PhoneGap for Flex/AIR Mobile Developers

If you’re a Flex/AIR developer or any developer focused on mobile for that matter, I believe it’s worth your while to spend some time reading this first post in a series of posts I will be writing on using PhoneGap (aka Cordova) for building mobile apps. It’s another great technology choice for rapid cross-platform mobile development and becoming more and more popular. I’ve heard...

Upcoming Flex Events

If you’re looking for a great conference to attend, 360|Flex is right around the corner and you should definitely make a point of checking it out. Most developers consider this to be *the* conference to attend and glancing at the schedule, you can see why. My fellow teammate, Christophe Coenraets is going to be doing the keynote and has some fun in store that you will not want to miss. There will...

Flex Mobile Development – Adding Maps with the MapQuest AS3/Flash API!

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...

Flex Mobile Development – SplitViewNavigator Tutorial (w/ source)

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 Mobile Development – DateSpinner Sample (with source)!

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...

Flex Mobile Development – SpinnerList Sample (with source code)

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...

Flex Mobile Development – ToggleSwitch Sample (with source)!

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...

Flex Mobile Development – Building Tablet Apps – Full Example with Source Code!

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...

Using Flex Mobile Components in a Flex/AIR Desktop Application

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...

Flex Mobile Development – Callout Component Sample (with source)

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...