Alternate heading for this is how to install Flash SDK in Chrome though either way I was stumped this morning as I just wanted to get in to learning Flex 4.

• When developing Flex applications you need the SDK version of Flash for debugging which means uninstalling previous versions first. After digging around my Mac for a little while then hitting Google I was able to find out that this has to be achieved via a seperate, downloadable uninstaller (unlike all other apps I use).
• I followed the 6 steps from Adobe then I opened Google Chrome and checked About Adobe Flash Player page only to see that its still installed. At this point Adobe's advice is quite simply repeat these steps to uninstall Flash Player - honest, that's what it says.
  I did repeat the steps a couple of times for sanity sake then I remembered that Chrome integrated Flash recently so I fired up Firefox and found that indeed Flash was uninstalled!
• Back to Chrome and I went to about:plugins and Disabled "Shockwave Flash". Fired up About Adobe Flash Player and now its gone!
• Final step is installing Flash SDK and you're done

Please update your bookmarks and feeds for my site.

I now have a Mango Blog at:

http://www.andyjarrett.com/blog

Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/andyjarrett

I've just posted a comment over on Simon Whatley's blog which made me think some people still might not know that ColdFusion is free for education and this includes all qualified students, faculty and staff of eligible education institutions.

You can find out more at freeriatools.adobe.com/coldfusion/ though you will have to prove you eligibility with some form of ID.

Also don't forget that Adobe offer Flex Builder under the same conditions as well.

It was about a year ago there were reports that Futurama was coming back and now TV Squad has a post about recent news from Comic-con of the return.

[More]

Under the Mozilla Public License(MPL) Adobe are planning on releasing Flex to the Open Source community.

This includes not only the source to the ActionScript components from the Flex SDK, which have been available in source code form with the SDK since Flex 2 was released, but also includes the Java source code for the ActionScript and MXML compilers, the ActionScript debugger and the core ActionScript libraries from the SDK. The Flex SDK includes all of the components needed to create Flex applications that run in any browser - on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux and on now on the desktop using "Apollo".

[More]

Ted Patrick has announced on his blog that "One Solid Flex Release 2.0.1" is now live and ready for download.

What does the .1 release bring. In short:

• Faster Compiler
• Module Support
• Apollo Support
• Runtime CSS
• and my favourite, Mac support!

Check out Teds post for a better description.

What makes this nicer is that I won a copy of the licence at the CFDevCon and have been waiting for the Mac version to come out. So I think its time to collect on that too!

Flex here I come!

WooHoo, I don't know if he was the first, but Sean has just mentioned that Flex 2 beta for Mac is out!.

Though as David mentioned in his comments, ". Some day, we (Mac users) won't have to wait 6 additional months for apps.". Fingers crossed, knock on wood and all that, that this isn't the same for Fireworks.

I finally managed to get myself to London again for the Ben Forta presents on Flex 2 for ColdFusion Developers presentation, and as usual it answered lots of questions and I think amazed quite a few people. The PowerPoint slides should be available soon on the UKCFUG site, and the code demo'd is available at http://labs.macromedia.com/. So what came out of it:

1. Beta 2 is coming any day - it was actually out on the day of the presentation!
2. The pricing has been a major factor in this release, after all the posts and messages last time Adobe have focused on price. To prove this you can actually develop Flex apps for Free by creating the MXML in an editor of you choice and compile it using the freely available Flex Framework and SDK
3. Support for Mac is coming, though there is no official news on Mac-Intel
4. Flex apps 2 are 100's of time faster on the initial load then Flex 1. If anyone who saw the Pre Flex 1 presentations, or experimented with it will remember how slow a simple hello world app would take to start.
5. Flash 8.5 was actually rewritten to improve speed and is not compatiable with previous version, but to ensure backward compatibility has the pre 8.5 engine available within it
6. There will be a new Flash Lite to use with Flex 2, so you will be able to push these apps to Mobile devices

That was just the general spill, below is whats new in Flex 2 and/or beta 2

1. CFC CRUD, Bean wizards. Seeing this in action was pretty amazing. - This actually is available as a seperate download so you can use it in conjunction with CFeclipse. Look for the ColdFusion Extensions to Flex Builder 2.0
2. RDS - Shown last night it was a nice feature to have available agin. This is also available to use when you download the ColdFusion Extensions
3. ActionScript to CFC and CFC to ActionScript wizards availabe by right-clicking on the appropiate file. Again available via the CF extention
4. Charting Components are now included in the beta 2 of Flex, which might mean that selling it as a seperate package might be out of the window.
5. Live Charting - Charts feeding directly from data

There was some more covered but my notes at that point get scarce. Needless to say I think there will be a few downloading Flex 2 today after the meeting, but even if you don't want to go near Flex make sure you download the ColdFusion Extensions for RDS support and CFC wizards.

The one point Ben made a few times was that if you want it in the application/server let Adobe know. Without letting them know there is a demand they won't include it.

By the way the sample app used was Phone Selector.

So i had a few comments left in my last post and thought just wanted to make a post out of them incase no one read them:

Community Flex - http://www.cflex.net/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/files/flexcodersFAQ.txt (need to be a Yahoo user)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/ (need to be a Yahoo user)
http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com
Kevin Hoyt
Christophe Coenraets (product evangelist)
Peter Ent (Flex support)
Matt Chotin (Flex engineer)

You can get a comprehensive list of Flex blogs at the MXNA Flex Feed list

Cheers to those who posted comments.

So i've decided to jump into Flex 2 now, as i'm sure a few of you might of with the reduced price plan in place :o)

Anyway i've been looking around and apart from the official offering for help, there doesn't seem much external sources for reference? This is probably where its been an enterprise product only. So i was just wondering, where is everyone going to leanr Flex?

a.k.a Another Adobe and Macromdia post

So its coming to the end of the day in the UK soon (6:15pmish here now) and i realised that for the first time in ages i hadnt fired up FeedDemon all day WOW - last time that happens. So incase you havent heard there's gonna be a huge merger between Macromedia and Adobe - for more info check out the mini site at www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html. If you are looking for a more personal touch in finding out what this means you NEED to check out Mike Chamber recent blog entry.

Well i could go on about relative links out there but MXNA and Goog have done that well with all the post stating their concerns.

One big concern i have that doesnt seem to of been addressed that well anywere is the community focus. With the likes of of all the MM staff blogs which are an invaluable resource, there participation on mailing lists right down to MXNA? What will come of this?

David Temkin has announced on his blog that Laszlo is now open source under the Common Public License(CPL). Also announced on the Laszlo Systems site, it states "under an open source license, developers can be reassured that the future of this technology is in their own hands".

The choices for developing an RIA are now slowly opening to the full spectrum of developers. Both this and the Flex announcment will no doubt start shapping the way we see the web sooner rather than later.

As a mini poll though, who, with these new annoucements is already thinking of making jump into the world of Flash style RIA's?

The Bit Bucket Blog is reporting that you can now get a free Flex license. Looking at requirements its the basic non-commercial and non-institutional manner, which in a nutshell seems to be as long as you don't advertise on the site, sell anything from you're pretty much good to go. Check out The Bit Bucket Blog for a brief, but better than mine, explanation of the requirements or go to macromedia.com/software/flex/productinfo/faq/#ancni for all the details.

Well i had to do it, i've ordered the CD and started going through the MM Flex sites and tutorials. As soon as its arrived (8-14 days) expect some posts.

I still don't think the price is right but im lucky enough to be in a corporate enviroment who use Java as well as CF. I know its enterprise software but i've got a freelance friend who loves the idea of Flex (and saw Ben Forta present it in the UK) but with the price tag he knows he's excluded. I still think its a shame, with a lower price tag i think they could of done a lot more damage to the market. Hopefully somekind of light version comes out aswell.

As you've probably seen from all the other blogs, Macromedia[MM] have now opened the applications for beta testing their new product Royale . Like many i went rushing over to submit the form, i hit [submit] and got a Js error saying i haven't completed all the fields, uh, im sure i have??

Anyway after a post and reply from a developer called Reto the problem is that on questions 8,10 you cant have the same answer for both lines. e.g.
Question 8: On your development team, how many developers and designers are there? If you only have 2, a designer and a developer, then you cant tick "1" on both lines. You will need to select 2-5 on the top and 1 on the bottom, or vica-versa.