Archive for the ‘Software’ Category
Flex Builder gets new name
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe Catalyst, Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Software
As expected Flex Builder has now been renamed to Flash Builder starting with version 4 due out later this year(?). Lee Brimlow broke the news and has answered a few questions people have regarding what this means for the future of the Flash IDE and how this may effect confusion between Flash & Flex.
Ultimately we need to remember that Flex is, and has always been, a framework. Flex Builder was named as such as it’s primary purpose is to build Flex projects though more and more people are now using it to build pure Actionscript projects. Personally I think the name change makes sense purely from a marketing point of view and it generally solidifies the Flash platform as a brand onto itself.
At the beginning of the year I had plans to learn the Flex framework though I have since decided to wait for version 4 to be released. My reasoning for this was I felt Flex 3 is still quite finicky when it comes to customizing the visual look of components. Flex 4 seems to be taking this issue as a primary design goal with a much improved separation between a component’s skin and logic. I’m still coding Flash using FlashDevelop for the time being but am very much looking forward to the release of Flex Buil… err… Flash Builder.
30+ Great AIR Apps
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe AIR, Software
Came across a nice round up of some of the better AIR apps available for designers and developers over at Mashable. I find it great to look at what other developers are churning out for the AIR runtime. I’m hoping to spend some time this year learning AIR and Flex so it’s always great to look at other people’s work for inspiration.
Check out the apps over at Mashable.
Hardy Ha Ha
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe AIR, Adobe Flash, Software
Today marks the offical release of the lastest version of the popular linux os Ubuntu 8.04 LTS codenamed Hardy Heron.
Over the last 2 days I’ve been playing around with the pre-release candidate and I must say I like it. I’m slightly ashamed to admit this is my first foray into the world of Linux and could not think of a smoother introduction than with Ubuntu. With Firefox 3 beta 5, Open Office and a slew of other software preinstalled, Ubuntu has a lot going for it straight out of the box… or in this case, out of the freely downloadable CD image. That’s right it’s 100% free, no catch.
Installing sofware is a breeze. Simply by clicking the aptly titled ‘Add software’ item from the Applications menu I had some of my ol’e Window’s favorites installed such as Skype, Filezilla and VLC.
It’s also worth noting that Adobe currently have a version of their AIR runtime for linux in the works. Now if they could only port their CS3 suite to Linux Ubuntu may actually grab a share of the disheartened Vista users ready to jump ship.
