The July 2011 issue of the Flash & Flex Developers magazine is now out and available for download. Key articles include:
You can download the issue for free.
Adobe today announced the availability for AIR 2.7, which includes the SDK and the associated runtimes.
The focus on recent releases, this release, and (I’d presume) upcoming releases, is continued emphasis on mobile/smartphone/tablet computing. Having recognized the mobile revolution years ago, even prior to the iPhone craze, Adobe continues to make a smart strategic move by combining the ubiquity of Flash and the massive collective talent surrounding the platform.
A core advantage I used to emphasize to those evaluating Flex back in its early years was that it was relatively easy to ensure the same experience/look and feel regardless of OS/Browser combination. Though with advancements in things like jQuery, that argument isn’t as strong.
If you stuck with HTML/CSS/JavaScript – at least you were still sticking with the same languages as you battled trying to get your stuff to look the same on multiple browsers.
Moving onto mobile (assuming you’re making native apps), the multi-browser UI challenges pale in comparison to multi-mobile-OS’s. To start, just dealing with multiple SDKs and programming languages presents a formidable challenge.
Enter Flex & AIR for mobile. As a Flex developer you’re able to create experiences for the big mobile platforms, but more importantly from a business perspective – your time to market with products and updates can be achieved with fewer resources and faster turn around time simply due to a unified code base.
Howdy! My name is Tariq ("Ta-Rick") Ahmed, and a Director of Software Engineering at New Relic where my time is focused on creating developer experiences through our developer websites, APIs, CLIs, SDKs, and ability to build your own custom apps on the New Relic One platform.
I'm most passionate about finding amazing people, growing talent, and building amazing teams in order to accomplish meaningful breakthroughs in technology that ultimately create great user experiences.