nothing yet | jason madsen

So day two was pretty interesting. Jeffry Houser gave an interesting session on building Flex Components. He has a comfortable, interactive style of speaking that works well, and keeps you involved with the session.

I really enjoyed the introduction to fluint, the Flex Unit testing project by Jeff Taper. Unit testing is one of those things that I would like to incorporate more into projects, but have always balked at the time considerations involved. I think the fluint project is really come along.

I think my favorite session of the day was Christophe Coenraets (Adobe Evangelist). It was a pretty high level overview of LiveCycle Data Services, and using remote objects. It didn’t get into too much of the tech details, but I really enjoyed the session. He also showed an interesting Flex portal application that was using Modules and a Module Loader.

After talking with Jeffry Houser for a few minutes, he talked me into doing an quick interview for the Flex Show. I was really flattered to be a part of the show. We mostly talked about the conference sessions and my thoughts on them. I have been listening to the Flex Show for a while now, so it was nice to meet Jeffry, and be on the show. You can check out the latest show, episode # 56 to hear it from here.

I ended up having to leave just before the mixer at the end to catch a cab to the airport. I was disappointed at missing that.

All in all it was a great two day event. I’m glad I went. Thanks to 360 | Flex and the NJ Flex group for putting it together.

So I made it through day one of the 360 | Flex Camp today. Yakov Fain from Farata Systems gave a one day “Advanced Intro To Flex” training at Montclair University in New Jersey. It started with some pretty introductory topics, but it moved on quickly, and ended with some hands on use with BlazeDS. I was excited to get a local installation of Tomcat and BlazeDS running on my Mac. I have been using AMFPHP a lot on some of my latest projects. We’ll see how BlazeDS changes that for me in the future

Tomorrow features the guest speakers. Several interesting topics on deck.

I can’t end this post without thanking Danton Chin. I was stranded at the University, and he offered me a lift to my hotel. I would probably still be wandering around the University looking for an appropriate bus to catch right now if it had not been for his kind offer.

I’m heading to the Garden State this weekend to attend 360 | Flex Camp New Jersey, and the Farata Systems Flex training. I’m looking forward to the two day event. I missed out on going to San Jose this year, I figure this is the next best thing.

I’m looking forward to the sessions of Fluint, and also Drupal. Both of which I keep hearing about, but have yet to work with.

For more details visit http://www.360conferences.com/360flexcamp/

-jason

So it was bound to happen. I put out a version of the Badge Builder, and Adobe and Grant Skinner soon there after release a similar application.

It is called Badger, it has a cool flying badger icon, and does a few really cool things. For example when you select your AIR application it will pull your publisher ID, and application ID out of the AIR file itself. Very nice touch.

While I haven’t researched much further yet, it also appears that you can use various template badge SWF files. Doing so should allow you to build your own custom template for use with the application.

You can check out Grant’s post on Badger here

-jason

As mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been putting together an Adobe AIR application that allows the user to quickly create a Badge Install HTML file by filling out a simple form. The aim of Badge Builder is to give access to all of the options available for utilizing the Badge Installer, while not drowning the user with parameters that they don’t wish to change.

You can toggle between the necessary, and optional parameters. It has a built in preview function that will open your browser and display the HTML file. Once you are satisfied with your settings, you simply build the file to the folder of your choice. All of the fields have tool-tips to get you up to speed quickly on the information that is needed. The application is just another way to be more productive.

I’ve set up a page with an Install Badge, screen shots, and a bit more by way of features here.

I have been testing it as I develop and use it. So far is has been pretty stable for me. If you find any issues, please let me know.