FlexLive.net

Matthias Zeller has screen cast demonstrating Flex and SAP integration. Most people, including myself, used to think that Flex was only for building rich UI, but people are starting to realize that under that flashy UI is a extremely powerful communication pipe. With Flex Data Service, we are bringing people closer together like never before. I think this video should be mandatory for all CTOs.

I have heard the same story over and over, people get into Flex for the eye-candy, but they stay in Flex because of the productivity gain from the framework and the IDE. Based on the rock solid Eclipse platform, is the ultimate IDE for developing Rich Internet Applications. If you are used to working with Flash or AJAX, you will be pleasantly surprised how much Flex Builder could improve your web development productivity. Below is a quick list,

• Two way sync between the code mark-up mode and WYSIWYG mode
• Code refactoring tools built right into the IDE
• Debug environment that lets you break and step through ActionScript, just like working on a desktop application
• Profiling web applications without leaving the IDE
• Web service introspector that builds SOAP wrapper classes with just two clicks
• Switch between multiple Flex SDKs seamlessly

Best of all, because Flex Builder sits on top of Eclipse, you could install third-party Eclipse plugins such as a Subversion client plugin or an UML diagram tool.

If you are a student or faculty member, you can get Flex Builder 3 for free!

The Mars Project has just made its first pre-release on Adobe Labs in the past week. For those who are unfamiliar with the project, it’s “an XML-friendly implementation of PDF syntax… incorporates industry standards such as SVG, PNG, JPG, JPG2000, OpenType, Xpath and XML into ZIP-based document container”. I took the liberty of making the following walk-through clip,