There is much debate about the best backend for Flex applications. Here at IE we’re using PHP, mainly because it’s what we know, and what we’re good at. We’ve also been using the Zend Framework for our PHP development for some time now.

So we were very encouraged yesterday, when we saw that Adobe and Zend have announced that they are collaborating to make the integration between the Zend Framework and the Flex Framework even better. It’s always nice to hear that what you’ve been doing anyway is being officially recognised as a good way of doing it!

Read more about the collaboration on the Flex Team Blog.

It’s great that we have a company such as Google who can throw time and money into projects such as this. The internet giant has started to beta a new Web browser that will hopefully meet the demands of today’s Web users. The premise for Google Chrome is sound; the designers of today’s widely used Web browsers did not envision that the Web would be used how it is today. We’re not simply browsing the Web anymore, we’re interacting with a number of Web applications that users demand the levels of performance, reliability and security usually expected from our traditional desktop applications. The brains at Google have aimed to build a Web browser from scratch to satisfy the stringent requirements we so demand. Continue reading

With the 360|Flex conference at the beginning of last week came several announcements for new and exciting stuff that is coming in Flex 4 (and CS4).

The Next Dimension of Rich Experiences (360|Flex Keynote) Mark Anders

As this video alone is over an hour long, I thought I’d summarize some of what I think are the most interesting advancements below.

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With the Olympics in full swing, many of us have been inspired to dust off our bicycles, running shoes, or leotards (!) but for the designers/developers among us it also inspires something else… The need to create cool and/or useful things around it based, of course, on the latest technology - in this case AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) applications.

AIR allows you to build desktop-based applications from web-based technologies like Flash, Flex, HTML and JavaScript. There are a few AIR apps that have been around for some time now and are becoming increasingly well known - such as eBay Desktop and the Google Analytics reporting tool (by Nicholas Lierman).

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Web accessibility is a buzz word many developers bandy around without much in the way of explanation. It seems obvious that accessibility is important - after all, the more people who can access your website the better - but what other advantages does accessibility offer, and is it really as important as we techies seem to make out?

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