The general topics slated to be covered are:

• Getting Started (Intro, project types, pros/cons, comparison to other editors)
• Shortcuts ('QuickFix' code generation, refactoring, searching, etc.)
• Integration with Eclipse (SVN, ANT, XML, and other helpful plug-ins)

I will speaking on the third item, Integration with Eclipse, presenting an introduction to simple ANT integration and workflows, along with some of the Eclipse plug-ins I use on a regular basis.

Here are all of the details from the flashpdx.org site:

David Knape, Jon MacDonald and Matt Gitchell will show how they use the FDT development environment in their daily work.

When: Thursday 10/15 11:30 - 1:00pm
Where: Second Story 714 N Fremont St #200

Pizza will be provided, seating is limited to 25.

Please RSVP with shane {at} secondstory {dot} com

PowerFlasher, the makers of FDT, have generously donated a copy of FDT Pure edition for a raffle, and will send discount codes to anyone who provides an e-mail address for the raffle.

(Don’t know what FDT is? In short, FDT is a professional code editor for ActionScript. More info on FDT at http://www.fdt.powerflasher.com. )

So while this is extremely exciting (as in, I just became an iPhone developer in 5 minutes this morning exciting) there are a few things to note:

1. This is only for standalone applications - meaning iPhone/iPod Touch applications that you download from Apple's App Store either on your phone or via iTunes. It does not include Flash played via the Safari mobile web browser. So no online Flash video just yet. Ryan Stewart, an Adobe Platform Evangelist tweeted the following today during the keynote: "When Apple is ready to bring the full Web browsing experience to iPhone users, we'll be ready to bring Flash Player to Safari."

2. You cannot load external SWFs into the apps you compile for the iPhone. The official line on this is: "iPhone applications built with Flash Platform tools are compiled into standard, native iPhone executable packages and there is no runtime interpreter that could be used to run ActionScript bytecode within the application." But in reality, Adobe is just staying within the limits imposed by Apple and their "no running other bytecode in apps" rule.

3. This won't be available until Flash CS5 is released. The good news here is that a public beta of Flash CS5 will be released before the end of 2009.

You can read all about this announcement over on Adobe Labs: Flash Professional CS5 Applications for iPhone, at the official Adobe press release, and in the Adobe Dev Center where they have posted an article about Developing for the Apple iPhone using Flash. The Dev Center article goes into some good technical explanation of what is going on behind the scenes.

There is also an extensive technical FAQ available on Adobe Labs which is worth the read.

Lastly, you can see some quick video of the Mythbusters-type segment they did as the announcement below:

If you use FDT, this looks to be a huge update. Here is the list with main new features from the FDT blog:

MXML Support
- Semantic Highlighting
- Templates
- Wizard for MXML Classes
- Flex-Builder Project Importer
- Attribute Auto Completion
- Quick Outline
- Type Hierarchy
- Hyperlinks (F3)

Further AS-Support
- Improved SWC-Parser
- Improved Auto Completion (constructor)
- CS4 Help Importer

You can find instructions for updating to the beta here.

The app includes class references for Adobe AIR 1.5, Adobe Flex 3.2 and Flash Player 10. I've been testing it this weekend and it has run great.

There is more information on Mike's website for the app, including a download link for the iTunes App Store. If you want to install the app directly on your phone, you'll need to search for "Mike Chambers" to find the app while it works its way into the App Store search.

The Gaia panel was completely rewritten in Flex and includes optimization features, easier Gaia project management, and a new publish panel which makes developing with Gaia even easier. Gaia 3 also features a brand new version of SWFAddress (version 2.3) that fixes the Firefox 3 OSX redraw bug.

There is also a completely new addition to the Gaia project: the Gaia Framework Site Creator AIR application. This small AIR application allows you to quickly update your project's site.xml and visualize it as a wireframe sitemap.

Some of the features include XML validation, drag and drop re-ordering, reordering of asset load order, editing project properties, and printing a site map. You can download the first version from Wade Arnold's blog posting about the app.

Along with this release the public gateway has also been updated to use SWX PHP v2 beta and allow for AS3 support. You can find documentation here, which shows how to use the new AS3 API as well as provides an introduction to the new Simple Call and Custom Call methods of interacting with your SWX gateway.

Lastly, Folkert Hielema has contributed an updated Twitter service and a new Identi.ca service. Both of these services are live on the public gateway (you can test them in the Service Explorer) and also available in the SWX PHP download available on the Google Code page under "Featured Downloads".

I will continue to work on updating the SWX blog with new documentation, but until then please refer to this documentation - it should provide you with everything you need to get started with v2.

If you notice any issues, please log them here. For support or to discuss the new release, please use the project's mailing list.

This release has been a huge effort by the SWX development team, and has been in the works since September. I'm sure you'll enjoy using it as much as we've enjoyed coding it.

Can't wait to see what you build!

• Refactored JavaScript implementation
• New SWFAddress.swc AS3 component
• New CS4 based Splash screen sample
• New Digg API sample
• New up() method for easier deep linking path navigation
• New XSS protection that doesn't affect special characters
• Support for Internet Explorer 8
• Support for custom HTTP status messages in the SEO sample
• Improved title handling
• Improved unload event handling for IE
• Updated Rails sample
• Fixed getBaseURL() for AS3
• Fixed Safari 2.0-2.0.3 support
• Build-in fix for the Firefox 3/Mac OSX blinking effect
• Additional onLoad fix for application/xml content type
• Fixed optional options parameter for the popup method
• Cross platform build script
• Various optimizations

This looks to be a major release, and took over seven months of development. I remember speaking to Rostislav about this release back at FOTB 2008 Brighton, so he truly has put in a lot of effort. Here's hoping it gets wrapped into the expected new Gaia release.

The new version is available for download here.

Jason and I used our experiences in building the p.i.n.k. Spirits website as a platform for testing the concepts and they worked so well that we decided to write an article. The article covers using SWFAddress and SWFObject with PHP to provide your content in an alternate view (in this case HTML instead of Flash) for SEO purposes.

The article contends that when Adobe announced they were working with Google and Yahoo! to improve the searchability of Flash and Flex websites and applications, the Flash development community largely applauded the initiative. However, months after the announcement there has been minimal increase in the effective search engine rankings of Flash and Flex websites.

We discuss why the current method of Google and Yahoo!'s new 'headless player' isn't working quite yet, and how you can provide a mirror of the exact same content in your Flash and Flex projects as HTML using a single data source. This is a 'white hat' approach and doesn't break any of Google's rules.

There have recently been some articles on how Google has been updating the 'headless player', namely this article on InsideRIA, and I may do a blog post updating the article if necessary. Until then, be sure to check out the article in the January 2009 issue of Flash & Flex Developers Magazine.

I had previously posted about the offline help and language reference locations in Flash CS4 which allows you to access the local copy of the language reference from within a web browser. But did you know that you could also access these local files from within the Flash CS4 help panel?

Normally when you access the help panel in Flash CS4 it automatically tries to load the online version of the documentation and language reference. I assume Adobe chose to do this so they could keep it updated and you could benefit from other user's comments in the Live Docs.

To access the local copy of Flash CS4 help and the language reference, just tell Flash to “keep you offline”:

Go to Window > Extensions > Connections. In the panel that pops up, click the arrow at the top-right and select “Offline options”. From there you can check the box for “Keep me offline”. Flash will then always default to using the offline help.

I should note that doing this may also prevent you from using any other panels which call out to the internet, such as Kuler and the Flash startup/new file screen. As of now I'm not using any Internet-connected panels and I have the splash screen set to not show on startup, so this works quite well for me.

Project:

Leanne Marshall website

URL:

http://www.leannemarshall.com

Synopsis:

Leanne is a fashion designer who recently won season five of Project Runway - a reality competition show on the television network Bravo.

Before the show had ended and Leanne knew she had won, I was approached to help build her a new website to display her collections. I immediately asked my friends over at Transport if they would help out by designing the site.

Working with the extremely talented team at Transport, we designed and built this site in about five weeks. As Transport notes, Leanne needed something up quick, but she also needed it to last more than a season. The design works as any portfolio should: by putting the artist's work up-front and center. When a visitor comes to the site they are immediately presented with two large, randomly chosen photos from Leanne's various collections.

The entire site is controlled via a simple CMS system, based on XML files, which Leanne can edit whenever necessary. This allows her to update images, add collections, add stores and modify her bio without needing to know any technical details. For even more customization, Leanne can even control the pop color that is associated with each collection.

The site was built using the Gaia Framework for Flash, in ActionScript 3 and PHP.

You can view a video recap of the final runway show, held at Bryant Park during NYC's fashion week, which includes Leanne's winning collection here. Leanne has also recently been featured in magazines such as Dwell, and I'm glad to have been a part of her start to a successful career in fashion design.