James Ward - RIA Cowboy

Pingback by Video: Flex Best Practices « Rich Internet Applications - July 23, 2008 @ 3:54 am

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Comment by Mike G - July 23, 2008 @ 4:15 am

James thanks for posting your preso, great stuff!!

I’m interested to learn more about the Service Bus approach you mentioned you often use for Flex applications. If you have any links or code you could share on this that would be great.

Cheers, Mike G.

Comment by codecraig - July 23, 2008 @ 7:33 am

Would it be possible to get your power point slides? Also, could you provide your code for working with a Service Bus?

Also, the service bus framework that you were discussing (you couldn’t remember the name)…was it LCDS (LiveCycle Data Services)?

Comment by James Ward - July 23, 2008 @ 7:56 am

I’ll try to get my slides added here soon.

The message / service bus framework is Mate:
http://mate.asfusion.com

Comment by James Ward - July 23, 2008 @ 9:21 am

The slides are here:
http://www.jamesward.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ria_best_practices.ppt

Comment by Chris - July 23, 2008 @ 10:37 am

Does FlexBuilder provide any support to manage modular apps when the main app is in one Eclipse project and various modules are in other Eclipse projects? Because modules are all loaded at runtime via the filename, I have to path specific to my Eclipse workspace and project structure. That differs from how I’m going to deploy the swfs in my production environment. Also, different projects may exist on different paths for different team members. So we all have to manage our module paths differently :(

regards,
-Chris

Comment by James Ward - July 23, 2008 @ 5:15 pm

Hi Chris,

Usually for large projects you should use a build tool like Maven or Ant to handle compiling the modules. That way you can have better control over how the modules are named, deployed, and loaded.

-James

Comment by codecraig - July 23, 2008 @ 6:53 pm

Speaking of Maven…how do you use it to build a Flex/Java app (i.e. something you deploy to a web container, which might use LCDS or BlazeDS, see this link for the type of project I am referring to: http://corlan.org/2008/06/05/creating-a-combined-flexjava-project-in-flex-builder-wo-lcdsblazeds/).

Even just a regular flex app…how do you do it?

Comment by James Ward - July 23, 2008 @ 9:53 pm

Hi Craig,

Check out:
http://flex-mojos.googlecode.com/

And:
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-12730

-James

Comment by Tom Van den Eynde - July 24, 2008 @ 3:14 am

Hi! Thanks for the slides! One question: I’m very interested in your view on the ’service bus’ approach. I suppose you see it as an alternative to the rather ‘heavy weight’ MVC approach? Some thoughts (or some documentation even if it’s not Flex based) would be very helpful.

Comment by James Ward - July 24, 2008 @ 7:24 am

Hi Tom,

My personal preference for large Flex applications is for a service bus approach as the overall application architecture, coupled with modules, and some hand rolled MVC for the micro architecture (self-contained with a module).

-James

Comment by Tom Van den Eynde - July 24, 2008 @ 7:42 am

Thanks for the feedback! Are there any service bus frameworks for Flex or non-Flex out there that I could use as a reference?

Pingback by .:. Blog Hugo Martins .:. Tecnologia, Informática, Papéis de Parede, Wallpaper, Lost, Photoshop, Humor » As melhores práticas para os desenvolvedores do Flex - July 24, 2008 @ 11:02 am

[...] Desenvolver usando as melhores práticas de qualquer linguagem de programação tem sido bastante comentado entre os desenvolvedores de todo o mundo, pois traz uma série de benefícios para as aplicações a longo prazo. Além de utilizar os padrões de mercado, é mais fácil de dar manutenção. A apresentação com as melhores práticas para desenvolver Flex e ActionScript 3 está disponível aqui. [...]

Comment by codecraig - July 24, 2008 @ 7:28 pm

I’ve successfully hooked up Flex to ActiveMQ by using BlazeDS and LCDS (LiveCycle Data Services). The bus would come later in my prototyping but it’s a good start.

Comment by codecraig - July 25, 2008 @ 5:27 am

James:
Do you have any details/info on the sections of the presentation you didn’t cover in the video (testing, scalability, security)?

One question (you hopefully know) I have is do you know how to access a user certification stored in a browser from Flex? Or if there is another method how to get it into flex?

Comment by James Ward - July 25, 2008 @ 8:13 am

Hi Tom,

Check out Mate: http://mate.asfusion.com

Codecraig,

For testing check out FlexUnit and the Flex Automated Testing Framework. Scalability is a broad topic. But in general Flex applications scale much better than traditional web applications because more is being done on the client. Since Flex uses the browser networking stack security in Flex is similar to web applications. There isn’t any direct way to handle certificates in Flex. The browser handles certificates and usually Flex applications don’t need to do anything with them.

-James

Comment by nz - July 25, 2008 @ 6:02 pm

Can you post the video up on Adobe Media Player for offline viewing?

cheers

Comment by Laurie - July 25, 2008 @ 10:02 pm

Hi James,

I met you briefly today after your presentation, and asked you about the First Steps to Flex book (can’t actually remember the exact), but you’d already run out of copies. Out of curiosity, when and where will the book be available?

Comment by Sean Moore - July 26, 2008 @ 10:57 am

Hi James,

Great video!! There are a ton of great tips in here. Thanks for posting!

Here are two articles that are directly related to your video I thought they might help some people out:

Flex best practices – Part 1: Setting up your Flex project
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/best_practices_pt1.html

Mate: Event driven framework for Flex
http://www.flashmagazine.com/Reviews/detail/mate_event_driven_framework_for_flex/

Kind regards,

Sean

Comment by James Ward - July 28, 2008 @ 12:18 pm

@NZ - I’ll look into that.

@Laurie - First Steps in Flex hasn’t officially been released yet. Hopefully it will be in the next few months. Check back here for updates.

@Sean - Thanks for the links! Both are great articles!

Comment by Matt - August 7, 2008 @ 8:02 pm

What was that tool you used for the screencast? I really liked how you could zoom in and out during your presentation.

Comment by James Ward - August 8, 2008 @ 1:26 pm

Hi Matt,

I use Camtasia. It works great.

-James

Pingback by Flex Best Practices « Scratch Pad - August 12, 2008 @ 1:06 am

[...] Best Practices I came across this video recording of James Ward presentation on Best practices with Flex. Do take the time to go through the complete [...]

Comment by Ed Syrett - August 14, 2008 @ 7:24 am

I’d like to add my voice to the rest of the guys asking for the video to be put up somewhere where we can download it. It’s too long to view all in one go during my lunch hour but if I want to view the second half I have to wait for the swf to download all over again…

Also I too would be really interested to see some more of the rest of the presentation

Thanks,

Ed.

Comment by James Ward - August 14, 2008 @ 9:09 am

What format / codec would you all prefer?

-James

Comment by andrew - August 18, 2008 @ 11:01 am

I agree some downloadable format is key. I would like to listen to this on the go.

Comment by James Ward - August 18, 2008 @ 12:45 pm

Hi Andrew,

What format would you like?

-James

Pingback by Flex Best Practices | Software Development Videos - August 18, 2008 @ 10:15 pm

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Comment by Ed Syrett - August 22, 2008 @ 1:50 am

How about just allowing us to download the movie swf? Alternatively, any format that Media Player will handle.

And don’t forget to add all the stuff you didn’t get time to present……

Thanks,

Ed.

Comment by James Ward - August 25, 2008 @ 5:14 am

Hi Ed,

Here is the link to download the SWF:
http://content.screencast.com/users/jlward4th/folders/Default/media/2a9e80b1-6231-4e57-ac79-b2c37c0fb3a4/flex_best_practices.swf?downloadOnly=true

Let me know if that works for you.

-James

Comment by codecraig - August 25, 2008 @ 5:29 am

download works for me.

Thanks!