Let’s talk about Flex
Adobe is hosting a Flex Community Summit today and tomorrow where we invited a number of Flex community leaders and enterprise developers to participate in a discussion on a variety of topics. In the next coming hours and days we will be publishing videos and articles on the future of Flex and the discussions held at the Flex Community Summit. I’ll keep this blog post up to date with new videos and publications as they become available. Day 2 of this community summit will be streamed live tomorrow today! Stay tuned for more info on that.
Please note that these are unedited and raw recordingings of the actual summit and that audio levels may vary. More polished versions are coming to Adobe TV later this week.
UPDATE:
LIVE STREAM OF DAY 2: http://my.adobeconnect.com/flexsummit (log in as guest)
LIVE BLOG: http://www.spoon.as/2011/flex-summit-live-updates-day-2/
PODCAST: Nerd Radio interview with Deepa Subramaniam and Andrew Shorten
FROM MONDAY DECEMBER 12th:
VIDEO: Session on Falcon and FalconJS Compilers
VIDEO: Flash Platform changes and demos of future Flex contributors – part three
VIDEO: Flash Platform and Flex update session - part two
VIDEO: Q&A with Danny Winokur (VP at Adobe).
BLOG: The Flex team already posted an update last Friday.
TWITTER: Follow the #FlexSummit hashtag for live updates.
Back From MAX
Wow… I’m not sure where to start… I’ve been home for a week now and I’m still buzzing… Ok… So let’s start with the beginning. The keynote opening… Wow… That was absolutely mind-blowing. You could only do one thing after watching that and that was applaud as loud as you could. Seeing it on the massive 11.5 meter/38 feet tall screen was breathtaking.
The video really doesn’t do it justice but if you weren’t able to attend MAX this year it’s the next best thing.
There were plenty of exciting announcements in both keynotes. In day 1 we introduced our Creative Cloud offering and our new creative touch apps. Both will change the way you work! I’ve been playing around with our touch apps for a few weeks now (an employee privilege :D) and absolutely love them! My favorites are Proto and Photoshop Touch. Adobe TV has a bunch of videos introducing each one of the touch apps.
Another exciting announcement was the release of the Digital Publishing Suite Single Edition. Now everyone can use the power of the software behind tablet publications like Wired, Martha Stewart Living and 100s of other digital magazines.
And let’s not forget about the acquisition of TypeKit!
And that was just day 1!
Where day 1 was full of design oriented announcements, day 2 was all about developers. And not just Flash developers! If it wasn’t clear before that Adobe wants to support HTML5 developers AND keep innovating with the Flash Platform then I’m sure this keynote proved that point. The acquisition of PhoneGap and the release of Edge Preview 3 were just the starters. The CSS Regions and CSS Shaders entrees were delicious. But the dessert was definitely the highlight. 3D gaming in Flash Player looks absolutely amazing with Epic announcing support for the Unreal engine in Flash Player. The Nissan Juke website is a perfect example of how Flash Player keeps innovating and upgrading the web with every new release.
“But hey… You didn’t talk about Flash Builder in the keynotes.”
That’s true but that doesn’t mean that the Flash Builder team has been sitting around doing nothing! The Flex 4.6 SDK and Flash Builder 4.6 bring a ton of new components and features. Check out Jacob Surber’s article on what’s new in the Flex 4.6 SDK and Flash Builder 4.6 for more info. You can also sign up for the Flash Builder 4.6 prerelease.
Oh… And let’s not forget about the sneaks! I think Rainn Wilson was the best sneaks host to date but the engineers behind the sneaks were the stars of the evening. My favorite sneaks were “crowd sourced video” and “image deblurring” but really all of the sneaks were equally amazing! Oh… And you can view all of them online!
Is it weird that I’m already looking forward to MAX 2012? Mark your calendars: October 20th to 24th 2012, Los Angeles.
PS: If you’re in/near Paris, Berlin or London and would like to see some of this technology firsthand then make sure you sign up for the free Back From MAX events!
John Warnock on innovation
John Warnock is one of the founding fathers of Adobe. John is also the inventor of Postscript, and recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, one of the highest honors bestowed on scientists, engineers and inventors in the USA. John and Chuck Geschke also were recently awarded the Marconi Prize, considered the highest honor specifically for contributions to information science and communications.
In this video, the first in a series of conversations with leaders in technology, Adobe’s CTO Kevin Lynch talks to John about innovation and how Adobe encourages it.
Build iOS applications with Flex and Flash Builder 4.5.1
You already know that you can use Flex 4.5 and Flash Builder 4.5 to build applications for Android and BlackBerry Tablet OS devices. Today we’re releasing an update to Flash Builder that will enable the exact same workflow to build iOS apps. You’ve probably see us demo this a million times already but today it’s here for you to start building your applications!
In this video I’m showing you have easy it is to do this and where to get all the developer and device certificates from.
The coolest thing is that you can now use the exact same code to build apps for Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS devices in one go! When you’re app is ready you only need to press the release build button to package your application for all these platforms.
“But my application won’t look native, Serge“. Well… I kinda like that. Flex gives you the freedom to make your application look however you want. But if you really need that native iOS feel then check out this Flex theme.
Want to find out more about Flash Builder 4.5? Then don’t forget to sign up for our Developer Week. It starts today and tomorrow I’ll be talking about mobile application development using Flex and Flash Builder 4.5.1.
If you already have Flash Builder 4.5 then go to the HELP menu and select SEARCH FOR FLASH BUILDER UPDATES to download the 4.5.1 update. If you haven’t upgraded to Flash Builder 4.5 yet then try it for 60 days. I guarantee you’ll love it. Oh… And yes… The iOS workflow also works on Windows!
Video interview: Robert Reinhardt on HTML5 video
Robert Reinhardt… He wrote The Book… The Bible… Of Flash that is. Robert is also a streaming video expert and has been working a lot with HTML5 video recently. I asked him about his experiences with HTML5 for video.
Feel free to follow me on: 
