Chakra Media blog

Apollo was released on labs a yesterday so I downloaded and installed the Apollo Runtime as well as the Flex extensions and the and the SDK. This seems like a really cool technology, being able to use my existing web skills (Flash, Flex, HTML) to build rich Internet applications that are first-class citizens on the desktop. I can't wait to give it a try. There was a cool demo by that maniac Lee Brimelow on his Flex blog using PaperVision3D in a full transparency Apollo app. Check it. I've been following PV3D for the past few months and there's some really talented people from all over the world who are involved in pushing it forward, with new people signing up everyday. It's exciting to see the open-source movement pushing Flash in such a cool direction. Hopefully I'll get some free time soon to post a few demos of my own...

OK, so i recently built my first Flex app and was surprised at how simple it was to create a blog reader. (example was direct from the tutorials)... what I really find interesting (and look forward to learning) is the ability to blend both Flex and Flash content for truly amazing, immersive, high performance experiences. Flex offers a richer experience than a traditional page-based model, but it can still be somewhat ugly.... especially since it's geared towards developers who are less 'design' oriented. I think Flash designers/developers have a great opportunity to become the bridge between design and technology and continue to push the web in a forward direction. Flex offers great tools to interact with data and I think the fun part is learning how to 'flex' your Flash muscles to express the capabilities of this new development model... It's an exciting time to be a Flash/Flex developer and I hope more Flash designers will make the leap and explore Flex.

The crew over at Asual just released SWFAddress 1.0 which not only provides one of the cleanest solutions for enabling back button and deep link support, but provides a sweet technique that enables search engine indexing for those deep links.(nice!) I think this is a great milestone for the Flash community as SEO (and back button support) has always been a thorn in the side of Flash web development. Finally, the 'search engine' argument can be put to rest and hopefully people will start using this great tool. Thank you, Maria and Rostislav, for taking the time to do this and release it under open source. Your efforts are greatly appreciated.