FlexLive.net

I’ve been quiet in the past few month, that’s because I’ve been busy working on this new product. This new product now has a name, and it’s Citrify.

What is Citrify? Citrify is a little photo editor that strives to be simple and fun. It’s simple because we have one-click tools for removing pimples, reducing wrinkles, and fix red-eyes. It’s fun because we pack in a number of cool effects, such as the “Obama Poster” effect or the “Incredible Hulk” effect. For a list of cool things that Citrify does, check out this feature page.

For a limited time, we are giving away 50 premium licenses on this blog, valued at $39.99 each. Please follow these steps to claim your license,

• Visit http://www.citrify.com/promo/
• Submit the form with this promo code in the message body: flexlive1209
• The license key and installation instructions would be emailed to you shortly

Are you an ActionScript ninja? Well then Yahoo’s Flash platform team has a spot for you. Many prominent members of the Flex community came from Yahoo’s Flash platform team. This would be an ideal job if you live on the westcoast or willing to relocated. Check it out,

http://flexgigs.com/job/27/flash-engineer-yahoo-flash-platform-at-yahoo/

If you work in the Flex business, you have to check this one out, http://flexgigs.com. Jeff Graham just launched the website during the weekend.

As far as I can tell, this job site is completely dedicated to Flex, which is a sign of the community growth.

I was really impressed by how easy it was to post jobs. There’s no need to create a user account, similar to how CraigsList works. Good job, Jeff!

Update: there’s also a widget feature that let’s you embed latest job postings into your blog. Check out the side bar on this blog. Good stuff!

If you are interested in Flex deep linking, search engine optimization, and integration with Google Analytics, come to the Ottawa Flex user group this Wednesday evening. My presentation is built around SWFObject and SWFAddress, so it’s applicable to both Flex 2 and Flex 3 developers. As usual, there will be a lot of live coding and hands on demo, very few slides. Cheers! 

• Time: May 7th, 7pm 
• Location: 343 Preston St., Ottawa, ON 

I’m going to give a presentation on the LiveCycle Data Services at the Montreal user group next Thursday. Here is the detailed agenda for the user group meeting. During the half hour session, I’m going to do some live coding showing you how to take data snapshots of a Flex application and bind them to PDFs. Drop by if you are in the Montreal area. Cheers!

Just this morning, Adobe unveiled LiveCycle ES, the next generation enterprise document and process management platform. The ES release is a major upgrade with countless number of new features with the underlying theme of “user engagement”.

Flex is very much embedded in the ES release. Workspace, formerly known as Form Manager, is re-written from ground up using Flex. Not to be out done, Form Designer can now generate Flex code based on PDF forms. The new unified SOA architecture makes it easier than ever to build custom RIA for LiveCycle. In fact, the new Workspace can now render and exchange data with custom Flex applications with just a few clicks.

Aside from the user experience improvements, the ES release also paid special attentions to the developers. All the LiveCycle development tools are now consolidated into a single Eclipse based IDE. The development environment is integrated with the server side to provide version control and team collaboration support. It’s just a matter of time before people start building third party LiveCycle tools as Eclipse plugins.

Can’t wait to get your hands on the new LiveCycle ES? Head over the devnet and grab the preview release.

The first preview release of LiveCycle ”next generation” is available for download on devnet. The package is about 2 Gbs, but it’s well worth the bandwidth if you want to see the next gen enterprise solution in action:

• Finally, SOA Done Right: The LiveCycle suite used to have separate servers catering to a specific job such as form rendering or policy control. As the LiveCycle family grew, it became a multi-headed beast that was difficult to install and maintain. The new preview release consolidates the individual server products into services running in a common container. The result is dramatic improvements in maintenance and a much cleaner API
• Eclipse-based IDE: The form designer and workflow process designer have been consolidated into a single IDE called the Workbench. Just like the Flex Builder, Livecycle Workbench is based on the Eclipse platform. The IDE is not only a lot more efficient at designing forms and workflows, but it also provide version control and team collaboration support.
• Flex and Form Designer Integration: Is your PDF form too bland? Why not spice it up with a Flex wizard? Designer now comes with a new tool called the Guide Builder that allows you to attach Flex based wizard to your PDF forms. This feature actually makes boring forms fun and aesthetically pleasing. I’ll cover it in a web cast in the near future so you can see it in action.
• More Flex Integration: Formally known as the Form Manager, LiveCycle Workspace is a web portal where the users participate in workflows. It has been completely rebuilt using Flex. The new interface is very slick and the MXML code is available for customization.

As you can see, the new preview release packs more than just incremental improvements. It’s a solid package that pushes the envelope of enterprise RIA. Stay tuned for web casts showcasing the cool new features.

Summer is here, school is out. For me, school is out for good. I’m glad to announce that I’m returning to the LiveCycle Designer team as an QA engineer. Not many people know this, but PDF is a very capable RIA platform. Acrobat has a full blown JavaScript engine with direct support for SOAP calls and database access. LiveCycle Designer let’s you tap into that platform with a WYSIWYG form editor and a JavaScript editor. Stay tuned and I’ll be blogging a lot more about Designer scripting down the road. In the meantime, check out Stefan Cameron’s blog on LiveCycle Designer. Stefan is the only other Designer blogger that I’m aware of, and he actually sits two cubes away from me. How cool is that?!

I helped organize an Adobe event on the University of Ottawa campus two weeks ago. I meant to blog about it sooner but school work has been crushing me to death lately. The event was the first of its kind and it has been a fantastic learning experience for everyone involved. We made a few mistakes and had to deal with some glitches, but in the end we had a very positive feedback from the audience of ~70 engineering students.

During the event we decided to focus on Flex because the product is so cool it practically speaks for itself. To keep things interesting, I went through a few slides quickly and spent the rest of the time doing live coding. Follow the links below for my slide deck and the Flex app I wrote in front of the live audience.
adobe_flex.ppt

helloworld.zip

Marcel Boucher has just launched the LiveCycle Productivity Kit. It’s an open source project that greatly simplifies the LiveCycle APIs – highly recommended for LiveCycle (Java) developers. Get it from the RIAForge while it’s hot.