The following is a short summary of what (little) I know of Adobe’s commitment to the cloud from the perspective of a developer.

2007 - AIR Bus Tour Toronto
I first learned about the cloud from a presentation on the Salesforce AIR toolkit. The audience was presented with a demo of an AIR application that did CRUD operations against the Contact table on Salesforce. Nothing special … until he pulled the network plug out of the laptop and performed CRUD ops without being connected. When he reconnected, the data that he manipulated locally was then syncronzed to the Salesforce cloud. No tweening balls here.

The next month, I had joined a company that did Salesforce customization. Little did I know the next few years I would be dealing with configuring an environment with the ease of not having having to deploy one.

The toolkit used in the demo is alive and well today:

http://developer.force.com/flextoolkit

We didn’t end up using it because of the amount of SOQL that had to exist on the client-side. Instead, we rolled out our own.

2009 - Flash Builder for the Force.com
Adobe hacks up a beta of Flash Builder to support an integrated development experience. Developers can take advantage of the Data Services tab and drag and drop webservices on to abused controls like the data grid. Pretty cool stuff. I ran through the demo but did not have an imediate need or a new project to apply this on.

2009 - Adobe MAX/RIA Unleashed Boston
Kevin Hoyt announces Adobe Flash Collaboration Services which would go on to be renamed as Adobe LiveCycle Collaboration Services. It was Flash Media Server with a hosted managed solution so that businesses did not have to worry about setting up supporting infrastructure.

Developers could sign up for a free account that allowed 15 minutes of real time collaboration.

I wish this existed 5 yrs ago when Java engineers we were working with were trying to push the limits of messaging for the in-game chat.

2010 - LCDS Managed!
This is awesome news. But what would be better news is if they made it cheaper. Last I checked, they made it even more expensive. Anyways, businesses now have an additional option of leveraging an Amazon cloud instances to run pre-configured LCDS instances.

I wanted to jump right into this today. The entry point is through Adobe LiveCycle Developer Express. Here’s an excerpt from the FAQ:

Q: How is a LiveCycle Managed Services deployment different than LiveCycle Developer Express?

A: LiveCycle Developer Express can be considered as a “sandbox in the cloud” for developers that want to develop their LiveCycle applications in the cloud rather than incur the costs of setting up a development environment on-premise. LiveCycle Developer Express is not intended for deployment of applications in production. In contrast, a LiveCycle Managed Services is intended for LiveCycle applications to be deployed in production in the cloud.

So I try to get my hands on something like an LCDS SDK and I run into this major obstacle that you have to be a paid member of AEDP, the Adobe Enterprise Developer Program. This is a problem. A $1500USD problem!

This really blows. At least on Force.com, you can get a Developer account for like $0.00. They give you a pretty fair amount of liberties to play with. The only pitfall is that your app can be used like 10minutes a day at most.

Anyways here’s the links on today’s big news with LCDS and the cloud.

Deployment Info:
http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/cloud

Development Info:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/aedp/dev_exp/

This is probably old news but I just discovered it now. I wish I had this URL all those times I received a bug from the field and we could not reproduce it in house. We would ask the client or the support person on the client side to right click on our applcation and select About Flash Player 10.

I am a senior level Flex/ActionScript developer looking to take on new and interesting projects. Please review my LinkedIn profile to learn more about my work in the Financial CRM and Online Gaming industries. Whether you are hiring or not, please do not hesitate to add me on LinkedIn. I would be more than happy to refer you to a candidate or discuss an opportunity down the road.

My Resume

The title of this post may not be the most aptly named but the internet has “saved that spot of hair on my head to be pulled out another day”. As I’ve learned, other people have already gone through these obstacles and I am glad they’ve published their experiences. The following is a summary of my own experience.

Getting Started
Problem: Baby steps; Automating HelloWorld.swf; New to build automation
Solution: Learn to install integrated Ant for point and click building; Write a script to automate Hello World
Resources: Installing Ant - http://flex.gunua.com/?p=78; First Script - http://flex.gunua.com/?p=79

Script is too simple and the project is really complicated
Problem: The project that is meant to be automated requires a script more elaborate than compile Hello World.
Solution: Take something that has worked for someone else and make it work for you. Then tweak it.
Resource: http://java-aap.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

Script blows up; Java Heap space error
Problem: [mxmlc] Error: Java heap space
Solution: Allocate more memory for Ant
Resource: http://soenkerohde.com/2008/06/change-eclipse-ant-settings-when-you-run-out-of-memory/

mxlmc barks about Embed
Problem: [mxmlc] C:\..\blah..\MyControl.mxml( Line 64 ): Error: unable to resolve ‘assets/icons/icon_alert.png’ for transcoding
Solution: Simplify by commenting out any CSS style tags to expose just the embeds in use. Remember to restore it back afterwards. Use the root ‘/’ operator as the start point of a reference for non-code assets; mxmlc compiler uses the project root as context for the base dir.
Resources:
http://www.webappsolution.com/wordpress/2009/04/22/dealing-with-embed-tags-ant-builds-and-paths-to-resources/

mxmlc barks about Locale
Problem: Error: Unable to resolve resource bundle
Solution: Incorporate locale/{locale} into the ant script
Resources:
http://flexonjava.blogspot.com/2008/12/flex-3-unable-to-resolve-resource.html

For less than the price of a 360|Flex 2010 ticket, I can hit 3 days worth of events, cover transportation, and accommodations in both Boston and NYC. Early 2009 was an ugly time for the economy. The low-price barrier of the events recognizes this. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to an RIA event/conference. I am on a super tight budget since I learned weddings and homes are expensive.

I’m pretty stoked about learning what other developers are doing with the technology, meeting people, and exchanging ideas. Ask me anything about Salesforce and Flex and I’ll try to answer as best I can. I’ve been working with a team the last 2 years with integrating the two.

November 13 - “RIA Unleashed : Boston” is a 1 day 3 track event covering Flex, AIR, ColdFusion and related technologies and disciplines. Our three tracks are designed to allow you to focus on the technologies you are interested in. You’ll be able to pick and choose a variety of topics from top notch speakers.

http://riaunleashed.com/page.cfm/topics

November 16 &17 - “Flex Camp Wall Street” is a unique event that will provide practical tips, techniques and actionable advise for adoption of Flex and AIR based RIA within banks, brokerages, fund management companies, insurance firms and other financial services institutions.

http://www.flexcampwallstreet.com/sessions.html

The Budget
$30 RIA Unleashed Boston
$49 Flex Camp Wall Street NYC

$43 x 2 nights @ Priceline 3-star hotel in Waltham, MA
$51 x 3 nights @ Clean private room in Central Park, Manhattan
$100 x Roundtrip MegaBus TOR/NYC
$30 x Roundtrip MegaBus NYC/BOS

Checking my inbox for the usual bulk emails and decided to click through one. I must say I was very impressed with the relevance of the campaign experience. Dreamforce is a conference for Salesforce devs. The event carries a high price tag. When you click through to the website to learn more about the event, there is a dedicated section on how to “Justify Your Trip”.

The “General Dreamforce ROI letter” link available on http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF09/site/register/roi.jsp is such a cool idea. Haven’t seen something like this before and it definitely is in line with my personal dev philosophy that a conference should have a ROI.

Great place to get started @ http://blogs.adobe.com/flexdoc/2009/06/documentation_for_the_flex_4_a.html

Experience so far: Installed it and compiled 3.1 projects…a bit slower than usual…maybe a lot slower. Disappointed that the network monitor stuff only works for new 4.0 projects. There is a lot of developer features to take in. I haven’t been this excited since Flex 2 Beta 2.

Ben Forta has said: “The project is currently on hold. There is not enough requisition for the product to continue its development”

(Taken from Tom Chiverton’s site)

Make you’re voice heard and vote for a comeback http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-19053

Googling for snippets functionality in Flex IDE and I stumbled upon this blog entry based on Europa (Eclipse 3.3.x).

http://nwebb.co.uk/blog/?p=178

Snippets come in handy for repetitive tasks like commented section headers.

////////////////
// Properties //
////////////////

/////////////
// Methods //
/////////////

I am running Ganymede (Eclipse 3.4.x) and this is how I got Web Standard Tools up and running

1) Help -> Software Updates

2) Ganymede -> Web and Java EE Development

3) Put checkmark in Web Developer Tools and hit Install

4) After install it will prompt for restart, restart it

5) Window -> Show View -> Other

6) In the quick filter, type “Snip…”; Select Snippets and hit OK! The snipppets panel should now be seen;

7) Snippets are stored in “Snippet Items” which are aggregated by “Snippet Categories”. To create your first category, right click on the snippet panel and click on Customize.

8 ) In the top left corner, hit the “New” button and create a new category

9) With your new category selected, hit the “New Item”

I got a LinkedIn invite by a headhunter who I would refuse to do business with simply because of poor communication and research skills. Here is the invitation (mostly) in verbatim:
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Hi Mark,

Saw your profile online and wanted to contact you. Bob,

How are you sir? Had to connect with you. My name is O.K. [REPLACED FULL NAME WITH INITIALS], a senior IT recruiter with [COMPANY NAME OMITTED], Canada’s oldest and most successful IT consulting firm.

I know you are a Flex Developer at Parlay which is why I am contacting you. How would you consider a fabulous new opportunity as a Flex Developer with a stellar firm in Mississauga, doing just that.

I have an opportunity for you right now that meets your core competency schedule. I hope that first you will accept my invite so 2) we can discuss it as per your discretion and interest level.

Looking forward to hearing from you

O.K. [REPLACED FULL NAME WITH INITIALS]
IT recruiter
[COMPANY NAME OMITTED]
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I hope this is not a form letter because if it is, this person lacks the professionalism to prevent mass mistakes. Do you see Bob at the end of line 2? Who is Bob???

What then really got me boiled over was that it mentioned “I know you are a Flex Developer at Parlay”. Dude, you knew how to contact me through my LinkedIn profile but did not have the nerve to read my work experience properly. Currently, I do not work work at Parlay and when I did work at Parlay, I was doing Flash Development. Clearly a sign of poor research skills. They are not one in the same. It just might be the case that this person is probably getting the wrong candidates for the job as all they care about is filling the position. This person claims to be a Senior IT recruiter however this bodes poorly on the company as a whole. I suspect dealing with junior recruiters might fare worse.

For Part 1, have a gander at this:
http://knowledge.lapasa.net/2007/05/18/there-are-good-headhunters-and-then-there-are-these/