nwebb

Flex, Flash, AIR

Video Tutorials

Note: I may move these tutorials to YouTube at a later date. Rather than link directly to a specific video I strongly recommend that you link to this page. If I move the tutorials I will keep the links on this page updated.

Disclaimer: The creation of these videos is as much a way of teaching myself as it is of passing on information. I will do my best to relay accurate information at all times, but it it quite possible that I may make a mistake or unintentionally misinform , especially when tackling a subject that is new to me.  Please bear that in mind … and constructive feedback is always most welcome. You can email me directly neil[ AT ]nwebb.co.uk :)

1. Installing Apache, mySQL, PHP & AMFPHP (4:48)
Set up your machine ready for Flex and PHP-remoting! This video takes you through the setup for Apache (webserver), mySQL (database) and PHP from scratch, using a popular all-in-one package called XAMPP. It is aimed primarily at Windows users but XAMPP is available for Mac and Linux too.

2. “Hello World!” PHP remoting example (9:31)
Create your first Flex/PHP remoting example. This video demonstrates how to write a basic service in PHP and how to get your Flex application talking to it. I also cover a little bit about phpEclipse, though it is not required.

3. “Hello Mate!” (PHP remoting example) (24:14)
Mate (pronounced ‘Mah-tey’) is a tag-driven event based architectural framework for Flex. In this video I cover the Hello World example given on the Mate website. I use PHP-remoting rather than Coldfusion, meaning you can leverage the knowledge gained from my first two video tutorials.

4. “AIR – reading in a file” (12:04)
An AIR tutorial for beginners showing how to load & display a simple text file, and also how to retrieve the file icon for display.

5. “AIR – recursively searching through directories for a particular file type” (10:37)
An AIR tutorial for beginners showing how we can look through a directory and its subdirectories, in order to retrieve files of a particular type.

17 comments

17 Comments so far

  1. New Flex video tutorials out on the web | Cyril Hanquez November 6th, 2008 1:48 am

    [...] I always found video tutorials very valuable as an addition to an article or a course. So I wish him Good Luck! Go to his new Video Tutorials Page. [...]

  2. shaun November 7th, 2008 2:19 pm

    Thanks! Found the “Hello Mate!” video tutorial very handy – I’ve been meaning to dig into Mate for quite a while, and this was a nice way to get up to speed quickly. Also enjoyed the little Eclipse tips :)

    Interesting that you use phpEclipse. I tried it out for a while, but found that the code completion was often incorrect – almost always generated a huge list of options that were outside the scope of my context. I’ve found PDT to be a little more accurate in that regard, but a bit harder to set up – especially PDT2 for Ganymede.

    Anyhow, great tut, thanks again!

  3. shaun smith » Blog Archive » AMFPHP and Mate Video Tutorials November 7th, 2008 2:34 pm

    [...] http://nwebb.co.uk/blog/?page_id=241 [...]

  4. pbohny November 13th, 2008 9:18 am

    Hi Neil

    Fantastic tutorial, great quality in every respect. Mentioning the change to the callback tag helped also and was obviously at the exact right time. I have changed the code and it works just fine.

    What I really would like to see is a adapted example of the Cafe Townsend example with amfphp classmapping. (see my comments to your video on the Mate site. I could provide the sql and php files

  5. nwebb November 13th, 2008 10:12 am

    Thanks guys :)

    pbohny – sure, I plan to cover that tutorial soon – things are are hold at the moment while I’m on a contract, but that’s okay because I understand that there are going to be some minor changes to Mate at the beginning of December – the php/sql would be very handy so yes please (comments in the code would be appreciated)

  6. oregon_guy November 21st, 2008 8:24 pm

    thanks Neil…

    could you please tell me what application you’re using to record your screen (and which version)?

    thanks

  7. nwebb December 5th, 2008 12:10 pm

    Sure, I’m using Camtasia Studio
    http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

  8. Flexible RIA Architecture: PureMVC and Mate « shaun smith February 8th, 2009 3:02 pm

    [...] Hello Mate by Neil Webb: Mate, amfphp, and two-way communication between model and view. [...]

  9. shaun February 9th, 2009 6:52 pm

    Hi Neil,

    As a matter of interest: what were the changes to Mate you mentioned in your comment above, and have they happened yet?

    Cheers!

  10. nwebb February 10th, 2009 12:11 pm

    Hi Shaun,
    I know that the dispatcher & listener tags are no longer needed (in fact there should be no need for any Mate code in the views). There may be other changes too which are hopefully covered on the Mate site – afraid I’ve been way too busy in the last 2 months to get around to the planned videos and update.

  11. shaun February 10th, 2009 2:30 pm

    Cool, thanks. I see you’ve been checking out Swiz. How are you finding it?

  12. nwebb February 10th, 2009 4:13 pm

    I wish :)
    I’ve had no time to check out Swiz either (or Slide for that matter) but when I saw those Swiz tutorials I thought I’d tweet them for the benefit of others. Have you had any experience with it?

  13. shaun February 10th, 2009 4:44 pm

    Nah, just those tutorials. It looks pretty cool, but I’m becoming wary of all-in-one do-it-all frameworks like Mate and Swiz (dependency injection, MVC, utilities, helpers). I’ve been using PureMVC for ages, but after looking into Mate and Swiz I’m not sure I want to go back to all that boiler plate code!! ..leaving me currently “between frameworks” ;)

  14. dnk April 21st, 2009 6:06 pm

    The videos are great. I am going through the mate one with amfphp, now I have a question…

    In the video, you had displayed an “update” that says certain tags are no longer needed after v0.84 of Mate. I am currently using the v0.87 Mate. I am a little confused how the code must be modified.

    Is there an update to this video? Or somewhere with a little clarification?

  15. nwebb April 21st, 2009 6:33 pm

    Thanks. There isn’t currently an updated video so I’d suggest looking up the tags in the Mate documentation to see if they are deprecated or not … I’m sure all tags mentioned will still work, so there shouldn’t be any major issue getting the code to work as it is in the video – the Mate documentation is really good so that should be your first call :)

    I intended to go through the whole Mate series but then a new (and very time-consuming!) contract came up. It’s coming to an end next month and I’m hoping to be able to take some time off to do stuff, including more Mate video tutorials. If I do I’ll take a look at the changes.

  16. Aaron May 20th, 2009 2:00 am

    Neil-

    Let me join the chorus of people saying “great job” on these tutorial videos. I was also curious about what is needed instead of the etc., but am sure I can figure it out from the Mate tutorial.

    Great job on unraveling the complexities of AMFPHP, and even better job helping me get my feet wet with Mate.

    Thanks,
    Aaron

  17. nwebb » New AIR Video Tutorials October 16th, 2009 4:09 pm

    [...] Video Tutorials Flex, Flash, AIR [...]

Leave a reply

Bad Behavior has blocked 517 access attempts in the last 7 days.