Review of The Flex Authority Inaugural Issue - Part 2

In the prior edition of my review, I covered the first half of the first issue of Flex Authority. However, as I said in that review, this issue is so full of content that it couldn't possibly fit into a single review. In this edition we will cover articles by Charlie Key, Theo Rushin Jr., Lief Wells, Johnny Boursiquot, Giorgio Natili and yours truly.

Synchronous SQLite Database Queries in AIR by Charlie Key
Charlie gives a good overview of handling synchronous database operations in AIR and SQLite. He covers the basics of writing CRUD database operations for SQLite and then builds a simple task manager sample application. The application simply allows you to add edit and delete tasks that are displayed in a data grid. All the data is held in a SQLite database and it does not synchronize with an online database but it offers a good introduction to the basics of working with the local database API.

To Be or Not To Be...Online That Is by Theo E. Rushin, Jr.
Theo covers how to use the provided API's to determine whether an application is connected or not and when the connectivity changes. There are examples offered of the network change event as well as the URLMonitor. The URLMonitor example goes into some depth covering using the default behavior as well as showing how you can manage the polling interval. As with Charlie's article before it, this is a good introductory level tutorial for AIR.

Ten Questions with the Merapi Team Leaders by Lief Wells
Throughout the journal, Lief Wells offers brief product and site showcases. Most of these are two short to review, but he also contributed a long interview with Adam Flater and Dave Meeker who lead the Merapi Project (which is under the auspices of my employer, Universal Mind). The goal of the Merapi project is to enable communication between AIR and Java. Among other things, this allows access to hardware and operating system values that aren't available directly to AIR. They hope to have a "hands-on" feature in the next Flex Authority.

Quickly Integrating PDFs Into Your AIR Applications by Johnny Boursiquot
Johnny shows how to easily add PDFs into your application but then dives deeper into checking for Acrobat Reader compatibility. In addition, several scenarios are covered where PDF behavior within AIR might not work as expected. Next Johnny discusses how to communicate with a loaded PDF using JavaScript; no examples are given but he does direct us to some good documentation on the topic. Lastly, the article briefly touches on the topic of the options available for creating PDFs in AIR, though, again, no specific examples are shown. I actually hope that Johnny considers following up this article with a more in depth look at these last two items.

Updating Your AIR Application by Giorgio Natili
Giorgio fills the reader in on various strategies for updating your AIR applications. The first discussed is updating the entire application. Giorgio shows how you can check for new versions, download the new version and update the application via ActionScript. Next, Giorgio covers updating "plug-ins" for your application. This assumes you have built your application using "modules" that can be loaded at run-time. Some code is shown though I probably need to give this section a re-read as at some point I got lost (not blaming the author). The next topic is updating application data that can be synchronized and stored locally in SQLite. Finally, the beta Update Framework APIs are discussed, though briefly.

Hello Mate: A Beginner's Guide to the Mate Flex Framework by Me
Judging my article, which covers Nahuel Foronda and Laura Arguello's Mate framework, is like trying to critique the work of a master artist; its like trying to decide which of Michael Phelps gold medals is the best. The article is a masterwork, showing not only why one might want to use Mate but also how it compares to Cairngorm. I do so by building an outstanding example application for getting DNS queries. Its enough to leave you breathless in awe of my intellectual achievement. Its no wonder the editors of Flex Authority saved it for last (in case you don't get it, I am kidding).

In Conclusion: The Journal Overall
I am very pleased with the Flex Authority and look forward to future issues. If I had one minor critique it would be that there were too many beginner level articles. Nonetheless, I think this is a excellent start and there is enough content in there that I am certain beginner's and experts alike will find some bit of learning in there to justify the subscription cost. So, what are you waiting for? Subscribe now!