artima - Articles

Graphics in Flex 3 and Flex 4

by Chet Haase, July 7, 2010 Submit comment

With a demo app from his book, Flex 4 Fun, Chet Haase shows how Flex 4 enables a new, declarative model of drawing custom graphics objects in Flex code.

Hiring as a Core Competence

by Sean Landis, July 1, 2010 35 messages

Sean Landis, author of Agile Hiring, describes why he thinks hiring should be considered a core competence of software organizations and an important skill for software professionals.

State-Specific Property Values in Flex 4

by Chet Haase, June 21, 2010 Submit comment

With a demo app from his book, Flex 4 Fun, Chet Haase shows how to automate changes in property values when an application changes state.

Developer Productivity in Flash Builder 4

by Frank Sommers, May 7, 2010 Submit comment

Last month, Adobe released both the latest version of the open-source Flex SDK and its payware, Eclipse-based Flex development tool, Flash Builder. Many new features in Flex and Flash Builder are aimed to increase Flex developers' productivity. This article reviews the most important new Flash Builder productivity boosters.

States and Components in Flex 4

by Chet Haase, April 23, 2010 Submit comment

With a demo app from his book, Flex 4 Fun, Chet Haase shows how to make components visible only in specified application states in Flex 4.

Bend your Pixels with Flex 4

by Chet Haase, April 12, 2010 Submit comment

With a demo app from his book, Flex 4 Fun, Chet Haase explains pixel shaders in Flex 4, which allow you to provide arbitrary calculations on images at the pixel level.

Working with Images in Flex 4

by Frank Sommers, January 25, 2010 Submit comment

Adobe's Flash Player provides a sophisticated platform for client-side imaging applications. This article illustrates how to use the latest Flash Player 10 features from Flex 4 applications to efficiently manipulate images on the client, focusing on Pixel Bender image filters.

Defining "Done" in User Stories

by Victor Szalvay, January 6, 2010 2 messages

An increasing number of organizations are taking the plunge to Scrum, with or without professional coaching. Developers transitioning to Scrum can avoid many pitfalls by following a handful of hard-learned principles. In this article, I discuss a common mistake with the popular "user story" requirements format: poorly defined done criteria.

What's New in Flex 4 Effects

by Frank Sommers, November 10, 2009 Submit comment

Flex 4 introduces a new API to define effects for rich-client applications. This article provides an overview of new features in Flex 4's effects and animation-related APIs.

Scala's Stackable Trait Pattern

by Bill Venners, September 30, 2009 6 messages

This article describes a Scala design pattern in which traits provide stackable modifications to underlying core classes or traits.

Time is the New Memory

by Bill Venners, September 21, 2009 46 messages

In this interview, Clojure creator Rich Hickey suggests that the problems people associate with shared state are problems of time. He compares the lack of automatic time management in today's mainstream languages to the lack of automatic memory management in languages such as C++.

Working with States in Flex 4

by Frank Sommers, September 16, 2009 3 messages

Flex 4's new syntax simplifies working with application states. This article provides a tutorial introduction into UI state management with Flex 4, and includes a complete example.

Scala's Selfless Trait Pattern

by Bill Venners, September 4, 2009 4 messages

This article describes a simple Scala design pattern that allows library designers to provide services that their clients can access either through mixins or imports. Giving users a choice between mixin composition and importing makes a library easier to use.

Creating a Custom Look and Feel for Flex 4 Components

by Frank Sommers, September 1, 2009 1 message

An important feature in Flex 4 is a new component architecture, Spark, that allows a complete separation of a component's view from its display logic. This article provides a tutorial introduction to creating custom Flex 4 skins using the Spark architecture.

Skinning and Components in Flex 4's Spark Architecture

by Frank Sommers, August 11, 2009 2 messages

Allowing developers and designers to work together on the same Flex project is a key theme of the open-source Flex 4 SDK. An important enabler of designer-developer workflow in Flex 4 is a new component architecture, Spark, that separates the visual elements of a Flex component from other component logic. This article describes the basic principles of the Spark architecture, and how Spark makes it easier for developers and designers to work together.