Examples, Getting Started and Contributing

[Ben Stucki]

Hi all,

The Reflex Open Iteration meeting this week seems to have been a great success, and I'm planning something similar once a month going forward. If you weren't able to make it to the meeting feel free to check out the recording here: http://bit.ly/cJn1nN. Special thanks goes out to Matthew Wallace and my local Nashville Flash Platform User Group for making it possible.

I also wanted to post some updates which were promissed during the meeting...

1. Examples & Example Code

A running example app is now live at http://reflex.io/?page_id=3 and a link to the code is also posted. This one is written in MXML, but I'll also be providing AS3-only and Flash Pro examples soon. It came in at right around 68kb.

2. Getting Started Guide

I've posted some quick getting started information on the website under "Setup" http://reflex.io/?page_id=9. It's still a more lengthy process than I'd like for normal users, but will only get easier from here as I begin providing precompiled swcs and improve the support for compiling in Flash Pro.

3. Details for Contributing

A lot of people have asked for details on how to contribute, and the answer really depends on how you'd like to contribute. However, the best advice is to not wait for my permission unless you're trying to tackle something that's on the roadmap already (in which case email me). The great thing about github is that you can fork the reflex repos and treat them as your own.

I expect most third-party contributions to be custom skins, layouts, behaviors and components that you think other people might find useful. This is why the Reflex Library repo exists at http://github.com/reflex/reflex-library. If you'd like to contribute skins, layouts, behaviors or components just fork the github project (you don't have to ask me) and code away. This is the only place where it's going to be acceptable to use MXML and reference outside libraries (Tweening, Physics, Graphics, etc). I also intend to compile a swc of this library project and distribute it with the default Reflex download. For that reason there will be some curating and quality standards in place, but I'll work with contributors to make sure I pull as much as I can back into the main repo.

I've also opened the issue/bug tracking features on github so that anyone can submit bugs or QA issues on the appropriate repo. At a minimum the issue needs to provide steps required (or code) to reproduce the issue. A link to code (or a fork) which provides a failing unit test which should be passing would be fantastic, and if you're going all out (or trying to become a primary contributor) then providing a fix along with the issue would probably make my day.

Another great way to contribute is to help create getting started guides/tutorials/videos and start trying to building some example apps to show off what's there so far. You can be sure that I'm going to link to them. Also, anyone who would like to help me keep an eye on the support forums at http://support.reflex.io/ as new users start ramping up would be my new best friend. As the user-base starts to grow I'll try to move specific support questions to the support site and keep this list open for general, high-level (architecture) discussions.

Finally, if you'd like to contribute roadmap features or major contributions which might require core changes then you'll still need to email me and start a conversation around what the existing plan is for those changes and where/when we can get your work in. If you're new to using the project or new to AS3 then you may want to try tackling a few bugs or example apps before diving into a full scale refactoring. :)

Alright, that's all for now. More next week!

- Ben Stucki

[Ben Stucki]

Sorry, here's the correct link to the recorded Reflex meeting. http://bit.ly/9oJxtd