Yesterday, 11th of April, Adobe announced Creative Suite 5.5.

Besides all new features and improvements introduced in the new CS5.5, part of them presented in the previous video and some listed bellow, another new thing introduced with Creative Suite 5.5 is the “Pay as you go” subscription. Besides buying the whole product now the products can be rented for shorter periods of times. This helps a lot development teams that work on short term projects. Read more about it here: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/cssubscription.html?promoid=INPKB

Now lets get back to what is new in the products…

Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK

• Multiscreen development with Flex 4.5 SDK
• New Spark components in Flex 4.5 SDK
  • Spark DataGrid
  • Spark Form
  • Spark Image and BitmapImage enhancements
• Spark Formatters
• Video and text enhancements in Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK
• Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK compiler improvements

There are too many new features and improvements to list them here. If you need to know more please read: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/introducing-flex45sdk.html

Adobe Flash Builder 4.5

• Developing mobile applications for Android, iOS, and Blackberry Tablet OS
• Accelerated coding for Flex and ActionScript projects
• Improved designer/developer workflow
• Updated platform support
• Improved Performance
• Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP

There are many great changes but the most important I think is the workflow for developing mobile applications. See a video about it bellow:

Please read more about Flash Builder 4.5 here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/introducing-flex45sdk.html

Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5.5

• Resizable applications and components
• Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder workflow (see Understanding new Flash Catalyst CS5.5 and Flash Builder 4.5 workflows)
• Prototyping and wireframing enhancements

I just mentioned a few of them and didn’t go deep into each feature or improvement, but you can read more here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashcatalyst/articles/introducing-flashcatalyst-cs55.html

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5

• CSS3 and HTML5 authoring
• jQuery Mobile integration
• Native mobile apps (for iOS and Android) with PhoneGap

Read more about new features and improvements in Dreamweaver CS5.5 here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/whats-new-dwcs55.html

Other products that are included in Creative Suite got lots of new features and improvements and to see more keep an eye on adobe.com.

Adobe has announced new technologies on Flex Framework. These are:

• Adobe Flash Builder “Burrito”
• Adobe Flash Catalyst “Panini”
• Adobe Flex SDK “Hero”
• Mobile Application Development with Flex and Flash Builder

Each of them have new features, improvements and integration work-flows added and you can test all these new technologies on Adobe Lab. If you like to see some samples go to http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flexsdk_hero/samples/.

As you already know Adobe MAX is on course and new stuff will be presented to everybody.

Read more about “Burrito” in the Andrew Shorten’s article on Adobe Developer Connection.

Table of contents

1. FX4 Tour – Flex Camp at Bucharest on 15th of April 2010
2. FX4 Tour – Flex Camp at Bucharest – Registration & Agenda
3. FX4 Tour – Flex Camp Bucharest is Over

The FX4 Tour – Flex Camp Bucharest is over now. It has been a great success: there has been around 60 participants from which 65-70 percent were Flex developers. This is great! The Flex community is growing bigger and stronger.

Three interesting things:

• seen TransformGestureEvent in action
• Slider – Flex Mobile Framework is expected to be available in 2010
• Cairngorm is discontinued although version 3 beta is out since last winter

We had taken a few pictures…

Alexandru Chiculita

Attendance

Corlan speaking...

Dragos Georgita

Our attendance

Problems discussed...

Winner of FB4 license

 

Table of contents

1. FX4 Tour – Flex Camp at Bucharest on 15th of April 2010
2. FX4 Tour – Flex Camp at Bucharest – Registration & Agenda
3. FX4 Tour – Flex Camp Bucharest is Over

As you know on 15th of April 2010 a new Flex Camp will take place in Bucharest. Now we have the registration and some agenda modification. Most important change is that it will start around 4:30 PM.

• 16:30 – 17:00 – Registration
• 17:00 – 17:45 – Keynote – Mihai Corlan
• 17:45 – 18:30 – 10 things you didn’t know about Flash Builder 4 – Mihai Corlan
• 18:30 – 19:15 – Flex 4: tips and tricks – Mihai Corlan
• 19:15 – 20:00 – Designer/Developer workflow with Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder – Dragos Dascalita
• 20:00 – Pizza, beer and time to chat

Register using the widget bellow or by going to http://flashbuilder4.eventbrite.com/.

Wednesday, 27th of January, in Bucharest, Mark Anders, the creator of Flash Catalyst will tell us how Flash Catalyst appeared and how it got done. For anyone who doesn’t know about him, Mark Anders is a major contributor for the whole Adobe Flex platform.

The meeting starts at 6 PM but we will start gather and 5:30 PM and it will be mostly an opened discussion. Mark will tell us what’s behind the scenes not only for Flash Catalyst but also for other Flex related products.

For registration go on MyAdobe, http://myadobe.ro/2010/01/21/how-its-made-versiunea-adobe/ (Romanian only).

Hope to see you all there.

Table of contents

1. Flex 4 Tour – Bucharest PitStop
2. Registration for Adobe User Group Tour 2009 – Flex 4 Tour – Bucharest Pit Stop Now Available
3. Agenda for Flex 4 Tour – Bucharest Pit Stop
4. Bucharest Pit Stop Passed

Yesterday (10.06.2009) at Adobe Systems Romania offices took place the Adobe User Groups Tour – Bucharest Pit Stop event. The event was a success – great things presented. Even all tickets were sold out long time before the event only 40 persons showed up at the event.

The event was about new beta products that were launched by Adobe at the beginning of this month: Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4 SDK. But you already knew this by reading the event’s agenda.

What we learned…

• Flash Catalyst is a product targeting the designers
• Flash Catalyst integrates with Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks and Flash Builder 4
• Flash Catalyst makes use of some Flash Professional concepts and interactions
• Flex 4 SDK has language modifications but the both Halo and Spark components can be used together
• Separation of behavior from appearance
• Some Halo components will not be present in Spark
• New graphical primitives in Flex 4 SDK which are not derived from UIComponent (MXML Graphics Library)
• New FXG format based in MXML understood by Illustrator, Photoshop, Fireworks, After Effects, Flash Professional, Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder
• New Flash Text Engine
• 2-way binding
• Advanced CSS
• New states
• Flash Builder 4 Plugin for Eclipse can be installed over a Zend Studio this way having debugging in both Actionscript/Flex and PHP
• New tab in Flash Builder 4 – Data Services
• Drag and drop binding to components
• Lots of new wizards to easy and increase the productivity
• Package explorer
• Getter/setter/event handlers generators
• Network monitor
• New FXP file type used by Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder 4

… and other things not mentioned here.

The Bucharest Pit Stop wasn’t recorded neither transmitted through Adobe Connect so who was present got home with new info about the Flash Platform and some stuff from Adobe and Fx{r}.

Presentations and source files from the event are available at the end. Still have to tell you that some of the presentations are in Romanian but most of them are in English.

Other articles about the event:
http://groups.adobe.com/posts/bdbc2a5190
http://myadobe.ro/2009/06/10/flex-4-tour-bucharest-pit-stop/

Table of contents

1. Flex 4 Tour – Bucharest PitStop
2. Registration for Adobe User Group Tour 2009 – Flex 4 Tour – Bucharest Pit Stop Now Available
3. Agenda for Flex 4 Tour – Bucharest Pit Stop
4. Bucharest Pit Stop Passed

As was expected we have at this time a final agenda for this event.

17:00 – 17:30
Registration participants
17:30 – 17:45
Opening Message
17:45 – 19:00
Flash Builder 4 & Catalyst, Cornel Creanga & Michael Corlan
19:00 – 19:45
Break for pizza and beer
19:45 – 20:15
Flex 4 SDK, Michael Pricop
20:15 – 20:45
PHP Services in Flash Builder 4, Andrei Ionescu
20:45 – 21:00
Break
21:15 – 21:45
Skinning in Fx4 – Stelian Crisan
21:45 – 22:00
Closing Message

See you there in one week .

Adobe User Group Tour 2009 will stop also in Cluj, Romania.

So, Transylvania Flex Group invites you all to the firs ever Flex camp to take place in Cluj-Napoca. You will be able to witness all the news related to the Adobe Flash Platform, Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4. There will be adobe evangelists as well as members of the Transylvania Flex Group.

Agenda:

10:30 – 11:00 – Opening presentation – Cornel Creanga (Adobe Platform Evangelist), George Iosif (TFXG)
11:00 – 12:00 – Flash Catalyst – Cornel Creanga
12:00 – 12:10 – Coffee break
12:10 – 12:50 – Applications built using Adobe Flex: Case study Betfair – Daniel Ursan, Claudiu Ursica
12:50 – 13:50 – Flash Builder (Flex 4) – Cornel Creanga
13:50 – 14:00 – Coffee break
14:00 – 14:30 – Introduction in Adobe AIR – George Iosif
14:30 – 15:00 – Lunch break
15:30 – 17:00 – Flex & AIR Seminary: boot camp – introduction to Flex, AIR & RIA. Concepts, how to use Flex Builder & APIs

In order to register and more info please visit Transylvania Flex Group page at: http://groups.adobe.com/posts/a36a47fae4.

Starting today, Flash Catalyst & Flash Builder 4 are in public beta.

You can download them from Adobe’s site by following these links:

• http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/ for Flash Catalyst
• http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/ for Flash Builder

If didn’t hear about them, Flash Catalyst is:

…a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding.

And Flash Builder 4 is the former Flex Builder but rebranded:

…we are renaming Flex Builder to Flash Builder. This name change will create a clear distinction between the free open-source Flex framework and the commercial IDE

There are lots of examples and content for these two new tools. Get started following the links bellow:

• Flash Builder and Flex 4 SDK – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/tutorials/
• Flash Catalyst – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/tutorials/
• Flash Platform videos – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flash/videos/

Enjoy the public betas and give us feedback about both products.

Table of contents

1. Flex 4 Tour – Bucharest PitStop
2. Registration for Adobe User Group Tour 2009 – Flex 4 Tour – Bucharest Pit Stop Now Available
3. Agenda for Flex 4 Tour – Bucharest Pit Stop
4. Bucharest Pit Stop Passed

As we said in the previous article about the Adobe User Group Tour 2009 – Flex 4 Tour – Bucharest Pit Stop the registration is now available. It doesn’t cost anything but we need it because the seats are limited. Please see bellow.

The agenda is not done yet but in the next days we will put it together so you’ll know precisely what subjects will be treated – but keep an eye on the blog and/or the group for new posts regarding the agenda.

What you should know is that for sure it will be focused on the new Flex 4.