Flex 3 and AIR are getting close to launch and in preparation, the Adobe Platform Evangelist team is traveling to select cities to show off the great new features and some brand new demos.

Flex 3 is a feature-packed release, adding new UI components like the advanced datagrid and improved CSS capabilities; powerful tooling additions like refactoring; and extensive testing tools including memory and performance profiling, plus the addition of the automated testing framework to Flex Builder.

Adobe AIR is game-changing in so many ways, extending rich applications to the desktop, enabling access to the local file system, system tray, notifications and much more. Now you can write desktop applications using the same skills that you've been already using to create great web apps including both Flex and AJAX.

Don't miss out on the opportunity to see and hear about this highly anticipated release of Flex 3 and AIR during this special pre-release tour. Plus, in addition to giving away some one of a kind Flex/AIR branded schwag, we will also be raffling off a copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional (pending availability) and a full commercial copy of CS3 Web Premium at this event!

Check out the comprehensive listing of dates at flex.org/tour to see if the tour is coming to your city!

Tom Link jumped quickly into a technical discussion about events and what they were. Within minites he had us looking at code and explaining what events were. We were shown slides with examples of what events are in Flex as well as ColdFusion. We then were told that event handlers handle events that are dispatched by components. A mouth full.

Within 20 minutes however it was clear to me that the presentation was geared to a level of developer who was already familiar with asynchronous execution. As a developer who codes strictly in ColdFusion (and CF is generally considered synchronous) I was a bit lost. I understood the event concept, but the examples appeared to assume you had already coded asyncrhonously. Large quantities of code were modified on screen. It is very clear to me that I'll need to study the whole event handler concept prior to the Flex training in San Jose that I will be taking in a few weeks.

According to an acquisitions editor for the Adobe Press/Newriders/Pearson group that was here, it looks like August is about the earliest we can expect a Flex 2 book to be available from their imprints. I know there is a Flex 1 or 1.5 book available, but since Flex 2 is so radically different it may not be worth buying. There should be plenty of documentation available online as well as blogs to keep you busy for the next few months.

Imagine 3 hours of dedicated example time with Jason Delmore, Mike Nimer, Dean Harmon and another senior CF developers.

Now imagine a large auditorium with 70+ people trying to install Flexbuilder and ColdFusion updaters in mass, from <20 CDs.

:-)

We spent over an hour trying to get everyone's laptops fully updated/installed with Flex Builder, CF updates, CFEclipse, etc.

I did have a chance to ask Mike Nimer, the developer of Flash Forms (in CF) on how to get my flash forms working on a host/ISP. There is a known configuration problem where ISPs aren't mapping the /CFIDE/scripts folder in CF and aren't making it readily available to developers on their servers. One can upload your own copy of the folder & files to their working directory and then in a CF form, add the scripts="/cfide/scripts" or similar path to their form tag. This should allow CF to find the necessary files to create the flash forms.

Two hours into the demo and we have accomplished surprisingly little. We briefly saw a demo and now there is Adobe staff banter. The majority of the audience appears to be completely lost. Dean knows his stuff...which is nice, but he keeps jumping ahead of everyone. I'm quickly loosing interest in this presentation and a number of people around me are too. We are sitting farther from our computers and just watching and not trying to keep up.

Ladies & Gentleman, you just missed organized chaos.