I’ve a new article on Community MX entitled Flex Powertools: Explorers, in which I review over 20 of my favourite Flex 2 and 3 explorer utilities and resources, which includes component explorers, styling & skinning explorers and resources, visual effects explorers and benchmark explorers.

I’m a little late to the discussion it would seem, but, in stumbling upon last month’s heated discussion on the topic of DRM in Flash, let me lend a little clarity, and sanity I hope, to the debate. No doubt you’ve already heard of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s denouncement of “DRM in Flash”, with posts and comments such as these serving only to confuse matters.

Everyone is all a huff as why the iPhone does not have Flash, in posts and comments all over the bloggosphere lately about Steve Job’s comments about Flash, spawning two main interpretations: a) Steve Jobs is Lying about Flash on the iPhone, and is keeping the info to himself as a negotiating tool. b) Steve hates Adobe, and is doing an f-you to Adobe. …and a kinder, more rational explanation, c) that Flash is not ready for the iPhone.

As both a Flash and a Flex developer, I can say that designing and developing a highly visual experience such as a promotional website for an automaker like this recent Volkswagen site seems to me like putting a round peg in a square hole. One of the main roadblocks to building highly visual experiences in Flex, as Yacov Fain mentions, is that performance, particularly load times, can suffer dramatically.

I always wondered if this day would come. Now, hopefully, it just might. Following is a reply to a post on the Open at Adobe blog entitled Is dead code ever a good line? If someone cares that the program continues, and is will to commit their resources, why shouldn’t the code be released? If the code is good enough, and doesn’t include other properties, why not release it? If a community is available to control and govern it, why not?

Sean McSharry, co-author of Foundation Actionscript 3.0 with Flash CS3 and Flex, has issued a challenge to the community in giving out free copies of his book. The challenge is: “Which is better and why: Flex or Flash?” Since my answer was unexpectedly long-winded, I am reposting it here. Let us assume by Flash we mean both the Flash CS3 IDE and its compiler, and by Flex we mean Flex Builder and its MXMLc compiler. a) Different tools for different jobs. Neither is better.

I thank Adobe for aggregating this blog on the MXNA. Without aggregation, posting on a blog feels like whispering in a desert: someone may hear you, but you’ve got to shout, so to speak. For those of you new to this blog, here are the most recent posts: Jan. 3: Learning AS 3.0 is Easy (or at least no harder than AS 2.0): further insights on Colin Moock’s commentary. Jan. 3: What kind of SWF Developer Are You?

Today I came across a very interesting post by Yakov Fain, who comments on staffing a team for your Flex project.

The latest addition to the Flex 101 series is now available on Community MX. In this tutorial we go into the Event subclasses — what they are, when and when not to use them, complete with examples. We describe when certain event classes are dispatched from component interactions, what classes to type to depending on use, and the event class package and inheritance structure in Flex 2.

Almost every time I speak with a new recruiter, I find myself explaining what a “Flash Platform Developer” is, and what the skills listed on my resume mean in the overall context of RIA development. Or having conversations with project managers and HR personnel about why it may be necessary to hire two different kinds of Flex developers, unaware of the distinction.