You know what? I found the jump very easy and those guys at Adobe’s hq did a wonderful job on driving people into this new release of the Flex framework.
I’m not posting some code this time, just a link to a project which can be sooooooo helpful to take your dive: “Flex in a Week”.
Nothing hard, just take your time, your headphones and a good internet connection, drive your browser to http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videotraining/flex4beta/index.html and start from the beginning…
If you’re not new to flex programming it will take you half a day to get into this new baby.

bye for now

Recently I’ve been searching for a plugin for eclipse, a tool, *something*, able to generate code snippets on the fly. This lack of eclipse IDE is filled by a project called Eclipse Monkey, a dead (yes…dead..-.-’) component of  Project Dash which enables Eclipse to execute javascript functions on demand.

Eclipse Monkey will put a “scripts” menu on your Eclipse menu bar which is populated by the list of scripts (.js) inside the specified folder.

Here’s my Scripts>Actionscript dropdown menu

Installation:

1) Add project dash site ( http://download.eclipse.org/technology/dash/update )  to your eclipse’s update sites,
2) Restart eclipse,
3) Run create test project by selecting scripts menu,
4) Download actionscript snippets lib from here

…great deal

Here’s a video showing Eclipse Monkey at work

(Either JavaScript is not active or you are using an old version of Adobe Flash Player. Please install the newest Flash Player.)

UPDATE:

take a look to “Pimp my Eclipse” post from Lee Brimelow (part 1 and 2) for further customizing your eclipse installation

Yep, I’m going to be an attendee at Flash on the Beach 08 next week. I bought the ticket, booked a flight and a room at myHotel and right now it’s time to plan my schedule.

I’m really enthusiastic of getting there, I use to read blogs of speakers I never met yet and it will be a pleasure to listen and talk to them “live”, further, I’m meeting again some great people I knew at 360 Flex in Milan such as Neil, Koen, Zohar (yes, I installed kaltura plugin for wordpress ), Franto, and many others (and even my best friend Luca )

Back in topic… here’s my own schedule:

Day 1 – Monday 29th
09:00 – Keynote
10:15 – Carlos Ulloa: The best way to predict the future is to invent it
11:30 – Branden Hall: Brilliant ideas I’ve blatantly stolen
13:30 – Mark Anders: A preview of Flex 4 and “Thermo”
14:45 – Tink: Flex effects: transitions as design elements OR Richard Lord: creating particle effects with Flint
16:00 – Erik Natzke: Beyond the Knowledge: The Art of Play

Day 2 – Tuesday 30th
09:00 – Aral Balkan: Welcome to the cloud
10:15 – Adobe: Town hall meeting
11:30 – Grant Skinner: Things Every Actionscript Developer Should Know
13:30 – Chris Allen: Building Red5 Applications
14:45 – Lee Brimelow: Platform Jiu-Jitsu

Day 3 – Wednesday 1st
09:00 – Rob Bateman: Finding Away3D
10:15 – Seb Lee-Delisle: Papervision3D simplified
11:30 – Doug McCune: Decompiling Flex and Flash
13:30 – Koen de Weggheleire: Play With Pixels, bitmap manipulation with AS3
14:45 – Mario Klingemann: Here be Pixels

mmm…I really think I’m going to have a great time there in UK (hey, it’s my first time in UK…it MUST be great! )

stay tuned for comments and follow ups

Here’s the next great meeting from Actionscript.it community!

Join the party, we’re going to share together our nerdy love for Adobe Flex!
Just compile the widget and submit that form

UPDATE: http://www.flashfuck.it/fps-monitor/

Here’s some (usefull i hope ) source..

I’ve made a little fps monitor for my projects (for both as3 and flex)… so, here’s some souce and some howtos about…

There are 2 classes, FPSMonitor is made for as3 (or flash) projects, the other one, FlexFPSMonitor is made expecially for use in Flex.

Usage AS3:

import it.flashfuck.debugger.FPSMonitor;
//[...]
addChild(new FPSMonitor());

Usage Flex:

// new xmlns in application tag
xmlns:debugger="it.flashfuck.debugger.*"
//then add the tag, remember to add it at the end of your app so it's appearing in front of everything

quite simple hm?
The main difference between these classes’ results is dragging. Flex one is draggable over the application stage, the other one is not draggable (just edit the code if you want to bring it away among the screen )….

Features
FPSMonitor (as the flex one) is monitoring
- OS, Player type, version, and “is debugger”
- FPS
- Memory usage (note: this parameter tells you the memory usage by ALL flash player instances you’re running, so if you’re running more than 1 player at once this value is altered!…even in 2 firefox tabs or a standalone and a browser player)

Graph:
FPSMonitor is displaying in a graph 2 values: FPS (white) and memory usage (black) (same note for this value )
Everything is blended with BlendMode.INVERT so you can see the monitor in quite every condition.

I hope you enjoy.
Download here both classes FPSMonitor.as and FlexFPSMonitor.as

….just a note: feel free to use this code anywhere, if you’re improving functionalities, adding more features or anything else please just send me a smoke signal or a pidgeon with a message so i can update the source

It’s time to upgrade!
Astro is here!

Let’s take a look to what chefs cooked up for our taste pleasure:

1. 3D support: finally adobe put some z in flash!:D on astro release notes Adobe’s claiming that they’re enabling everyone to create complex 3D effects using simple code… mmm… i’m curious about that! i’m a papervisioned guy!
2. hardware acceleration: flash player 9.0.115 introduced hardware acceleration… astro is becoming even friendlier with your gpu. Now flash player supports GPU compositing and blitting, both parameters must be enabled by html.
3. Adobe Pixel Bender: formerly Hydra (which was a cooler name ), this system let us create our own custom filters and apply them runtime..
4. New text engine! Multiple columns text, support for chinese (GB18030 )
5. Speex! a free codec used to encode speech….Ribbit thanx while pacifica voip project is waiting…
6. Dynamic sound generation!…Andr√© Michelle’s “Adobe make some noise” petition really made some noise!
7. File reference runtime access! Finally we don’t have to upload our files to manipulate them inside our RIAs! Files are handled as ByteArrays so we can do quite everything
8. Many others…

Another impressive innovation is Astro is available for Ubuntu Linux users too…so even penguins can try new features shown in the demo on labs site.

Finally the coolest news: WE ALREADY CAN COMPILE CONTENT TARGETING ASTRO!

I’m so excited i don’t need mana to stay awake tonight!:D

I’m finally back to my Venice and found many liters of mails and skype messages about 360 Flex Europe.Now I have to finish some work (be abroad for 3 days means be working for 3 nights once back!:D) but I can’t resist one minute more to put this video online!Zohar created it on the fly with his great Kaltura framework during his session, take a look, it’s funny!

Doug McCune è uno dei flex developers che sto seguendo più da vicino,

recentemente ha pubblicato il video integrale della sua sessione al 360 Flex di Seattle.

Se masticate un po’ di “American English” (quello con la patata in bocca per intenderci ) e avete un’oretta da spendere ad imparare inclinate lo schienale della poltrona, piazzatevi comodi comodi e date un’occhiata a questo video in fullscreen (la qualit√† √® abbastanza alta da leggere il codice)

Doug McCune @ 360Flex Seattle

La 360 Flex conference √® un evento flex “senza fissa dimora” che vede in aprile l’approdo a Milano agli inizi di Aprile.
L’evento si sviluppa in 3 giornate (da luned√¨ a mercoled√¨) e vede la partecipazione di ben 32 testoline da speaker provenienti da tutta europa pronte per parlare di millanta argomenti flex oriented.

Forte √® la presenza dei “code invaders” (no, non c’√® nulla da ridere -.-’) ossia il gruppo di speaker di Actionscript.it.

Pochi giorni fa √® stata stesa la prima schedule della conferenza, potete scaricarla direttamente dal sito ufficiale del 360 Flex Europe al link http://www.360flex.com/360Flex_Europe dal quale potrete anche iscrivervi all’evento.

Dopo il Flex Magic ormai sono una figura di speakko, e speakko anche li

Ghiotta √® l’occasione e dentro mi ci butto

Sarò uno degli speaker al Flex Magic, manifestazione organizzata da Actionscript.it a Bologna, il 26 Febbraio prossimo.

A questo meeting toccheremo diversi argomenti tra le novit√† di flex 3, l’integrazione con .Net, lo scambio dati con ColdFusion e AMF, e Papervision 3D.

Ghiotta l’occasione anche per i partecipanti al meeting, infatti saranno estratte tra il pubblico una licenza dell’Adobe Creative Suite CS3 e una licenza di Flex Builder 3.

Questo il form di registrazione e maggiori dettagli sull’evento e sui programmi:

http://www.actionscript.it/showEvent.cfm?id=92

Ci vediamo a bologna!