Archive for April, 2008
uCertify contacted me to do a review on one of their prepKits. It’s a simulator of various certification tests. I’ve asked for the Adobe Certified Expert on Flash. I downloaded the A9A0-311 Macromedia Flash Professional 8 kit.
To begin you need to download the uCertify PrepEngine. It’s ‘kind of’ like a framework that you install once, and then can simply download different prepKits to use with. You can also download a free evaluation version with 30 practice questions.
Once you install the engine and run the program the main window appears:
The look and feel is quite nice and modern. I started by taking the first Diagnostic test. The questions are like a quiz, and are multiple choice. Some are select the correct answer, some are drag and drop. The questions are a range of simple actionscript questions as well as Flash IDE questions. Eg: Name the tools from the toolbar. I failed the first time, and I was amused to get a score of 666.
In addition of having a quiz style test simulator. You also have a set of tools to help you study and prepare for the test.
There is a lot of content to go through and help you out on your certification quest. The flash cards is good way to memorise and practice the different type of questions. There are several basic flash tutorials in the “how to” section.
Overall
If you want to get a certification I would definitely recommend you try this out. uCertify has a money-back guarantee policy, that will return your money back if you fail the exam the first time.
April 30th, 2008
Last night was the inaugural meeting of the Sydney Adobe User Group. Note that it is now a joint group between the Flash User Group and the Coldfusion User Group.
Geoff Bowers did a presentation about “Setting Fire To Your Community”
The presentation was really good and I left the user group meeting with a nice feeling to try and help the opensource communities I daily use.
He gave really good (and a bit funny and disturbing) analogies comparing opensource communities with japanese mummies. Geoff also got into explaining some details about different opensource licensing schemes, and made us aware of the great difference between gpl and lgpl.
Even though most of us might just click next, next, next when downloading most of the software we use… If you are going to use that code in your commercial projects, you should really know what you are getting into and learn about the implications you will have when you distribute your project.
We also learnt that the extjs framework is changing its licensing from lgpl to gpl. This means that if you include that library in your code, you will have to opensource your project.
It was a great meeting and I’m looking forward to the next one. Chris informed us that the meetings will be held on every last Monday of the month, so the next meeting will be on May 26.
April 29th, 2008
The future of coding PHP in FlashDevelop may be quite closer than expected, thanks to user: kuzya (flashdevelop member from russia)
http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/viewtopic.php?p=13082
He modified the HaXeContext plugin and now you can see your php class methods and variables in the outline pane. It was a bit buggy, and then Philippe managed to get to get a basic PHP context working overnight!
Philippe’s version is the Flashdevelop SVN. If you would like to know how to compile the source code and get started with FD development go here: Participation [Getting started with FD Development]
If you want to try out the initial HAxe Context by kuzya, you can download the plugin: http://spbgu.ru/upload/kuzya/HTMLContext.dll
Copy that dll in your Flashdevelop plugins folder:
Usually: C:\Program Files\FlashDevelop\Plugins
Open a PHP file in FlashDevelop then select Haxe from the Syntax Menu.
Here’s a screenshot:
April 28th, 2008
When: Mon 28th April (Meet at 6pm for 6:30 start)
Where: Rocketboots.
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With the advent of a number of open source initiatives from Adobe, Geoff Bowers of Daemon will speak on:
A tale of Japanese mummies, karmic balance and benevolent dictators.
Your guide to putting a torch to your open source community. Learn how to set up a flourishing developer community or just help to ignite your favourite.
Please RSVP on http://apugs2008april.eventbrite.com
Note: This is the inaugural meeting of the new Adobe Platform Users Group, Sydney which combines the Sydney Flash Platform Developers Group and the NSW Coldfusion Users Group.
April 23rd, 2008
To begin you need to download the uCertify PrepEngine. It’s ‘kind of’ like a framework that you install once, and then can simply download different prepKits to use with. You can also download a free evaluation version with 30 practice questions.
