David Flatley > Actual RIA info > Adobe AIR > Flex 4 released today – tons of new material for learning

Flex 4 released today – tons of new material for learning

Author: March 22, 2010

Actual RIA info, Adobe AIR, Adobe Flex, Coolness

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If you haven’t seen already, Adobe released Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4 SDK today. If you’re a student or you’re unemployed, or possibly an unemployed student even, you can get yourself a free copy of Flash Builder. Along with the release are endless heaps of new material to get you up-to-speed with the latest and greatest of Flex. Below is a list of some of the best new resources to get you up and running with Flex 4 in no time.

  1. Learn Flex in a Week video series on the Developer Connection site is being updated. These were an immense help for catching up with the latest incarnation of Flex.
  2. Tour de Flex has tons of new and updated samples. Any source code you could imagine is in Tour de Flex, it’s like your personal Flex library you carry with you. You might even run across one particular sample to wow you 🙂 created by yours truly. Many thanks to my colleague Holly Schinsky, who works tirelessly on Tour de Flex and a zillion other things all at once, and to Adobe Evangelist Greg Wilson for the opportunity to help out with the project!
  3. Flex Test Drive on the Adobe Developer Connection is a great way to get into Flex if you’re brand new. This series walks you through the process of building a Flex 4 application in one hour, and is accompanied by video and written tutorials.
  4. I built the Spark Intranet Sample app and tutorial on the Developer Connection site and just updated it for the Flex 4 release. This is another good one to learn to connect Flex 4 to data, explore the Spark framework and new MXML specification, and see more about the new Flash Builder features. I can neither confirm nor deny that there are more Flex 4 sample apps to come very soon, and they may or may not be fairly intense so as to satisfy your inner geek 😉

If you’re a Flex 3 developer just getting into Flex 4, you’ll see there’s a slight learning curve to the new Spark architecture. A good place to start is Deepa Subramaniam’s article on the Developer Connection. That’ll give you the background you need to understand Spark versus MX components and how/when/where to use them.

With all this new material at hand, the learning curve is tiny compared to the benefits you’ll get by updating to Flex 4. With the Spark framework, you’re able to take things to a whole new level.

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4 Comments

  1. Mark

    How do you prove that you’re unemployed?

  2. Dave (Post author)

    Mark, good question. How do you prove a negative? Hmmm, well I heard from students that they had to scan a document or provide a student ID. So I would imagine someone who’s unemployed would need to scan some documentation or something similar.

    I’ll ask around though and see what I can find out.

  3. Kris

    I love how society is changing with this new increase in unemployment. Just saw another blog post similar to this one. Good stuff. Thankfully I’m not a student and I have a job.
    Kris
    Chicago It Consultants

  4. Jenny

    It’s a good material, but really beter to be EMployed 🙂

Comments are closed.