Flex Authority - A New Flex Trade Magazine

I have had the pleasure to be one of the first authors for a new Adobe Flex Magazine that aims at being a quarterly published journal about Flex. The magazine is the first, to my knowledge, dedicated solely to developing with Flex. Each of the issues will have specialty focus with this first issue discussing Adobe AIR. House of Fusion is the force behind the magazine and already has a ColdFusion magazine, Fusion Authority, under their belt. The magazine has a very capable Editor-in-Chief, Jeffry Houser - flex fanatics out there might know him from The Flex Show, a Flex focused podcast.

After reading through the first issue that is going out I feel that the publication has a good future if it can keep up the level of quality shown in this attempt. I am not just saying this because I have an article in there, which is perfect, of course, but because there were several articles that taught me useful new things. Specifically, there was an article about Updating AIR Applications using the built in mechanisms which is very useful for anyone planning on building a sustained AIR product. But even if you’re a first time Flex user you will get plenty of benefit out of the journal since they even have an article about building your first AIR application.

The magazine will have several recurring columns and segments. This includes a question/answer column, Flick and Flack: The Flex Talk Guys, that takes a sent-in question and answers it analyzing the possible and recommended solutions. Not to mention they keep it lively with some playful banter and their pen names, Flick and Flack, are parodies of Click and Clack from Car Talk. I think it is also a worthy mention that the people behind Flick and Flack, Alex Harui and Gordon Smith, work for the Adobe Flex team and really know what they are talking about. Some of the other columns are The Beginners Corner, Communications (focuses on communication protocols), and Effective Flex Development. The Effective Flex Development column has a very interesting article on source control with overviews on several different SCM (Source Control Management) software solutions.

As far as authors go I think they did a good job of getting some of the most respected Flex guys out there. Then there is me, who I am sure they are asking themselves “Who is this guy?”. I do think that if anyone is interested in learning more about Flex and has the time should check out Flex Authority. I will try to keep everyone up to date with short reviews of each issue as they come out. As people get the magazine in their hands we would love to hear what you all think about it in the comments.