Come Learn about CF9 with Flex and AIR at Adobe Max 2009

I must admit that my session is going to be pretty awesome. While some people get to speak for an hour – or maybe an hour and a half, I will be speaking for 8 hours (with some breaks of course). I will be presenting on Building ColdFusion Powered Flex and AIR Applications (see all of the labs here). While the preconference sessions are an extra cost ($595), you get an entire day of training from some amazing developers. If you look around at rates for a one-day training, you will see that this is a huge bargain. Normal sessions give you a taste of certain functionality, but at a preconference lab you can really learn it and take it back to your job.

In my session you can be sure that I will be covering:

• Utilizing the new Data-Centric Development Features in Flash Builder 4 (with ColdFusion)
• Working with the Proxy ActionScript classes that were introduced in ColdFusion 9
• Configuring and Using the ColdFusion 9 AIR Offline Sync functionality
• Working with ColdFusion Builder and configuring it to work with your development server
• Defining a Complex Domain Model using the new Hibernate ORM Support in ColdFusion 9
• Using the Hibernate ORM and its ColdFusion Builder Extension to create remote CRUD services
• Creating new Script-style CFC’s (with annotations)

All in all – you won’t want to miss this session! If you have any questions – feel free to leave a comment!

Quick CF9 Remoting Tip

I was working with a CF9 + Flex 4 example last night. This was a new installation of CF9 - and I hadn't tweaked any of the remoting settings at all (more on that in a bit). I was setting up a data paging example - and noticed that the Flex application was going crazy. From the network monitor I noticed that it was making continuous calls - and eventually caused the application to hang. After further analysis in the network monitor, I determined that Flex was receiving the objects back from ColdFusion - but they didn't contain any data. I hadn't seen this issue before.

After rummaging through the remoting config files, I discovered the issue. My bean CFC was using ColdFusion 9's new implicit getters/setters. To get this to work properly, you have to change a setting in the remoting config( specifically in services-config.xml):

By setting use-implicit-accessors to true, ColdFusion then uses the new implicit getters and setters in CF9 for your remoting calls. With that quick fix (and a restart) everything was working perfectly.

An Honest Open Discussion on Web Standards and HTML 5

If you monitor the web, you likely think that the Flash Player and Silverlight are on life support, and that HTML5 is rapidly changing what is possible on the web. In reality, many people who are commenting on HTML5 don't fully understand the current landscape. Did you know that HTML5 editor Ian Hickson stated that HTML5 won't fully be implemented in all browsers until 2022? Did you know that iPhone developers can start fully using HTML5 now? Did you know that all features in HTML5 were originally from web plugins? Did you know that Google uses a web plugin for Google Wave?

We need an open honest discussion about HTML5 and what it means for the web. Unfortunately, you aren't going to get the truth from fanatics on either side, but instead we all need to examine all of the evidence and come to our own conclusions. I have spent a great deal of time analyzing the facts, and in the process I have made several observations.

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Come Join Us Friday for Flex Camp Miami

This Friday is the much anticipated Flex Camp Miami. If you haven't registered yet - that is fine. You have two options: go ahead and register at the site, or you can show up on Friday at the venue. This will be a great event, and I am really excited that we added Jeremy Grelle to the line-up (the architect behind the Spring / Blaze DS integration). This completes a great list of speakers covering a wide range of Flex/AIR topics. You can check out the full list here: Speaker / Topic List.

If you will be traveling into town, don't forget the hotel discount code "FCM" at the Holiday Inn Coral Gables. We hope to see all of you there!

UPDATE: I can neither confirm or deny the predictions that Doug McCune made about Flex Camp Miami. You will just have to come and see.

New Flex Camp Miami Referral Program

Brian Rinaldi announced the Flex Camp Miami Referral Program. This will allow you to win prizes for referring your friends to the great Flex event (more on that in just a second). For those of you that don't know, Flex Camp Miami is a one day Flex training event that is only $30. It features speakers like Greg Wilson (Adobe), Andy Powell (Universal Mind), Laura Arguello (AsFusion), Brian Rinaldi (Universal Mind), Maxim Porges (Highwinds), Christian Saylor (Universal Mind), Brian LeGros (Highwinds), members of the team that built Scrapblog, and me. For a complete list of speakers/topics click here. You won't find any better deal on Flex training than this one!

So, what's with the referral program? Basically, you can win free books or even a copy of Flex Builder. To be eligible for the copy of Flex Builder, you need to refer at least 5 people to this event. For complete details on the referral program (and the new group rate at the hotel) see Brian Rinaldi's post on the topic.

See you in Miami.

Don’t Miss Flex Camp Miami

I took some time off from speaking at conferences last year for the birth of our twins, but I will be speaking at several conferences this year. Flex Camp Miami is the first of those conferences. It is happening on March 6th in sunny Miami on the campus of the University of Miami (at the Hurricane 100 Room). Registration for this one day Flex/AIR training event is only $30.

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Learn About URLKit for Flex

I just published a full-length article over at InsideRIA that should help anyone that is interested in using deep-linking within a Flex application through the URLKit project. The article gives several examples (from simple to more complex), so even a person with no deep-linking experience should hopefully find it an easy read.

InsideRIA: Advanced Flex Deep Linking with URLKit

Great Cairngorm Slides from 360Flex Europe

Børre Wessel has posted his slides on his talk 'Cairngorm Deep Dive' from 360Flex Europe. Børre is a Senior Consultant at Adobe Consulting and I found these slides to be pretty useful.

Presentation Slides (PDF)

SlideRocket Interview and Invites

I just posted my write-up of the interview I had with Mitch Grasso, CEO of SlideRocket, on InsideRIA.com. This article also includes some invites if you hurry and check it out.

An Interview with SlideRocket

Great Walkthrough of the Flex Component Kit for Flash CS3

Adobe Evangelist Serge Jespers has a great overview of the Flex Component Kit for Flash CS3 on his site. He walks the user through the process of creating a Flex component from the FLVPlayback component in Flash CS3. I agree with Serge that the component kit has a lot of power - and many developers are under-utilizing it. I just used it on an application I just finished last week (more on that later).

The Flash and Flex Marriage