O’Reilly: Inside RIA

The latest release of Flash Catalyst Beta 2 has brought us a lot closer to having a shipping application. We now have the ability to set a host of properties for each object, easier access to skin the wireframe components, and support for video and 3D rotation. Unfortunately, we do not have a full component set available to us. The reason behind not having all the components in Flash Catalyst is due to the different component architecture used in the Flex 4 framework (Spark) versus the Halo components used in the Flex 3 framework. Until a component has been rewritten in the Spark framework, Flash Catalyst cannot use it. The most notable absence is the comboBox. In this article I will show you a simple method to recreate one by creating a custom component. It is not perfect, but it just might be able to tide you over until we have an official component from Adobe.

Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. Each AFT is designed to be quickly digested, usually only taking a few minutes to get up and running, and contains valuable information you can directly apply to your next Flash campaign. In this AFT I will go over - Photoshop for Developers.

It might be debatable whether a native app written Objective-C is an RIA, but most of the are internet connected at least part of the time and lots of the coolest iPhone apps I'm using run right in Safari on the iPhone. It's not however debatable whether or not iPhone has raised the bar for slick and aesthetically pleasing UIs and if you're going to develop a web app or native app for the iPhone you need to meet that bar to succeed. On that note here are a couple resources to make your iPhone apps look like Apple's very own apps!