// Commented Out

O’Reilly’s Flex 4 Cookbook is now on shelves and is the perfect way to get started with the Flex 4 framework. Using the tried-and-true cookbook format, you’ll be up and running in no time. The content is as excellent as the list of folks behind it. Just to give you some insight into the caliber of this book, let’s take a look at the hall-of-fame quality of the authors.

Joshua Noble – @factoryfactory – http://thefactoryfactory.com/
Todd Anderson – @bustardcelly – http://custardbelly.com/blog/
Garth Braithwaite – @GarthDB – http://www.garthdb.com/
Marco Casario – @marcocasario – http://casario.blogs.com/
Rich Tretola – @RichTretola – http://blog.everythingflex.com/
David Tucker – @mindmillmedia – http://www.davidtucker.net/

As inspiring and impressive as that list is, that’s not all. There were several highly influential members of the Community that served as Technical Reviewers as well. Let’s go down that roster, shall we?

Sean Moore – @seantheflexguy – http://www.seantheflexguy.com/
Chuck Freedman – @chuckstar – http://chuckstar.com/blog
Russ Ferguson – @asciibn – http://www.insideria.com/russ-ferguson/
Mykola Bilokonsky – @mykola – http://mykola.bilokonsky.net/

Uh, there is this other guy too. I’ll give you a hint. His name rhymes w–  OK it’s ME! Yes. I was honored to be a part of such an elite group of Flex gurus to help Tech Review this fantastic book. Even if I wasn’t a part of it, I would still be posting this. The people involved, especially those at O’Reilly, are as professional as they are skilled at what they do.

I recommend picking up a copy and digging in. The latest and most-cutting edge development techniques are covered within, including Unit Testing with FlexUnit, working with the new video components utilitizing the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF), secure server-side communication with BlazeDS and AMF, Spark layouts and containers,  declarative graphics skinning with FXG, and a ton more Flex 4 goodness. Actually, writing this reminded me of how packed this book is with awesome. I’m going to go read it right now! Grab a copy today!

Awhile back, I posted about the Typography of my ActionScript. At the time, I had no idea there was real support for changing editor colors in Eclipse. Since the public beta 2 of Flash Builder 4 at announced at MAX, I’m happy to report that this has finally changed! As far as I know, the support is added in Eclipse 3.4,  but don’t hold me to that. I actually stumbled across these settings by accident in the Flash Builder preferences. Right now these options are spread out between the Flash Builder syntax coloring preferences and the default Eclipse editor settings in a few places. It can be kind of confusing, but that’s what I am aiming to help you avoid having to deal with. Read the rest of this entry →

Over the last few years as a Flash Developer, I’ve noticed something. Flash isn’t what it used to be. Back in the days of Studio MX, when I first encountered Flash, it was the Wild West of interactive development. Much of that had to do with it’s labeling as a “fad” and the fact that it was the only real IDE that could write small and compelling interactive content for the web.  Read the rest of this entry →