What do I want from InsideRIA?
To stop asking questions!

Framework Quest 2009

Integration google api and actionscript tutorials.

i.e.
as3 api for google calendar, fusion, picasa, docs...

Flash Player's performance, I know it has all been talked about a lot. But there should be one place where it can all gather together. All the tips/tricks developers need to know to improve the performance of their applications.

The same stuff you've been posting but make it geared toward newbs. Andrew Trice always does a good job of this. For example, if I was a Flash Designer / Developer, what topics / technologies should I know and understand to be a solid Flex Developer candidate (to land a job). Source, downloads and examples are always good. :-)

To emphasis on articles I'd like to see... a person with my background (and I know I'm not the only one) is trying to maneuver up from the Flash world and into the Flex world (or, shift from an interactive designer / developer to a full fledged developer). The differences between the two careers are astronomical.

When I did this, my problem was understanding what technologies I should know to consider myself a 'Flex Developer'. At first I started learning 'just' Flex, how to employ the various components, set up the layout... then I learned how to skin and style the components... then I learned how to inject interaction to the components or write custom components... then to supply dataproviders... then create custom itemrenders... then read data from a database... then employ webservice calls... etc, etc, etc... I still feel as though I'm wandering a bit and trying to figure out which technology is best to learn as a base that compliments Flex (Java seems logical for me at this point in my career).

But, articles that focus on people shifting their careers from Flash (aka multimedia, interactive web) to Flex would be immensely helpful for many.

Flex + PureMVC

I would like to see more informational or educational articles and not so much opinion pieces.Seems we get a large number of articles that are just a person's opinions about a topic with no real educational value to it. Some of them could be useful if the author would expand on how they came to their conclusions with examples but most don't bother. These are incredibly boring to read, especially when the author is already convinced beyond a doubt that their opinion is right and refuses to consider the thoughts of people who disagree expressed in the comments.

Plus, if an author writes an article about a product their company sells, how about they actually make their pitch in the article as to why their product might be interesting to us. As opposed to the typical "here's our really cool Product X, click on this link to go to my company's site to read more!" type of article we seem to be getting here. I don't mind ads but not ones posing as articles.

And finally, stop the occasional article that is essentially "my choice of framework/software/platform is far superior to your choice and you're stupid for even using that inferior piece of crap." I expect that fanboy stuff in the comments but it is sad to see it in the article itself.

More about RIA development lifecycles (User Centered Design,...) and less about specific code examples, that could be deprecated/improved in the next version of e.g., flickr API, actionscript or whatever.

More on RIA code generation tools (for the business logic, or for the UI,...):
code generation tools and IDEs, complex CASE tools using model-driven development (MDD) techniques...

That's my choice.

I would like to read some articles about

- using FXG in Flex projects

- basic concepts of creating as3 components framework (measuring, updating, skinning components and layout algorithms)

- profiling applications

- unit testing with different frameworks

- comparison of charting components (flash and JS)

- amf3 and XMPP communication between client and server

- protecting content in new Flash Player

- creating app in Robot Legs Flex/Flash Framework

- image recognition

- streaming video with Red5 server and RMTP protocol

- comparison of ajax file uploading methods / pugins / scripts

Some info about dropping a total size of SWF and something about 3D transformations and physics in Five3D and Away 3D Light Flash engines. It would be nice to see something about byte operations and optimization in flash apps. Text covering Flash Text Engine also might be welcome.

Oh, yaeh and something about translation and internationalization in RIA (Flex ResourceManager / i18 / gettext / database structure for different languages)/

Spring and Flex communication and Flash Media Server with flex and AIR