But I soon encountered the one big problem with a book written this early in the software development cycle - it can't anticipate the bugs that are pretty much expected with an Alpha release. For this reason, even with a sturdy rudder, I found myself hopelessly ran aground less than a third of the way through. My installation of the Alpha couldn't even create a basic "Hello World" application without a string of bugs. And trying to get any kind of support from Adobe for an Alpha release seems very difficult; they don't welcome email and their forums are, understandably, much heavier on questions than answers. The Pocket Guide doesn't have a chapter on troubleshooting unfortunately, which is unsurprising for such a rush release, but troubleshooting is typically a significant part of the Alpha experience.
It is not O'Reilly's fault that the Apollo Alpha is not sturdy enough to justify this book. But it makes me wonder what the point of Adobe's "Public" Alphas are in the first place, when it is nigh on impossible to feed back any experience to Adobe which might improve future versions of the product. But I suppose I already know the answer to that one. It is because we masochistic early adopters demand it, and so we will hopefully start blogging these bug fixes in plenty of time before the paying customers get there.
Article comments
1 - Stefan Schmalhaus
Very entertaining thoughts on early adopters. I enjoyed the reading!
You should have mentioned that this book is also available as free PDF download from the Adobe Labs site.
2 - John Dowdell
Hi, the O'Reilly intro to Adobe Apollo alpha is indeed "a gentle introduction and a very quick read, just about enough to get you started and give you the idea", and I believe its text was finalized before the alpha release was locked down.
For ongoing discussion of usage, I'd recommend the Apollocoders mailing list on Yahoo Groups, which seems to have a bit more action than the Apollo webforum on Adobe Labs.
Here's one forum discussion on configuration issues, which may contain the missing key on your situation.
There are other Apollo discussion groups springing up, but the Apollocoders mailing list currently seems to have the most interactive conversations.
jd/adobe
3 - zenbullets
Thanks John,
If anyone does want a go at fixing my Apollo issues, the bugs are detailed here.
4 - John Dowdell
That link goes to the Adobe webforums on Apollo, and the question turned out to be "Can you tell what is preventing me from HelloWorld to work?" There were three replies from Mike Chambers trying to clarify what might be different there. Mike wrote that book on Apollo, and travels the world showing people Flex, writing new projects, writing new tutorials. You've gotten attention right from the top. :)
For that question, you might post a short little bump to that original thread... you already had The Man working to get the details on your setup, and I suspect it's a mere work overload which caused that last set of basic background info to remain unanswered. Does that sound good, or are you past a HelloWorld app already...?
jd/adobe