jun :: realeyes

I’m probably the last to notice, but I just realized that my MAX session was posted on Adobe TV.  Here’s the direct link if you want to see a MAX session that covers the debugging and profiling features of Flex Builder.

http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f15384v1074

Also, if you scan to the last 10-15 minutes or so of the presentation you will see an excellent overview by Mike Morearty of the new debugging features that Flex Builder Gumbo will be bringing to the table!

For a little while now the Beatport team and the development team that I’m on at RealEyes have been working on a Flex 3 web application. (One of the reasons I’ve been so quiet lately.)

http://www.beatport.com

It just launched this evening and I will have to say BRAVO to the RealEyes team, including myself, and of course the Beatport team.

It looks outstanding and is a perfect example of the COOL you can bring to the table with Flex.

For those of you that were lucky enough to get your hands on the Flex Builder Gumbo MAX Preview build, you may have noticed two things:

1. Adobe only made the preview available as a standalone install and not an Eclipse plugin

2. The standalone install did not have ANT pre-bundled.

If you’re like me you like to install Flex Builder as an eclipse plugin, or at the very least you need ANT to feel comfortable about your development environment.  After my Gumbo was installed I realized I had forgotten how to install ANT.  So, I did a quick Google search.  Luckily for me Jody Brewster had run into the same issue back with Flex Builder 3 Standalone and had written some pretty detailed step-by-step instructions.

Since the process is slightly different in gumbo, I took the liberty to revise Jody’s instructions to be specific to installing ANT into the Flex Builder Gumbo MAX Preview.  Thanks again Jody, and for the rest of you, enjoy!

Installing ANT into the Gumbo MAX Preview

• Launch Gumbo MAX Preview
• Go to Help > Software Updates > Find and Install
• Select “Search for new features to install”, click next
• Select “The Eclipse Project Updates”
• Also at this point I usually check the “Automatically select mirrors” checkbox since I’m lazy
• Click the “Finish” button
• At this point the update progress dialog will display for a little bit.  Once the update list has been generated you’ll be at the Updates dialog where you’ll select what to install.
• Expand “The Eclipse Project Updates” in the features to install selection area
• Now expand the second option “Eclipse SDK Eclipse 3.4.1”
• Now check “Eclipse Java Development Tools 3.4.1……” in the list of available features
• Click the “Next” button
• Accept the license agreement, click next
• Review the installation details and change the installation directory if you desire
• Once you’re satisfied click finish
• The download will start and you’ll see the progress screen
• Once the download is complete you will end up at the Verification dialog.  Review the verification info and click the “Install All” button
• The update will take place, and once the JDT has been installed you will see a prompt to restart Gumbo.  Click the “Yes” button to restart.

Yay! Gumbo now has ANT!

To display the view:
In Gumbo go to Window > Other Views… >  In the Other Views dialog expand the ANT view group > click on the Ant view and Click OK. You now have the Ant view

To configure the ANT environment:
In Gumbo go to Window > Preferences > In the Preferences dialog click on ANT.  You can also expand the ANT preference group to get to the other ANT options such as the Runtime options.

I’ve submitted some topics to 360|Flex Indy.  I’m excited about the conference and would like your support.  Take a look at the three topics I submitted and if any of them perk your interest, click on the link and vote for them.  If you vote I will provide!

Although I could go on and on about how busy I’ve been and give you all the reasons why my blogs been pretty slow lately, I’m just going to let Everlast say it for me.

It’s 2009, I’m ready to start kicking this blog back into gear, and I’m excited to start another fun-filled year with Flex and AIR!