Flex cookbook spotlight: faqcontrib

faqcontrib actually is a team of two people. Located in Bangalore, India, Anirudh Sasikumar and Sujit Reddy Gurrala are both Technical Evangelists for Flex at Adobe. In addition to promoting Flex and trying to assist the Flex users, they contribute to the Flex Cookbook to address the common questions that they have seen throughout the community.

Here are some of the posts by faqcontrib:

• How can we speed up the performance of DataGrid when there is a lot of data?
• How to pass data to Flex application
• How do I make my Flex application look and feel great?
• How to add BlazeDS configuration file to Flex project manually?
• How do we display HTML in a Flex application?
• How to paginate data in a Datagrid?
• Why is HTML wrapper generated by Flex Builder disabling browser's vertical scrollbar?
• How to send messages to Flex application using BlazeDS messaging from a non Flex client?
• More

Briefly tell us about yourself and your Flex development experience.

Anirudh: I started my career developing MFC/GTK+ applications in the network automation domain. Having worked primarily with C++, Lisp and Java, I was on familiar ground with Flex – both in terms of the programming language and the tools involved. I was captivated by the ease with which visually appealing applications could be built with it in a short span of time. Add to this my fascination for computer graphics and you have a strong believer in Flex and its myriad possibilities.

Sujit: I work as Technical Evangelist at Adobe. In my career I have developed several applications using technologies like Flex, J2EE, PHP and .NET. Impressed by the Flash Platform and its capabilities, I started developing Rich Internet Applications a year back. The intergration of the Flash Platform with various Server technologies is my core area of interest and investigation.

What type of topics do you usually post about in the Flex cookbook?

Anirudh: My entries deal with performance, ActionScript & MXML, AIR and capabilities of the flex framework / flash platform. I personally believe it is important to understand what the underlying platform is capable of, what its boundaries are and what the best practices are so that your application is on a strong foundation.

Sujit: RIAs, specifically those built with the Flash Platform, are becoming important citizens in the web application eco-system. As a result it is important to understand how they work with the eco-system around them including servers and services. I post entries explaining how to communicate with various server technologies from Flex applications.

How many cookbook recipes have you contributed so far?

29

Why do you think Flex users should visit the Flex cookbook?

The Flex cookbook gives exceptional insights into how real developers solve their problems using various Adobe platform technologies including Flex, AIR, Flash & BlazeDS/LCDS among others. This enables you as a Flex developer to learn different ways of approaching the same problem so you can make the right choices and get to useful information quickly.

What would you say to those people who are also interested in contributing to the Flex cookbook?

Contributing to the cookbook brings real experiences in building Flash Platform based applications to the developer eco-system. By being an active contributor, not only do you get feedback and alternative ideas about your inputs, it also helps you become a visible netizen of the Flash Platform. It also helps you to record the specifics of your solution which you might not remember later!