jun :: realeyes

The early bird pricing for the premiere ColdFusion conference is ending today.  If you want to go and need to register, now is the time.  So hit up the site and get registered:

http://register.cfunited.com/go/register/step1#current-step

Also, if you’re a manager contemplating sending your troops, here’s a PDF for your reading pleasure.

http://cfunited.com/images/CFUnited2009_managerguide.pdf

Finally, if you’re a CF’er and you’re new to Flex/AIR come check out my session while you’re there, I’ll be giving a 100 level on Flex Debugging and Profiling.

I’ve got 15 minutes available to blog at the moment.  I wanted to shed some light on a couple time saving features in the recent version of Subclipse SVN plugin for Eclipse. (I’m not sure in what version these features were added, but they exist in my version of Subclipse 1.4.8)

If you already knew these thing I apologize for wasting your Friday, but if not, then I think you’ll like these tips.

TIP 1: Committing/Updating multiple projects at once

If you select multiple projects in your Eclipse navigator, you can right-click and commit/update multiple projects at once.  Here’s a screenshot.

TIP 2: Comparing your changes to the repository version at commit time

When you go to commit your latest code, oftentimes you’ll want to see the changes you made so that you can offer a useful commit comment.  All you need to do is find the file that you would like to compare in your commit dialog and double-click on it to invoke the diff tool. Here’s a screenshot.

Want this for your site?

This Saturday is the first Flex bug quash.  It’s going to be an outstanding community event geared toward improving the SDK and ridding it of as many pesky bugs as possible. If you’re a Flex developer, then I highly recommend your participation in this event.

Worried that your not l33t Flexor enough?  Don’t worry, there’s going to be plenty of non-coding work to do such as assessing deferred bugs and validating community bugs.

A word of advice, if you’re going to Quash with us on Saturday you better do it soon.  Reason being, you might need to create some bugbase and sandbox accounts for yourself, set up your dev environment, and there’s some paperwork to sign and send to Adobe.  It’s already Thursday evening too…catch my drift?

So if you haven’t already, get registered and start getting set up to Quash. The nice thing is that you can attend in-person or remotely.

I’ve got to play Mr. Mom on Saturday so I’ll be attending remotely, but for those of you in Denver or Seattle wanting a more community and in the flesh vibe, here’s some in-person options for you:

Seattle: http://bugquash.com/

Denver: http://euibugquash.eventbrite.com/

See you all at the Quash!

At MAX 2008 Adobe pulled the covers off of “Tour de Flex”, a very cool AIR-based reference tool for Flex developers.  It’s got some very useful features such as cloud API examples, a component explorer, and direct links to various Flex resources such as the Flex 3.3 Livedocs.

The other cool thing is that Tour de Flex allows commenting from the public.  Third party developers are even allowed to submit their own code examples.

I know that Tour de Flex has been out for a little while, and I also know that several people have blogged about its existence and the existence of its companion Eclipse plugin.  However, I really like Tour de Flex and just yesterday discovered the Eclipse plugin, hence the reason for this post.

Using the Eclipse plugin, you can have a Tour de Flex search originate directly from your Eclipse IDE, and it will open Tour de Flex and go directly to the corresponding sample.  My guess is that command line arguments are being passed over to the Tour de Flex AIR application to accomplish this, but whatever is happening it’s a pretty cool example of passing data into your AIR app from an external source.

Anyway, if you haven’t had a chance to use Tour de Flex or its the Eclipse plugin, here’s the link. http://flex.org/tour

Also, here’s a screenshot to show you what it looks like.

It’s amazing when you release free software into the wild with the best of intentions, then realize that you’ll have to spend the rest of your time being “billable”. Kind of a bummer really.

On that note, I’d like to say that I’ve had time to come back to a neglected child of mine and do a couple quick updates.  The first was to fix an issue that was happening with the new user registration system.  The other was to update the app.xml, compile it against AIR 1.5, and get the new binaries activated in the site badge.

Hopefully, I’ll get some more time soon to add more features and fixes, but in the meantime, I’ve got a couple of announcements to make:

ANNOUNCEMENT 1

Another parent of REDbug has had a chance to be productive.  David Hassoun aka Mr. Flash Video, has added a Flash Media Server connection tester module to the tool.  It’s pretty neat from what I’ve seen.

ANNOUNCEMENT 2

We’ve been discussing an integration of REDbug and StructuredLogTesting.  I know that things are very early in the development stages, but it’s definitely something to keep your eye on.

Before I go, I just wanted to say if you haven’t had a chance to try REDbug yet, you can find it here: http://redbugtool.com/

Anyway.  I hope to continue to post about new and exciting things in REDbug on a more frequent basis, but if I don’t feel free to hit me up and see what’s up…I’m sure I just got stuck being “billable”.

This Wednesday evening is the second Denver Ignite.  The last one was a most enjoyable experience, as I’m sure this one will be.  I’ll be there to talk about lame-core generation from GarageBand to mix things up amongst the cool topics that will be presented.  So get registered and get there!

To register: http://ignitedenver.eventbrite.com/

If you’re in Denver and looking for something cool to do I’ve got your answer for tonight.

Tonight is the monthly meeting of Rocky Mountain Adobe Users Group, RMAUG.  Not only will information on Flex on Rails be covered, but there will be an intro to a Flex solution called FlexUIFramework.

RSVP if you plan to join us: http://www.rmaug.com/

Also, if you’re not in Denver, you can watch our live stream, RSVP at the above link for that too.

For those of you that are on the cutting edge of Flex development or have a tendency to go through a lot of hardware and/or a lot of Eclipse/Flex Builder software versions I’m sure you can feel my pain…install Eclipse, install Flex Builder, install ANT, Mylyn, Subclipse, WST, etc, etc, etc…and then configure, configure, configure.

I mean, if I got a penny for every minute that I’ve spend reinstalling and configuring my Flex Builder environments since Flex Builder 2 beta came out…and the times that I’ve spent helping teammates install their environments…wow, I could retire.

So, what the point of this blog post?  Basically, I’ve been playing around with a configuration management service for Eclipse called Pulse this weekend and it’s been pretty slick so far.  Before I mention anything else, let me give you a couple disclaimers:

- I’ve only been playing with this solution for a couple days

- I haven’t run it through it’s full paces yet

- Flex Builder 3 is somewhat of a hack to get working and for the time being forget about Flex Builder Gumbo MAX preview.

- I’m pretty sure to save workspace settings requires the pay version which is about $60 per year…but if it proves itself I think it’d be worth it.

- I’m very tired and I’ve gotta work in a little while, so I’m going to keep it short for now.

So, what is Pulse?  Pulse allows you to download this Windows, Mac, or Linux utility to manage Eclipse, the plugins you’ve installed, and also the workspace settings.  To manage these configurations you create profiles which you can download and install.  Here’s the general workflow:

1. Install the Pulse client software.

2. Pick the flavor of Eclipse base install you want to use.

3. Pick the plugins from their plugin directory, things such as Subclipse.

4. Download, install, and run this profile.

5. You can add additional plugins that are not in the directory at this time, they’ll get synced with the profile.

6. You can configure your workspace, things such as linked resources, SVN console settings, custom perspectives.  After you’re comfortable with the customization, you can sync the workspace settings to the profile.

7. Have fun, and know that if Eclipse gets toast or needs to be reinstalled, you can run the client and re-download the profile.

So, as I said before, there are some issues with Flex Builder 3 and this service, mainly because the Flex Builder 3 plugin uses an external installer and doesn’t follow the standard Eclipse update site formula like most other plugins do.  However, as I had also said, there is a way to hack it into your Pulse installation: http://www.poweredbypulse.com/forums/showthread.php?t=388

This weekend, I got Flex Builder 3 up and running on my Pulse installation using the steps at the link above.  One thing I had to do was repoint it to the Flex SDK location on my drive but then after that I tested a basic Flex Project and a basic AIR project.  I tested Source View, Design View, and all three Flex perspectives.  I debugged and profiled, and so far outside of the hacky way it needs to be installed, it’s looking pretty promising.

Here’s a screencap of my Pulse-based Flex Builder 3 installation.  It’s actually a screencap of a test I ran restoring it from their service.  In other words, after the restore, the plugins were there, my custom perspective was there, my Eclipse preferences were there, and even the pointing I had to do to my custom SDK paths were there.  Also in the screencap you can see the Pulse client application running in front of Flex Builder.

So…in conclusion, I’m sure it’s not perfect.  For instance although I still need to test it, on restore, I think you need to make sure the Flex Builder 3 plugin had been installed to your machine in the same location first.  I also haven’t had a chance to run it through it’s paces enough yet to feel 100% comfortable recommending it…

Right now, I’m imagining the day when I don’t have to spend a half-day restoring my Flex Builder environment, and being able to get the jr developers set up without a ton of hand-holding.

Bottom line, very interesting, very exciting, worth additional testing, and a promising service to keep your eyes on. http://www.poweredbypulse.com

I was asked to present a 100 level intro on Flex debugging and profiling at the upcoming CFUnited conference. This session will be geared toward those of you just getting started with Flex development.

If you’re going to attend and are interested in what I’ve said so far, here is my session abstract:

If you are new to Flex development and want to be shown the ropes on how to debug and profile your applications, this is the session for you. During this session all aspects of debugging and profiling your applications using Flex Builder and other useful tools will be covered through both oral presentation and live demonstration. By the end of the session you should have a good understanding of the tools available to you for debugging and profiling your Flex applications.

Also, if you’re thinking of going to the conference, you definitely should, there’s a great lineup of speakers with some very interesting sessions.  Here’s the link to register:

http://register.cfunited.com/

This will be my first time at a CFUnited conference so I’m really looking forward to checking it out.  Lately, I spend so much of my time working with Flex and AIR that it’s hard to keep up on all the fancy new stuff in the ColdFusion world, so the CFUnited conference will be my ticket to get up to speed this year.

A buddy of mine just got the new 17″ Mac.  It’s been a while since he’s used Mac OS, and he asked me if I could give him a list of the software that I’ve found and used during my time with Mac OS X.  He’s also a Flex developer so he requested any software outside of Adobe software.  After compiling the list, I decided rather than sending an email I’d just create a new page on my blog to update from time to time.

So without further ado…I present you the list of non-Adobe software running on my Mac: http://www.iheartair.com/?page_id=181

By the way, if you know of any Mac OS X software you like that you don’t see on my list feel free to comment…I’m always on the hunt for cool new software.