I'm new to Flex, but realizing the benefits of using a framework in a team environment I decided to give Cairngorm a try for my first real Flex project. I had heard some not-so-good things about Cairngorm from a lot of developers I know and respect, but I figured I had to see for myself. At first I didn't really see much wrong with the micro-architecture. Sure there was a lot of repetitive boilerplate, but I was using a code generator so it wasn't that bad.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about how I was using implicit getters in my model for calculated properties. This works great, but if you are calculating these values based on ArrayCollections you have to do a little extra coding to make sure changes to your ArrayCollection update your calculated value bindings.

Yesterday Joe Rinehart blogged about using the ternary operator in Flex data binding. I was glad to see this post as I'm in the middle of my first Flex project and I find my self using this technique quite a bit. Here is just one example, which changes a text input's background color to red if it has a negative value.

After about two years of threatening to learn Flex I'm finally doing it. I started by completing the "Adobe Flex 2 Rich Internet Applications" DVD-ROM course from Total Training. I won this a while ago at a CFUG meeting and have been meaning to get to it ever since. I have to admit, I wasn't sure how I'd like the format given that I usually learn by reading a book on a particular topic then experimenting, but I liked the course. And I know what your thinking, "Flex 2?

I just got home from the on AIR Bus Tour and I have to say that Adobe has done a great job with this tour. The venue was awesome (The Franklin Institute here in Philly), the beer was cold, and the presentations were informative, at least for an AIR newbie like me. I'll admit that haven't had time to look into AIR so I wasn't really getting the hype. However, after tonight's presentations I'm pretty excited about the possibilities...

Last night I attended the Philadelphia Flash Platform Adobe User Group meeting on Flex/Flash Large Scale Applications, presented by Arpit Mathur, Lead Software Engineer of Comcast Interactive Media. Phil Duba already did an extensive writeup on the meeting so I won't do that here. I will say I left the meeting wanting to do some Flash development!

Tonight was a pretty fun night for me here in Philly. It started out with the Philly CFUG Meeting where I got to hear Adam Lehman talk about building Flex applications with ColdFusion. It was a great presentation especially for those who, like me, haven't taken a look at Flex 2 yet. After seeing this talk Flex is definitely on my list of things to check out soon. After the CFUG meeting my wife and I were off to the Electric Factory to see the Shins play.