Trials and tribulations of software development…
Flash Builder 4.6 includes a new feature to allow you to add a dynamic splash screen component to your mobile application. This feature will allow you to load a different image based on a few different properties you can set to ensure you get the best image for the right device. The properties you can use to determine which image is displayed for the splash screen are:
dpi
minResolution
aspectRatio
You can... 
It’s been quite the roller coaster in the Flex world these past few months to say the least! Now seemed like a good time for an update on the latest status of things.
Adobe Flex to Apache Flex
Adobe Flex is now Apache Flex (in case you’ve been under a rock lately or perhaps just discovered Flex ). It’s been contributed to the Apache community and is in incubator status. Incubator... 
My fellow teammate Michael Chaize recently had an idea for creating a ‘game’ to showcase Flex and the latest 4.6 release features with Tour de Mobile Flex being the initial inspiration. I’m happy to announce that the Game of Flex is now available on both the Apple iTunes and Android Market for your downloading pleasure !
The Game of Flex consists of 16 questions which if answered... 
A topic that has come up often in my conversations with developers lately is how to easily add mapping components to their their Flex and Flash mobile apps. Now I’m super excited to share this latest AS3/Flash API for mobile from MapQuest for everyone to check out! The new version contains touch-friendly maps and controls and was streamlined for performance on mobile.
To get started, first check out... 
The SplitViewNavigator is another new Flex 4.6 component targeted for tablet development that can be used when you want to create a master view / detail view in your application, where the master view typically serves as a source of navigation and the detail view displays the results of the action taken on the master view. The master view is typically the left or top of the screen, and the detail view is... 
Flex 4.6 (release going public TODAY – I will update this post with the link as soon as I have it) – includes some nice soft keyboard enhancements to be aware of, including setting a certain type of keyboard or setting the default return key lable, and even auto-correcting and auto-capitalizing text. This post will show how to use each of them along with some sample code. The sample application... 
Flex folks, first of all, today there’s a new official statement out on the Adobe website about Adobe’s commitments to the Flash Platform including plans for Flex that you should be aware of. Secondly there’s a new post from the Product Management team out now summarizing the recent Flex Q&A. There’s been a lot of frustration in the community (which I understand and can... 
The next feature I want to highlight in the upcoming Flex 4.6 release is the new DateSpinner control. The DateSpinner allows you to represent and select a date and/or time through a custom-skinned set of SpinnerList controls out of the box in Flex 4.6. Here’s an example:
If you take a look at the DateSpinner.as source code in the SDK, you will see there are a number of SpinnerList controls defined... 
There was a lot of news from Adobe last week surrounding the Flash platform and Flex SDK (understatement !!) I know many have formed their own opinions on the state of affairs, but the bottom line is, we need to move forward now and be productive again. Flex 4.6 will launch soon and there are some really cool new components that I want to continue to highlight prior to the launch.
The next in my series... 
The Flex/Flash Builder 4.6 prerelease includes a new ToggleSwitch control that can be used to indicate a binary value (like a CheckBox). Below is a screenshot showing a sample of two being used. The first switch shows it selected by default using a specified slide duration (for animation in milliseconds), and the second one uses a custom skin class to define different labels:
The important part of the... 
I just returned from RIA Unleashed where Christophe and I presented a Flex Mobile Boot Camp session. In this session we built an Expense Reporting application called XpenseIt, specifcally targeted for tablet devices. We originally presented a 4.5.1 version at MAX, but wanted to utilize all the awesome new components available in Flex 4.6.
We’re sharing the assets from this 3 hour lab HERE for those... 
There may be a time when you want to use some of the Flex mobile components in a Flex/AIR desktop application, and this might be the case even more now with the recent addition of the new Flex 4.6 tablet components available in pre-release. I’m not necessarily advocating this as best practice but I know many people either didn’t know this could be done or are wondering how to do it, so here it... 
Next week I have the distinct pleasure of attending and speaking at my first RIA Unleashed conference in Boston, MA! I will be presenting with Christophe Coenraets on all things mobile in a Flex Mobile Boot Camp class. We will build a rich full-featured app that can be taken home and used for later reference and talk about some best practices for mobile in the process. Here’s a preview of the app... 
Flash Builder 4.6 and Flex 4.6 are currently in pre-release and this is the first of a series of posts highlighting the new features with sample code. Most of the new Flex 4.6 components were created for tablet application development where more screen real estate is available to work with.
The first component I’ll highlight in this series is the new Spark Callout component. The Callout is used to... 
Adobe AIR 3.0 Beta is now publicly available and includes a key feature that many may not yet be aware of, EncryptedLocalStore support. The EncryptedLocalStore is a class that ‘provides a persistent, encrypted data storage mechanism.’ This class was available for use in AIR Desktop applications but restricted on mobile until this latest AIR 3.0 release. It’s very simple to use. I created... 
Holly Schinsky is a Technical Evangelist at Adobe Systems, Inc.
Disclaimer: This blog contains my personal thoughts and not those of my employer.
