2007-10-30

Intellij supporting Flex

Once upon a time I used to be a big Intellij user, before the popularity of Eclipse. Love the IDE and actually I still do, but since everyone at my company uses Eclipse and of course due to Flex Builder, I haven't used Intellij in years. However I was recently looking at the feature set of Intellij 7.0 and noticed something interesting, they support Flex! So I was ok, let's download and see what they mean. So I did play around with it for an hour or so and here is what I discovered.

For MXML, they do syntax coloring but there is no code-hinting as far as MXML properties are concerned. But if I remember from way back, there is way to configure this in Intellij if you have the schema for MXML. One thing I noticed is that code-hinting does work for any AS code you write in a script block in an MXML component. As for ActionScript classes, they do syntax coloring and some code hinting, because they are basically supporting the ECMA 4.0 standard, which ActionScript 3.0 implements. One cool thing I noticed is basic refactoring is also supported which is great!

Unfortunately there is no way to point Intellij to your Flex SDK of choice (either 2.01 or 3.0) so it can provide code-hinting/auto-completion for the framework classes. As for compiling, you can configure Intellij to run externals applications, so basically point it to mxmlc with the right parameters and you should be ok.

So it is a good start for those using Intellij and building applications using Flex. I am sure someone will build a Flex plug-in at some point in the near future that will do even more, or JetBrains will simply upgrade their current support. Great to see that a major IDE has acknowledge the presence of Flex in this large development world :)

2007-10-23

DB access with j2flex

You know a technology is getting more popular as people start releasing more add-ons for it, and it is no difference for Flex. For those who are not keen on server-side development, someone is trying to make things simpler are the name is j2flex. It is for Java-only and allows you to do object-to-RDMS mapping from the UI all the way down to the database. Definitely something that certain people will be interested in, so give it a go if it peaks your interested....oh wait, there is nothing to download! I guess they forgot that, or it is coming soon. Guess you will have to wait :) Till then you can head over there and read about it.

Register for RIA Developer Camp

Adobe is holding an RIA Developer Camp in San Fran in a couple of week, sign up here: http://www.eventsadobe.com/devcamp/index.html

Great chance to learn about the latest Flex and AIR stuff and meet people!

2007-10-18

Genesis

Well here I am, blogging for the first time. My name is Dimitrios "Jimmy" Gianninas from Montreal, Canada and I have been in the Flex ecosystem since the beginning basically. You may have read one of the articles I wrote on Adobe's DevNet or seen me post on Flexcoders. I am basically going to use this blog to post things regarding interesting things I come across as I develop in Flex and Java at work and also share a Flex component or two as we go along!