Flex2 :: The spiral seems to be imploding
Hello,
Well this is a recap of a time that was fun but is about to end.
One of my favorite places in the world is the laboratory. Invention and innovation are and were the most fascinating times of my life. As we draw close to the public release of Flex2, what does this mean for developers?
Well, for me it means cleaning the petre dishes, turning the bunsen burner off and packing my bags for a trip that has an unknown destination. I have really enjoyed the alpha - beta1 - beta2 - beta3 trip and have learned Flex enough to feel confident about some of my chosen paths.
Lets shed some light.
I have noticed a lot of links to this blog’s entries about the AS3/MXML documenter. When I started this project I had ported an existing AS2/v2 component Help Book generator(written fully in PHP5) that I used with my Flash components. That old documenter was so fun because it showed me the power of Regular Expressions in more than just a ‘text search’ algorithm.
I now have fully ported(I am really lying about this, when I say port I mean the ideas) to AS3 Flex RegExp. I might have showed some interest in releasing this to the public, well don’t hold your breath right now. The thing works for all intents and purposes, prints out beautiful Adobe ADIDocs(copyright infringement again Adobe?) and wows me by how it just gets down to business(performance).
I don’t want anybody holding their breath for this as a solution in the near future. I see Mirrel development AS2Doc seems that they ‘might’ be writing a parser for AS3 in their program.
The bottom line is, I made this to function and it does but, it has taken WAY to much time away from my component development. Although the bright side is I got into Cairngorm and learned some new kewl design patterns along the way. Learned about the Flash Player 9’s performance and that AS3 is a VERY agile language now.
Down the road I am sure there will be other documenters, when I am ready this one will compete in the ‘extensibility’ factor due to the fact it is written entirely in Flex and could load new Flex modules to extend it. This will also be my first stab at an Apollo app, since I just need file system access to be completely decoupled from that tier of the OS. Look for it in the future but not right now.
Back to component development and whatever else life throws at me and there have been some fast balls as of late. Kids are out of school so the next 2 months will be JOY! 
Ironically, going to the summit this week landed smack dab on the day my children’s move up day in school is. I have received permission from them that it is all right and this is dad’s move up day also. I love kids; they are so honest, what happens when you grow up?
TeotiGraphix.com will be getting a major facelift, if you have been over there yes it looks like a ghost town but the store will soon be filled with lots of little toys and goodies for the good girls and boys.
So note, this site is articles, tutorials and references. My company site is business and product sales.
PS Look for a lot of good info when I get back from the summit on this blog. I just need to find my way to San Francisco, I only got down to the Red Wood forest when I was a kid, of course Los Angeles but never San Francisco. Oh yeah, cloths, does the word ‘formal’ even exist in New Hampshire? I know Flannel shirts is quite well defined around here 
Peace, Mike