Grant Skinner has released a new tool called RegExr aimed to help ActionScript developers edit and test Regular Expressions in ActionScript 3.0.

[gskinner.com] RegExr is an online tool for editing and testing Regular Expressions (RegExp / RegEx). It provides a simple interface to enter RegEx expressions, and visualize matches in real-time editable source text. It also provides a handy RegExp snippet sidebar with descriptions and usage examples to make it easier to learn Regular Expressions through trial and error.

Learn more about using Regular Expressions in ActionScript 3.0 and Flex >>

Give RegExr a try >>

Grant Skinner first showed me his components for spell checking in Flex, Flash, and AIR at MAX Chicago. I was interested in them because they were being used in Buzzword (which Adobe recently acquired), and because I’m always interested in checking out Grant’s latest work. I also wanted to see them because they were built partly as a result of a challenge that the AIR team gave Grant: the first versions of his spell check engine used server side spell checking, and we challenged him to make it work client-side so it could be used offline with AIR applications.

The thing that really stood out for me after looking the components over is how polished the whole product is. The code is very slick and optimized, the API looks really robust, the documentation is complete, and the whole package is really well organized. Grant also made it really simple to implement: drag a component onto a textfield or component in Flash to add spell checking, or add a simple tag in Flex. The Flash community would really benefit if there was a wide variety of professional components like these.

This latest update improves Flex integration, and makes it behave more like spell checking in Word or Pages.

Check out the SPL product page for more info, and demos of the components in action.

As of 6:20pm Dallas time on July 18, Colin Moock’s latest book, “Essential ActionScript 3.0” is number four on Amazon’s best-seller list. Tim O’Reilly hasn’t confirmed this on his blog yet, like he did with “Programming Flex 2″ by Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott, but I am hearing rumors that Colin’s book may be trending towards an all-time best-seller for O’Reilly. Awesome.

This supports a trend that we’ve been seeing. Flex is hot - ActionScript 3.0 is hot, and Adobe AIR is bringing whole new crowds of web developers over to check out Flex, Flash, and ActionScript 3.0.

By the way, thanks to Colin for mentioning my name in the beginning of the book. It’s pretty cool to see your name printed in a best-selling book.

Congratulations, Colin! I know writing this book was a ton of work but it will surely be the one book that every ActionScript developer will want to have on their desks. Great work.

The Adobe Platform Documentation team is in need of an ActionScript 3.0 developer who can build sample content. The position requires prior experience developing object-oriented samples and building Flash applications. This is currently a contract position.

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Robert Dominy introduces JavaScripters to Flash ActionScript in this article on www.about.com.