Learn Adobe Flex in a week

Adobe Flex is an open source platform that allows you to create RIA (rich internet applications) easily that can run on all browsers and uses the Adobe Flash Player. This platform is of special interest to Salesforce users because Salesforce provides a flex toolkit that eases integration between Flex and the Salesforce APIs.

Adobe provides a easy to follow course that will get you up to speed with Flex at Flex in a Week.

Salesforce developers can go to the ADN website to learn more about integrating Flex with Salesforce.

Now is a great time to be a developer!

The state (past to present) of development – or now is a great time to be a developer

At start there was the mainframe with central deployment and support but with COBOL and CICS

Then we had the client-server model that used the powerful pc as the client which allowed better user experience and development tools but had the difficult deployment and support model.

The internet ushered a return to the simpler central deployment and support model. No more installations on separate client machines.

But the development and user experience also returned to page-based environment.

With the new slew of RIA environments (Flex, AIR, Ajax), and the corresponding frameworks, we are now returning to rich user experience with the development tools to match, while still keeping the central deployment/support model.