Maven Book 0.5: Flex Chapter & PDF Improvements
By Tim OBrien
5 minute read time
We just cut the 0.5 Edition of the book... Download the PDF or Read the Book Online.
- More readable PDF content. - Typography makes a huge difference to the readability and usability of a text like Maven: The Definitive Guide, and this edition marks a series of editions that are going to focus on bringing the PDF format of this book up to the level of the printed, post-production version of the book. In this release:
- Font was reduced to 11 point from 14 point. In addition to saving a few trees, this makes the book easier to read.
- Page margins reduced to 0.3 inches. Again, if you look at an old version of the PDF, you'll see that the margins were all over the place and the page wasn't even centered.
- More sophisticated table layout. As this books develops, I expect it to grow more "useful" tables than we have now. The FlexMojos chapter is full of long reference tables for each plugin goal, and we're stating to get more sophisticated about table layout in the PDF.
- First Version of FlexMojos Chapter Completed - Chapter 20 covers the FlexMojos plugin and how you can use Apache Maven to compile, document, test, and build Flex applications. FlexMojos just recently had a 3.2.0 release which added more support for unit testing, and the next FlexMojos release 3.3.0 is going to emphasize unit test coverage reports. The first draft of the Flex chapter covers everything you need to know about configuring your development environment for Flex to using the FlexMojos archetype to start a new Flex project in Maven.
Changes in Edition 0.5
The following changes affect the entire book:
- MVNDEF-101 - Reduced the Width of the PDF Margins
- MVNDEF-100 - Created Customized Table Column Widths in Flex Chapter
- MVNDEF-99 - Reduced the Font Size in the PDF Book
- MVNDEF-98 - Created a Table with Custom Column Widths and Multiple Named Spans
The bulk of the changes in the 0.5 release where in the FlexMojos chapter, a chapter which is still in a draft status as the FlexMojos project continues to develop.
- MVNDEF-85 - Added documentation for the custom SWC and SWF lifecycles in the FlexMojos Chapter -Section 20.4, “The FlexMojos Lifecycle”
- MVNDEF-83 - Added instructions for configuring the Flash Player to support FlexMojos unit tests -Section 20.2.2, “Configuring Environment to Support Flex Unit Tests”
- MVNDEF-82 - Updated the FlexMojos Archetypes to match the 3.1.0 release. The FlexMojos 3.1.0 archetypes no rely on a parent POM to customize the build for Flex - Section 20.3, “Creating a Flex Mojos Project from an Archetype”
- MVNDEF-84 - Added a section that documents all of the goals in the FlexMojos plugin - Section 20.5, “FlexMojos Plugin Goals”
- MVNDEF-103 - Added a section to Flex Chapter about adding the Sonatype Plugin Group to your Maven Settings - Section 20.2.3, “Adding FlexMojos to Your Maven Settings' Plugin Groups”
- MVNDEF-102 - Update book to reference FlexMojos release 3.2.0
- MVNDEF-94 - Documented the test-compile and test-run goals. - Section 20.5.3, “Unit Testing Flex”
- MVNDEF-89 - Documented the flexbuilder goal - Section 20.5.4, “Generating Flex Builder Project Files”
- MVNDEF-87 - Documented the compile-swc and compile-swf goals - Section 20.5.2, “Compiling Flex Source”
- MVNDEF-86 - Documented the Actionscript Documentation goal and report - Section 20.5.1, “Generating Actionscript Documentation” and Section 20.6, “FlexMojos Plugin Reports”
Written by Tim OBrien
Tim is a Software Architect with experience in all aspects of software development from project inception to developing scaleable production architectures for large-scale systems during critical, high-risk events such as Black Friday. He has helped many organizations ranging from small startups to Fortune 100 companies take a more strategic approach to adopting and evaluating technology and managing the risks associated with change.
Explore All Posts by Tim OBrien