Fireworks and Flex - Design Matters!

Flex is quite the addiction. I was hoping to slam dunk the Flex 2.0 TFS book in a matter of days and that is turning into a couple of weeks now. So far so good, the TFS book is very tight in presenting the basics of Flex, the code is perfect, and it is also a great starting point for those who may be new to MVC Model View Controller design patterns. My only suggestion is that the FlexGrocer store could maybe use a little bit of a cosmetic design facelift. Enter Fireworks CS3!

I have always been a big Fireworks fan and I have a tendency to laugh out loud when people compare it to Photoshop. Oddly enough I learned Fireworks quite some time ago by accidentally booking myself into a hands-on training class thinking I was taking a Flash 2.0 beginner course. I purchased the Flash/Fireworks 2.0 web bundle and I was not even educated enough to know the difference in the two software products. As it turns out, that was a valuable mistake that empowered me with the knowledge of a great software tool that has not only survived the jump from Macromedia to Adobe, but has hit the new CS3 version scene with a vengeance.

So, what does that have to do with Flex 2.0? The latest CS3 release has some great new features for prototyping  your Flex applications with the ability to export Flex components and images as MXML. At this point I could stay up all night writing a tutorial to show you how to do this, ... but I would rather get some sleep, so I will point you right along to a great free tutorial by Trevor McCauley - a technical support engineer at Adobe Systems. Thanks Trevor ...