Yes finally we can start using the Flex SDK to build mobile AIR apps. Yes Flash has been on the mobile for quite a while however the many Flex dev's out there have been waiting to use the SDK for mobile. The latest version of Flash Builder "Burrito" has now been released on Adobe Labs it's currently a preview version as not everything has been completed yet. Details on Labs about mobile Flex development. Mobile development with Hero & Burrito.

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For my session at Flash Camp Birmingham I wanted to introduce people to declarative skinning within Flex. I was skinning Flex applications back in Flex 2 and to get the right visual appeal it was quite a tricky thing to get right. There was a reliance on heavy external assets brought into Flex and scaled using Scale9 techniques. There were many times I wanted to have better control of the UI I was creating through not only a more advanced CSS capability but without having to resort to creating skins from scratch directly with the Flash drawing API.

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Adobe Flex is a great platform to work with for creating rich engaging applications of all sizes for the web and now the desktop with AIR. Now we are at Flex version 3 and the next version Flex 4, which is the SDK, and the editor now called Flash Builder are just around the corner. There are a number of resources, guides and articles that I use regularly when building Flex or AIR applications. This is a growing resource so bookmark the page and feel free to suggest anything that I may have missed. Here we go then:

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As I mentioned in a previous post the Adobe Flex project for Prudential that I worked on has one a prestigious Revolution Award in the financial category. The retirement planner was the first RIA application for Prudential, however the decision to go with the Flex solution to provide a richer user experience has paid off. It's a shame that many companies shun the idea of breaking the mould and going with RIA technologies like Flex and AIR. This project goes to show that bold management and technical decisions, well designed and executed can produce a market leading innovate solution to drive revenue. So a big well done to all people on the Prudential Retire Your Way project. You can download the Revolution Awards 2009 winners PDF from here.

I have just been informed that an Adobe Flex application that I worked on last year has been shortlisted for a Revolution Award in the financial services category. The application is a retirement planning tool for Prudential in the UK and developed using web services in Adobe Flex 2. It guides the user through a journey of calculating how much money they are likely to have at retirement, find any possible shortfalls then save and review the information at a later date. I was the lead Flex UI developer and responsible for the skinning of the Flex user interface, transitions and custom view components. The project incorporated a custom Flex 3d chart that was built as an extension to the standard Flex charting components. The skinning was done using Flash CS3 assets as symbols and then applied using CSS and scale nine.

Launched in 1997, the Revolution Awards recognise digital marketers and their agencies for outstanding work in promoting products and services and have become the premier annual event for the digital marketing industry

The Prudential planner is up against Dare Digital for Barclays and Harvest Digital for NatWest in the finance category. You can download a PDF of the shortlisted contenders for the Revolution Awards 2009 from the site here. The project is now maintained in-house.