few of the new capabilities the Flash Player team is working on for Astro: advanced text layout, simple 3D effects, and custom filters, blend modes and effects.”

Adobe BlazeDS
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/blazeds/
http://livedocs.adobe.com/labs/blazeds/html/index.html
“BlazeDS is the server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology that enables developers to easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real-time to Adobe® Flexâ„¢ and Adobe AIRâ„¢ applications for more responsive rich Internet application (RIA) experiences.”

API’s
http://programmableweb.com/apis/directory/1?sort=date
I always keep an eye on this area of Programmable Web for new ideas for applications and mashups.

ASDoc
Using ASDoc
“ASDoc is a command-line tool that you can use to create API language reference documentation as HTML pages from the classes in your Flex application. The Adobe Flex team uses the ASDoc tool to generate the Adobe Flex 2 Language Reference.”

Brain-computer interface
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-computer_interfaces
http://www.techrivet.com/2007/07/23/NeuroSkyMovingBeyondConceptBCI.aspx
“brain-computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain-machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a human or animal brain (or brain cell culture) and an external device.” The WII in Flash was cool, let’s see one of these plugged into the Flash Platform!!!

Cairngorm
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Cairngorm
http://www.cairngormdocs.org/
“The Cairngorm Microarchitecture is a lightweight yet prescriptive framework for rich Internet application (RIA) development.”

Cloud Computing
http://tnerd.com/2007/10/14/cloud-computing-the-next-big-thing-is-cloud/
Cloud_computing_wp_final_8Oct.pdf
“is a computing paradigm shift where computing is moved away from personal computers or an individual server to a “cloud” of computers. Users of the cloud only need to be concerned with the computing service being asked for, as the underlying details of how it’s achieved are hidden”

Design Patterns
http://www.javacamp.org/designPattern/
http://www.exciton.cs.rice.edu/JAvaResources/DesignPatterns/default.htm
ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns: Object Oriented Programming Techniques
“In software engineering, a design pattern is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations”

E4X
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/training_e4x.html
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-357.htm
E4X: A new approach to XML processing
http://www.w3schools.com/e4x/default.asp
“E4X offers a natural, fluent set of language constructs for manipulating XML. In contrast to traditional XML-parsing APIs, XML with E4X performs like a native data type of the language. E4X streamlines the development of applications that manipulate XML by drastically reducing the amount of code needed.”

EcmaScript 4.0
http://www.ecmascript.org/
http://www.ecmascript.org/es4/spec/evolutionary-programming-tutorial.pdf
Microsoft trying to derail ECMAScript 4?
“ECMA-262 Edition 4 is the next-generation version of ECMAScript being developed currently by the ECMA TG1 working group.” This space is heating up, keep a watch on this one I have a feeling this is going to shape the future of the web in major ways.

Flash Media Server
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver
“an enterprise-grade data and media server from Adobe Systems Inc. This server works together with the Flash Player runtime to create media driven, multiuser RIA’s.”

Flex 3 & Flex 4
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/
Keep an eye on Adobe Labs. Flex 3 will be coming out in 2008 and who knows we may even see at least some more talk about or get to provide additional input on the future of Flex.

Flex Custom Components
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/creating_components.html
Flex Component Kit Alpha for Flex 2.0.1
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/creating_as3_components.html
I think creating custom components for Flex is going to increase in demand in 2008.

Flex Performance and Memory Profiling
Performance and Memory Profiling
“Memory profiling lets you look at objects being created, take snapshots and compare them. Performance profiling allows snapshots for looking at cumulative and internal time.”

Flex Persistent Framework Caching
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/08/player_update_p.cfm

Flex Refactoring
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/videos/refactoringdemo/

Flex Skinning
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex_skins.html
http://www.scalenine.com/resources.html
“If you want to redesign the appearance of the Flex components more radically, you can do so by creating a new set of skins for the Flex components that completely replace the built-in Halo Aeon theme.”

Hibernate
http://www.hibernate.org/
“Hibernate is a powerful, high performance object/relational persistence and query service. Hibernate lets you develop persistent classes following object-oriented idiom – including association, inheritance, polymorphism, composition, and collections.”

Hydra / Adobe Image Foundation
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIF_Toolkit
“The Adobe Image Foundation (AIF) Toolkit preview release includes a high-performance graphics programming language that Adobe is developing for image processing, codenamed Hydra, and an application to create, compile and preview Hydra filters and effects.”

Java 7
https://jdk7.dev.java.net/
http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2007/08/09/looking-ahead-to-java-7.html

Java 6
http://www.sun.com/training/catalog/courses/WJB-110A.xml
http://www.sun.com/training/catalog/courses/SL-275-SE6.xml
http://www.sun.com/training/catalog/courses/CX-310-065.xml
Here are a few links with training recommended for Java certification. Might be something to think about for the future.

JavaFX
http://www.sun.com/software/javafx/index.jsp
“The JavaFX product family delivers the ability to create interactive content, applications and services from the desktop to mobile devices to the living room.”

Microformats
http://microformats.org/
“Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.” Microformats are being used in conjunction with Adobe AIR.

Occasionally Connected Apps
Monitoring network connectivity
One of the draws to using Adobe AIR is the ability to monitor network connectivity. This is one area I want to work with and research a bit more in 2008.

OOP
http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=1590598458
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/oop_as3.html
“Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses “objects” and their interactions to design applications and computer programs. It is based on several techniques, including encapsulation, modularity, polymorphism, and inheritance. It was not commonly used in mainstream software application development until the early 1990s. Many modern programming languages now support OOP.”

Papervision 2.0
http://blog.papervision3d.org/
http://papervision3d.googlecode.com/svn/trunk
http://blog.zupko.info/?p=76
“Features: Faster! ShadeMaterials, Shaders, ASCollada (animation support), Frustrum Culling, Multiple Viewports, Render to Scene and more. More features expected soon.”

Prisim
http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/10/prism/
“Unlike Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight, we’re not building a proprietary platform to replace the web. We think the web is a powerful and open platform for this sort of innovation, so our goal is to identify and facilitate the development of enhancements that bring the advantages of desktop apps to the web platform.”

Refactoring
http://www.refactoring.com/
“Refactoring is a disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior. Its heart is a series of small behavior preserving transformations. Each transformation (called a ‘refactoring’) does little, but a sequence of transformations can produce a significant restructuring.”

Spring
http://www.springframework.org/
http://www.theserverside.com/tt/articles/article.tss?l=IntrotoSpring25
“The Spring Framework is probably best known for offering features required to effectively create complex business applications outside of the programming models that historically have been dominant in the industry. Next to that it is also credited for introducing previously unfamiliar functionalities into today’s mainstream development practices, even beyond the Java platform.”

SQLite
http://www.sqlite.org/
http://sqlitebrowser.sourceforge.net/
“SQLite is a software library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine.” This is used in google gears and Adobe AIR. Firefox also uses SQLite.

Struts
http://struts.apache.org/
“An open source framework for building Servlet/JSP based web applications based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design paradigm.”

Subversion
http://subversion.tigris.org/
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn-book.pdf
“Subversion (SVN) is a version control system initiated in 2000 by CollabNet Inc. It allows users to keep track of changes made to any type of electronic data, typically source code, web pages or design documents.”

Surface Computing
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
“Surface computing is the use of a specialized computer GUI in which traditional GUI elements are replaced by intuitive, everyday objects. Instead of a keyboard and mouse, the user interacts directly with a touch-sensitive screen, replicating the familiar hands-on experience of everyday object manipulation.”

Swing
Java Swing By Marc Loy
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/
“Swing is a widget toolkit for Java. It is part of Sun Microsystems’ Java Foundation Classes (JFC) — an API for providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for Java programs. Swing includes GUI widgets such as text boxes, buttons, split-panes, and tables.”

Thermo
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Thermo
“Thermo” is an upcoming Adobe product that makes it easy for designers to create rich Internet application UIs. Thermo allows designers to build on familiar workflows to visually create working applications that easily flow into production and development.

Technological singularity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
“There is no clear definition, but usually the Singularity is meant as a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity.”

TouchLib
http://www.whitenoiseaudio.com/touchlib/
“Touchlib is our library for creating multi-touch interaction surfaces. It handles tracking blobs of infrared light for you and sends your programs multitouch events, such as ‘finger down’, ‘finger moved’, and ‘finger released’. It includes a configuration app and a few demos to get you started. It interaces with most major types of webcams and video capture devices”

UML
http://www.uml.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Language
“In the field of software engineering, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a standardized specification language for object modeling. UML is a general-purpose modeling language that includes a graphical notation used to create an abstract model of a system, referred to as a UML model.”

Unit Testing
http://code.google.com/p/as3flexunitlib/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/unit_testing.html
“Unit testing is a procedure used to validate that individual units of source code are working properly. A unit is the smallest testable part of an application. In procedural programming a unit may be an individual program, function, procedure, etc., while in object-oriented programming, the smallest unit is a method; which may belong to a base/super class, abstract class or derived/child class.”

WebKit
http://webkit.org/
http://webkit.org/blog/
“WebKit is an open source web browser engine.” This is the browser used within Adobe AIR.

Here are a number of podcasts regarding software development. All of these topics are valid for Flex development. Enjoy!

Refactoring Pt. 2
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode55-refactoring_pt2.mp3

Design By Contract
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode51-designByContract.mp3

Architecture Patterns (Architecture Pt. 4)
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode41-architecture_pt4.mp3

Refactoring Pt. 1
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode46-refactoring_pt1.mp3

Dynamic Languages for Static Minds
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode49-dynamicLanguages.mp3

Architecture Pt.3
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode30-architecture_pt3.mp3

Architecture Pt. 2
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode25-architecture_pt2.mp3

Development Processes Pt.1
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode24-developmentProcesses_pt1.mp3

Architecture Pt. 1
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode23-architecture_pt1.mp3

Service Oriented Architecture Pt.1
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode27-soa_pt1.mp3

Error Handling
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode7-errorhandling.mp3

Scripting Languages
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode4-scriptingLanguages.mp3

Dependencies
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode2-dependencies.mp3

Patterns
http://media.libsyn.com/media/seradio/seradio-episode1-patterns.mp3

Design Patterns
http://media.libsyn.com/media/ais/AiS2_copy_1.mp3

Web Services
http://media.libsyn.com/media/ais/AiS5.mp3

Unit Testing
http://media.libsyn.com/media/ais/AiS8.mp3

Advanced Unit Testing Techniques
http://media.libsyn.com/media/ais/AiS9.mp3

Database Normalization
http://media.libsyn.com/media/ais/AiS12.mp3

Abstraction
http://ais.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=187077#

Engineering Processes
http://ais.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=196868#

Refactoring
http://media.libsyn.com/media/ais/AiS24.mp3

Scalable Enterprise Applications
http://media.libsyn.com/media/ais/AiS35.mp3

Cairngen - Free
http://www.ericfeminella.com/blog/cairngen
This tool provides AS3 code generation for Cairngorm based Flex projects. You’ll need to have Ant installed and know how to run and modify Ant scripts so there is a barrier of entry here. It would be great if Cairngen had a GUI.

VASGen – Free
http://selfmummy.com/vasgen
There are a few issues with VASGen, like no package name support, but the AS3 code generation is pretty good. This tool is definitely worth checking out, especially considering the price. If you aren’t planning on using Cairngorm and you want a free tool this might be the solution.

UMLet – Free
http://www.umlet.com
This app can be set up as a Flex/Eclipse plug in. Pretty cool, no code generation from what I could tell though.

Enterprise Architect – $239-$135
http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/products/ea.html
At one point I had a trial copy of EA that was generating AS3, if memory serves me it did take a few hours of changing settings and research to get the code gen working though. Unfortunately the current price tag is out of my reach so no further information is available.

Visual Paradigm – $70-$59
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/vpuml/personaledition.jsp
Visual Paradigm claims AS3 generation but I’ve seen some concerns, and have my own (that doesn’t look like AS3 to me, notice the lack of a package?).