David Deraedt

Launch application

By now, every Flex developer should be familiar with the basics of the new Designer / Developer workflow: importing art coming from Illustrator or Photoshop into Flash Catalyst will automatically let the user convert the related graphics data into MXML skins, MXML components, and embedded assets, which will be used in our final Flex 4 application.

However, there are times when your workflow may require to simply copy and paste some FXG code exported from a graphic tool directly into your MXML files.

So this is it. Starting today, I will no longer work as a freelance contractor since I have the immense pleasure to join Adobe. I'll be taking Thibault Imbert's prior position - web consultant - as he joins the Flash Player team in San Francisco (congrats again, Thibault ;) ). This is of course a great opportunity, and I'm very excited about what's going to happen.

Updated on June 1st to add a SparkSkin description given by Ely Greenfield

I noticed that the new spark and Flex4 architectures can confuse developers coming from Flex3, so I decided to create some very simple class diagrams to help them get the big picture.

Please note that these diagrams are by no means exhaustive, and probably not even 100% accurate: they're just meant to provide an overview in three simple steps. I hope it can be useful to some of you.

So here we go:

Besides the still existing mx components architecture, we now have the spark architecture with two main branches: SkinnableComponent which is the super class for the new spark components, and Skin, which is the super class for the components skins, ie the class which defines the look of the component.

I finally managed to take some time and publish a much needed update to Lita, my SQLite database admin app.

Lita 1.5.1 is the biggest update since v 1.0. It includes many bug fixes, such as missing edit commands (copy, paste, ...), crashes with null typed columns, problems for entering negative number in forms, and many more. Besides, I changed the record lists datagrid horizontal scroll policy to better support tables with many fields.

This new build also includes a bunch of new features, such as
-the ability to execute a statement by pressing Ctrl+Enter,
-the option to clear the form after adding a new record,
-time control for date values.
-statement execution time

It's about 10 days late, but it's here. I'm proud to announce that lupo manager is now available for download. You can now start internationalizing and localizing your flex apps in a much more productive way ;)

Lupo manager is the first (and main) part of the lupo localization studio: it's the tool which helps Flex developers extract strings from their code, manage resource bundles, and implement i18n features in their apps. Lupo Translator, the second part of the lupo localization studio which is aimed at translators, should follow very soon.