Colin Moock's guide to Flash for Flex programmers

One of the things that makes me laugh (and cry) about the Flex 2 documentation is that it implicitly assumes that the reader is familiar with Flash. Given that Flex is supposed to be a development environment targeted at traditional developers (familiar with Eclipse and source code control and the like), you'd think that it would be a fair assumption that at least a significant share of the readers of the Flex 2 doc set would be Java, C++ or C# programmers (like me) who are keen to understand how to build rich clients in Flex.

I guess that other newcomers to Flash will probably have the same frustrating time as I did trying to figure out how (and when) the AVM2 dispatches mouse, focus and keyboard events, how to refer to the instance's properties of a symbol created with Flash CS3 using the Flex Component Kit for Flash CS3, and how to write programmatic skins etc...

So I thought a guide to Flash for Flex programmers was needed and I even though about writing one. That is until I read Colin Moock's recently published Essential AS3 book. Section 2 is the essential "missing manual" on the AVM for Flex developers who don't come from a Flash background and Chapter 29 is the perfect introduction to the Flash IDE for Flex programmers.

One day there might be a book on the Flex class library of the same thoroughness and quality.

Flex's DateTimeAxis renders in GMT by default!

I have to admit to that fact that getting used to Flash's Date class has been a struggle, especially in its new localized form. If you instantiate a Date with a single parameter, it assumes the parameter you supply is the number of milliseconds since UNIX was cool, and it also assumes you're specifying the time in GMT. All is fine. If, however, you instantiate a Date with several parameters, (specifying the day, month and tear etc... separately) it assumes that you're specifying the date in "clock-on-the-wall" time. Once you've created the Date object, its toString() method renders the time in "clock-on -the-wall" time.

The fun really starts when you render a collection of Date objects using Flex Charting. Despite the fact that the Date class's toString() method renders UTC times in "clock-on-the-wall" format by default, the mx.charts.DateTimeAxis class renders Date objects in a line series in UTC by default. Thankfully the DateTimeAxis class has a property called displayLocalTime that you can set to "true" to get the Date objects rendered in "clock-on-the-wall" format but it's not the default.

Flex jobs at betfair.com in London, England

I recently joined betfair.com as the development lead for a new team responsible for reimplementing the gaming systems in Adobe Flex. We've already completed a beta and, because of the positive feedback, we now need to urgently grow the development team in London, England.

We're looking for talented developers who have experience of developing service-oriented smart clients in a team environment, ideally with first-hand experience of Adobe Flex2 and Cairngorm but strong candidates with experience of Java Swing and/or Windows Forms.NET will also be considered.

Launched in 2000, betfair.com is the world's leading online betting exchange with customers more than 35 countries. betfair.com provides a similar service for online betting that a "derivatives exchange" offers for the financial markets, just at a much bigger scale (over 1 billion trades were processed on the exchange last year). betfair.com is a profitable company with annual revenues exceeding GBP 140 million (USD 280m).

If you're interested in applying for one of these positions please send your resume to me at graeme dot harker at betfair dot com.