Flex

My SitePoint article went live last week! Nobody bothered to mention it, but that's ok.

I'll be interested to see where Microsoft goes with IronRuby. We tend to think of Microsoft as this big monolithic entity, but it's really not. There are disparate groups, many of which are doing some very cool things. IronPython and IronRuby are examples of that. I'm not quite sure what the strategic direction is, but I think it's neat all the same.

O'Reilly is hosting a Flex cookbook cook-off with tickets to MAX as a grand prize. Have some fun. Put up a couple of recipes.

The Craigslist desktop is a cool use of Adobe's AIR. It keeps all of your searches around so that you can run them again to see what's new. I find the user interface a little too 'transitiony', but otherwise I like the app and I'll continue to use it as I need to move offices.

Check this out. The video tag from HTML 5 written using Flash. Nice job guys!

I finished my third book for the year today. My sixth (or seventh) book overall depending on how you count. The book is called 'Building Media Sites' and it's a continuation of an article that I wrote for the O'Reilly Network that has been getting a lot of attention since it was first published.

I won the Flex article writing contest that SitePoint hosted. I've never won a content like this before. It's really exciting. I wanted to get that 3D configurators article out there and this was a cool way to do it. I can't wait to see it published.

The Flex 3 Cookbook is a fantastic book. It's filled with well thought out and well written solutions to problems that real world Flex developers actually face. It's a fine update to the original Flex 2 book and works on it's strengths. The material on States, which are very important, is excellent and much appreciated.

The writing is tight. The example code is good. The recipes are relevant. You can't ask for more than that.

A must buy for Flex developers.

I got a first look at the cover art for Getting Started With Flex 3 from O'Reilly this morning:

ILOG has updated their licensing and loosened it up for small businesses. That's good news. This is an amazing set of 2D and 3D charting components. I've used it a lot and I intend to make it a centerpiece of an upcoming book.