My old colleagues at the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia are hiring for a ColdFusion and Flex developer position.
I have probably said this before but Wharton is an incredible place to work. It promises better than decent pay, interesting work, brilliant co-workers, and incredible benefits.
This got lost a little in the shuffle around MAX. If you’re interested in teaching RIA development, or Flex development in general have we got a site for you:
Rich Internet Application teaching resources
We’ve brought together a wide range of resources for you here including small tutorials, course project ideas, best practice documents, and book recommendations. All it all, a one stop for designing RIA courses around the Flash Platform.
I thought I had seen the best discount for MAX a few weeks ago, when I blogged about the educational/governmental/non-profit discount. It seems that I was wrong. There’s an even lower one for students:
That’s a phenomenal price. If you are a student and want to take advantage of it:
We have educational/governmental/non-profit pricing for MAX this year. If you qualify as any of these groups, MAX will cost you $995. This is the best rate I’ve seen for MAX tickets to date, so jump on it.
To get the educational pricing, use the code EDU966, as noted on our Educators at MAX site.
To get non-profit or governmental pricing, email questions@max.adobe.com and they will assist you with a promotional code.
I’ve been working on a class for some of our higher education community members. I take the class from an Illustrator comp, through Flash Catalyst, then Flash Builder, and Flex to a Flex Application, then on to an AIR application. Because I’m starting in Catalyst, when I get to the AIR application I don’t really want to use AIR’s chrome. Rather, I’d like to go chromeless and let the UI handle things like closing the application and whatnot.
I found a good tutorial on doing chromeless AIR applications. But no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get rid of this big blank whitespace in my application, despite following the directions to the letter.
After a lot of trial and error it turns out that the old way of making the Application background disappear using CSS (step 6 in the article) doesn’t work with the new component model. Instead you have to use a custom skin on the WindowedApplication tag.
The following skin works for me. I’m by no means an expert at this skinning stuff yet, but it gets the job done.
Now let me make it clear. There may be another way to do this. There may be a better way of doing it. It’s also possible that this is the flat out wrong way to do it. But when I searched for this, I got nothing. So I figured, I could at least help somebody just get the job done, and worry about “the right way” later.
We’re now taking applications for the 2009 Max Awards. Of special interest… there’s a new category this year dedicated to Education. I hope to see some familiar faces in competition for that.
Go to the Max Awards Site for more details.
I’m pleased to announce that Adobe has released the official curriculum for teaching ColdFusion today! There are two tracks:
Both courses are available for download at our education site: ColdFusion 8: Introduction and Advanced Development
A couple of my educational customers have asked me this, and I figured I would come up with a canonical (for me at least) answer.
How do I get Adobe Software with educational pricing?
Free Software
Both ColdFusion and Flex Builder are free for Students, Faculty, or Staff using them for academic purposes. In order to take advantage of that, you have to go to either the Flex or ColdFusion FreeRIATools site. The only thing you have to do to secure the software is prove you are eligible. The easiest way to do so is to take a picture of your student ID and send it in. I know from experience that they accept that.
If you would like to obtain a bulk license for a lab or classroom, you can do it through that site. You just:
Discounted Software
In North America, Adobe has a tool that will allow you to search for local resellers for our products. I did a spot check for the Philadelphia area (my local), and it looked very up to date.
Adobe – Find an education reseller
In Europe (and North America) Adobe products can be found online at Studica. Additionally Fuzzy Orange, can also resell Adobe software and provide educational discounts. They do not have a online catalog/store, but if you contact them they will be more than happy to help you out.
In other parts of the world, the online Adobe store has an educational section:
I’m not convinced this covers everyone so if you can’t find a way to buy Adobe products for Higher Education in your country or region, let me know, and I’ll research it.
I got to see a very cool use for Flex and AIR in Higher Education today. It’s the DMD Project from the Masters in Human-Computer Interaction Program at Carnegie Mellon University.
It’s a prototype RIA for patient management at dental offices. It was designed for touch screens, but also can be used with the traditional keyboard and mouse interface as well. It shows everything dentists, hygienists, and front office staff would need to manage the entire patient interaction.
I got a chance to talk with one of the developers, Jaanus Kase, about it. He told me that they spent most of their time upfront researching how exactly dentist’s offices would need to interact with a system. That yielded a few custom interfaces, including the “radiograph view” which the rest of us just know as “an x-ray of all of your teeth.” The other cool thing I noticed was the high emphasis they place on important information like “Severe Penicillin Allergy.” Clearly, this program really does focus on quality computer-human interactions.
The project itself is a prototype; don’t expect to see it in your dentist’s office anytime soon. But the app is available as an AIR application for your review.
Jaanus is done with the Masters program now, and is working with an startup in New York named World Evolved.
I’ve seen a couple of tweets around this, and instead of trying to answer every one in 140 characters, I’m instead going to point people to this article.
Get the Developer’s Version of ColdFusion
The developer’s version of ColdFusion is free. It’s not a trial version; it is just free, but with a few restrictions. It is limited in the number of IP addresses it will answer to, and certain featured like cfdocument and cfchart get watermarks placed in their generated content. If you purchase a licensed copy, this version can be upgraded without a reinstall.
In addition to the Developer’s Version a Full trial version is available. It is not limited in ability, but will only run for only 30 days. If you purchase a licensed copy, this version can also be upgraded without a reinstall.
Download the free developer’s version or trial version of ColdFusion
Also I will point out that if you are a member of the Faculty, Student Body, or Staff at a Higher Education institution using ColdFusion for academic purposes, then you are eligible for a free license.
Apply for a free license of ColdFusion for Education.
Pick an Editor/IDE
There are a few options to choose from for editing ColdFusion. Obviously any text editor will work, but there are a few choices if you are looking for an editor with language support for ColdFusion.
Dreamweaver has color coding, language reference and RDS integration with ColdFusion. It is an especially attractive option if you are coming from another web technology and already working with it. If not you can also try it out its demo version.
Download the trial version of Dreamweaver
CFEclipse is a pretty full featured editor for ColdFusion. It is an especially attractive option if you are working with Eclipse already as a Java developer, or using Flex Builder.
Getting started with CFEclipse
Finally, although it is not available today, the Adobe project currently named “Bolt” is a ColdFusion IDE. I’d bet on it becoming the standard tool for ColdFusion development when it comes out.
Learn about ColdFusion
Pretty much everyone will point you to the Adobe ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit, Volumes 1, 2, and 3. Combined they are pretty daunting, but you are just getting started, so buy volume 1 for now. Disclaimer: the first author of the book is Ben Forta, for whom I work. I would still recommend it even if I didn’t.
Also available is community member John Farrar’s book ColdFusion 8 Developer Tutorial. I haven’t read it, but check it out and see if it is more your style.
In addition to the book route, there is a ton of information available on the Adobe Developer Center. The include simple how to’s and higher level articles like theory behind high availability.
Connect with Other ColdFusion Developers
There are several ways to tap into the ColdFusion Community. Here are just a few:
Also deserving special mention is ColdFusionBloggers.org. This site was setup by Ray Camden, and is a ColdFusion only blog aggregator. Ray’s pretty aggressive about policing the list (and publicizing the site 😉 ) so in many ways it’s a better resource than AXNA.
Get Open Source ColdFusion Code
A few years back Ray Camden started RIAForge as a place to store Open Source applications written for ColdFusion and Flex. Currently it has over 600 projects. Check it out before you try and reinvent the wheel.
RIAForge open source code for Adobe technologies
Online Video Presentations
There are a few collections of ColdFusion audio and video presentations by some of the best voices in the community.
I’ll add more to this as I find new ones, or people point out to me which obvious ones I’ve forgotten or not explained enough.
tpryan.blog 