1. I think FlexJS would benefit from its own dedicated page on the main website that describes its benefits in a more polished, bite-sized form. Basically, more of a marketing page that keeps the architecture discussion limited to high-level bullet points. If someone really wants to dive in to the nitty gritty details, we have multiple pages in the wiki that go more in-depth on the architecture.
2. The Flex SDK Installer is still working well, in my opinion. We've been able to successfully tweak the install scripts when we release new SDK updates, as necessary, and there hasn't been a need to push updates to the installer app. For instance, Adobe recently changed AIR SDK for Mac to be a DMG file, and the upcoming Flex 4.16 will support this different format. Older SDKs won't work with AIR 24 and newer, though, and if we wanted to support that, we'd need to release small updates to each of them. The manual install instructions should still be accurate. Users simply need to pass the installer.xml file to Ant (and, optionally, versions for Flash/AIR stuff) and the rest is automated. In both cases, the SDK will work in IDEs. Ultimately, the same install script is run. A FlexJS project may require extra tweaks in certain IDEs because they don't know about FlexJS and we're tricking them into thinking this is the classic Flex SDK. 3. I think that Tour de Flex provides a ton of good examples for getting started the Flex SDK. I see that it's under "About Flex" in the main website menus. It might be good if we could add it under "Documentation" too. Tour de Flex is good as both an overview of everything that's available, but also as a resource for experienced Flex developers to review during development. It might be smart to make the menu it say "Tour de Flex Code Examples", "Tour de Flex Component Explorer", or something that's a little more clear on what it actually is. It might even be smart to pull out Tour de Flex into its own section on the main page as the user scrolls down. On the wiki, I recently started creating some simple examples for the FlexJS Basic components: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLEX/FlexJS+Basic+components This probably isn't super easy to find from the main website, though. There has also been talk of a Tour de FlexJS on the mailing list. Something like that would definitely be good! Maybe as a replacement for my simple examples above, or a more in-depth kind of thing. - Josh On Mon, Dec 26, 2016 at 12:17 PM, Mark Kessler <kesslerconsult...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'd like to start a discussion aimed at prospective new > developers. This is sort of an in-process review. The end state > getting feedback on our current setup just to make sure we are making > it easy for new folks. > > Let's setup the ground rules of working on constructive / > positive. Giving feedback for issues found or ideas for growth are > great. Focus being on a new person blindly walking into Flex and > attempting to get started from scratch. > > > Here are some starting points to get things moving (can add more). > I consider this to be sort of a 1/2/3 in terms of steps to get > started. > > > 1. Presentation to new users. IE the flex website. It looks good, > but I've been looking at the same one over the years and I may be > complacent with it's design. > > - Is it still easy enough for a new developer to walk into, see our > highlights and figure out how to get started? > > > 2. The SDK installer or manual SDK download. > > - Is the SDK installer still easy to download and have an SDK be ready > for whatever IDE you choose? > > - Does the manual SDK setup still work by our instructions? > > > 3. Easy to find examples. Like off the main website. > > -Do we provide simple examples (hello world, basic forms, basic > concepts, states) for different compiled targets (swf, air, native, > FlexJS)? > > -Do we have any more advanced examples (client server communication, > advanced event handling, promises)? > > -Are the video's we have too old or are they still valid? > > -Do we need a new video's or a more detailed line of them? > > > > It is the holiday time period and everyone is busy, so I image this > email chain to take a while. No rush and no worries. > > > -Mark >
