This Thursday, Jim Priest will present on "Introducing jQuery - a brief introduction to jQuery and unobtrusive JavaScript". Afterwards, I'll give a brief rundown of the interesting announcements from CFUnited and will take any questions.

If you think you might come, leave a comment on this article so I know how much Pizza to get.

The meeting begins at 6:00 and will be held at PStrat in a new Location:

10 Laboratory Drive, Building 2
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

Directions: From I-40, take the Davis Drive exit (280).
Turn right at the end of the ramp.
Turn right onto Laboratory Drive (if you reach Cornwallis Road, you've gone too far).
Turn right at 10 Laboratory Drive.
Veer left and drive around back to get to the main entrance for the building on the left (Building 2).
The meeting space is on the second floor.

See you there!

Our May meeting will be held Thursday May 22nd at 6:00PM. Dave Powell will be speaking on "Skinning Your Flex Applications".

Skinning your Flex Applications The purpose of the RIA is to present the user with a "rich" experience within your application, but Flex and AIR apps present a the highest level of potential (and complexity) for the Adobe developer. How do you balance complexity with the need to differentiate your application from every other Halo themed Flex app? From buttons to transitions and backgrounds, identify the highest impact mods to set your application apart.

Dave has been doing graphics and web design since WAY back...ok...since '97 or so. Starting with print design for major retailers and manufacturers such as Target, Wal-Mart, JC Penney, The Banana Republic, Fruit of the Loom, Vassarette, and Peds.

Not wanting to miss out on the dotcom "boom", he defected to a web startup company where he became an Art Director. Dave got tired of the developers breaking his designs, and so he picked up ColdFusion and never looked back. Seeking a bit of job security, and the familiar halls of his alma mater, he returned to the University of North Carolina where he currently manages IT projects of all types, and develops applications using Cold Fusion and Python. He also manages the Carolina Adobe User Group, and is an active member of the Triangle Area User Group.

The meeting begins at 6:00 and will be held at PStrat in a new Location:

10 Laboratory Drive, Building 2
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

Directions: From I-40, take the Davis Drive exit (280).
Turn right at the end of the ramp.
Turn right onto Laboratory Drive (if you reach Cornwallis Road, you've gone too far).
Turn right at 10 Laboratory Drive.
Veer left and drive around back to get to the main entrance for the building on the left (Building 2).
The meeting space is on the second floor.

See you there!

Just a friendly reminder, Doug Hughes, President of Alagad Inc. presents tonight on Patterns and Techniques for Data Persistence and Access.

Virtually all web applications depend on storing and retreiving data of some sort. The most common place this data is stored is a database, however developers also may use other systems such as flat text files, web services, and more. Furthermore, the ways in which data are stored tend to be different from what our applications require. The way in which we interact with this data can have a dramatic impact on our applications. As a result, a number of design patterns and techniques have arisen to help make data interaction more manageable. In this presentation we will cover some of the more basic data access design patters such as Data Access Objects and Gateways as well as more advanced techniques and patterns like Active Record and metadata based persistance techniques.

10 Laboratory Drive, Building 2
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

Directions: From I-40, take the Davis Drive exit (280).
Turn right at the end of the ramp.
Turn right onto Laboratory Drive (if you reach Cornwallis Road, you've gone too far).
Turn right at 10 Laboratory Drive.
Veer left and drive around back to get to the main entrance for the building on the left (Building 2).
The meeting space is on the second floor.

See you there!

This month, Doug Hughes, President of Alagad Inc. presents on Patterns and Techniques for Data Persistence and Access.

Virtually all web applications depend on storing and retreiving data of some sort. The most common place this data is stored is a database, however developers also may use other systems such as flat text files, web services, and more. Furthermore, the ways in which data are stored tend to be different from what our applications require. The way in which we interact with this data can have a dramatic impact on our applications. As a result, a number of design patterns and techniques have arisen to help make data interaction more manageable. In this presentation we will cover some of the more basic data access design patters such as Data Access Objects and Gateways as well as more advanced techniques and patterns like Active Record and metadata based persistance techniques.

The meeting begins at 6:00 and will be held at PStrat in a new Location:

10 Laboratory Drive, Building 2
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

Directions: From I-40, take the Davis Drive exit (280).
Turn right at the end of the ramp.
Turn right onto Laboratory Drive (if you reach Cornwallis Road, you've gone too far).
Turn right at 10 Laboratory Drive.
Veer left and drive around back to get to the main entrance for the building on the left (Building 2).
The meeting space is on the second floor.

See you there!

This month, Dan Wilson presents on How to get from Procedural Architecture to Object Orientation.

Description

If you would like to know how to migrate an existing procedurally programmed application into an object oriented one, grab a chair and sit for a while.

We'll discuss some sensible guidelines designed to help you make incremental changes towards OO nirvana.

We'll also look at lots of code samples, we all like code samples, right?

New Location

The meeting begins at 6:30 and will be held at PStrat in a new Location:

10 Laboratory Drive, Building 2
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

Directions: From I-40, take the Davis Drive exit (280).
Turn right at the end of the ramp.
Turn right onto Laboratory Drive (if you reach Cornwallis Road, you've gone too far).
Turn right at 10 Laboratory Drive.
Veer left and drive around back to get to the main entrance for the building on the left (Building 2).
The meeting space is on the second floor.

See you there!

Just one of numerous reminders you will receive about Ben Forta's presentation on Adobe's Flex 3 and Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR).

Adobe will be providing some eats and a copy of Flex 3 (upon release) and CS3 Web Premium Suite to be raffled off during the event.

The meeting location is being provided by:

Railinc Corporate Headquarters
7001 Weston Parkway, Suite 200
Cary, NC 27513
Phone: 919.651.5000
Fax: 919.651.5402

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We would really appreciate it if you could RSVP for the event so that we have a rough idea of how many will be attending.

RSVP Link: http://tinyurl.com/389zrs 

See you there!

As part of a 40 city tour, Adobe will be sending Ben Forta to the Raleigh/Durham area for a presentation on Flex and AIR. Mr. Forta will be with us on January 23rd, 2008. The exact location is still to be determined.

Adobe will be providing some eats and a copy of Flex 3 (upon release) and CS3 Web Premium Suite to be raffled off during the event.

Mark your calendars and stay tuned. We will post more details as we get them.

Jim Priest will present Selenium - a web application testing tool. He will also give a condensed Ant presentation for those of you who missed it.
From the Selenium website:

Selenium is a test tool for web applications. Selenium tests run directly in a browser, just as real users do. And they run in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh. No other test tool covers such a wide array of platforms.
** Browser compatibility testing. Test your application to see if it works correctly on different browsers and operating systems. The same script can run on any Selenium platform.
** System functional testing. Create regression tests to verify application functionality and user acceptance.

Jim will go over setting up simple tests using Selenium, creating tests with the Selenium IDE (a Firefox extension) as well as how to automate your tests using... what else? ANT!

We are in the middle of a mailserver move, and the new server is not cooperating as it should.. jsyk

Update: Should be sorted now

*trumpets sound in background*

Dan Wilson!!!

*crowd goes wild*

Yes, that's right ladies and gentlemen, Dan Wilson is the winner of our AIR contest. And what has he won? And what did he win with?

Bob, tell him what he's won.

Dan Wilson is the proud, new owner of a brand new copy of Flex Builder. Dan will have his choice of Windows or Linux.

Congratulations, Dan, and thanks to all those that submitted their entries.