Adobe MAX day 1 - Sessions

Looking Ahead to the Next Version of Flex
It'll compile much faster, have better workflow for developers and designers, and show a significant change in the evolution of the framework.

Looking Ahead to the Next Version of Flex
Main improvement areas: workflow, framework evolution and compiler performance.

Catalyst: Helps designers turn artwork into components. It's currently difficult to customize components beyond reskinning them. Will improve workflow between developers and designers.

Spark Architecture: New classes using FxComponent as base class to replace Halo classes, though FxComponent is derived from UIComponent. Moves all UI related funtionality in code and out of markup (MXML). This makes the classes much more easily extensible since substituting new skins will be more powerful.

In order to support more tightly integrated skins graphics primitives were made first class citizens. As a result MXML components like Line, Rect, etc. can now be animated.

Introducing FXG interchange format.

'State' syntax changed to allow more powerful state capabilities.

mx.core.Container replaced by mx:Group. ?

New Layout base class divorces layering from child order. Much applause!

Talks about two-way data binding.

Performance enhancements: 2x to 5x speed improvements in compiler.

The Flex Architecture Faceoff
Dissapointing overall, mostly complained about various frameworks like Cairngorm. Half of the speakers prefered good code generation over frameworks.

Why do projects fail:
- Overuse of patterns. Engineers trying to use patterns where they don't belong.
- Overuse of singletons. Everythings a singleton, leads to spaghetti-code.
- People don't think they need programming expertise for Flex.

Enterprise Design (?) architecture design tool.

Watch out for overuse of data-binding, very hard to clean up, bad performance.

Prana Framework (http://www.pranaframework.org) Inversion of Control/Dependancy Injection tool.

Use code generation for back-end work.


Advanced Tips and Tricks for Flex Builder 3
+ Stay up-to-date with latest Java JVM. 1.6 is much faster starting up Flex Builder than earlier versions.
+ Flexbuilder.ini bump memory settings.
+ Use Team->History for SVN access.
+ Use profiler! QueueElement method used by DispathLater sometimes accumulates memory.
+ Use CSS features whereever possible.
+ Ctl-x/clt-y - shift case of selection.
+ Ctl-shift-p - find matching braces.
+ Ctl-n - open new editor.
+ Ctl-d - delete current line.
+ Use framework RSL linkage to reduce SWF size. Caches Flex framework code. Note: can't profile when in this mode.

Coldfusion Powered Flex