Logged In
Announcing the Flex Developer Derby Winners
Adobe received many engaging and innovative applications for the Flex Developer Derby. In this contest, developers used the Adobe Flex 2 to build rich Internet applications with the updated versions of Adobe Flex Builder 2, the Flex framework, and Flex Data Services. Thanks to those who submitted their applications and showed us what is possible.
If you're new to Flex, read Flex 2: Enabling the Next Generation of Rich Internet Applications or visit the Flex 2 home page for more information.
The judges panel contained key contributors to the developer community (non-Adobe participants). Using a points system, the judging panel compared each submission on the following criteria:
- Originality
- Ease of use
- Design
- Use of Flex features
Read more about the winners for each category and check out the winning Flex applications below.
Product configurators/self-service guided applications
Applications in this category allow configuration or filtering of a service or product, changing the visual presentation and associated data to guide the user to a more informed decision.
Winner: Home Locator, by Nahuel Faronda of Blue Instant
Home Locator is an intuitive real estate searching application. It lets users search by area by clicking on a US map and then filter the results by price, number of bedrooms, bathrooms and other relevant criteria.
Figure 1. The Home Locator application
Components and gadgets
Applications in this category use components or user interface gadgets in an intuitive and appropriate way to increase usability of DHTML or standard web applications.
Winner: SQLAdmin, by Kevin Kazmierczak of Citynet
SQLAdmin is an online version of query analyzer for Microsoft SQL Server. Features include a graphical execution plan, syntax highlighting, live table editing, tabbed query windows, an object browser and more.
Figure 2. The SQLAdmin application
Data dashboards
Applications in this category provide a live, visual window into business processes or snapshots of business intelligence that drive insight in a variety of configurations, potentially from multiple applications or databases. Ease of use and the ability to save or print views is also paramount since the target is usually a business user who has specific reporting milestones.
Winner: StatPods, by Rich Tretola of EverythingFlex.com
StatPods is a dashboard for the visualization of web visits, page views, session tracking, and browser/platform properties information. StatPods allows for multiple days or months of datasets to be loaded for comparison views.
Figure 3. The StatPods application
Note: The StatPods application requires a username/password of test/test to view it.
Mashups
Applications in this category combine content from more than one source to create new applications. Content often comes from public APIs or data feeds like RSS and Atom.
Winner: E41ST, by Amit Gupta
E41ST is a mashup between Amazon.com and the Public Library system. Its objective is to provide an integrated interface in which book lovers can get an enriched browsing experience based on Amazon.com's content, but at the same time, have the ability to see entries in the Public Library system.
Figure 4. The E41ST application
Communication/collaboration applications
Applications in this category allow two or more users to work together in real time and in context to achieve a specific objective. Where users had to communicate, the application entries were required to have audio, video, and text.
Winner: Lesson Builder, by Tim McLeod and Kevin Harris of Ntara, Inc
The Lesson Builder Tool, code-named "Project nGrain", serves as a practical, rich Internet solution that enables a group of content editors to collaborate in the creation of Flash-based training modules.
Figure 5. The Lesson Builder Tool application
Just freakin' cool (aka wildcard)
Applications in this category don't fit into any of the other categories.
Winner: FC64 by Darron Schall
FC64 is a Commodore 64 Emulator written in ActionScript 3 for Flash Player 9. The original hardware of the Commodore 64 has been re-created in software to allow the Flash Player to be used just like an original Commdore 64.
Figure 6. The FC64 application
We're really excited to see all that developers are building with Flex 2.
To submit your application for consideration in the Showcase Gallery, send an e-mail to ria@adobe.com with the following information:
Name:
Personal URL:
Application Description:
Application Demo URL:
View Source URL:
Please note: At this time, we cannot host developers' application demos on our servers. Please publish your compiled applications on your own site and provide us with the URLs. You are not required to provide the source of your application; however, if you wish to help the community by letting them know what you did to create the application, enable the "View Source" menu item when compiling your Flex 2 application, and publish the view source output to your server.
