Rich Internet Applications via PHP and  Flash

Earlier this month, Mike Potter (Adobe's Developer Relations team) gave an excellent introduction to Adobe Flex Builder (currently in beta) and how it can integrate with a PHP based backend using AMFPHP.  Adobe Flex Builder is an Eclipse based tool that helps developers build Rich Internet Applications that get delivered via the Flash player.

Mike Potter has extensive experience with PHP, having created the website for the largest amateur sporting organization in Canada (the Canadian Curling Association). Mike also ran the Mozilla Calendar Project for a year after that. He joined Adobe a year ago, and is now working in Developer Relations as an evangelist for open source and web developers.

Those interested in hearing Mike's presentation (about an hour) about Flex Builder, Flash 9, AMFPHP and a whole lot more web (and non-web) related stuff can Listen Now! You can also visit Mike's blog at http://blogs.adobe.com/mikepotter/.

PLEASE NOTE:  Although the Flex SDK is free of charge, neither it nor Flex Builder (its Eclipse based IDE big brother) are open source and the later comes with a license fee "significantly under $1,000".  For some that might be reason enough to sit this one out, for others in a production environment, the pain/performance ratio might make this a no-brainer. - ed