John C. Bland II

Ok…maybe it isn’t 1:1 in terms of skills/knowledge but consider the age of today. 5 years ago mobile stylesheets were the rave and were dang near required for every mobile device out there. Now? Nope. With Webkit running rampit on smartphones and smartphones becoming the normal end user phone, with the surge of iPhone and Android devices on the market, there is a shift from doing strict mobile development to making sure your site works on the web and Webkit.

This is pretty key and very interesting in terms of the direction our industry is heading right now. Mobile dev’ is not gone though. You still have a need to provide a scaled down version of your site, depending on what it is and depending on whether you’re using some device that can’t deliver the “whole web” or not (lol; yes, that’s a jab), for mobile devices. I much prefer not having to load non-mobile optimized ads or a two-mile navigation when attempting to load a simple blog, hint hint…mine.

Either way…the point of this post is to have web developers now consider the market and device changes bringing more mobile to your web experience. Consider mobile when building your sites.

Just a quick note here. The videos speak for themselves. They prove the marketing wheel is a big beast and people flock to what is believed to be true vs what is true, reference to Seth Godin’s book as enlightened by @simpulton. Think for yourselves people!

Steve Jobs HTML5 web experience on the iPad
- @iBrent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4

HTML5 vs Flash – Developer Perspective
- michaelsv10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVjIsL8qwNw

Disclaimer:
I in no way am discounting every point Jobs made. He made some good one’s but he is far from being accurate, IMO.

I’ll shelve off ranting about anything for now. There are a couple points I want to make then I’m out.

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Last night I spoke at the AZFPUG and AZCFUG Flex 4 Release party. I am thoroughly happy I did!

What fun it is talking about something you’re passionate about and Flex 4 is definitely something I thoroughly enjoy working in and talking about. With that said, most of what I talked about was pulled directly from Flex 4 in Action. I had my fair share of plugs for the book throughout the meeting. Hey…it is a great book, biased or not.

Technically something always happens and, according to @nathanstrutz, I didn’t have enough dongles. I was missing my display connector(s) but thankfully @simpulton saved the day by bringing a couple and one worked. Big props to Ron Haberle for buying one. It wasn’t the right one but the effort must be awarded some kudos.

One example failed to work. It was about rotating an image around the center and the rotate not affecting the layout. Well…I ran the same exact code today…worked! BOGUS! To demonstrate, I put the code online for all to see how it works (view source is included). For simplicity, here is the mxml for the swf:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:Application xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" 
               xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark" viewSourceURL="srcview/index.html">
  <s:layout>
    <s:VerticalLayout paddingLeft="100" paddingTop="100" />
  </s:layout>
  <fx:Declarations>
    <s:Rotate id="effect" target="{image}" angleBy="45" 
              applyChangesPostLayout="true" autoCenterTransform="true" />
  </fx:Declarations>
  <s:BitmapImage id="image" source="@Embed('images/flex.jpg')" />
  <s:Button id="mybutton" label="Click Me!" click="effect.play()" />
</s:Application>

Other than that, everything was pretty smooth and I filled up 2 hours showing off Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4 goodies. What’s crazy is I had even MORE to talk about. Flex 4 is a beefy upgrade and solves so many problems. It shines a light on the fact that more online tutorials, videos, etc are needed. Ahem…maybe I’ll get some done soon.

#azfpug and #azcfug, thanks for having me. Catching up with everyone was a true treat. Keep rockin’ guys and keep @simpulton out of the weight room. That dude is lookin’ buff!!! lol

UPDATE

Here are some tweets about the preso:
@lavonwoods – here
@simpulton – here
@bwohl – here and here
@nathanstrutz – here
@alanrother – here

This is going to be a huge treat for me. I’m flying to AZ for the first time since I left AZ for TX to attendee speak at the Arizona Flash Platform Users Group April 2010 meeting, their official Flex 4 release meeting.

Since I’m friends with the majority of the group, I’ll be pretty informal but still keeping a planned preso together. I like keeping it lose cuz those guys know their stuff and they always have excellent questions/requests of me (remember the Command Pattern in 10 minutes impromptu preso? That was interesting. lol). With that said, it probably will not be recorded but I gladly will if they are OK with that.

Either way…AZ will be bumpin’ some Flex 4 come Wednesday!