Be sure to check it out! May 29th in Orlando, take the family and hang with that world famous mouse after! The all day jammed packed day of Flex/Flash topics is to be held on the campus of The University of Central Florida. Its a inexpensive sure way to get some good info from experts in the field that will be speaking. Head to Flash Camp Orlando
peas
DK
Live in Atlanta? Get out and register for CFUnited Express! Come see the famed Charlie Arehart and that Jedi of Jedis Ray Camden speak on ColdFusion. Also on tap are John Mason, Master Andy Powell, as well as myself. I’ll be covering the Flex Component Life Cycle in depth and with as much humor as I can inject! Yeehaw! Be sure to register its this coming week and remember, your money spent on this is applied to your CFUnited fees! So its a win-win!
http://express.cfunited.com/go/atlanta/2009/
About
CFUnited is coming to Atlanta Georgia. This is our second time visiting and we are so excited to be welcome by the AtlantaCFUG. Join us for an entire day of excellent topics by Charlie Arehart, Douglas Knudsen, John Mason, Andrew Powell, and Raymond Camden.
Date
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Check out the Topics!
The cost for this event is $149, which expires 4/10/09; after that it will be $199.
http://express.cfunited.com/go/atlanta/2009/
Head on over to the recent CFConversations podcast to catch a interview with yours truly! Dan Wilson kicks the interview in gear with my self talking about Hooking That Shiny New Flex App Up To ColdFusion, the topic I will be speaking on at CFUnited 2009. Be sure to listen in. If you have yet to register for CFunited, kick it in man! Be sure to check out Brian Meloche’s blog too, he’s another of the main squeezes behind CFConversations.
I also chat a little bit about my old stomping grounds in South Florida. Shout outs to all the peeps from those 80’s and 90’s back in the day! I also mentioned some listening preferences. Of late I’ve been listening to Chinese Silk style music as well as some Persian Classical, all via Shoutcast of course. REally helps the concentration. For more info on Silk Music see this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiangnan_Sizhu
peas
DK
I’m pleased to announce that I will be speaking at CFUnited 2009. Thanks to all who voted me up there! I will be among some distinguished and better known list of speakers listed here: http://cfunited.com/go/speakers/2009. This is where its at for the mash-up of ColdFusion, Flex, and Air topics that will get your heart pumping and your coding fingers twitching. Be sure to register now! In a large team? Talk it up with your managers now and get that training approved! Don’t forget to mention the corporate discount plan!
About:
This year’s conference is a 3-day event with a bonus on Saturday repeating the most popular sessions. In addition to the keynotes and sessions you expect at any conference, this year will include Birds-of-Feather discussions in the evenings, panel discussions, round tables, and many other social and networking events. If 4 days isn’t enough for you, we have a full-day hands-on classes instructed by CFUnited presenters the day prior to the main event.
peas
DK
peas
DK
Folks, be sure to check out FlexCampOC out in Cali. Tom and John masters of the 360 universe are sure to impress with a day long Flex conference. What, no cash? No excuses there, only $25 clams, dude! Goin back to Cali, Cali, Cali. Goin back to Cali, Cali….
Come on out and check it out and here speakers such as Adam Flater on Flex 4, Evan Gifford of cairngormdocs.org fame, Thomas Burleson, as well as myself chatting away about Flex and CF.
peas
DK
The fine folks over at CFunited have opened up the can o’ suggested speakers. This is really a awesome way to get the community involved in deciding what the community wants in a conference. Do you want to hear about ColdFusion or The Dyson Vacuum that sucks more? ha! So, step up to the plate and get out the vote!
http://cfunited.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/12/4/CFUnited-Topic-Survey–VOTE-NOW
While here I’ll plug my topics I submitted 
“How do I hook this shiny new Flex tool up to ColdFusion?” -This is intended to be a talk on the three ways to connect your Flex/AIR application up to ColdFusion for data and what not. I cover not only the three types, but how to use e4x and XML generated by CF. Also, I cover Remoting and CFC-to-AS object serialization and the converse. I further compare and contrast all three techniques, you know, which is faster and which is better, offering a world famous answer to the latter!
peas
DK
I know, its prolly freakin cold in Boston, but hey, warm your self up to the thought of a full day of intense Flex topics from leading industry experts! So, head on over to http://www.flexcampboston.com/ and register now. Don’t worry, it won’t break your bank and hey, it will help recession-proof your career!
peas
DK
MAX is only a short hop away on the calendar now. Looking forward to meeting some of you peeps out there, some great sessions, some sneak peeks, some big news about…I can’t say, oh yeah, and the free b33r! w00t!
At this years MAX we will see three, no four now, un-conferences. These are free conferences within MAX brought to you by folks you know and love in the community.
Ray ‘Jedi’ Camden will be leading the ColdFusion Unconference with some help from Scott Stroz, hey even a Jedi has to slip out for more free b33r and mini quiches. Please join us for some great topics brought to you by folks like Charlie Arehart, Brian Rinaldi, and Mike Brunt to name a few.
Those amazing wonder twins Tom and John will be activating their powers in the form of 360 and MAX to bring us 360|MAX. Drop by and get your Flex and AIR on for sure. Come see the Merapi Overmen show off some really uber kewl Flex/AIR-meet-Java relationship building. You can grab a chair, if any are left, and hear folks like Juan Sanchez, Laura Arguello, Jun Heider, just to name a few speak on Flex.
FiTC will also be in the MAX house. Head there to catch Ethan Eismann, Lee Brimelow, or Grant Skinner among other Flash Titans.
SoDA will also be there holding discussions on business of design agencies and related topics.
So, there you have it folks. With all the content going on this year, I may just have to escape the hallway cruising and sit down and consume! Yeehaw!
peas
DK
The other day a co-worker Andy Powell, no not this Andy Powell hehe, sent out a twit asking the question on what perspective do Flex developers use most, Development or Debug? Several folks answered Debug, but not I. Why? I like more space, enter Debug perspective only when needed. That and my work-flow ends up depending on trace() bullets more so I suppose, but that’s another topic.
This got me to thinking about a couple of things. The first is something in Eclipse called ‘Fast View’. Right click on say your Flex Navigator tab to get its context menu. You should see a ‘Fast View’ choice, choose it and see some magic. This creates a icon linky in the tray to the left by default. Click the icon to open the Flex Navigator and use it as usual. Click anywhere outside of the Flex Navigator or hit ESC to close Flex Navigator. Shazzam! More screen space. You can do this to all the individual views, putting icons in trays left, right, and center. You can also set Fast View on a tabbed notebook by clicking the minimize icon. In all cases you can switch back easy enough. That was duh! moment number one. I mean, I knew this already, but its easy to forget this sort of thing after working in one way for a while.
The second thing, and this is the biggest of duh! moments that day, is perspectives. Obviously you know of these puppies already, Flex Debug is after all a perspective. Did you know you can create your own? Yes! Thus I found myself doing just that. Open any perspective as a starting point. Add views you want, remove views you do not want. Got dual monitors? Super! Right click on a view or tabbed notebook and choose Detached, bamm you can drag this to your second monitor. Alternatively, just drag and drop your view or tabbed notebook onto the second monitor. So, on monitor one I have the main Eclipse environment with only the editor view there. On monitor two I have the tabbed notebook with the Flex Navigator and Outline views and one tabbed notebook with the Problems, history, Search, Console, Ant, Debug views in it. These are just the ones located on the left and bottom of the default Flex perspectives. Now for the magic moment. After getting all things cozy and where you want them, choose Window > save as perspective, enter a name, I called mine Dual Flex Development, and mash ok. bamm! Now you can simply enter the dual monitor perspective. Undocking and taking that lappy on the road? No prob, simply switch back to the Flex Development or Debug perspective for single monitor goodness.
Note that this will work with any perspectives…Java, CFEclipse, etc.
peas
DK
PostScript: how the hell do you screen cap a context menu? I wanted to add some screen caps to this, but gave up as the pop-up context dialogs disappear when focus is lost.
