sakri rosenstrom blog

We had a pretty good turnout yesterday, it was great to see (and meet) a lot of new faces! I naturally started the event by going to the wrong SISA building, but fortunately the ‘real’ one was just a few minutes away.

Here are some of the highlights:

James Ward went over some of the new tags, namespace changes and general updates in Gumbo. Amongst other things, he covered the new 3d implementation, pixelbender integration, FXG, skins and new text features.

Chet Haase talked about his recent work in the frameworks animation capabilities. The Tween class is now replaced by a lower level ‘Animator’ (or was it Animation?) Class, and the implementation was like music to my ears! He also went on the explain the higher level implementations of Effects… very cool…

Peter Elst delivered an interesting overview of the SQLite Features in Air1.5 in his typically coherent and well organized manner, always a pleasure

Mr. Spring ActionScript : Christophe Herreman discussed a bit of Inversion Of Control Theory, then went on to showcase his current project, how Spring ActionScript was is implemented in it and what the benefits are. I have to admit that although each time I read about the topic I understand a little bit more, yet, parts of it still flew way over my head. It’s a fascinating framework, and I have a great deal of respect for Christophe! He posted a very comprehensive summary of his presentation this morning on his blog.

Finally, my own presentation. Again, I’m not sure what Koen was thinking when he put me on as the last speaker… Talking about Invalidation Routines at 21:45 in the evening was, well, challenging Having said that, the presentation went smoothly, generated some laughs and I received positive feedback at the end, including the “If only you could have told me this one year ago”

Here be the slides:

…and probably more interesting, you can download the Flex project with all the source code here

Thanks again, and see you all at the next user group event!

Koen was kind enough to invite me to speak the FlexCamp at Sisa Antwerp. Given just 10 days headsup, I decided to go with my “Invalidation Routines Pounded into your cranium once and for all!” which I gave at the 360Flex earlier this year in Milan. If you are building Flex Components, and are not 100% clear on the uses and implementation of measure(), commitProperties() and updateDisplayList() are, then this is a must see. The original presentation was 90 minutes, this time it’s compressed to just 30, but I’ll still try to fit time to “dig a bit deeper” to keep it interesting for even the Flex Masters out there. I still see people getting this wrong, so I figure it’s a useful presentation. Apparently the event is pretty much sold out, so if you’re not one of the lucky ones, you can try the scalpers outside the door or by bribing Koen

Also, a wonderful case of “ask and thou shall receive”, Christophe Herreman blogged about the release of the Spring ActionScript last week, I asked if he might demo it at the FlexCamp, and within a few hours he was on the speaker list! I’m really looking forwards to that one!

See you there!