Today Adobe Announced COCOMO.

From labs.adobe.com

“Codename “Cocomo” is a Platform as a Service that allows Flex developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA (rich Internet applications). Comprised of both Flex-based client components and a hosted services infrastructure, Cocomo allows you to build real-time, multi-user applications with Flex in less time than ever before. And because Acrobat.com hosts the service, issues like deployment, maintenance, and scalability are taken care of for you.

Add social features to your existing Flex apps or build totally new ones, such as real-time productivity/collaboration apps, multiplayer games, and audio/video chat.”

Real-time social features that can be added to Web applications include:

* Robust Data Messaging
* VoIP Audio
* Webcam Video
* Real-Time File Sharing
* Text Chat
* Contextual Presence

This is very exciting. This will open up new possibilities for Flash Platform to create Real Time social applications which will enable to communicate efficiently and easily.

Links:

Cocomo @ Adobe Labs : http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/cocomo/

I can’t talk more Experience new flex.org

• Go through Adobe® Flex(tm) 2 DeveloperExam Guide to get the overall idea of exam.
• Refer Flex 2 Developer’s Guide This will help you to cover all areas of flex.
• Refer Programming ActionScript 3 for High Level reference of ActionScript 3.0

This is just a reference material but you experience will count.

Exam questions are come from four areas mentioned in Developer Exam guide.

1. Flex Application User Interface (UI) Creation
   IF you have played with most of UIcomponent of Flex you can easily answer the questions. But questions will not be straight forward it will be well twisted so it requires good attention while reading question.
2. Flex System Architecture and Design
   You should have really good knowledge of flex component architecture and must know how to created loosely coupled component. You should also know basic UML diagram techniques like Inheritance, Implementing interface etc.
3. Flex Application Programming Fundamentals
   You need to have knowledge of OOPS programming and Core AS3 programming like String, Array etc.
4. Integrating with Remote Data and Flex Applications
   If you have worked extensively with flex but haven’t played much with data integration with flex then this will be very difficult area for you. You have for prepare and practice well to understand RPC services features for flex and have good understanding of LCDS

Reading is fine for certification but after all “Experience Matters”

Following are currently work in progress milestones.

Scope determined: April 2008
Beta 1: Late 2008
4.0 Final: 2009

You can follow Flex 4 SDK page for more feature announcements.

I can say only 1 thing about 360|Flex Atlanta “It Rocks”.

I have attended many interesting sessions

• Axel Jensen – Understanding the component LifeCycle
• Ben Clinkinbeard – Creating Polished Custom Components
• Christophe Coenraets – The Future of Data Services
• Andrew Powell – Building Java Powered Flex Applications.
• Jun Heider – Memory management and optimization
• Flex 4: What’s cooking  Deepa Subramaniam

I have delivered session on “Creating cool frontend Apps: using Flex and JavaScript” which went very well. I have demoed my experimental application “svWord” online word processor using Flex and Javascript (using Zoho Api). svWord will be online soon…

Overall it was great learning experience.

Flex Developer Guide is best resource to learn flex and prepare for Adobe Certified Flex Developer Exam.

Here is a link

Flex Visual component are created with the class hierarchy of several ActionScript class to provide more flexibility and add more features at the different level of hierarchy.

Following is a visual representation of class hierarchy of Flex Visual Components:

Object: Object is a Top/Root Level class of AactionScript class hierarchy. | More Info…

EventDispatcher: EventDispatcher class extends object class. EvenDispacher class allows any object on the display list to be an event target. | More Info

DisplayObject: Display Object class extends object and this is the base class for all objects which can be added in the DisplayList. Display object class allows some properties (x, y, width, height )for components/Objects like MovieClip, Button, TextField etc. | More Info

InteractiveObject: InteractiveObject extends DisplayObject and it is an abstract base class for all DisplayObject with which user can interact. InteractiveObject provides some common properties like doubleClickEnabled, focusRect, tabIndex etc… and Events like all mouse Events, Keyboard Events. | More Info

DisplayObjectContainer: DisplayObjectContainer extends InteractiveObject class and it is a base shell for all containers which adds display objects in the container shell. . DisplayObjectContainer provides some common properties like numChildren, tabChildren etc and methods like addChild(), removeChilld() method related to the child display object management. .. | More Info

FlexSprite: FlexSprite is a subclass of the Player’s Sprite class and the superclass of UIComponent. It overrides the toString() method to return a string indicating the location of the object within the hierarchy of DisplayObjects in the application. The Sprite class is a basic display list building block: a display list node that can display graphics and can also contain children. | More Info

UIComponent: UIComponent extends Sprite and it is a base class for all Interactive and non Interactive component. The UIComponent class is not used as an MXML tag, but is used as a base class for other classes. | More Info

All Visual Components like VBox, HBox, Canvas, Button etc. extends UIComponent.

Hope this article will help you. Any Comments?

My topic will be covering following points and much more.

• Flex and JavaScript Hand in Hand.
• Integration and communication between Flex and JavaScript.
• Flex and Ajax Bridge.
• Simple approaches to achieve most usable UI using Flex and JavaScript.
• Building word processor using flex and javascript.
• Drag and Drop management between Flex Component and JavaScript component.
• Some Examples
• Q and A

This session will bring up light on many good technique and challenges while working with flex and JavaScript.

See you @ 360Flex Atlanta.

Register for 360Flex Atlanta / Europe

WOW-Engine is a free AS3 open source physics engine written by Seraf ( Jme Birembaut ) capable to handle positions in a 3D environment.

WOW-Engine use Sandy library for all the 3D mathematical computations (matrix, 3D vector, plane). The inner architecture of the engine is also inspired by Sandy™s one.

It is good to see that flex 3D coming in good way.

Checkout more details here