David Harris's Technology Blog

ColdFusion, Flex, and other stuff...   (and 354,854 hours, 58 mins in to my plan for global domination)

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Adobe Community Road Show Coming to Auckland!

This Thursday http://www.cfug.org.nz/ and http://www.fxug.org.nz/ are hosting an Adobe Roadshow event with Mark Szulc.

Come along to hear more about Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst and CF9!

I will attempt to broadcast the meeting on http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/nzcfug/, all going well!

Related Links:

http://groups.adobe.com/posts/1b5f77b054

http://nzroadshow.eventbrite.com/

http://labs.adobe.com/

See you there!

RIA conference In Queenstown, New Zealand - Web on the Piste - take2

Straker have just announced that Web on the Piste is happening again.

The conference is a deliberately smaller conference of only the low hundreds of attendees available. This means you get get access to the speakers to talk to between sessions etc.

The years theme is "Usability and Rich Internet Technologies" and one of the speakers that has been secured at this stage is Robert Hoekman Jr, author of the best selling book "Designing the Obvious" with more speakers to come.

So it could be good.

Last year I organized User Groups on the Piste which was a chance to get the Adobe Development community together to hang out and talk geek. If you are coming this year, keep an ear out for this event, as I am hoping to organize (or help organize) something similar again.

New Zealand has 2 official Adobe User groups:

- http://www.cfug.org.nz

- http://www.fxug.org.nz

so WOTP is a good chance to get us all together in one place!


Disclaimer: at this stage I am currently employed by Straker, but only for one more week! ;-)

Auckland Event Half Full!

As you are hopefully aware the RSVPs opened for a specail New Zealand Flex User Group event last week.

As of now the RSVPs are halffull for the Auckland Event and the Wellington event is not far behind.

Seats are going quick, so RSVP now to secure your seat!

See you there!

RSVPs open for Special New Zealand Flex User Group Meeting!

Just a follow up on a previous entry to let all interested know that the RSVP for Wellington and Auckland are open for the special FXUG meeting at the end of the month!

http://nzfug.eventbrite.com

See you there!

New Zealand has an Adobe Ambassador!!

Just reading over my blog feeds this morning and I noticed Campbell Anderson has become an Adobe Ambassador!

Congratulations Campbell.

I have been on the receiving end of his help, and think Adobe (via Andrew Spaulding) have made a good choice in asking Campbell for this role.

Campbell's knowledge in Flex and willingness to share that knowledge has helped me out a few times my Flex forays.

So go along to NZ Flex User Group and congratulate the man in person!

[Edit] Does anyone know if there are other "Adobe Ambassadors" in New Zealand? Campbell is the first one I am aware of...

NZ Flex User Group Meeting you won't want to miss!

At the end of February, the New Zealand Flex User Group, in association with the New Zealand ColdFusion User Group are having a special event!

Seats will be limited, so be ready to RSVP ASAP when you can! The RSVP site will be announced soon! (promise) See http://www.fxug.org.nz and http://www.cfug.org.nz/fxug for more details! I'd suggest signing up on the Flex User Group's mailing list too!

Flex takes on "Second Life" in the form of "Small Worlds"

The team at OutSmart have resurfaced from 12 months of self declared "Stealth Mode" according to this Blog: nz-entrepreneurs-going-to-town-on-web

The result of this time is "Small Worlds" which is an online world, powered by Flex, produced by OutSmart.

"Small Worlds" is 100% web based, and runs within the browser.

Campbell destroyed my evening last night by sending me an invite to Small Worlds.

The "Small Worlds" Game/application looks very sharp and the highlight was beating Nathan at a game of pool. I have never met Nathan in the real world, but I was informed he was one of the developers that worked on the pool game!

May last year they showed off early stages at the New Zealand Flex User Group, and then provided an open demo. See this entry.

The related links below have links to other announcements and photos.

My email address is on the right, so feel free to email me if you want an invite!

Congratulations and Well Done to the team at OutSmart! We all look forward to seeing your "Small Worlds" grow!

Related Links:

http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=1238
http://blog.xsive.co.nz/archives/260
http://www.flickr.com/photos/xsive
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=713

Must.not.sign.in.to.Small.Worlds!

Binding of properties between sub components

On the NZ Flex UG list, (another) David posted this question.

In the process of testing what he outlined, I created a simple example, which I have posted here.

The point of this example is to show how you can declare "public" variables in a component, and then access those variables as properties form the component that uses it...

The example consists of 2 files:

FormExample.mxml (Application File)

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" >
   
   <mx:Panel>
      <!-- call in the MyForm component -->
      <local:MyForm
         id="myForm"
         title="My Form"
         xmlns:local="*"
      />

      
      <!--
         a button with the "enabled" property bound to the "formValid" property of the myForm component above
      -->

      <mx:Button
         id="myButton"
         label="My Button: enabled is '{myButton.enabled.toString()}'"
         enabled="{myForm.formValid}"
      />

      
   </mx:Panel>
   
</mx:Application>

MyForm.mxml (in the root folder of the project)

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Panel xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="vertical">

   <mx:Script>
      <![CDATA[
         /*
            Create property and expose it by declaring it as "public",
            and let the compiler know to make if bindable using the [Bindable] meta tag
         */

         [Bindable] public var formValid:Boolean = false;
      ]]>
   </mx:Script>
   <!-- Something to let us know if the 'form' is currently Valid or Invalid -->
   <mx:Text text="Form is Currently {formValid == true ? 'Valid' : 'Invalid'}" />
   
   <!-- simple button to toggle the formValid status -->
   <mx:Button label="Toggle Form Valid" click="formValid = !formValid;" />

</mx:Panel>

Result:

My Flex Playing requires Adobe Flash Player 9. Get Adobe Flash..

Feel free to ask questions!

PS: There can NEVER be enough Davids!

Learn Flex and Air and win stuff!

The New Zealand Flex User Group has announced a beginners competition to create an Air application using Flex!

If you have been wanting to find the time and motivation to learn Air and Flex, they are providing the motivation, so all you need is the time!

See here for all the details.

[Update] You need to live in New Zealand to enter too!

Web on the Piste, the debrief.

Well, it's all over for this year...

Web on the Piste has come and gone.

Day 0

I flew in to Queenstown on Tuesday, and we had "User Groups on the Piste" @ 4pm - 6pm that evening.

This was an event put on by New Zealand's ColdFusion and Flex User groups.

[More]

One hour out from "User Groups on the Piste"

One hour till User Groups On The Piste kicks off!

Sorry everyone, I didn't get the name tags done in time! :-(

Don't forget, you can attend remotely if you can't be here in person!

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