Well, almost ready. Mohawk? Check. Silly shirt with my silly face on it? Check. Presentation? Ummm, it’s coming along…

Here’s the brief description I finally wrote up about my custom component development session:

This session will focus on advanced component development techniques. We’ll cover some of the basics to make sure everyone’s up to speed, but the focus will not be on updateDisplayList() or createChildren(). Topics that will be covered include: diving deep into the framework to find the meaning of life, overriding the framework to create the components you actually want, using events to communicate from your components, using styles and setting default styles for your components, ‘underriding’ base framework classes like UIComponent, MXML templating, how to deal with pesky private variables when overriding a class, and how to steal other people’s ideas (and code) to make you look smart.

I’m still working on the presentation and I have absolutely no idea how I’m supposed to take up an hour and 20 minutes. Like that description hints at, I’m going to try to focus on what I consider the “non-standard” stuff in component development. I’m not going to make a Hello World Flex component. I’ve got a few cool tricks to show (at least I think they’re dorky cool), and I’ll cover some of the harder stuff like doing good event dispatching from your components and using styles correctly. If I run out of content the session will devolve into a “bitch about what you don’t like in the Flex framework” session, and I have a feeling we’ll be able to fill up a substantial block of time with that.

Want to hang out? Come to 360Flex.