I've just finished my presentation at the 360 Flex Conference this morning and it went really well. We had a really good turnout and there were some great questions. As promised, I am posting my slide deck and sample code (client and server) here for everyone to download and try for themselves. For those of you who weren’t there but are interested in what was covered, here is snapshot of the samples that I talked about…

• Why Flex & PHP
• What can I build with it?
• How can I build with it?
• Demos
  • Flex & PHP using REST
  • Flex & PHP using JSON
  • Flex & PHP using AMF
  • Flickr example

If you had any questions or comments, feel free to let me know! Thanks to Tom Ortega for getting me involved, and of course, thanks to everyone who came!

Flex & PHP 101 - Flex & PHP for Rich Internet Application Development

Server-Side PHP Code

Client-Side Flex Code

Charles

I was just recently asked to be a presenter for one of the seminars at 360|Flex in Seattle next month! The previous presenter, Mike Potter, was unable to make it so I am gladly filling in for him. I'll be covering integration between Flex front-ends and server-side technologies, particularly PHP. I will talk about common integration techniques using either a REST-based architecture, serialization via JSON, or binary messaging with AMF. My class in particular will be on the second day (Tuesday, August 14th), first thing in the morning -> 8:30am - 9:50am (schedule). I hope to see you there and if you have any questions, I'm in contact with the event coordinators, so feel free to ask!

See the schedule and register for the event at…

http://www.360conferences.com/360flex/

Charles

I just finished my presentation at UBC and it was another great event. We had a good attendance and some really really good questions. I was very pleased to see how enthusiastic a lot of the students were. I was also pleased to see some very good criticisms in the audience. This is a positive thing. I very much appreciate criticism. It means a few things - people are listening, they are interested about the technology, and they are giving opinions on how to improve it, and to me, these are the most valuable because ultimately, it will be these people who will be the ones using it!

I also enjoyed this presentation a bit more because it gave me the chance to speak about Apollo. I've worked with it in projects prior, but wasn’t able to say anything about it simply because of how early in development it was (and still is). I'm really excited though to see Apollo hit the masses and hopefully see some very cool applications flood the web.

As always, here is my presentation slide deck from the event. See you on the flipside…

Charles

Looks like I’m scheduled to present again at my future alma-mater, UBC. Last time I was there, I did a presentation on the joys of Flex. This time, I get to show off Apollo! Ooooooh. As usual, food and drinks will be provided, and we will be accepting resumes. This is a great chance to see some of the new and exciting technologies that Adobe's brewing up, and if you're familiar with Apollo at all, then you know what I mean. Hope to see you there!

^*oops, looks like I forgot to add the event details :p

When: Tuesday, February 13rd, 2007 from 5:30pm - 6:30pm
Where: DMP 110 @ UBC (Hugh Dempster Pavilion, 6245 Agronomy Road)

Charles

The presentation to FlexGala, the Flex User Group in Italy, was great. Thanks to Raffaele Mannella and Marco Casario for setting this up, as well as the FlexGala members for having me. As promised, here is the slide deck from the presentation. Feel free to contact me if you have any other questions. Hope to do this again!

^*Update:Marco Casario posted the recorded live meeting on his blog. Thanks Marco!

Introduction to Flex Data Services (PowerPoint slide deck)

Introduction to Flex Data Services (recorded live meeting)

Charles

I will be giving an online "webinar" to FlexGala, the Flex User Group in Italy via Acrobat Connect (formerly Macromedia Breeze). It is titled “Introduction to Flex Data Services” and will take place this Wednesday, December 13th at 12:00pm EST (6:00pm Italy time). As you can probably tell from the title, it will be an intro to Flex Data Services. For more information, see by Marco Casario, as well as the FlexGala website.

Charles

As promised, here is the code from the main demo that I used during my Tech Talk Tour. Written by a co-worker, Zee, for the first stop in the tour (a Tech Talk at the University of Ottawa), it is a simple demo to illustrate some of the main features of Flex: ease of use, powerful framework and IDE, the rich look-and-feel, and the web services support.

The demo, as mentioned, is comfortably written in under 50 lines of code and is an implementation of a Flickr photo viewer. Using Flickr's REST API, Flex provides a rich and engaging, cross-platform application to search and view Flickr photos! Again, the demo is very simple so user searches, searching by tags, camera, etc. are not implemented (but we encourage you to write it!). Anyways, try the app, download the source, and try building your own! If you have anything you'd like to show-off, let me know!

Flickr Viewer (demo, source)

^*Note: Because of the sandbox security-model in Flash Player 9, I can't make calls to the Flickr server directly. Here is the proxy.php file that I used instead to bypass this.

Charles

I just got back home from my trip doing the Tech Talk Tour and we've had some really great events! The tour was a big success and I'd like to thank everyone who attended and especially those who helped out on campus.

Anyways, for those who are interested, I'll be posting my demo code from the presentation as my next blog post, probably entitled something like, "Flickr Photo Viewer Demo"^*. My slide deck though, is posted below (I've only posted one copy, since they were mostly the same for each university). As for my visit to the Vancouver Flash User Group, I used a different presentation and demo which is actually the basis for my "States Tutorial", so look out for that in a week or two. So if anyone had questions or feedback, feel free to let me know :)

Thanks again to everyone who participated and hopefully there'll be more to come!

What is Adobe Flex 2?

^*Update: The Flex Flickr Viewer, can be located here - http://work.whoischarles.com/content/flickr-photo-viewer-in-50-lines-of-code

^**Update: The Flex Transitions and Effects Sandbox, can be located here - http://work.whoischarles.com/content/transitions-effects-demo

Charles

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'll be coming back to my hometown, Vancouver BC, to do some presentations at the local universities. While I'm in town, I will also be meeting up with the Vancouver Flash User Group to give a quick introduction to Flex and Apollo. Thanks to Ross Ladell, the user group leader and fellow UBC'er, for inviting me and helping me organize things.

For anyone interested in joining, you are more than welcome! It will be on the night of November 9^th at 7pm in "The Network Hub" downtown (422 Richards Street - 3^rd floor).

Hope to see you there!

Charles

*UPDATE: The event location is now changed. Our friends at Blast Radius have kindly offered to host the event instead -> 1146 Homer Street, same time :)

As part of our university initiative, we have piloted the beginnings of a Tech Talk Tour, starting with our very first event at the University of Ottawa. Zee, a fellow intern at Adobe, has just finished presenting at the event and it was a great success!

We have since scheduled Adobe Tech Talks at 4 more schools within the next few weeks, the rest of which I will be presenting at. Looks like I'm going on tour! See the schedule and see if you can make an appearance!

• University of Toronto (Toronto, ON)
• Monday, Oct. 30^th @ 4:00pm
• BA1130 in the Bahen Centre Building
• University of Western Ontario (London, ON)
• Thursday, Nov. 2^nd @ 5:30pm
• Room 2202 in the Spencer Engineering Building
• Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, BC)
• Tuesday, Nov. 7^th @ 12:00pm
• Room T9204 in the new TASC Building
• University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC)
• Wednesday, Nov. 8^th @ 5:30pm
• DMP310 in the Hugh Dempster Pavilion

If you're in the area and are interested in learning more about Flex and Apollo development, drop on by!

Charles