Last week, I took part in a recording of The Flex Show that centered around Apache Flex and the state of Flash in 2012. I thought it was a pretty interesting discussion – a lot of good points were brought up and you can listen to the entire recording from the show website:
Flexing into 2012 w/ Joseph Labrecque and Mark Ehlert: The Flex Show Episode 159

Apache Flex Re-branding Initiative

Submit your design to the Apache Flex Logo Contest!

On the 31th of December, 2011, the Apache Software Foundation has accepted the Flex SDK into incubation. Apache Flex is now a community project managed by Apache (ASF). The migration from Adobe to Apache involves a re-branding and you can contribute by proposing the new Apache Flex logo.

Such is the case with the email reproduced below regarding Flex. I’ve asked permission from the individual author but have blanked out his name for reasons of privacy.

Greetings Joseph.
I have several decades of programming experience on desktops and (in the old old days) mainframes, using a variety of languages and technologies.

I am interested in application development for mobile platforms, both Android and the Apple platforms. However I am unable to find anyone who can give an unbiased and straightforward answer to this question: Is the Adobe Flex platform (1) a good choice to devote my limited time resources to for learning mobile development (2) is it or is it not true that the Adobe Flex platform is dying / going away / not really a good choice etc. etc. etc.

Would you be kind enough to give me some guidance regarding this? I don’t have enough time available to learn every technology so I must focus and get the biggest bang for my buck.

What do you recommend?

Thank you so much for your guidance with this.

-Xxxxx

My response [though slightly modified for this public post] follows.

Hi Xxxxx.

I don’t think anyone has 100% fool-proof, solid-as-stone answers around this just yet… but I’ll answer you the best I can.

1) I believe that AIR/Flex is still quite valuable for mobile apps. Buried amid the 11/9 announcements is a repeated statement that Adobe is “doubling-down” on AIR for mobile. One of the reasons cited for dropping mobile Flash Player in the browser was to divert resources to mobile AIR. Furthermore, Adobe’s new line of Touch Apps for Android are (almost) all built upon AIR for Android (though my understanding is that Flex was not used).

2) Flex is now an Apache incubator podling. Assuming that the Apache Flex team is able to organize everything enough to put out a release or two (normally achievable over 4-6 months), the project is expected to graduate to full Apache project status – putting it on the same level as ANT, Tomcat, HTTPD, and other well-known, popular projects used worldwide. Note that PhoneGap was also contributed to Apache by Adobe directly after the Nitobi acquisition – so this is by no means a death sentence or dismissal of the framework.

With Flex in the hands of the wider community, there are actually more resources available in light of the number of individual contributors. Even if not an Apache contributor yourself, if you have a patch for Flex that would be useful for others – get in touch with a contributor to see whether they might see value in the patch and perform the contribution in your stead. Don’t forget that a number of contributors are Adobe engineers and that they the company has stated that even though the runtimes are still under their care – they will align releases in light of what is going on at Apache.

I am confident that we will see some great things come out of the Apache Flex effort from members of the Spoon project and the greater community.

I hope this is helpful.

-Joseph

I hope this is useful for others out there. If you want to gather information on-the-ground, be sure to check out the 360|Flex conference in April!

Unfortunately, the recording was problematic and we only have the first 20 minutes – but it still contains some good information and discussions.

The recording…
Rmaug_12/6/11 by realeyes media

I have always used Flash when appropriate, to do things which were either impossible with HTML or at least would be a major pain. I’ve developed many applications which use Flash technology – they do so in a modular way. Will this change in the near future? Not at all. For functionality that requires technology beyond what HTML can provide, I am going to use Flash. Build a website? Use HTML. Will HTML continue to improve? Sure it will… and if Adobe can provide some killer tools and frameworks around HTML in the future – that would be pretty cool too.

Is Flex Dead?

So what changed? This evening, the Flex team updated their article from last week with a slew of excellent new details on exactly what is going on. I suggest anyone who is even remotely interested in Flex have a look over at Your Questions About Flex. Some of the hi-lights that caught my eye include the following bits and pieces…

Not only the Flex SDK is being open sourced, but also BlazeDS(!), the new Falcon compiler, testing tools, new Spark components, and…

Falcon JS, an experimental cross-compiler from MXML and ActionScript to HTML and JavaScript.

Whoa! Write AS3 and compile to HTML/JS – getting around the need for Flash Player for certain applications? Sure!

Adobe will also have a team of Flex SDK engineers contributing to those new Apache projects as their full-time responsibility.

Similar to their commitments to jQuery – this is really good news as Adobe ought to keep contributing to Flex. They have a lot to contribute!

The Apache model has proven to foster a vibrant community, drive development forward, and allow for continuous commits from active developers.

Having all of these projects (including PhoneGap) under Apache is a good move. The Apache Foundation is respected and established. Flex will not shrivel and die there – Adobe has now made some truly AWESOME contributions to the open source community!

The previous statement of HTML being the “long-term solution for enterprise applications” was also clarified:

Flex has now, and for many years will continue to have, advantages over HTML5 for enterprise application development

What about the roadmap shown at Adobe MAX this year?

Previously communicated road map features, such as enhanced code editing, real-time error highlighting and compile-as-you-type support will be available to both ActionScript and Flex developers.

So there we have it! Flash Builder also gets some mention with Adobe remaining committed to the tool – also a deep commitment for Flash Player on the desktop and the AIR runtime for desktop and mobile. There is a bunch of more info in the article, so be sure to give it a read.

I’d also recommend reading over Brian Rinaldi’s post, as it provides some additional perspective: Moving Forward with Flex and Flash.

And honestly, if you haven’t read Mike Chambers post yet… you really should.

In happy addition: I’ve gotten some rather heartening news from the Adobe Community and Education teams which will wait until another day ;)

[this is a post from 2007 in light of Adobe's announcement on 11/11/11]

Heh… really…

http://www.spoon.as/

Contribute to SPOON and see what happens!

Slides are also available below.

In this workshop, top Flash expert Joseph Labrecque is your guide to Flash Builder 4.5. After a quick introduction to Flash Builder for those who may be unfamiliar, he covers the many new features in the latest version, including new coding features and Spark components. The course includes a chapter on mobile development where you’ll learn how to create a variety of mobile project types and how to effectively simulate iOS, Android, and Tablet OS devices before packaging and signing an application for mobile distribution. Finally, you’ll learn about Flash Builder´s integration with other Flash tools, including how to perform round-trip authoring between Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder and how to author a Flash Professional project in Flash Builder.

Access the full workshop.

Grab the detailed release.

The following three sample movies are public:

• Where Does Flash Builder Fit into the Flash Platform?
• New Formatters and Validators
• Creating a Tabbed View Navigator Application

Thanks to everyone who attended my session!

Scenario: Using Flex 4.5 and the default Spark theme, you provide a button with both a “chromeColor” setting and assign it an Icon. The Icon is rendered almost transparent and looks nothing like what you’ve exported from Photoshop, Fireworks, or whatever. The image below demonstrates both how the icon should appear (top) and how it appears by default (bottom).

Good Icon / Bad Icon

I’ve mentioned that I’ve encountered this before. Well… for the current project, it really is a big deal. I needed to find a solution to this and the answer is not at all readily available. Since the ability to include an icon was not included in the initial Spark release, performing a search on Google will mostly pull up workarounds for this. Now that icons are officially supported in Spark Button components, this is not a big deal… yet we still have the problem of the icon showing up all funky.

I reached out on Twitter, thinking there must be someone out there that had encountered this. Dan Florio pointed out that it was likely the chromeColor style setting that was causing the problem. After giving this a good look, I did verify that the icon seemed to be inheriting styles off of the chomeColor even though the Label element within the Button was not. Weird… but it definitely gave me something to work on.

Anyhow. Here is what I found that does fix this problem.

1. Create a new Flex application with the default Spark theme.
2. Add a Button with an icon defined, as well as the chromeColor attribute:

   <s:Button label="BOOKMARK" chromeColor="#000000"  icon="@Embed('mini_bookmark.png')"/>

   This will render the icon barely visible.

3. Now you must create a new Skin class based off of spark.skins.spark.ButtonSkin and assign this to the skinClass attribute of the Button
4. Within this class (around line 43) is the following declaration:

   static private const exclusions:Array = ["labelDisplay"];

5. The icon in a Spark Button has the ID of iconDisplay. We will add this to the exclusions Array:

   static private const exclusions:Array = ["labelDisplay", "iconDisplay"];

6. Presto! Everything looks classy!

Hopefully those reading this did not need to spend over an hour wading through the default Spark component and skin declarations to locate this :)

The book contains 372 pages of useful information and solid recipes for developing killer Android applications using Flash Platform technology.

The Flash Development for Android Cookbook enables Flash developers to branch out into Android mobile applications through a set of essential, easily demonstrable recipes. It takes you through the entire development workflow: from setting up a local development environment, to developing and testing your application, to compiling for distribution to the ever-growing Android Market.

There a a number of people I’d like to call attention to and thank for helping make this book a reality:

• Scott Janousek: for providing an excellent forward to the book.
• Fabio Biondi, Sean Moore, and Leonardo Risuleo: for lending a careful set of eyes as technical reviewers.
• Wilson D’souza: for his expert editorial help through the entire process.
• Thanks also to my friends in the Adobe Community Professional, Adobe Education Leader, and wider Flash Platform and mobile development communities!!!

Lastly, special thanks to my wife Leslie Labrecque for putting up with me and these many varied projects… ;)

Please spread the word, buy the book, and drop me a note if it was useful!