Using Built-In ASDoc Help in Flash Builder 4.5

I wanted to share some tips I have learned from an article posted on Adobe’s Flex Doc Team blog by Mallika Yelandur. The post is on how to use some of the built-in tools in Flash Builder to access ASDoc materials for ActionScript and the Flex framework–right within Flash Builder itself.

I put together a quick screencast to demonstrate the features. My colleague Brian Rinaldi also posted about this cool hidden feature on his blog as well.

Happy coding!

An Open Letter to Flex Mobile Skinners

Over the last few days I have been working with Flex for mobile and have been struggling with the skinning workflow. The workflow for browser-based Flex is pretty clear and well documented with support in Catalyst and Creative Suite to make it pretty seamless. For mobile it isn’t as clear.

So I have been doing some research on best practices for Flex mobile skinning from the user experience designer perspective. How do I create assets for the mobile developer to use? What are the design constraints? What are the various skin parts of the mobile components that I need to hit?

What experiences have you had? Are there resources that you have found helpful? Where are the biggest gaps or problems you have had when working with Flex mobile skinning?

Add your comments below…Would love to get your thoughts…

Mapping Design and Develop Disciplines

The world of interactive design and development has significantly grown and expanded in the last few years. Frameworks and tools, like Flex and Flash Catalyst, have expanded the capabilities of the designers and developers that work together to create content and applications. With this expansion however, we have delineated the world as two hemispheres: designers or developers. The reality though is that all of us are a varying combination of disciplines, some are designer-based, some are developer-based. It is through the combination of these disciplines that give us all unique value in projects and teams. We also look at these disciplines to help expand and grow our own abilities and skills. To help define this dynamic world a bit better a new model is needed. This discipline map is a good first step to represent who we are and how we fit in with our peers and colleagues.