Nathan Levesque

So it’s been a day since Flex Camp Boston and I have to say it was a great event! They had some great speakers there and it was absolutely jam-packed with information. It was a very good atmosphere and the only time I felt even slightly out of place was when someone asked anyone in the room with a graphic design background to raise their had and I think I saw only one hand other than mine. But that really doesn’t matter, Friday was about Flex, pure and simple.

If you’re interested in getting an idea of what went on, Daniel R. was taking notes and posted them on his blog.

The discussions about ColdFusion really got me excited. I’ve heard of it before (mostly because of the ColdFusion extension option in Dreamweaver installs). Now since I hadn’t heard a whole lot of buzz about ColdFusion I had pretty much dismissed it as something I should learn. However, the discussions Friday really made me start thinking that I should. It was also the first time I had actually seen ColdFusion code and at first glance I could pretty much figure out what most of the code meant. I think this is definitely (yet another) programming language I will be learning. Now I’m starting to see why a lot of the Senior level jobs out there list at least 5 programming languages as required. You simply end up learning them one way or another. I still feel like I’m constantly playing catch-up on technology, but I like to think that I’m getting closer after having learned C#, PHP, SQL, ASP.NET, Python, ActionScript, and Flex in the last 18 months.

I really want to thanks everyone who had a part in putting Flex Camp Boston together, especially Brian Rinadli and the Flex Camp sponsers. And if you were a part of it and you’re reading this, when are you going to start selling tickets for next year?

One of the best things you can do to make your application code in Flex more readable is to modularize the code. What I mean is, try to break things down into separate components. If you need to get data from these components, then expose public read-only properties. Add events so you can respond to things such as click events. This seems like a little extra effort, but really it is far easier to edit several components than to work on one monolithic MXML Aplication file. Learning how to properly create and use custom MXML components will add a little time to the visual design-time of your application, but when it comes to the code-behind it will be easier to separate logic and avoid monster MXML files with dozens of <mx:AddChild> tags for when you switch states. Instead, simply add only a specified custom component to your application file and your MXML and ActionScript is able to remain clean.

I would have to say that it may be even worth going back and modularizing existing code because the increase in ease when you begin to code ActionScript is that worth it.

I have come to the realization that markup languages are the bane of any evolution developers and  (especially) designers want to see in the web in the near future. With some of the new features coming out for Flex 3 I have begun to wonder why we need to still be dealing with markup languages. Markup languages have been around in some form for the better part of 30-40 years. HTML itself is nearing its 20 year old birthday. Of course, there will be all the people screaming that things have changed since the first HTML specification, namely things like JavaScript and CSS which sprouted other methodologies such as Ajax. I am certainly a fan of both JavaScript and CSS but doesn’t the problem lie with the fact that we need these technologies in the first place? Flash has been reported to have reached 99.1% of all desktop Internet users.

Now, I have become a bit of an Adobe fanboy recently, but even if that wasn’t the case I would still have to say that right now programming website with Flex 3 and AS3 is looking far more promising and headache free than anything else I’ve seen. Who else other than Adobe has offered web developers a way to render their sites the same way on many browsers with no additional effort through Flash? Sure, bookmarking and SEO have been issues in the past, but the Flex 3 release will begin to fix much of that.

Next on the list of arguments is those that argue that Flash content can be a costly download to those with slower connections. Well frankly, the people with dial-up should know that in most areas faster ISPs are available, often for less. The fact is most ISPs these days are not dial-up and as a result most dial-ups simply can’t compete in the price wars anymore and still stay in business. The onus is on the individual to be a savvy consumer.

So what’s the roadblock?

• We need browsers to treat Flash files no differently than text files.
• Keep going on making Flash internal bookmarking more effective.
• More Flash SEO.
• More Flash security. Certainly there’s no thing as 100% secure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t aim for 99%.

And the final, big one.

• We need to put the pressure on the consumer to WANT flash sites. We want anyone going to look at any XHTML/CSS site to give it the same sour look any web developer would give a 90’s era Geocities website.

Hopefully, we can begin to see some changes toward a more multimedia based web experience within a few years.

I’m currently working on a project with Flash and WordPress. It ought to be fairly interesting and I do not believe has been done before (at least according to a quick Google search). I will be posting some videos of it in the coming weeks.

For now I shall keep it vague…stay tuned!