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Mrinal Wadhwa
Flex 4 Component Lifecycle (Slides and Code)

Mrinal Wadhwa

21 Jun 2009 | 10:52 am

I gave a talk this Friday on the lifecycle of a component in Flex 4. The talk went into the details of how the flash player works, why a component needs a lifecycle and the various stages of a components life. Here are the slides and experimental code from the talk … Here’s the code we played with to understand how frame rates work in the flash player … FrameRates.as Here’s the code we wrote with to understand the Elastic Racetrack … ElasticRaceTrack.as Here’s the experiment to understand marshaled slices … MarshaledSlices.as Download Slides Download…
Flex 4 Component Lifecycle

Mrinal Wadhwa

12 Jun 2009 | 2:43 am

I’ll be presenting a talk on Flex 4 Component Lifecycle at the next Bangalore Flex User Group Meeting on 19th. The talk will be an in depth walk through of the life cycle of a component in Flex 4. The Flex 4 component model (Spark) is built on top of Flex 3 component model (Halo), so we will also take a detailed look at the Flex 3 lifecycle. I am not planning to do a feature by feature overview of new features in Flex 4, so it would help if you already know a little bit about that. These articles are a good place to start .. Matt Chotin on What’s new in Flex 4 Beta Joan Lafferty…
I’m now an SAP Mentor

Mrinal Wadhwa

9 Jun 2009 | 3:15 pm

As some of you on twitter may have seen me mention today morning, I’m now an SAP Mentor. The Mentors’ website defines … The SAP Mentor Initiative identifies and provides special status to exceptional and high-value members of our SAP Developer Network (SDN) and Business Process Expert (BPX) communities. SAP Mentors are role models who differentiate themselves through the high quality and frequency of their community contributions, their perspectives, attitudes, and interaction styles. They are subject-matter experts who are passionate about SAP and share their…
Adobe BrowserLab: Cross browser testing Nirvana

Mrinal Wadhwa

3 Jun 2009 | 12:14 am

Adobe has just released BrowserLab (formerly Meer Meer). Quoting their website, the tool lets you .. “Preview and test your web pages on leading browsers and operating systems – on demand. Adobe BrowserLab makes it easier and faster than ever before to see how your designs appear to your customers and audience. Get your results in real time, from virtually any computer connected to the web” This is a snapshot of 2 views of my blog .. one on Firefox 3 – OSX and other on Firefox 3 – Windows XP .. onion skinned on top of each other … Anyone who has built and…
FXG paths to Flex components convertor

Mrinal Wadhwa

8 May 2009 | 3:39 am

While working on a project yesterday I needed to convert several vectors (hundreds of them) into reusable Flex 4 visual elements that I could then use in my skins, so lets say if I have vectors of chess pieces that I would like to use in my Skin as follows … Since I needed these in several skin files I did not want to deal with clunky Path elements which would’ve looked something like this.. So I created a quick AIR application …. that that converts the elements into AS3 classes that extend from spark.primitives.Path and look something like this … This way all my path…

InsideRIA
Calendar Component in ActionScript 3 Part 3

Tom Barker

3 Jul 2009 | 7:00 am

So far we've seen how to implement the calendar component, and explored the logic inside the Calendar class itself. From here I will show the logic inside of the Day class, and talk about potential ways to expand the...
Silex - Open Source RIA

Mike Slinn

2 Jul 2009 | 8:15 am

SourceForge's FOSS project of the month of June was Silex. From the SourceForge writeup: "Silex is an open source RIA that enables you to build Flash websites for Flash Player 7, 8, 9, and 10. Silex is a new kind...
Introduction to Adobe Flash Collaborative Services

Romin Irani

2 Jul 2009 | 6:00 am

AFCS (Adobe Flash Collaboration Service) previously known as 'Cocomo' is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that that allows Flex developers to address a class of applications known as collaborative applications. Collaborative Applications have progressed from a nice cool thing into serious applications. Almost all of us would have participated in an online chat or a web meeting, which allows a group of users to chat, share files, do screen sharing, take polls, ask questions and receive answers, etc. AFCS aims to lower the barrier to entry for developers to bring such collaborative features into…
Tibco PageBus: an event framework for JavaScript

RJ Owen

1 Jul 2009 | 1:02 pm

Tibco PageBus is a free event framework for JavaScript. In this entry I discuss the merits of PageBus, how to implement it, and show a quick example demo I built integrating some HTML, PageBus, and a very simple Flash component.
jQuery Example - Using cookies to save draft information

Raymond Camden

30 Jun 2009 | 6:41 pm

An example of using jQuery to store draft information in cookies.

Ryan Stewart - Rich Internet Application Mountaineer
HTC Hero is the First Android Phone with Flash Support

ryanstewart

24 Jun 2009 | 4:50 am

The Flash Platform is coming to Android. Today HTC is shipping their Android-based HTC Hero smartphone and it’s the first Android device with Flash on it. There was a lot of news this week about Adobe delivering the full Flash Player 10 experience in the browser and this is an important step towards this. We’ve set up a section on the Adobe Developer center with HTC Hero information and Adrian Ludwig has a good video that shows off what you’ll be able to do with the device there. Adobe’s mobile evangelist Mark Doherty also has a lot more info. One of the cool things…
Congrats to the Flash Lite Developer Challenge Winners

ryanstewart

18 Jun 2009 | 9:13 am

I was lucky enough to be asked to judge the Flash Lite Developer Challenge in which we gave away a lot of prize money ($15,000 USD for each category winner and $30,000 USD for the grand prize). I continue to be impressed with what you can do with Flash Lite. I’m busy working on my own Flash Lite application and these guys put me to shame. My favorite out of the bunch is Little Spender because I think it’s an easy to use and well designed little application. Be sure to check out all the winners, Mark Doherty has some great YouTube videos of all the winners in action. And we also…
Tech Talk with Ryan Stewart on REST APIs in AFCS

ryanstewart

17 Jun 2009 | 11:53 pm

This was posted a couple of days ago but I forgot to blog about it. I got a chance to talk with Raffaele Sena on the Adobe Flash Collaboration Service team about some of the things you can do with the REST APIs that we expose in AFCS. You can use any language you want (the SDK comes with the biggies including Java, PHP, and ColdFusion) to manage rooms and integrate authentication into your own environment. Make sure to check out the AFCS forums if you’ve got any questions.
MAX Registration Open and Sessions Starting to Finalize

ryanstewart

17 Jun 2009 | 10:12 am

Registration is now open for MAX 2009 in Los Angeles from October 4th - 7th. If you register before August 31st you get the early bird pricing of $200 off. I’ve been involved with MAX this year as a camp manager and seeing how this all comes together from the inside is impressive. We’ve got a ton of content this year including a number of “BYOL (bring your own laptop)” labs that will let you get some hands on experience with the tools and technologies. MAX is also a great place to come mingle with the community’s best and get a chance to talk with the engineers…
The RTMP Spec is Released, Published, and Available

ryanstewart

15 Jun 2009 | 2:06 pm

Today we’ve published the RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) specification as part of the Open Screen Project so that anyone can download it and add RTMP functionality to their applications or code. We announced that we were going to be opening it up earlier this year and now it’s available. RTMP is one of the core (and probably most interesting) parts of the Flash Player. It’s what enables a lot of the rich media as well as real time collaboration features inside that have made the Flash Platform so successful. By publishing this spec we’re giving every developer…

Michael's Blog
Results of AJAX Statistic for .NET Development

Michael Schwarz

23 Jun 2009 | 12:36 am

Simone has created another survey concerning AJAX usage with ASP.NET. The results are available, now, and it is really interesting to see that there are only small changes in the use of AJAX libraries for ASP.NET developers. The most used Ajax/JS library among .NET developers is jQuery, which is used by the 71,4% of the users. Second comes the Ajax Control Toolkit with 58,8%, followed by the core ASP.NET Ajax library, which is used by 44,8%. The 3 most used libraries are still the same of 2007, just with the opposite order (it was ASP.NET Ajax, the Control Toolkit and then jQuery). He writes…
IActiveScriptParse and x64

Michael Schwarz

19 Jun 2009 | 7:20 am

Some days ago I had to work on an .NET application that has been ported from C++. This application is using VBScript as scripting host using the IActiveScriptParse interface. While the C++ compile was working fine on x64 the .NET port didn’t work. To understand why it is not working I had a look at the target platform settings in the .NET project. By default Visual Studio is using Any CPU. The .NET runtime then will have a look at the PE header to identify if the assembly has been compiled with Any CPU, x86 or x64. The IActiveScriptParse interface on x86 is mapped to IActiveScriptParse32…
MFtoolkit available soon in .NET MF 3.0 SP1

Michael Schwarz

31 Mar 2009 | 3:21 pm

Microsoft announced that parts of the MFtoolkit will be available in the first service pack for .NET Micro Framework 3.0. Missing http support (currently we have only simple WebServices) is one of the most requested features. Support for hardware devices / modules like XBee or common sensors are following right after. .NET MF 3.0 SP1 will be available around June 2009. Until then the MFtoolkit will be still available at CodePlex. This week we got some new features like NetBIOS lookup, C6820 camera driver, SHA1 and SHA256 support as well as more improvements for XBee and http server classes.
Ajax.NET Professional and ASP.NET MVC

Michael Schwarz

25 Mar 2009 | 5:01 am

Sean Lin has written about how Ajax.NET Professional (AjaxPro) can be used with ASP.NET MVC and what you have to change to get it working. Anyway, I have been using Ajax.NET since .NET 2.0, as well as since .NET 3.5. I haven't found a good reason to switch and it even runs under ASP .NET MVC and I reckon it is still better than using Ajax.ActionLink(). Unless of course, there's some easier method that I do not know of then please feel free to enlighten me anytime. Most of my Ajax use centers around requesting data from the server asynchronously and then using javascript to update the DOM. As…
How to fix German c:\Programme “Access denied”

Michael Schwarz

27 Feb 2009 | 10:29 am

Some months ago I opened a Microsoft Support call to ask why I cannot open c:\Programme (the German translated folder for c:\Program Files) on Windows Vista or Windows 7 Beta. When you type c:\Prog on a German Vista machine you will get a drop down list containing c:\Programme. Use the arrow keys to select it and press enter. What you get is a access denied message. Another test I did was to open c:\Programme\Windows NT, and wow, this was working without any problem. But when I clicked in the address bar on the Programme tab I got access denied, too. For those of you don’t understand what…

The Official Flex Team Blog
Flash Builder beta serial number extension site is now live

Vera Carr

24 Jun 2009 | 3:30 pm

Flash Builder 4 beta extension serial numbers are available for all licensed Flex Builder 3 customers. This includes all commercial and education serial numbers. To request a beta extension serial number, you will need to enter your Flex Builder 3 serial number. Please go to the extension request site to obtain a serial to extend FB4 beta.
Your Feedback Requested on Flex / ActionScript Posters

Mike Potter

22 Jun 2009 | 9:51 am

We're working on updating the Flex 3 and ActionScript posters for Flex 4 and would love your opinion on how they're being used. With the addition of the Spark component set for Flex 4, we think that there may be too many classes now to put all the information on one set of posters (the existing set is 5 posters for all Flex, AIR and Flash Player packages.) What's your opinion? What do you use the posters for? Would it be OK for just the class names on the posters, and then use the ActionScript 3 API guide for details? I'd love your opinion on how you use the posters so we can make them even…
Blueprint Flash Builder Plug-in for Code Examples Released on Adobe Labs

Vera Carr

17 Jun 2009 | 4:40 pm

If you're curious as to how you can query code examples inline from your development environment, Blueprint is definitely worth your while. Blueprint was released last week on Adobe Labs with support for Flex Builder 3 and Flash Builder 4. [via Flex Doc Team blog] Blueprint is an innovative code-centric search application, initially delivered as an Eclipse plug-in. It is a custom search tool that searches only for code (for now, it searches just for MXML and ActionScript). So, for example, if you search for DataGrid, it returns a set of code examples that use the Flex DataGrid control. But…
Upcoming Open Beta Meetings

Vera Carr

10 Jun 2009 | 3:13 pm

Open Beta Meeting for new and beginner Flex developers When: June 22nd at 10AM – 11AM PDT (Find your time zone here) Where: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/openbeta/ (Please enter the room as a ‘guest’ using your First and Last name) Open Beta Meeting for intermediate and advanced Flex developers When: June 23rd at 9:30AM – 10:30AM PDT (Find your time zone here) Where: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/openbeta/ (Please enter the room as a ‘guest’ using your First and Last name) We hope you’ve had a chance to get your hands dirty with the Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4 betas. You’ve heard…
Free Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst e-Seminars Next Week

Mike Potter

3 Jun 2009 | 1:06 pm

We have three free online seminars next week that will walk through the new features of Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst for you. Next Tuesday we'll have a session for PHP developers, on Wednesday we have a session on Flash Catalyst, and on Thursday we have a session for ColdFusion developers. Get more information on the seminars, and others that we have planned in the upcoming months.

Visualrinse | Design and Development by Chad Udell
Two Years In, How Much Do I Miss Not Having Flash On My iPhone?

Chad

28 Jun 2009 | 9:13 pm

As most of you who visit here know, I love Flash. Pretty much always have (Flash 3 baby! I ditched Director as quickly as I could.). Sure, we’ve had our differences on and off again over the years, but overall, I continue to be a strong advocates for the technology and love to use it whenever I can on projects for myself and clients. Many of you are probably also are aware that I am also an Apple geek. I have owned over a half dozen Macs myself, and used them long before I was able to get my parents to finally pick one up for me at the end of high school. Usually, this works out well…
links for 2009-06-24

Chad

24 Jun 2009 | 4:06 pm

SEOmoz | SEO Best Practices: SEOmoz's New Policies Based on Updated Correlation Data Quite possibly the authorative source on SEO best practices. This is one read you can't afford to miss. (tags: seo bestpractices seomoz searchengine)
links for 2009-06-17

Chad

17 Jun 2009 | 4:04 pm

10 Awesome Free Photoshop Brushes | Abduzeedo | Graphic Design Inspiration and Photoshop Tutorials I haven’t linked to any PSD brushes for a while… so, here you go. Some high quality ones right here. (tags: photoshop brushes free download)
links for 2009-06-16

Chad

16 Jun 2009 | 4:05 pm

40+ Helpful Resources On User Interface Design Patterns A thick stack of UI design resources for budding interaction and XD designers. A virtual bible of design patterns. (tags: UI xd webdesign)
Spring is over. Had a blast!

Chad

13 Jun 2009 | 12:15 pm

The annual Spring <br /> conference was held this past week in Athens, Ohio at Ohio University. A number of very talented professionals gathered to talk shop with the attendees. Ben Pritchard, Kevin Hoyt, Greg Rewis, Stephanie Sullivan were among the cadre. All in all the conference went smoothly, even with the unfortunate absence of Eric Meyer. Eric was able to Skype in his presentation, so it wasn’t a total loss for attendees. I presented two topics. One on Designer/Developer collaboration, the other a case study on a site we had just recently finished. The comments I go on the…

Digital Backcountry - Ryan Stewart's Flash Platform Blog
HTC Hero is the First Android Phone with Flash Support

ryanstewart

24 Jun 2009 | 4:50 am

The Flash Platform is coming to Android. Today HTC is shipping their Android-based HTC Hero smartphone and it’s the first Android device with Flash on it. There was a lot of news this week about Adobe delivering the full Flash Player 10 experience in the browser and this is an important step towards this. We’ve set up a section on the Adobe Developer center with HTC Hero information and Adrian Ludwig has a good video that shows off what you’ll be able to do with the device there. Adobe’s mobile evangelist Mark Doherty also has a lot more info. One of the cool things…
Congrats to the Flash Lite Developer Challenge Winners

ryanstewart

18 Jun 2009 | 9:13 am

I was lucky enough to be asked to judge the Flash Lite Developer Challenge in which we gave away a lot of prize money ($15,000 USD for each category winner and $30,000 USD for the grand prize). I continue to be impressed with what you can do with Flash Lite. I’m busy working on my own Flash Lite application and these guys put me to shame. My favorite out of the bunch is Little Spender because I think it’s an easy to use and well designed little application. Be sure to check out all the winners, Mark Doherty has some great YouTube videos of all the winners in action. And we also…
Tech Talk with Ryan Stewart on REST APIs in AFCS

ryanstewart

17 Jun 2009 | 11:53 pm

This was posted a couple of days ago but I forgot to blog about it. I got a chance to talk with Raffaele Sena on the Adobe Flash Collaboration Service team about some of the things you can do with the REST APIs that we expose in AFCS. You can use any language you want (the SDK comes with the biggies including Java, PHP, and ColdFusion) to manage rooms and integrate authentication into your own environment. Make sure to check out the AFCS forums if you’ve got any questions.
MAX Registration Open and Sessions Starting to Finalize

ryanstewart

17 Jun 2009 | 10:12 am

Registration is now open for MAX 2009 in Los Angeles from October 4th - 7th. If you register before August 31st you get the early bird pricing of $200 off. I’ve been involved with MAX this year as a camp manager and seeing how this all comes together from the inside is impressive. We’ve got a ton of content this year including a number of “BYOL (bring your own laptop)” labs that will let you get some hands on experience with the tools and technologies. MAX is also a great place to come mingle with the community’s best and get a chance to talk with the engineers…
The RTMP Spec is Released, Published, and Available

ryanstewart

15 Jun 2009 | 2:06 pm

Today we’ve published the RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) specification as part of the Open Screen Project so that anyone can download it and add RTMP functionality to their applications or code. We announced that we were going to be opening it up earlier this year and now it’s available. RTMP is one of the core (and probably most interesting) parts of the Flash Player. It’s what enables a lot of the rich media as well as real time collaboration features inside that have made the Flash Platform so successful. By publishing this spec we’re giving every developer…

Mike Chambers
Relative performance for collision detection techniques in ActionScript 3

mikechambers

26 Jun 2009 | 3:28 pm

If you have read my blog any this week, you have probably noticed that I have been doing some basic research on collision detection within the Flash Player. As part of this, I have put together a simple test suite, showing the performance of a couple of different techniques for checking for collision. This is by no means meant to be exhaustive (and currently tilts towards boundary collision). However, I wanted to post the results as the current information is useful (if nothing more than to confirm existing assumptions), and perhaps generate more tests an ideas around collision detection.
Strategies for optimizing collision detection with BitmapData.hitTest

mikechambers

25 Jun 2009 | 11:40 am

Yesterday I blogged about how you can use the BitmapData.hitTest API to do collision detection between the visible parts of multiple DisplayObject instances. This works very well, but as some of the BitmapData apis can be cpu intensive (particularly new BitmapData and BitmapData.draw) you have to take care to make sure that performance does not get out of hand. This post will discuss a number of approaches for optimizing collision detection when using BitmapData.hitTest. Check boundary boxes first The first thing to do is to check whether you need to check for visible collision detection in…
Using BitmapData.hitTest for Collision Detection

mikechambers

24 Jun 2009 | 4:56 pm

The Flash Player contains a number of APIs for handling collision detection within Flash content. The DisplayObject class contains hitTest and hitTestPoint which can be useful if you need to detect bounding box collisions, or detect collisions between an individual point and bounding boxes or shapes. However, BitmapData also contains a hitTest API, which can check collisions on BitmapData. Where the API really shines, is when you need to detect collisions between the visible areas of DisplayObjects (and not just of their bounding boxes). The API contains functionality for testing collisions…
What new game APIs do you want in the Flash Player?

mikechambers

16 Jun 2009 | 12:03 pm

I have been learning some game development lately, and building my first game (well, at least my first game since Flash 4). I think game development and deployment are some of the real strengths of the Flash player, but ones which we haven’t specifically focused on in a while. While working on my game, there were a couple of things I needed to do where additional player APIs could have made the development easier (as well as likely speeding up execution). This got me to thinking about other APIs that would be useful for game development. So, what new Flash Player APIs would you like to…
FlashCamp San Francisco, May 29th : Flex 4, Flash Catalyst, Flex Builder 4

mikechambers

5 May 2009 | 10:41 am

We have just posted information about FlashCamp San Francisco, a free developer event that we will be holding in the Adobe San Francisco Office on Friday night, May 29th. This will be similar to the ApolloCamp event that we held for the Apollo Beta launch a couple of years ago, although this event will be focused on the next generation of Flex, including Flex 4, Flash Catalyst, and Flex Builder 4. Register for FlashCamp San Francisco From the event page: FlashCamp San Francisco is a free one night event hosted by Adobe covering everything you need to know about getting started with building…

blog.FlexExamples.com
Importing a text flow from an XML object in Flex 4

Peter deHaan

25 Jun 2009 | 11:59 pm

The following example shows how you can import a TextFlow object from an XML object in Flex 4 by using the static TextFlowUtil.importFromXML() method. Full code after the jump. (more…)
Displaying icons in a Spark List control in Flex 4

Peter deHaan

24 Jun 2009 | 7:08 pm

The following example shows how you can display icons in a Spark List control in Flex 4 by creating a custom item renderer. Full code after the jump. (more…)
Setting the base theme color on the Spark DropDownList control in Flex 4

Peter deHaan

23 Jun 2009 | 11:59 pm

The following example shows how you can set the base theme color on a Spark DropDownList control in Flex 4 by setting the baseColor style. Full code after the jump. (more…)
Setting the symbol color on the Spark DropDownList control in Flex 4

Peter deHaan

22 Jun 2009 | 11:59 pm

The following example shows how you can set the symbol color on a Spark DropDownList control in Flex 4 by setting the symbolColor style. Full code after the jump. (more…)
Creating a custom Halo Accordion header skin in Flex 4

Peter deHaan

21 Jun 2009 | 11:59 pm

The following example shows how you can style the Halo Accordion header (with default Spark skin) in Flex 4 by creating a new skin based on the default Spark skin and modifying the various skin parts. The default Halo Accordion header Spark skin can be found at \frameworks\projects\sparkskins\src\mx\skins\spark\AccordionHeaderSkin.mxml. Full code after the jump. (more…)

Flex and Flash Developer - Jesse Warden dot Kizz-ohm
Flash Player 11: Gaming Platform?

admin

25 Jun 2009 | 9:46 am

When Director was being overtaken by Flash, you could see the signs by what they were teaching at local colleges, what jobs were hiring for, and activity centers online based more around Flash’ growth vs. Director. The same happened with Flex; Macromedia employee’s typically involved on the Flashcoders email list started to go quiet and a significant amount of new blood, and old, popped up on the Flexcoders email list. Product strategies favored new features for the Flex component set and not Flash. Now, while we’ve reached a point where while there is still room for…
Job: Python Software Engineer

admin

17 Jun 2009 | 9:04 am

VIAAS is seeking a Python Software Engineer. The engineer will be a member of a small, dynamic development team. This is a challenging position that requires in-depth knowledge of LAMP technologies, and a seasoned grasp of how to create, communicate about, and design for scalability of Web 2.0 technologies.The engineer needs to be comfortable working in a fluid environment, handling a variety of assignments and technologies. We have a very sharp, passionate, and fast-moving development team that prides itself on technical excellence and innovation. People who are used to staid corporate…
Error Handling in ActionScript 3: Don’t Make Grenades (or how to not crash Safari)

admin

10 Jun 2009 | 6:30 pm

Preface At the latest WWDC it was announced that the #1 reason Safari crashes for users is because of Flash, hence the new plug-in sequestering (i.e. if Flash blows up real good, it’ll do so in a way that won’t negatively affect the browser). I agree. If you’ve ever surfed the web using the debug Flash Player, Safari 3 and 4 explode all the time. I don’t know the true cause, but I do know when it’ll happen most often: when you get an error dialogue. These are shown only if you have the debug Flash Player installed, and an error that wasn’t…
Flash Command: Convert to Symbol and Distribute to Layers

admin

1 Jun 2009 | 10:11 am

Josh was bitching on Twitter the other day about how if you select multiple objects in Flash and choose Convert to Symbol, it puts them all on the same layer, regardless of where they were before. Others agreed that it is frustrating. I know where he’s coming from doing production art, so I built this quick Command to do just that. If you save in your Commands folder, and re-boot Flash, you can re-map your F8 key to use this Command instead of the regular Convert to Symbol Command. fl.getDocumentDOM().convertToSymbol('movie clip', , 'top left'); fl.getDocumentDOM().enterEditMode();…
Utilizing Namespaces to Indicate Framework Usage

admin

29 May 2009 | 3:36 pm

When utilizing PureMVC Mediator’s, there are 2 ways I’ve seen people write them. The first way is to have the Mediator call methods on the View, passing data it retrieved from a Proxy. This can also be done from a Command as well. The second way is to actually give the Mediator/Command more responsibility of State management for a particular View, and call more than 1 method on it, doing a lot of code that’s often done in the View. Both have the same problem: methods in the View that only PureMVC calls, yet exist for others to inadvertently use because they are public. This…

The Flash Blog
Adjusting audio pitch in Flash Player 10

lee

1 Jul 2009 | 7:39 pm

Update: Andre Michelle wrote some much better code to adjust the pitch of an external sound. I was secretly hoping he would. Check it out at http://blog.andre-michelle.com/2009/pitch-mp3. Thanks Andre! Here is another sound example that shows how to adjust the pitch of an external sound. This is an extension of the example that can be found in the documentation for the Sound.extract method. Now this example does adjust the pitch but it also speeds the song up as well. This is because you need to skip some samples in order to increase the pitch. Now there are ways to increase the pitch of…
Manipulating MP3 speed and direction

lee

26 Jun 2009 | 7:05 pm

Here is one of those examples that I did just for the hell of it. I often wondered how hard it would be to play an MP3 in reverse. It turns out that it is really easy with Flash Player 10. Now my implementation of reverse is pretty weak and I’m sure guys like Andre Michelle could make something that sounded perfect. Click the button below to try it out. You can reverse direction and speed it up. You surely heard the jerkiness and little glitches and that could surely be corrected with more work. All of this is possible thanks to the new Sound.extract() method. This allows you to grab…
Two weeks off

lee

22 Jun 2009 | 10:30 pm

Things have been kind of slow here on my blog and on Twitter over the last week. The reason is that I am on a two week vacation. In actual fact we are moving into our new house and are also remodeling a bathroom and updating the electrical service. I can honestly say that I’ve never worked as hard as I have over the last week. All of us in cushy computer jobs should take a minute and be thankful how easy we have it . The photo at the left is me right after an extensive bit of tile cutting. I have also installed recessed lighting, wired receptacles and switches, and almost every other…
The Flashbelt dead drop explained

lee

11 Jun 2009 | 12:02 am

I am now home from Flashbelt and I had a great time in the 24 hours that I was there. In addition to giving two sessions I also did another dead drop. This one was very interesting for a few reasons. Firstly, many of the people who participated were actually speakers at the conference. Flash conference regulars like Geoff Stearns, Phillip Kerman, Robert Reinhardt, and many others worked together to try to solve the clues. I also gave hints to people who were having trouble getting past a certain point. Read below to see the steps that made up this drop. The Carriage ID In my initial blog post…
The Flashbelt dead drop has begun

lee

8 Jun 2009 | 8:46 pm

Update: this dead drop has been found. More details to come. I have just finished setting up the Flashbelt dead drop. I think this one should be pretty interesting. I have upped the prizes on this one. The winner will receive Master Collection CS4, Flex 3 Professional, and some books from O’Reilly. Hurry up because as you know, these contests are often over rather fast. Submit your email using the form located at the link below to get started. This is just so I can track participants and I won’t be using your email address for anything not related to the dead drop. If you are…

Adobe Flex Developer Center: Recent tutorials
Building data-driven map applications using the Flex DataMap control

8 Jun 2009 | 12:06 am

Create a Flex application using the Yahoo! Maps component and data-driven techniques.
Effects in Adobe Flex 4 beta – Part 2: Advanced graphical effects

8 Jun 2009 | 12:06 am

Learn how to take your Flex applications to the next level with the new effects included in the Flex 4 SDK beta.
Flash Builder 4 beta for ColdFusion developers

1 Jun 2009 | 12:06 am

Learn about the data-centric features in Flash Builder 4 beta and how developers can easily use Flash Builder and ColdFusion to create Flex applications.
Understanding the role of CFCs in Flex application development

1 Jun 2009 | 12:06 am

learn how ColdFusion Components (CFCs) can provide back-end data services to front-end Adobe Flex applications.
Generating ColdFusion forms with Adobe Flash Builder 4 beta

1 Jun 2009 | 12:06 am

Learn to generate a form using a custom data type and populate the form with the employee sales data returned from a search tool.

ScottGu's Blog
ASP.NET MVC Talk in Reading UK July 3rd

ScottGu

2 Jul 2009 | 1:11 am

I’m in the UK today and tomorrow (on my way back from a trip to India for two days earlier this week), and am giving two tech talks while in town. The first is this evening at a London .NET User Group event. I’ll be presenting Silverlight 3. Unfortunately the event is already over-registered – so if you haven’t registered yet you’ll need to catch it the next time I’m in town. The second talk is tomorrow (Friday) from 1-4pm at the Microsoft facility in Reading and is on ASP.NET MVC. When we first announced it last week it also over-registered quickly. …
June 7th Links: ASP.NET, AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio

ScottGu

7 Jun 2009 | 12:05 am

Here is the latest in my link-listing series. Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. You can also now follow me on twitter (@scottgu) where I also post links and small posts. ASP.NET Implementing Incremental Navigation with ASP.NET: A nice article from Andrew Wrigley that describes how to use ASP.NET’s Site Navigation system to create a navigation user interface. Syndicating and Consuming RSS Feeds in ASP.NET: A nice article from Scott Mitchell that describes how to work with…
IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit

ScottGu

3 Jun 2009 | 9:53 am

SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the important considerations that any Internet web-site needs to design with in mind. A non-trivial percentage of Internet traffic to sites is driven by search engines, and good SEO techniques can help increase site traffic even further. Likewise, small mistakes can significantly impact the search relevance of your site’s content and cause you to miss out on the traffic that you should be receiving. Some of these mistakes include: multiple URLs on a site leading to the same content, broken links from a page, poorly chosen titles,…
Microsoft Web Platform Installer

ScottGu

2 Jun 2009 | 2:21 am

One of the cool new releases coming out this year is a small download manager - the Microsoft Web Platform Installer - that makes installing and configuring web server and web development stacks really easy. It is a free tool that you can download from the www.microsoft.com/web site (here is the direct link to the installer – choose the 2.0 version). It works with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. The Web Platform Installer provides an easy way to quickly install and customize all the software you need to develop or deploy web sites and…
May 30th Links: ASP.NET, AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio

ScottGu

30 May 2009 | 3:39 pm

Here is the latest in my link-listing series. Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. You can also now follow me on twitter (@scottgu) where I also post links and small posts. ASP.NET Using ASP.NET 3.5’s ListView and DataPager Controls to Delete Data: Scott Mitchell continues his excellent tutorial series on the ASP.NET ListView control. In this article he discusses how to handle deleting data with it. ASP.NET ListView: Displaying Hierarchical Data: Adam Pooler writes…

Method ~ of ~ failed by Tim Heuer
Silverlight Coding Competition – win USD $10,000!

Tim Heuer

25 Jun 2009 | 1:41 pm

I was honored to be asked by ComponentArt to participate in a judging panel for their just now released 2009 Summer Silverlight Coding CompetitionThe grand prize is USD $10,000. Yes, that’s right: USD $10,000! ComponentArt is even kicking in 2 runner-up prizes of licensing to their products, which is also a sweet deal! The contest is simple, and you are not required to use ComponentArt controls…in their words: Applicants are not required to use ComponentArt's products to enter the competition (or as the legal jargon requires us to say: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY). We'll obviously let you…
My move to free HDTV – Part 2: HD HomeRun to the rescue

Tim Heuer

15 Jun 2009 | 1:37 pm

In my previous post on moving to free HDTV, I had talked about my desire to change our home television “stuff” in an effort to remove basically a bill that we weren’t taking advantage of at all. Part of the irony in this whole exploration was that by the time I figured out a solution, the whole digital-TV-signal-broadcast-rule-thing was going to happen. Luckily, I received some good advice and product suggestions. If you read the previous post you’ll notice that I acquired a Philips MANT940 antenna from Walmart. $38 investment not bad. I crawled up into my attic space and put…
.NET RIA Services roadmap update

Tim Heuer

9 Jun 2009 | 7:43 am

Today, we posted on the .NET RIA Services forum an updated roadmap for the timing and thoughts around the product offering. What is .NET RIA Services? Microsoft .NET RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. The RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as datavalidation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight…
My move to free HDTV – over the air HD

Tim Heuer

5 Jun 2009 | 11:32 pm

About twice a year my wife freaks out (well, my terms not hers) about money, material things, life, etc. It’s a good freak out actually…and it is what has kept me grounded more in life than my past habits (you know, when you felt you *had* to have everything). I’ve learned to not care about things that aren’t worth the trouble. Her balance in my life really has made a good impact in things worldly. Back to the freak out :-) … We’re constantly looking for ways to save money. At times it is because we have to (or should) and others it is because we are wanting to put those…
Check your Silverlight 2 apps for compatibility with Silverlight 3

Tim Heuer

5 Jun 2009 | 3:15 pm

One of the goals of new versions of Silverlight is to be be backward compatible with previous versions. We make this a priority goal so that people can keep their previous applications deployed while not worrying that people with newer Silverlight will have a broken experience. Silverlight 3 has been out in beta form since March 2009 and hopefully if you are a Silverlight developer you’ve had a chance to work with the new features and tools. If you have existing Silverlight 2 applications that are deployed, I wanted to draw your attention to some action items if you haven’t done them…

Expression Blend and Design
Deep Zoom Composer - June 2009 Preview!

xprblog

19 Jun 2009 | 11:50 am

We know you’ve been waiting, and we know you just can’t wait any longer, so here it is: Download Deep Zoom Composer As always, please uninstall all existing versions of Deep Zoom Composer before installing the new version. A few months ago, we asked you...(read more)
Instead of Telling What We are Working On…Here is a Screenshot Instead!

xprblog

27 May 2009 | 9:52 pm

It’s been a while since we released a preview of Expression Blend 3 at MIX . We’ve been working pretty hard on continuing our work on Blend 3, but we haven’t really shared what exactly we are working on. Instead of detailing what we are doing, I figure...(read more)
Three Posts on Blend 3’s Photoshop Import Functionality

xprblog

27 May 2009 | 4:14 pm

Hi everyone, There are three really good posts on Janete Perez’s blog that covers the PhotoShop Import functionality found in the Blend 3 preview. Go check them out: Introduction to Importing Photoshop Files , Photoshop Import- Supported Features , and...(read more)
Check out Rooler – A free Screen Measurement Utility!

xprblog

26 May 2009 | 5:54 pm

Fellow Blender, Pete Blois, has written a small application called Rooler that allows you to make measurements of everything visible on your screen. You can download it by clicking here . Rooler helps solve a common problem you have when designing UIs....(read more)
Opening Blend 3 Projects without Actually Having Blend Installed

xprblog

22 May 2009 | 2:44 pm

Since we released our preview at MIX, there have been a fair number of questions revolving around how a WPF or Silverlight project that uses Blend-specific features will work when opened on a machine that does not have Blend installed. For example, one...(read more)

Google Web Toolkit Blog
Come hear about GWT at the Googleplex tomorrow night (June 16, 2009)

Fred Sauer, Developer Advocate

15 Jun 2009 | 6:36 pm

For those of you in and around Silicon Valley, I'd like to invite you to see my Google Web Toolkit presentation titled "GWT Overview and Feature Preview" at the Silicon Valley Web Java User Group. I'll start with an overview of current GWT features and functionality. Towards the end I'll cover some of the features you can expect to see in GWT 2.0, many of which you can try out now if you don't mind creating your own builds. Of course there will be plenty of time for Q&A and some time to network with other developers in the community. The meeting will be in the usual place on the Google…
GWT Community Updates

Sumit Chandel, Developer Programs Engineer

11 Jun 2009 | 5:04 pm

Community announcementsGilead GWT adapter for Google App Engine: Bruno Marchesson, creator of the Gilead (aka Hibernate4GWT) library, has created another adapter - this time for GWT applications running on App Engine. It is still in its early stages, but this may be useful to those looking to build their applications using GWT and Google App Engine and who don't mind hammering on fresh code.Vaadin 6 (formerly IT Mill Toolkit) releases: The IT Mill team has come out with the latest release of their toolkit built using GWT technology. Vaadin offers a different take on Ajax application…
New GWT App Gallery posted (check it out)

Sumit Chandel, Developer Programs Engineer

28 May 2009 | 9:30 am

A couple months ago, we asked the community to tell us about their GWT applications and their experience developing them. We were greatly pleased to see many responses, and lots of neat applications. In fact, we had so many responses that we needed a better way to showcase and share them with the community.Introducing the new GWT Application Gallery to save the day, now posted on the GWT homepage. Improving on the earlier GWT Application Gallery, the new gallery adds more features to make community interaction easier and application entries more meaningful. Here are some of these new…
Google API Libraries for GWT - May 2009 Release

Sumit Chandel, Developer Programs Engineer

7 May 2009 | 3:22 pm

By Eric Ayers, Google Web Toolkit TeamWe are pleased to announce updates to the Google API Libraries for the Google Web Toolkit project. The Google API Libraries for GWT project allows GWT developers to access some of Google's popular JavaScript APIs. This release contains new bindings for two libraries:Google AJAX Loader API - Allows dynamically loading an API from GWT code Google AJAX Language API - Provides translation, transliteration, and language detection services These libraries each come with sample code and Javadoc documentation.In addition, other libraries have been…
GWT and Maven - Playing Nicely Together Since 2008

Sumit Chandel, Developer Programs Engineer

4 May 2009 | 1:55 pm

StudyBlue is an academic social networking application, built with GWT, that helps students study smarter, faster. To manage the build process during the development of their application, the StudyBlue team uses the Maven build system. Chris Klundt and Hicham Bouabdallah from StudyBlue have kindly dropped by to share their tips on getting GWT and Maven to play nicely together.Maven is a great resource that allows developers to enable dependency management within their GWT web applications. While a complete description of Maven's dependency management is beyond the scope of this article, we…

Appcelerant
Getting Started With Titanium

Scott Schwarzhoff

25 Jun 2009 | 12:02 pm

Many of you are rolling up your sleeves and diving into Titanium. To get you off to a fast start, we have centralized all of our resources in two areas: codestrong and appcelerator’s support forums. http://www.codestrong.com/ is your first stop for getting started with Titanium. This wiki-styled repository has links to the following resources: Getting Started Walkthrough Introduction to Titanium webcasts and screencasts. Sample projects (check out the Yelp & Kitchen sink projects to take Titanium for a quick spin) Detailed documentation, APIs , and walk-throughs. Frequently…
Telling Your Story

Scott Schwarzhoff

22 Jun 2009 | 2:12 pm

It’s been quite a couple weeks since our Titanium beta launch.We received a tremendous number of requests for access to Appcelerator beta and hundreds of mobile and desktop projects have already begun production.It’s a good time to share some initial thoughts on all the great that apps that you’re looking to build. One thing is clear from reading the initial responses: you, our users, are building very different apps than the ones typically seen in the various app stores.Sure, we’re getting our fair share of games and entertainment apps.But whereas those two categories make up 35% of…
We’ve Gone Mobile!

Jeff Haynie

8 Jun 2009 | 1:05 pm

We’re excited to announce that Titanium beta has launched. Headlining this release is full support for iPhone and Android application development. That’s right, now you can use the same set of Web technologies you’ve known (and loved!) for years to build apps for the desktop, browser and now mobile devices. Download Titanium Beta Sign Up for Titanium Mobile Interested in learning more? This Thursday, our own Kevin Whinnery will show you via webcast how he built a killer Yelp app with geo-location in just two days. As we like to say around the office – if Kevin can build it,…
Countdown to Titanium Beta Launch – 2 Contests!

Jeff Haynie

4 Jun 2009 | 4:56 pm

We’re so excited to unveil Titanium Beta this coming Tuesday, June 9th (6pm at Jillian’s across from Apple’s WWDC at Moscone Center in San Francisco), that we just couldn’t contain our excitement… So, we’re running not one but TWO contests BEFORE Tuesday to really get the ball rolling: 1. Want to help us spread the word? If you’re one of the first 50 people to post this link to our party (http://bit.ly/5YAv) on another website, forum, blog, email list, or any other site, we’ll send you a nifty NEW Appcelerator t-shirt! Simply email the link of the site you posted it to…
Celebrate the Titanium Beta Launch: WWDC, June 9th, 6-9PM!

Jeff Haynie

18 May 2009 | 5:20 pm

We’ve been working hard on Titanium and are getting ready to make another big product announcement. We could certainly dish the details now, but an announcement this monumental really deserves a big party. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. On Tuesday June 9th, the Appcelerator team will be throwing a product launch shindig at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference to toast the arrival of Titanium Beta.Join us at Jillian’s in San Francisco between 6 and 9 p.m. where we’ll unveil Titanium Beta along with The Big Surprise. Come have a cold one on us with myself, Nolan and…

Joshua Marinacci's Blog
The Java Store, a Q&A

joshy

17 Jun 2009 | 11:53 am

One of the big announcements at JavaOne was the Java Store. I'm especially proud of it because I've been secretly working on the project for the past few months. Since the announcement I've gotten a lot of questions on the...
Top 5 Most Important Features in JavaFX 1.2

joshy

9 Jun 2009 | 11:12 am

Technically I'm on vacation this week so don't mention this post to my boss. I simply couldn't wait to blog about cool stuff we put into JavaFX 1.2. Shhhhh! Lots of JavaFX related things were announced at JavaOne, many of...
JavaOne: And so it begins

joshy

31 May 2009 | 1:55 am

I've just arrived in SF for my fourth JavaOne conference. Despite the usual chaos this year's prep has gone very well. We have a ton of new things to show you. Most importantly we have the new release of JavaFX....
Want a Job Coding Extreme Swing?

joshy

26 Mar 2009 | 10:24 pm

I don't normally post about job offers, but this one is simply too cool to pass up. The guys at Limewire are looking to hire a new Swing developer. For those of you who don't know, Limewire is the premier...
A Tale of Two Challenges

joshy

22 Mar 2009 | 4:04 pm

A lot has happened since I last blogged. The JFXStudio hit 33k hits with 50 posts, I've started working on a new secret project built with JavaFX, and we had a rockin' booth at SXSW last week. I'll cover SXSW...

Clarkeman's Weblog
JavaFX Async Task

jimclarke

8 Jun 2009 | 5:52 pm

Today someone asked how to use the javafx.async package. The javafx.async package is useful if you have some background work to do that you don't want to run on the main JavaFX thread. Perhaps you are doing some serious number crunching, or maybe some file IO and if you did this on the main thread, the user would be blocked from doing anything and features like animation would scream to a halt. To illustrate how to use the async package, here is a trivial implementation that merely spawns a task that sleeps 5 seconds. Right before the sleep starts and right after the sleep ends, a message is…
JavaFX Borders

jimclarke

29 May 2009 | 2:08 pm

When I am not busy with my day job or writing books on JavaFX, JavaFX - Developing Rich Internet Applications, I spend my spare time helping out on the open source JFXtras project, http://code.google.com/p/jfxtras/ . One part I have contributed is the borders package. The idea started off trying to duplicate some of the borders found in Swing. However, finding it relatively easy to implement the Border classes in JavaFX, the types of Borders started to grow. The following screen snapshot shows the current set of borders: To create a border just import the Border package from the JFXtras…
JavaFX - Developing Rich Internet Applications released on Safari

jimclarke

30 Apr 2009 | 7:44 am

Our new book on JavaFX, JavaFX - Developing Rich Internet Applications, has just been released on Safari @ http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780137013524 . This includes coverage for JavaFX 1.1 with some of the new features that will be in the upcoming JavaFX release. We are still on schedule for publishing the print copy for JavaONE, we'll see you there. Right now I am working on some of the new JavaFX features and will include code samples for the new features on the book's web site. Check http://jfxbook.com for more updates as the new JavaFX release is finalized.
Finishing first cut - JavaFX - Developing Rich Internet Applications

jimclarke

16 Feb 2009 | 11:34 am

Jim Connors, Eric Bruno and I have feverishly been heads down writing a new Book on JavaFX, JavaFX - Developing Rich Internet Applications. We have just finished the initial writing and soon the rough cut chapters will be up on Safari for review. Target date for publication is June, 2009, in time for JavaONE. We are also in the process of building a web site, jfxbook.com, to post the code samples, and show off some of the applications featured in the book. Most of the code samples are already posted up there, so feel free to peruse them. This is a work in progress, so check back for…
JavaFX Progress Bar with glow effect

jimclarke

3 Jan 2009 | 1:33 pm

Yesterday, I was looking at an install package for some game software my son was loading on his computer and I was intrigued by the progress bar. It had a glow effect going back and forth while the progress bar was "progressing". Of course, I had to sit down and figure this out in JavaFX. To start with I borrowed some code from my IndeterminateProgressBar that I posted here a few moon's ago, JavaFX - Inverting text color with a changing background. This shows how to change the text color as the progress bar crosses over the text. Next, I created a ProgressBar class, that…

James Weaver’s JavaFX Blog
Asynchronicity in JavaFX 1.2

Jim Weaver

23 Jun 2009 | 11:12 pm

The asynchronous task model has been much improved in JavaFX 1.2. Not only does it have a simple and elegant API, but several of the asynchronous tasks (e.g. HttpRequest) in the JavaFX API now use this model. In addition, there are a couple of progress UI controls introduced in JavaFX 1.2, and they work well with the new asynchronous model.The JavaFX package that contains the asynchronous-related classes is javafx.async, and a good class to take a look at first is JavaTaskBase. This class enables you to start a task, check on its progress, and be notified when the task has completed. …
Animating with Dynamic Timeline Values in JavaFX ...and a Scientific Fish Story from 1901

Jim Weaver

22 Jun 2009 | 8:42 am

A scientific fish story, published in 1901, reports that pike fish living in a tank were separated from minnows by a glass plate. After a while "a strike at the minnow had come to mean a bump on the nose... Instead of imputing their inability to the glass partition, they considered it some new and remarkable property of the minnows themselves." Consequently the pike stopped trying to strike the minnows, even after the partition was removed.I first heard that story when a speaker was illustrating the idea that we often get used to "the way things are", and consequently quit pursuing our…
Create a News Ticker with JavaFX 1.2 RssTask/AtomTask

Jim Weaver

19 Jun 2009 | 9:03 am

JavaFX 1.2 has many new features, not the least of which is a stone-simple way of reading RSS and Atom feeds. The new classes that contain much of this functionality are javafx.data.feed.rss.RssTask and javafx.data.feed.atom.AtomTask, respectively.Take a look at this post by Rakesh Menon that shows you how to create news tickers with these classes.Also, I'll give a free copy of the Pro JavaFX early access eBook (rewritten for 1.2) to the first person that leaves a comment with the name of the inventor of the Stock Ticker shown in the image above. :-)Update: We have two winners of the Pro…
Skinning Architecture in JavaFX -- straight from the horse's mouth

Jim Weaver

17 Jun 2009 | 3:00 am

No, I'm not calling Richard Bair a horse, but rather using an idiom that has its origins in horse racing. From The Phrase Finder:"In horse racing circles tips on which horse is a likely winner circulate amongst punters. The most trusted authorities are considered to be those in closest touch with the recent form of the horse, i.e. stable lads, trainers etc. The notional 'from the horse's mouth' is supposed to indicate one step better than even that inner circle, i.e. the horse itself."In their latest fxexperience.com blog post, Richard (Jasper is on holiday) sheds a lot of light on the…
Painting with JavaJeff (JavaFX Jeff?)

Jim Weaver

15 Jun 2009 | 9:41 pm

One of the great features of JavaFX is that it can instantiate and call methods of Java classes. Java author "JavaJeff" Friesen has created a Painter/Canvas infrastructure using JavaFX and Java. This infrastructure supports complex/fast painting possibilities such as fireworks, plasma, fractals, and even fire.Check out Jeff's blog post that provides the code, an explanation, and a Web Start link for the "plasma" painting example shown in the screenshot above.Regards,Jim Weaver

Confessions of an Flash Addict
Flash on Android!

Sidney de Koning

25 Jun 2009 | 9:19 am

Adobe and HTC have teamed up to bring Flash to the new HTC Hero smartphone. It is part of the Open Screen initiative. Later this year they are coming out with full flash Player 10, right now it only supports AS2 The HTC Hero delivers powerful, compatible video playback performance using Flash technology, and interactive content enabled by ActionScript® 2.0. Users can enjoy and navigate through Web videos using intuitive video controls. With progressive streaming of large MP3 audio files from a Web server and the local file storage, the HTC Hero provides a seamless audio experience. Support…
Getting published on print!

Sidney de Koning

24 May 2009 | 5:35 am

Today I received a big white envelope with inside a copy of the newest Flash and Flex Developer magazine, with my article ‘Drag and Drop in AIR using Flash CS3′ published on real paper :). I have posted the source files in the publication section, if you want to play around with it The next issue will also have an article by me, will keep you posted on that one. If you also would like to write for a real magazine, they are always looking for new authors and beta testers. Buy me a coffee
Tracing XMLList within a switch statement returns null

Sidney de Koning

6 May 2009 | 3:33 pm

Just found really nasty bug in Flash; When using XML Filtering within a switch statement it will fail when assigning that value to an XMLList variable and trace null. (Even though there is data) When you declare the variable outside/above of the switch it does work. What can also be done is assigning the variable to a function that does the filtering. Apparently you cant assign and set a variable on the same line within a switch because of a scoping issue. Also checked JIRA, Adobe’s BUG database, and it is already filed Here are some examples: //FAILS! switch(someName) { case "myName":…
Using a new syntax highlighter for my blog

Sidney de Koning

9 Mar 2009 | 11:51 am

I know this is not a big deal for some but for me has been an everlasting quest to find the best syntax highlighter for blogs. (Damn that sounded dramatic ;)) Anyway, I stepped away from the idea that it needed to be a plugin for WordPress. Then i found Alex Gorbachev’s Syntax Highlighter. Its easy to install and easy to use, and it has a ton of features that are relevant! And also lots of languages it supports. So ff some of my old posts have no syntax lights, i’m working on rewriting them when i have the time. Buy me a coffee
How to: Designing for Mobiles

Sidney de Koning

6 Mar 2009 | 9:33 am

Nice educational video from 4 dutch guys (Joel Laumans, Gemma Vernooy, Lemmy-Boy Hoogendoorn & Niek Dekker.) who talk about designing for mobiles in the correct context in 3 minutes. Enjoy! Buy me a coffee

Silverlight Web Services Team
Improving the performance of web services in SL3 Beta

SLWSTeam

7 Jun 2009 | 8:30 pm

Silverlight 3 Beta introduces a new way to improve the performance of web services. You have all probably used the Silverlight-enabled WCF Service item template in Visual Studio to create a WCF web service, and then used the Add Service Reference command in your Silverlight application project in order to access the web service. In SL3, the item template has undergone a small change that turns on the new binary message encoder, which significantly improves the performance of the WCF services you build. Note that this is the same binary encoder which has been available in .Net since the…
Check us out at TechEd North America 2009

SLWSTeam

20 Apr 2009 | 12:32 am

I hope you enjoy the content we post on this blog. I’ll be giving a talk at the upcoming TechEd conference in LA, going through some Silverlight 3 content similar to what we have been posting here. If you’re attending TechEd, check out: SOA03-INT Interacting with Web Services Using Microsoft Silverlight Yavor Georgiev Tue 5/12 | 4:30 PM-5:45 PM | Blue Theater 2 300 - Advanced, Middle Tier Platform and Tools, SOA and Business Processes, TLC Interactive Theater Learn how easy it is to utilize POX, REST, RSS, ATOM, JSON, and SOAP services in your Silverlight 2 mash-up application. Hear best…
Using WCF services from Silverlight in Azure

SLWSTeam

8 Apr 2009 | 4:15 pm

Update: Some of you are getting a message that you don't have the correct version of Silverlight instealled in order to view this content. Please note that you need SL3 Beta to see the sample embedded in this post. With all the buzz around Windows Azure, you may have wondered how to host your Silverlight application in the cloud. Since Silverlight controls are essentially static content, hosting them is as easy as uploading some files to the cloud. When it comes to building WCF services to provide data to your Silverlight control, the story gets a little more complicated.
Some known issues in SL3 Beta

SLWSTeam

5 Apr 2009 | 10:21 pm

We've run across some issues with our web services features in the Silverlight 3 Beta and I want to share these here to hopefully save folks some time and frustration. Issue: On Windows 7 Beta, you might encounter the following error when generating a proxy: "The element 'httpTransport' cannot contain child element 'extendedProtectionPolicy' because the parent element's content model is empty". Workaround: On Windows 7, when you use the Silverlight-enabled WCF Service item template, an <extendedProtectionPolicy /> element may be generated in Web.config. This element is not supported by…
What's new with web services in Silverlight 3 Beta

SLWSTeam

20 Mar 2009 | 3:18 am

Silverlight 3 beta comes with a set of exciting web services features that address key customer requests. Binary message encoding In Silverlight 2 the only supported binding was BasicHttpBinding, which encodes outgoing messages as text and sends them over an HTTP transport. This binding is great for interoperability with SOAP 1.1 services and is also easily debuggable since messages can be viewed in plain text on the wire using HTTP debugging tools such as Fiddler. However as Silverlight applications go into production and grow to scale, service developers start getting concerned with the…

James Ward - RIA Cowboy
How would you write this ActionScript code?

James Ward

23 Jun 2009 | 2:36 pm

I was just watching Lee Brimelow’s fantastic video about Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder and noticed some Flex / ActionScript code (generated by Flash Catalyst) that caught my attention: var state:String = currentState; if ( state == 'closed' ) { currentState='open'; } if ( state == 'open' ) { currentState='closed'; } This code just toggles the currentState property between ‘open’ and ‘closed’. I initially thought that the code was not very elegant in that form but that maybe there was a reason it was written like that. Maybe…
Flex and Salesforce / Force.com Updates

James Ward

22 Jun 2009 | 2:37 pm

There have been a lot of exciting things happening with Flex and Salesforce / Force.com lately. First Ryan Marples recently announced the release of an updated version of the Force.com Toolkit for Adobe AIR and Flex. If you are doing development with Flex and Salesforce or Force.com you should download this new release to take advantage of the latest enhancements to the web services APIs. Today Adobe updated the Adobe Developer Connection’s page containing information about integrating Flex and Salesforce / Force.com. This new page contains new videos, demos, articles, and other great…
Flex in Zurich and Copenhagen Next Week

James Ward

19 Jun 2009 | 10:17 am

With the recent beta releases of Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst there is a lot of fun stuff going on. Next week I’ll be speaking in Zurich at Jazoon on Tuesday about RIAs with Java, Spring, Hibernate, BlazeDS, and Flex. On Wednesday I’ll be speaking in Copenhagen about Flex 4 and Flash Catalyst. Thursday I’m back in Zurich speaking about Flex 4. And finally on Friday I’ll be speaking at Flash at the Lake about Pixel Bender and pbjAS. Lots of fun stuff! I hope to see some of you along the way.
Blazing Fast Data Transfer in Flex

James Ward

17 Jun 2009 | 8:52 am

A while back I created the Census RIA Benchmark to illustrate the benefits of having both a high performance client VM and a binary serialization protocol. These factors combined lead to significantly faster data transfer and rendering for large datasets in rich Internet applications. Recently I created an Adobe TV video that walks through Census and how to use Flex and BlazeDS to take advantage of these benefits. Check it out and let me know what you think. Note: If you run Census in Firefox 3 there is a bug with iframes causing the tests to not run until you click on the results panel on…
DZone Podcast about Adobe AIR, Flex, and Java

James Ward

30 Apr 2009 | 10:53 am

I recently recorded a podcast with James Sugrue for DZone. In the podcast we talk about why Flex and Adobe AIR are relevant to Java developers. You can either listen to the podcast or read transcribed text. It’s good to see DZone doing a lot more Flex related content including the Refcardz I’ve co-authored: Very First Steps in Flex and Flex and Spring Integration. Let me know what you think of the podcast. Thanks!

Comet Daily
Quick Introduction to Orbited

DylanSchiemann

16 Jun 2009 | 12:05 am

Starting Out with Comet (Orbited) is the first in a planned series of articles by Dave Fowler on getting up to speed with Comet. If you’re thinking about using Orbited, it’s a good introduction to the Comet concepts that are relevant to a new user.
Jabbify

Kris Zyp

14 Jun 2009 | 8:05 pm

Jupiter IT recently released Jabbify, a service for providing Comet capabilities. Jabbify utilizes JSONP to connect to the central Jabbify server, allowing developers to add Comet capabilities to their application without needing to setup their own Comet server. Jabbify uses a publish/subscribe paradigm for message routing and they used the OpenAjax hub API for making subscriptions and publishing messages. The Jabbify server uses Jetty for efficient Comet communication.
GroovyDB Adds Web Push

Alessandro Alinone

11 May 2009 | 12:02 am

GroovyDB is an appliance made by GroovyChannel that provides “SQL Virtualization” technology. It will be offered as a hosted “Cloud” service too. They recently added Web Push capabilities, so that any changes to the data are reflected in real-time through a web front-end. The Comet server used by GroovyDB is Lightstreamer. Their site hosts a live demo of news pushed in real-time from the GroovyDB. The Lightstreamer Adapter they developed is also available for download.
RFID + Comet = Browser-based Card Reading Goodness

AndrewBetts

22 Apr 2009 | 12:01 am

I’ve recently come across a brilliant new use of comet in an application designed by Dobrica Pavlinušić, a meteor user. The video says it all, though the music is probably best experienced on mute Dobrica writes: I already blogged about RFID readers but now I really need to replace antique 3M software with something better. So, basically, I started with specification: User should put RFID tag on reader and get output from Koha Nice and simple. However, readers are connected to Windows machine. And we need some way for reader to push data about new tag to browser. Hmmm… push?
TelegraphFail: Make sure you use your OWN data

AndrewBetts

21 Apr 2009 | 3:44 pm

It pains me to think of how frequently this happens and wonder why media companies still think it’s cool to allow unfiltered user generated content onto their sites. The Daily Telegraph, one of the main centre-right newspapers in the UK, has an editor in love with Twitter and Comet in equal measure, and as a result devoted a large amount of screen real estate to a live twitterfall feed in anticipation of our upcoming budget: Twitterfall is a real time twitter feed hosted on EC2 and using Meteor for Comet. It simply streams tweets onto your page based on filters you can define.

Ext JS Blog
Tree Grid, Grouped Headers and Aggregation Rows - Ext GWT 2.0 M3 Released

Darrell Meyer

15 Jun 2009 | 9:30 am

The Ext team is pleased to announce the availability of Ext GWT 2.0 M3. M3 will be the last milestone release. We will be releasing a release candidate before the final release of Ext GWT 2.0. Many thanks to the early adopters in the community that have been using 2.0 and reporting bugs.
Building a Rating Widget with Ext Core 3.0 Final and Google CDN

Tommy Maintz

10 Jun 2009 | 8:40 pm

We are very proud to announce the final release of Ext Core under the MIT license. Your feedback was invaluable. Thank you for all the bugs reported and test cases created. For those of you who are new to Ext Core, we suggest you read the previous blog post about the all the features and examples that we released as part of the beta.
Ext JS 3.0 RC2 Release - Stable, Robust, and Enhanced

Evan Trimboli

2 Jun 2009 | 10:52 pm

We are pleased to announce that the latest release candidate of Ext 3.0 is now publicly available. We are very proud of the stability of this release. We'd like to thank our support team and elite community members who have tested the release candidates. You have assisted in squashing a number of bugs affecting both Ext Core and Ext JS. The time taken to report issues and create test cases is much appreciated.
Implementation Spotlight: Zipwhip and Ext JS

Abraham Elias

27 May 2009 | 5:20 am

With close to 100 billion text messages sent every month in the U.S., text messaging has clearly become a communication medium many of us have come to rely on. Zipwhip, a text messaging utility for the web with a polished Ext-based user interface, aims to take texting to a new level. The team at Zipwhip were eager to share their enthusiasm and approach to building with Ext.
Ext GWT 2.0 Milestone 2 Released

Darrell Meyer

20 May 2009 | 8:43 am

The Ext Team is happy to announce the availability of Ext GWT 2.0 Milestone 2 available for immediate download. Ext GWT 2.0 M2 is packed full of new components and features, expanding on the Ext GWT 1.0 feature set. Included in this release, are several performance improvements which noticeably improve initial render and layout execution times.

jQuery Blog
jQuery Conference 2009: Dates and Venue

John Resig

2 Jul 2009 | 10:01 am

Good news everybody! The dates and venue for this year’s jQuery Conference have been determined. The conference will be held September 12th and 13th at Microsoft Cambridge in Boston, MA. This will be a 2 day conference with multiple tracks on each day. We’re in the process of planning out the schedule, talking with speakers, and setting up the conference web site. Watch the jQuery blog or jQuery Twitter feed for notification when registration opens. While this venue is larger than those that we’ve had in the past (Harvard Law School in ‘07 and the MIT Stata Center in…
This Week in jQuery, vol. 8

Cody Lindley

15 Jun 2009 | 11:03 am

Another week, another collection of links to some of the most interesting and exciting new jQuery happenings around the web. If you have ever used a regular expression tool to highlight character matches in real time, then you’ll jump for joy when I tell you about the Interactive jQuery selector tester written by Samuli Kärkkäinen. You enter a selector expression, and in real time you get to see the elements in the DOM structure that have been selected. I can see this being very handy for complex expressions or for optimizing expressions down to the simplest solution. Also, in case…
This Week in jQuery, vol. 7

Karl Swedberg

7 Jun 2009 | 5:14 pm

After a long hiatus, I’m happy to present another roundup of jQuery happenings. Keep in mind that this is just a small, fairly random sampling of what has been going on. For more frequent news and announcements, be sure to follow @jquery on Twitter. jQuery Updates Brandon Aaron has been writing a series called “jQuery Edge” on his blog, detailing some of the cool enhancements in store for the next version of jQuery. His most recent, New Special Event Hooks, describes the four “hooks” that make up the new custom event API: setup, teardown, add, and remove.
This Week in jQuery, vol. 6

Cody Lindley

1 May 2009 | 7:35 am

Another week, another collection of links to some of the most interesting and exciting new jQuery happenings around the web. One of the most interesting happenings this week was the release of Glimmer. Glimmer allows you to easily create interactive elements on your web pages by harnessing the power of the jQuery library. Without having to hand-craft your JavaScript code, you can use Glimmer’s wizards to generate jQuery scripts for common interactive scenarios. Glimmer also has an advanced mode, providing a design surface for creating jQuery effects based on your existing HTML and CSS. Also…
This Week in jQuery, vol. 5

Karl Swedberg

17 Apr 2009 | 6:11 am

Sorry about the unplanned hiatus last week. Not sure how long I’m going to be able to sustain this, but here we go again with another weekly roundup of jQuery news… jQuery + Server-Side Solutions A common complaint in the earlier days of jQuery was that there wasn’t enough information on how to integrate jQuery with server-side languages (or frameworks), so it’s nice to see a proliferation of tutorials in this area. Here are a few of the recent ones: ColdFusion: Validating Common Email Domain Misspellings using ColdFusion and jQuery. Incorporates the Autocomplete…

aralbalkan.com
Links for 2009-06-20

20 Jun 2009 | 4:03 pm

PaulKinlan's vooices.us at master - GitHub A set of open Vooices.us API's and documentation to help you build vooice interactive pages (via @dalmaer) (tags: vooices voice control apps api open source) Vooices.us - Control Games, Applications, Anything With Your Voice Vooices is a Phone Controlled, RealTime, MultiPlayer Application Platform for Screens in Public Spaces or for Games on the internet. What we are saying is that you can control a game or application with your voice or keypad by simply dialling the game. (via @dalmaer) (tags: voice control games apps javascript)
IPhone 3G S: the ultimate mobile video blogging tool

20 Jun 2009 | 8:35 am

OK, so I caved in and got an iPhone 3G S approximately half-a-day after it was released and not before bitching up a storm on Twitter about o2's upgrade policies (I finally ponied up for the pay-as-you-go version which means that I'm approximately £450 poorer now and will be living on beans for the rest of the month!) But you know what? It's totally worth it because with the iPhone 3G S I've found the ultimate video blogging tool that I'd been searching for for ages. First, some history. The Nokia N800 and nearly every recent phone by Nokia, Sony, etc., could have done what Apple did with…
Links for 2009-06-19

19 Jun 2009 | 4:03 pm

andreyvit's ScrollingMadness at master - GitHub iPhone: advanced UIScrollView tricks everyone should know (and ZoomScrollView that encapsulates them) (tags: open source iphone uiscrollview tricks)
Hex/HTML Color (RGBA, RGB) to UIColor

18 Jun 2009 | 8:15 am

#define HEXCOLOR(c) [UIColor colorWithRed:((c>>24)&0xFF)/255.0 \ green:((c>>16)&0xFF)/255.0 \ blue:((c>>8)&0xFF)/255.0 \ alpha:((c)&0xFF)/255.0] Usage: UIColor *c = HEXCOLOR(0xff0000);. If you want a macro for RGB (above is for RGBA), replace alpha: with alpha:1.0. Courtesy of this thread.
Links for 2009-06-15

15 Jun 2009 | 4:04 pm

css-vfx - Google Code css-vfx is a collection of gems that showcase iPhone Safari's 3D CSS Visual Effects extensions. css-vfx is based on Charles Ying's work with Apple's CSS Visual Effects extensions. css-vfx illustrates the creation of: * "Cover Flow" style touch user interfaces * 3D perspective correct transforms (and animate them!) * Smoothly transitioned user interfaces (tags: css visual effects iphone coverflow)

Quasimondo
Automated Threshold & Edge Detection

mario@quasimondo.com

1 Jul 2009 | 12:27 pm

It's a tiny bit late maybe, but here are two image processing techniques that deal with automated thresholding and edge detection that I showed in my "2d or not 2d" talk in 2007 and in "The Pixel Whisperer" in 2008. I've had a look at my presentation demos and repackaged their code into a single class called ThresholdBitmap. This is a BitmapData class with a few extras that help you if you plan to extract blobs or edges from a camera stream or some other bitmap. The general problem when you do camera based experiments is that you have unnown lighting conditions. Using a simple fixed threshold…
A fix for createGradientBox()

mario@quasimondo.com

16 May 2009 | 4:58 pm

Whilst playing around with some geometry that involved gradient fills I had to realize that the native implementation of Flash's createGradientBox() is unfortunately entirely useless as soon as you try to introduce rotation and scaling to a gradient. The reason seems to be that internally the order of matrix operations is unsuited for that task. Maybe I've searched not thoroughly enough, but I didn't find any solution for this out there. So I've written a tiny class that fixes it. Here's a comparison of the difference between matrix.createGradientBox() and my new…
Face Tracking Fun

mario@quasimondo.com

15 Mar 2009 | 7:08 am

I've started to have a bit of fun with the optimized Marilena face-tracking class and build a webcam based magic mirror. The specialty here is that it tries to displace your face only and leave the rest of the scenery untouched and additionaly adjusts the displacement scale based on how close you are to the camera: Check out Manic Mirror at the Incubator
Optimizing Flash Based Face Detection

mario@quasimondo.com

14 Mar 2009 | 10:56 am

Yesterday Seb-Lee Delisle pointed us via Twitter to this great example of a Flash based real-time face detection. It turns out that already more than half a year ago Ohtsuka Masakazu had been porting the face detection part of OpenCV to AS3 and added the source code to the Spark project - which is like a Actionscript candy box full of surprises. So I had a look at the source code and found one feature which I wanted to change: face detection is based on so-called Haar Cascades, simplified one could say that this is a very long list of zones that get checked for certain features in an image.
#tweetcoding Round 1 - a few more

mario@quasimondo.com

20 Feb 2009 | 7:06 am

Here are a few more of my entries for #tweetcoding: "Moskitos": g.clear();ls(1);o[i++]=[mouseX,mouseY,2*r(),2*r()]; for each(p in o){mt(p[0],p[1]); lt(p[0]+=2*s(p[1]*p[2]),p[1]+=2*s(p[0]*p[3])); };i%=2000 "Love in 3D": if(i

The MossyBlog Times.
Silverlight & Expression 3 Australian Tour.

scbarnes

29 Jun 2009 | 1:35 pm

It’s 2 more sleeps and I fly home to Australia for a month and I’m excited to be home as well. I figured whilst I’m home it would be good to setup an Australian Tour to meet folks in each capital city and get their feedback on how we are doing with Silverlight, Expression and WPF. Given these are three charters that I part own, no better way to gauge how we are doing is to meet the people on the street. I thought given Silverlight 3 & Expression 3 are getting close to RTM it would be a good opportunity to also provide some show & tell around what we are doing in v3 but also get…
Function, Form, Fashion – Shanemo.

scbarnes

10 Jun 2009 | 8:56 pm

Shane Morris, who for the few left that don’t know is one of our User Experience Evangelists in Australia. Shane’s actually got a deep background in Usability and is a lot of his fingerprints on our upcoming release of Expression Blend – Sketchflow. He seems to have recently done a presentation on “Function, Form and Fashion”. Although it’s only in slide deck format, I’m damn curious to see the vocals behind this interesting discussion. Check out the deck for yourself via Shane’s blog. Customer Experience and the 3 F's View more OpenOffice presentations from Shane Morris. I…
Design First, Engineer Second.

scbarnes

8 Jun 2009 | 8:38 pm

A lot of the time folks write off Apple customers as simply being MacTards, fans that are so pre-occupied with Apple and less about the products they make. In part that can be true, I’ve meet some extreme ignorant fans, but in general that’s not true at all. I’ve meet a lot of fans of Apple who can’t stand the company, but embrace the products they design. I’ve asked many creative souls who in Apple they worship the most, Steve Jobs isn’t on the list as much as Jonathan Ive is. It’s interesting to note this, as competition isn’t important as much as why folks CHOOSE to…
Interview with Mark Coleran.

scbarnes

28 May 2009 | 1:11 am

I just finished watching an Interview Adobe Evangelist Lee Brimelow put together around UI’s for the movie industry. It occurred to me tonight that I did an interview with the great Mark Coleran in Jan 2008 but never published it!. To help carry this insight into Hollywood and the software industry, i thought I'd publish it tonight. Coleran Reel 2008.06 HD from Mark Coleran on Vimeo. 1, Who are you? And what is it you do? Hi, I am Mark Coleran. I am a visual designer who has worked over the years in graphic, motion and interface design. From print work through to television and film.
Are you confused about Windows Azure?

scbarnes

11 May 2009 | 10:48 pm

In my daily life here in the land of Microsoft Headquarters, I often interact with a whole variety of developers & designers from many places both local and far. I was talking in the hallway the other day with one of the guys in the Windows Azure team around how folks are groking the Silverlight + Windowz Azure integration. I was asked “How are you finding folks in your space approaching Windows Azure”. For the first time in my career, I had no answer (which a smart ass like me is a rare thing heh). my response: “…ya know, I have absolutely no idea, I've not really paid too much…

WynApse
Silverlight Cream for July 01, 2009 -- #626

Dave Campbell

1 Jul 2009 | 3:55 pm

In this Issue: Cristian Merighi, Walt Ritscher, Al Pascual, Vijay, and Faisal(2). Shoutouts: The Mashooo folks have the winning entries up for their S Prize contest. I'd like to thank them for the honor of participating as a judge. I didn't look at any of the games prior to going through the 10 finalists because I didn't want to be swayed. Since I was a judge I won't comment on the winners, but I will say I'm not disappointed :) Check them out ... the other 7 are all winners also! Mashooo S Prize Silverlight Games Contest Danijel Stulic sent me a link to this awesome school timetable software…
Sure Cure for the Blahs: MVP Re-Award!

Dave Campbell

1 Jul 2009 | 9:09 am

First congratulations to everyone else that got awarded or re-awarded today! The only one I'm aware of so far is John Stockton -- a first-time awardee in Silverlight -- very cool John! I'm sure Twitter is alive with all the info, but I can't get to it from here. Just after getting to work, I got my re-award email and it made the muggy gray day here in Phoenix much brighter :) Thanks to everyone involved... I know it's a tough thankless job sifting through all the information and there are so many people to choose from. I'm proud and humbled at the same time (is that possible??). Thanks a…
Silverlight Cream for June 30, 2009 -- #625

Dave Campbell

30 Jun 2009 | 4:26 pm

In this Issue: Davide Zordan, Erik Mork(2), Walt Ritscher, Peter Bromberg, and Lee. Shoutouts: Are you up for showing off?? Tim Heuer has announced a Silverlight Coding Competition – win USD $10,000! ... and check that list of judges... wow :) Remember Chris Klug's FlickR ViewR? Well, check out the problems he had putting it on the blog: And then Firefox does it differently…reloading the Silverlight control when the css changes…. From SilverlightCream.com: Multi Touch enabling your WPF application Yeah I know this is WPF, but it's just cool, check out Davide Zordan's Windows 7 RC…
Silverlight Cream for June 29, 2009 -- #624

Dave Campbell

29 Jun 2009 | 10:05 pm

In this Issue: Andrej Tozon(2, 3), Jonathan van de Veen, Corey Schuman, and Al Pascual. Shoutouts: I'm with Jesse on this one: So Much Is Happening The Silence Is Deafening! Remember when Mike Snow said he was writing a book on Silverlight Game Programming? Have you noticed his blog has slowed down? Well... the book is NOW: Game Programming with Silverlight. Shawn Wildermuth announces that My Sillveright-Prism Article is Live! -- in MSDN Magazine... very cool, Shawn! What a weekend... essentially 3-1/2 days trying to finish off my part of the book. Hopefully I've got that behind me now :)…
Silverlight Cream for June 26, 2009 -- #623

Dave Campbell

26 Jun 2009 | 8:25 am

In this Issue: Erik Mork, Colin Eberhardt, Nigel Sampson, and Alex Golesh. Shoutouts: Pavan Podila has a post up about a great-looking TreeMap he's done. He may post source later, I'll watch for it. Meanwhile read the post and watch the video. A SilverLight TreeMap control From SilverlightCream.com: Commanding in PrismErik Mork interviews P&P members Bob Brumfield and David Hill along with Shawn Wildermuth all discussing Commanding in Prism ... another great Prism Podcast Erik!Silverlight MultiBindings, How to attached multiple bindings to a single propertyI first looked at this and…

Microsoft Silverlight content
Qixing’s Blend and SketchFlow Mini-Tutorials…

Microsoft Weblogs

2 Jul 2009 | 12:55 pm

Qixing Zheng just posted a series of short video tutorials on Blend 3 and SketchFlow. See them at: http://blogs.msdn.com/canux/archive/tags/Mini-tutorial/default.aspx Stay tuned, more on SketchFlow very soon…...( read more )...(read more)
Experimenting with User Interface Colors with Expression Design

Microsoft Weblogs

2 Jul 2009 | 12:31 pm

Learn more about how to apply the right colors for your user interface. In this video you will experiment how to apply colors to a user interface. Learn more about color while exploring Expression Design. Experimenting with User Interface Colors with...(read more)
Three great screencasts on Silverlight unit testing

Microsoft Weblogs

2 Jul 2009 | 12:36 am

If you're looking to learn more about Silverlight unit testing, here are 3 screencasts of interest....( read more )...(read more)
Silverlight 2 unit test framework binaries updated

Microsoft Weblogs

1 Jul 2009 | 12:45 pm

If you're doing Silverlight 2 development with the unit test framework, you might want to check out the latest release that includes bug fixes and a few small new features....( read more )...(read more)
Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional)

Microsoft Weblogs

1 Jul 2009 | 10:13 am

I got a MVP award from Microsoft for my activities on the online community, especially in the Silverlight category....( read more )...(read more)

Sun Bloggers
Sampling JavaFX 1.2

dannycoward

2 Jul 2009 | 11:43 am

One of the best ways to chart the progress of JavaFX these days is simply to go and look at the samples. The new set of UI controls and layout managers in JavaFX 1.2 are pretty nifty. So its easy now with these new additions to the scenegraph to go from gamesy style (like Brick Breaker, or Pac-Man) to plain fun, like the flickr photo viewer, through drawing centric apps all the way to the more traditional interface, like this project manager, or any hybrid inbetween. With its own skin in CSS. Getting data into a JavaFX application is easier too: you can easily fetch the data in a background…
JavaFX + Zembly

Rakesh Menon

2 Jul 2009 | 6:55 am

Zembly application development environment makes it easy to develop, customize and deploy your application. It provides APIs from various providers. Here we will try to use Zembly services (outside of Zembly) from JavaFX. Zembly provides client libraries for both Java and JavaFX. Here we will try to use the Java client library from JavaFX. Above sample is modified version of InterestingPhotos which now uses Zembly APis to search flickr's photo search based on tags. It uses flickr api - photos.search as shown below. String result = Zembly.getInstance().callService(…
SepiatoneImageToOriginal

Lawrence Premkumar

2 Jul 2009 | 6:27 am

A new image can be made to look like a old image just by applying SepiaTone effect to the ImageView. This makes the new image to look like a old image. Original Image Following piece of code is used to change the original image to look like a old image. var backImageView : ImageView = ImageView { preserveRatio : true image : image focusable : true effect : javafx.scene.effect.SepiaTone { level : 0.8 }} SepiaTone Image ( Looks like old image ) Now, how to see both the original…
Async Task API in JavaFX1.2

Raghu Nair

1 Jul 2009 | 10:35 pm

Async Task APIs are located in javafx.async package. These APIs provides a way of starting, stopping and tracking code that does not run on the JavaFX event dispatch thread. Now let us see how we can use this API. Step1: implement RunnableFuture Interface and create you Task. For example - public class MyTask implements RunnableFuture { public void run() throws Exception { //Place your code which you want to execute. println("Executing the task..."); } Note: Only Java Tasks can be specified here. Step2: Create…
2 JavaOne Hands On Labs , Sun Technology Exchange, Java Technology Day Israel, and Java Day Turkey

caroljmcdonald

1 Jul 2009 | 2:30 pm

jax June: 2 JavaOne Hands On Labs , Sun Technology Exchange, Java Technology Day Israel, and Java Day Turkey I had a very busy June, I gave two Hands on Labs at JavaOne, two sessions at the Sun Technology Exchange, three sessions at Java Technology Day in Tel Aviv Israel, and one session at Java Day in Istanbul Turkey. JavaOne Hands On Labs: I co-developed and delivered 2 Hands On Labs for JavaOne this year: Building RIA Dojo and JavaFX™ Pet Catalog Clients for MySQL™ backed RESTful Web Services You can read more about some of the example code for this HOL at GlassFish and MySQL,…

Latest Adobe News by Smart Category
Google App Engine Text Datastore Object not Saving with AMF

The Morphic Group

2 Jul 2009 | 10:24 am

I've been working with creating a Flex app with Google App Engine and AMF based on Sekhar Ravinutala's blog post about using GraniteDS and the new Java framework for GAE. Everything was going smoothly until I needed to use a datastore Text object instead of a standard string property because a string can only contain 500 [...]
Looking for a Flash / Flex Developer?

Mike Britton

2 Jul 2009 | 8:21 am

I am now on the market! If you're looking for someone with over ten years of experience programming in Actionscript, Javascript and PHP, contact me at mike@mikebritton.com. Some background for those of you who have no idea who I am,...
Intruction to Adobe Flash Collaborative Services

InsideRIA

2 Jul 2009 | 6:20 am

AFCS (Adobe Flash Collaboration Service) previously known as 'Cocomo' is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that that allows Flex developers to address a class of applications known as collaborative applications. Collaborative Applications have progressed from a nice cool thing into serious applications. Almost all of us would have participated in an online chat or a web meeting, which allows a group of users to chat, share files, do screen sharing, take polls, ask questions and receive answers, etc. AFCS aims to lower the barrier to entry for developers to bring such collaborative features into…
Adobe User Group Tour

Flex, AIR and Rock&Roll

2 Jul 2009 | 2:25 am

As you probably know, we launched the first public betas for Flash Builder 4, Flash Catalyst, and Flex SDK 4 in June 2009. And we had about 100 events across the world, events that were driven by the communities (Adobe User Groups). I had the pleasure to present at four events: Amsterdam – Netherlands, Bucharest [...]
Flex Power Tools: Using Flex Builder and FDT in The Same Workflow

Community MX

2 Jul 2009 | 12:44 am

In my everyday programming as a Flex and Flash Platform developer, it's up to me to keep tabs on the best tools to enable me to do my work with the greatest ease and with the most efficiency. In other words, call it lazy or efficient, I just want to be able to code with the greatest of ease so I can focus more on building and less on typing. In this tutorial, we're going to solve the challenging task of getting two of the most impressively featured Flex IDEs, Flex Builder and FDT, to work seamlessly in the same

Latest Adobe News by Smart Category
LCDS 3.0 Beta Free On Adobe Labs

FLEX{er}

2 Jul 2009 | 4:21 am

Two weeks ago Adobe released LiveCycle Data Services 3.0 beta on Adobe Labs. This is an early preview release and anybody can participate. Check it out here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/livecycle_dataservices3/. Andrew Trice said: The two big features in LCDS 3.0 seem to be Model Driven Development and Quality of Service/throttling/caching from the server side. in his article on insideRIA and [...]
Data Paging with Flex and PHP in Flash Builder

Flex, AIR and Rock&Roll

1 Jul 2009 | 10:24 am

Flash Builder 4 can really speed up the development of data-driven applications. There are new wizards that can help you creating, on the client side, the data service, the data model, map client side operations to server side operations (CRUD applications). You can find here an introduction to the new Data/Services view from Flash Builder [...]
MAX LA 2009

Flex, AIR and Rock&Roll

1 Jul 2009 | 2:25 am

MAX 2009 is coming fast. Cornel and I will do a lab on LiveCycle Data Services and BlazeDS, so for us, the work has already started. But being a speaker, means you don’t have to pay for your ticket Which brings me to this: on June 16th we launched the MAX session catalog and [...]
LCDS 3.0 Available on Adobe Labs

InsideRIA

30 Jun 2009 | 8:20 pm

Kind of old news (only a week), but Adobe recently released a beta version of LCDS 3.0 on Adobe Labs. Read on to get more information about LCDS 3.0...
Speaking tomorrow on BlazeDS, Flex, and AIR

TrajiklyHip

28 Jun 2009 | 1:42 pm

Tomorrow morning the 615Flex group (Nashville Flex User Group) is hosting a Flex/Flash Camp with six speakers giving one hour talks. I'll be giving a presentation on integrating BlazeDS, Flex/AIR, with a little ColdFusion mixed in for fun. After giving an overview of the technology behind BlazeDS and how BlazeDS messaging works I'll dive into the construction of an application in real-time. The app will demonstrate the use of BlazeDS messaging from a browser application to remote AIR clients. Registration for the event is closed but given its a free event I'd be willing to bet we'd find a…

SproutCore
Geoffrey continues his popular Sproutcasts with a new episode on...

30 Jun 2009 | 1:40 pm

Geoffrey continues his popular Sproutcasts with a new episode on properties, key-value coding and observers. Check it out on Vimeo. Also, if you want to be notified of the latest Sproutcasts when they first come available, follow @sproutcasts on Twitter.
One key element of the talk I give on SproutCore is talking...

25 Jun 2009 | 12:18 pm

One key element of the talk I give on SproutCore is talking about Cloud Applications vs Web Apps and Desktop Apps. I’ve put some of this material on the wiki. Check it out: What is a Cloud Application »
SproutCore at AJAXWorld

21 Jun 2009 | 10:54 pm

I’ll be giving a talk and possibly on a panel or two at AJAXWorld in NYC on Tuesday. My session is at 5:15. Don’t miss it! It’s going to rock. If you are in NYC and want to meetup give me a shout out on twitter (@okito) or email (charles @ sproutit.com) SproutCore Session at AJAXWorld »
Geoffrey Donaldson is working on a series of screencasts...

14 Jun 2009 | 2:37 pm

Geoffrey Donaldson is working on a series of screencasts covering the new SproutCore 1.0 code base. He just posted the first episode, covering installing and creating your first app, on Vimeo. Give it a look and tell him what topics you’d like covered in the future. Watch the video »
SproutCore WWDC Dinner

11 Jun 2009 | 12:02 am

The SproutCore dinner tonight was great. Thanks everyone who came. It was great to see/meet all of you. If you have pics, post’em and send’em our way. We’ll put them up.

VITAMIN
Event News: FOWA Summer Sale, Stack Overflow Dev Days Selling out & your chance to speak on the FOWD Tour

contact@thinkvitamin.com (Carson Systems Ltd)

1 Jul 2009 | 1:58 am

In this edition of “Event News” we offer you the chance to save up to 50% of FOWA 2 day conference passes, announce new cities for the upcoming Stack Overflow Dev Days series of conferences, reveal new speakers and details of the new uber-cool workshop venue for Future of Web Apps London and give you the chance to take to stand side by side with some of the UK’s biggest names in web design in our FOWD Tour “Call for Speakers”. Read on to find out more. Future of Web Apps 2009 Summer Sale To celebrate summer finally hitting the UK shores we are having a Future of…
Kevin Rose: How to Promote Your Web App

contact@thinkvitamin.com (Carson Systems Ltd)

27 Jun 2009 | 1:04 am

In this 11-minute interview we ask Kevin Rose, founder of digg and WeFollow five questions about web entrepreneurship. In case you don’t have time to watch the interview, we’ve summarized Kevin’s answers below. Feel free to share your answers to these questions in the comments below. We’d love to hear your perspective. What advice can you give new web entrepreneurs? A great way to gain traction and get coverage for a new web app is approach a well known person and offer them something valuable in return for trying out your service. Example: Tumblr asked Gary Vaynerchuk…
Should you go Beyond Relational Databases?

contact@thinkvitamin.com (Carson Systems Ltd)

24 Jun 2009 | 2:17 pm

Relational databases, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL and various commercial products, have served us well for many years. Lately, however, there has been a lot of discussion on whether the relational model is reaching the end of its life-span, and what may come after it. Should you care? Which database technology should you be using? Of course the answer is “it depends”, but that’s not very helpful. Let me ask you a few questions to help you figure out which technology is appropriate to your particular application. Then I can give a few pointers so that you can find out more.
Don’t Let Your Baby Die - How to use Social Capital to Market Your Web App

contact@thinkvitamin.com (Carson Systems Ltd)

16 Jun 2009 | 5:57 am

There’s a worryingly high web app mortality rate right now. I think the primary cause is the lack of marketing knowledge and how to apply it to web apps. I spoke at FOWA Tour Leeds on this subject so I’m going to summarize the major points below for you. You can also watch the complete video which is synced with my slides. Marketing has Changed Forever As recently as one year ago, everyone worked hard at making sure their brand was portrayed in a positive light. The message was tightly controlled and as a customer, you had very little power to express your love or hatred of a…
Six Useful Tips for Web Designers and Developers

contact@thinkvitamin.com (Carson Systems Ltd)

10 Jun 2009 | 1:27 am

We’ve compiled six useful tips for all you web designers and developers out there. They cover various topics including: accessibility, SQL, web developer plugins for Firefox, HTML emails, design and jQuery. Feel free to disagree or add your own in the comments below. If you’d like to submit a tip to be considered for future articles, just head over to Tipster and add your own. Alt Tags and Screen Readers By: James Fenton I can’t claim these tips as my own, though my web accessibility hero Bim Egan (of the RNIB) recently gave me a few simple tips regarding alt tags and screen…

Sean Moore - Flex Developer, AIR Developer, ActionScript Programmer
10 Awesome Flex Developers You Should Follow

admin

28 Jun 2009 | 3:29 pm

These individuals have all inspired and/or helped me at one point in time. I’d like to take a moment to point them out and say thanks. I’ve personally either worked with, met or digitally communicated with all of these peeps. They have all helped me greatly and their insight is fantastic. You should check out their blogs or follow them on twitter to gain great Flex development advice, code, tutorials, articles, etc. Thanks to all of you very much!!!! Laura Arguello Laura and I worked together on an article on the Mate framework for Flash Magazine. She was instrumental in providing…
O’Reilly InsideRIA: Overview of Flex 4 (Gumbo)

admin

1 Jun 2009 | 5:04 am

Last August I began researching and exploring the new features and capabilities in the next version of Flex, Flex 4 Gumbo. Adobe has been posting nightly builds of Flex 4 since last summer. Gareth Edwards was nice enough to help me to get set up and compiling the SDK at the time. Juan Sanchez was doing some initial blogging and Ely Greenfield released the infamous video demonstrating the new skinning techniques soon to be available. The Overview of Flex 4 (Gumbo) article was originally started as a presentation I was building in late August / early September. (I may still port the content…
Top Ten Flex Tools and Resources

admin

20 May 2009 | 8:02 am

When developing Flex and/or AIR applications there are a handful of tools that really make the difference between a good project and a great project. They are all very valuable and provide stability and clarity for the RIA development process; or at least they have for me. From Unit Testing to SVN utilities to frameworks and libraries I’ve found the following ten items to be very useful and helpful. I’d even go so far as to say these are critical for quality Flex RIA development; but as Les says: “It’s just a matter of opinion.” Cairngorm Cairngorm is the…
How do I learn Flex?

admin

27 Feb 2009 | 1:08 pm

The world of Flex development is pretty big and it’s expanding all the time. There are many types of applications that can be built with Flex from dashboards to widgets, media playback utilities to Enterprise RIAs and don’t forget interactive kiosks and Internet aware desktop applications. One of the most common questions that I get asked is: How/Where do I learn Flex? I think one of the keys to mastery is a successful learning path. I also think that a solid foundation goes a long way. We’ve all heard the phrase: “crawl, walk, run…” Here are some resources…
Simple Spring Example Project

admin

25 Feb 2009 | 9:54 am

The Spring framework is not new, it’s been around since mid 2003. In very simple terms Spring is a framework to help build Java (and .NET) applications. Spring helps organize and orchestrate the source code for Java applications. Spring can be used with any Java application including Java web applications. This is beneficial to Flex applications that communicate with server side Java web applications. In addition, Flex developers can now use the new Spring BlazeDS Integration provided by Spring with BlazeDS projects. Check out the awesome blog post and video by Christophe Coenraets for…

The Joy of Flex
Why Google built Chrome

David Coletta

10 Jun 2009 | 8:45 am

The conventional wisdom about why Google built Chrome is that Google wanted to be able to deliver a better browser experience, both for search and for its apps, than was possible in other browsers. Similarly, it’s understood that Google is betting heavily on HTML5 as the platform of the future for applications on the web, and the best way for them to influence that future is to create it. What I just realized today, however, is that since Chrome is built on Webkit, Google can build and deploy HTML5 functionality, contribute it back to the Webkit open source project, and watch it…
labs.acrobat.com launches with preview of Presentations app

David Coletta

27 May 2009 | 2:05 am

We just took the wraps off of a new site called labs.acrobat.com where we are showing previews of what is coming to acrobat.com in the near future. Today you can check out a preview of the app that does for presentations what Buzzword does for word processing documents. Now come give it a spin!
Should Documents Tweet?

David Coletta

19 May 2009 | 9:17 am

Right now it’s hard to find out when people have made changes to Buzzword documents that you care about. Say you’re working with a couple of other people on a project plan, and you’ve just written a first draft and sent it out for comment. When your collaborators leave comments in the document, or rewrite some of the document, the best way you can find out about that right now is to leave the document open and watch for changes. Alternatively, you can check for an unread mark in the document organizer. Either way, you have to remember to look. That’s not right. In a…
Flex Builder Mac won’t start?

David Coletta

13 Apr 2009 | 6:20 am

For reasons unknown, over the weekend Flex Builder 3.0.2 for Mac OS X stopped being able to launch. It would show the splash screen, then the beachball would start spinning, and it would never actually open the previously opened workspace. I got it working again as follows. I renamed the top level directory of the previously opened workspace, launched Flex Builder, and this time it started up just fine. Then I quit, renamed the top level directory back, and relaunched. That worked fine, and subsequently quitting and relaunch worked fine too. Hope it doesn’t happen again.
Check out Joe Berkovitz’s cool stuff: Noteflight, Moccasin

David Coletta

11 Mar 2009 | 8:16 am

Last night at the Boston Flex Users Group monthly meeting, Joe Berkovitz presented Noteflight and Moccasin. Noteflight is his Flex-based online music editor, and Moccasin is an open-source framework that supports direct-manipulation editing in Noteflight and apps like it. This was a great talk, and I particularly liked the way Joe used his music application as a example to demonstrate the Moccasin code. Moccasin comes with a sample AIR app that demonstrates its features, with some simple direct-manipulation editing, undo, and more. Noteflight – Moccasin

Peter Elst
Flash at the Lake – looking back

Peter

29 Jun 2009 | 1:08 am

I returned yesterday from an amazing four days in Zurich, Switzerland where I spoke at the first edition of “Flash at the Lake“. Its always difficult to know what to expect from a first time event, but I really think the organizers did an outstanding job. One thing I found particularly interesting is having workshops [...] Related posts:Flash at the Lake – Zurich, SwitzerlandSQLite at the LakeThe Progressive Web Tutorials
SQLite at the Lake

Peter

26 Jun 2009 | 2:08 am

Earlier today at the Flash at the Lake conference here in Zurich, Switzerland I presented my “Introduction to SQLite in Adobe AIR” session. I’ve done this one a couple of times before but have updated it to include more information on: Database encryption Synchronization strategies Using Data Access Objects SQLite wrapper classes You can find my slides below, and the [...] Related posts:Flash at the Lake – Zurich, SwitzerlandFlash at the Lake – looking backIntroduction to SQLite in Adobe AIR
Flash on Android

Peter

24 Jun 2009 | 10:04 am

This morning Adobe announced that the HTC Hero phone will be the first Android based phone to support Flash. Adrian Ludwig did a nice video showing off some of the features. Its important to note that, while it is not explicitly said, this is in fact Flash Lite 3.1 running on the phone not a full [...] Related posts:Adobe announces the Open Screen ProjectThe Future of Mobile ExperienceThoughts on the Flash Mobile Platform
FlashCamp San Francisco video

Peter

21 Jun 2009 | 3:59 pm

Sometimes I really wish I worked over in San Francisco — now and again Adobe does these great meet ups, like recently happened with FlashCamp. They’ve put the video of the presentations online including a keynote by CTO Kevin Lynch and the following topics: Introduction to Flash Catalyst What’s New in Flex 4 Skinning Components and Apps [...] Related posts:What have I been up to?Flex Builder tips and tricksFlashForward 2005 San Francisco roundup
Introduction to ColdFusion 9 by Cyril Hanquez

Peter

20 Jun 2009 | 9:56 am

Last Wednesday we had the Flex 4, Flash Builder 4, ColdFusion 9 and Flash Catalyst pre-release event at the Adobe User Group Belgium in Ghent. Speakers were Serge Jespers, Cyril Hanquez and Maarten Cox. I managed to record most of Cyril’s talk on ColdFusion 9 and Bolt, which was targeted mainly to non-ColdFusion developers. Think [...] Related posts:The State of ColdFusionColdFusion is Dead, or is It?ColdFusion Sneak Peek Event – Brussels

code zen
Quick Tip: Correct folder for Unit Tests in Flash Builder 4

arpit

13 Jun 2009 | 7:01 pm

I really like the fact that FlexUnit is built right into Flash Builder since one of the main reasons unit testing used to fall off our radars was it was a pain setting up Flex Unit and executing scripts. However one of the things that struck me pretty weird was that Flash Builder was writing tests in the source directory. Best practices in unit testing say that the tests should be in a separate folder called tests/ which should be a sibling of the src/ folder. This lets the tests be written with the same package as the code being tested. This allows, for example, testing functions with a…
Compiled vs interpreted languages and why I sometimes wish Actionscript was interpreted

arpit

6 Jun 2009 | 9:34 am

[UPDATE] My friend, Mat pointed out that this post isnt really about compiled vs interpreted languages but rather static vs dynamically typed languages. Its always interesting to see the conflict between developers who love and those who hate interpreted languages. It often feels like the developers’ equivalent of a generation gap, with a lot younger developers preferring interpreted languages like Ruby and Python over things like Java and C. An interesting post I read on why Web Applications Should Be Compiled which is an interested read, though a bit strongly worded against Ruby. I…
New Adobe toys this week: Flash Builder 4, Flex 4 SDK, Flash Catalyst, BrowserLab

arpit

3 Jun 2009 | 9:27 pm

An exciting week for Flash Platform Developers as Adobe released a number of Beta versions on the Adobe Labs site. I have just started playing with a couple of them but its definitely worth the shout out. Flash Builder 4: Flash Builder 4 is the next version of the Eclipse based IDE formerly known as Flex Builder. The renaming is more than just a re-branding exercise, as FB4 seems to have added features that make it a lot easier to work with other frameworks besides Flex. This is really exciting for me personally as this means it will be a lot easier to work with OpenPyro in FB4. In fact Greg…
So I am co-manager of the Philadelphia Flex User Group

arpit

27 May 2009 | 7:51 pm

…or rather as of a month or so ago. Still it felt worthy of a blogpost if nothing else to mark this date (/month) for posterity. I will be working with Derek Wischusen who has been doing an amazing job so far organizing local meetups. If you are in Philadelphia and interested in Flex, I would love to get to know you better and welcome your suggestions on making the group truly kick@$$. The timing has been perfect, with Flex 4 on the horizon that seems really cool. In fact on the 24th of June, Adam Lehman from Adobe will be coming down to talk about Flex 4 and Coldfusion NEXT (details…
My experience with Git and why I think Open Source projects should be released on Git

arpit

9 May 2009 | 3:07 pm

Over the last couple of years I have released a bunch of libraries under Open Source licenses, usually on Google code. However the my last project, OpenPyro was a little different and was released on GitHub with Git as the Version Control System. I write this as a developer with more experience and comfort using Subversion and yet encourage you to release your open source projects on Git. So what is Git? The one line description (from Wikipedia) is “Git is a distributed version control system, born with the fundamental mechanisms making branching and merging really easy.” A…

Ntt.cc
Beginning ActionScript 3.0 – Class 2

Ntt.cc

24 Jun 2009 | 5:16 am

In part 1 of class section(Beginning ActionScript 3.0 – Class 1), we have got some basic ideas about the package and the class attributes. So, we can write the skeleton of the Author class.The code is as below. Ok, the next step is the class body. The class body, which is enclosed by curly braces, is used to define the variables, constants, and methods of your class. Eh, show you the full version of Author class now. package public classAuthor private varnewEmailBooleanfalse private vararticleFinishedBooleanfalse public functionhaveBreakfastvoid…
Beginning ActionScript 3.0 – Class 1

Ntt.cc

22 Jun 2009 | 6:30 am

In the last section, we use some code to show the OOP style code. But the code can’t run. In this section, we’ll try to make it run. Type the example code into your flash authoring tools, and then test it. If you’re using flash cs3, you will get the following result. The error message means the compiler can’t find any information about the data type Author. And according to the last section, we need to define a class named Author. Define the class Go back to the flash CS3, clicked the [File] menu, and select [new], then a dialog will opened. Select [ActionScript File], and then click…
Beginning ActionScript 3.0 – Introduction to OOP

Ntt.cc

21 Jun 2009 | 7:26 am

When you looking at some resources introducing the ActionScript 3.0, it may say that, “ActionScript 3.0 is an object-oriented programming (OOP) language”. The key word “object-oriented programming (OOP)” is the topic of this article eh, and the following articlesJ. First sight on the OOP-style When we talked about the control flow, we use an example to mimic my schedule. And the code is like this: varnewEmailBooleanfalse var articleFinishedBooleanfalse tracehave breakfast//sequence tracepractice calligraphy tracecheck theemail …
The resource/tutroials of Flash Builder 4、Flex 4 SDK and Flash Catalyst

Ntt.cc

16 Jun 2009 | 7:42 am

Since the download available for Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst from Adobe Labs site, there were quite a lot of tutorials, how-to’s and reviews all over the web from Adobe’s Platform Evangelists and a few other prominent developers. Flash Builder 4 delivers a long list of new features, plus improvements to many existing features. Adobe has compiled a very useful set of videos about the new feature of Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst. The following is a list of the resource and tutorials of Flash Builder 4、Flex 4 SDK adm Flash Catalyst.If you know more please don’t hesitate…
Beginning ActionScript 3.0 – Summary of Functions

Ntt.cc

19 May 2009 | 4:54 am

Function, is a very important concept inside the ActionScript. And we talk a lot about the function in ActionScript 3.0. Let’s review them together now. At first, we use an example to show you how the functions help you get rid of the redundancy of your code, and make your code easier to maintain. And then, we discuss what the function is. Function is a block of code; the behavior is deterministic, use for carry out specific task. The following discussion is about the program flow and the definition of functions. functionfunction_nameparameterlistreturntype // code block…

Flashcomguru.com
Producing H.264 Video for Flash

31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

My friend Jan has a great article on H.264 video production on his site. You can read the first part below, and catch the rest on his blog. Introduction As a producer of video on the web, you know that you're judged by the quality of your video. In this regard, many producers are considering converting from the venerable On2 VP6 codec to H.264. H.264 offers better visual quality than VP6, and the AAC audio codec offers much better quality than the MP3 codec paired with VP6. Starting with Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3, you could play back files encoded in H.264/AAC formats. As of September…
Vendor Lock Out: Screen Sharing via the Flash Player and FMS

31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm
The Easiest Way to Enable Tethering over Bluetooth on the iPhone 3G

31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

Note: off topic post coming up. I've just come across a link that describes how to enable tethering on the iPhone 3G using the 3.0 software update that was released yesterday. Most of the guides I found seemed a bit complex and involved messing around in the Terminal - something that a lot of users find intimidating. But then I came across the following link (which you should access directly from your iPhone's web browser): http://help.benm.at/tethering.php From the list that shows select your country (I chose UK), and your network provider (for most this would be O2). I installed the profile…
RTMP Specs Spark Debate on the FlashMedia List

31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

The release of the RTMP specs by Adobe yesterday has thrown up some questions on the nologies. And free Adobe tech support too - I suggest you FlashMedia List, and several people are asking themselves if it is a good idea to actually read them as doing so (or even simply downloading the specs) will mean that you agree to be bound to the RTMP license. In particular, the license includes a section about prohibited uses: "Prohibited Uses The rights and licenses granted by Adobe in the RTMP Specification, including those granted in the Patent License, are conditioned upon Your agreement to use…
RTMP Specs Nows Public

31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

Today Adobe released the specification for Real Time Messaging Protocol (RMTP). The protocol documentation is available for Free, and describes how to use the messaging, chunking and handshake used by Flash Media Server. Adobe's secure protection measures are not exposed in this specification. Adobe also announced a new product offering called the FMS Connector for C++ SDK, that is also available today for licensing. No details around the license terms have been made public yet, but anyone who is interested in the product can contact FMSOEMinquiries@adobe.com. The connector can be used to…

funky monkey blog
Flash on Android!

Sidney de Koning

25 Jun 2009 | 9:19 am

Adobe and HTC have teamed up to bring Flash to the new HTC Hero smartphone. It is part of the Open Screen initiative. Later this year they are coming out with full flash Player 10, right now it only supports AS2 The HTC Hero delivers powerful, compatible video playback performance using Flash technology, and interactive content enabled by ActionScript® 2.0. Users can enjoy and navigate through Web videos using intuitive video controls. With progressive streaming of large MP3 audio files from a Web server and the local file storage, the HTC Hero provides a seamless audio experience. Support…
Getting published on print!

Sidney de Koning

24 May 2009 | 5:35 am

Today I received a big white envelope with inside a copy of the newest Flash and Flex Developer magazine, with my article ‘Drag and Drop in AIR using Flash CS3′ published on real paper :). I have posted the source files in the publication section, if you want to play around with it The next issue will also have an article by me, will keep you posted on that one. If you also would like to write for a real magazine, they are always looking for new authors and beta testers. Buy me a coffee
Tracing XMLList within a switch statement returns null

Sidney de Koning

6 May 2009 | 3:33 pm

Just found really nasty bug in Flash; When using XML Filtering within a switch statement it will fail when assigning that value to an XMLList variable and trace null. (Even though there is data) When you declare the variable outside/above of the switch it does work. What can also be done is assigning the variable to a function that does the filtering. Apparently you cant assign and set a variable on the same line within a switch because of a scoping issue. Also checked JIRA, Adobe’s BUG database, and it is already filed Here are some examples: //FAILS! switch(someName) { case "myName":…
Using a new syntax highlighter for my blog

Sidney de Koning

9 Mar 2009 | 11:51 am

I know this is not a big deal for some but for me has been an everlasting quest to find the best syntax highlighter for blogs. (Damn that sounded dramatic ;)) Anyway, I stepped away from the idea that it needed to be a plugin for WordPress. Then i found Alex Gorbachev’s Syntax Highlighter. Its easy to install and easy to use, and it has a ton of features that are relevant! And also lots of languages it supports. So ff some of my old posts have no syntax lights, i’m working on rewriting them when i have the time. Buy me a coffee
How to: Designing for Mobiles

Sidney de Koning

6 Mar 2009 | 9:33 am

Nice educational video from 4 dutch guys (Joel Laumans, Gemma Vernooy, Lemmy-Boy Hoogendoorn & Niek Dekker.) who talk about designing for mobiles in the correct context in 3 minutes. Enjoy! Buy me a coffee

SilverlightShow: Silverlight Community
Hacking Silverlight

27 Dec 2009 | 1:00 pm

Coming soon... Product Description "We did what would normally take six months in eight days-with a team learning from scratch." -from Chapter 1 of Hacking Silverlight Writing good code is hard enough using established, well-documented technologies; with something new like Silverlight, you need to think like a hacker. Hacking Silverlight is a unique tutorial that shows the reader how to build great Silverlight web applications fearlessly. Each chapter starts and ends with carefully annotated code examples that range from Silverlight basics to undocumented techniques you won't find anywhere…
Downloading Prism

2 Jul 2009 | 12:47 am

In this post Erik Mork explains how to find, download and build Prism for Silverlight. Prism is amazing. It was pretty much made by geniuses. Unfortunately, it’s kind of hard to figure out 1) where to download it and 2) what to do with it after you’ve downloaded it. This is a guide that shows you how to get up and running with Silverlight Prism.
Arranging Shapes in a Circle with Expression Blend – Part 2

2 Jul 2009 | 12:34 am

In the first installment of this article Walt Ritscher showed some techniques for implementing circular animations. The trek continues in this installment where he shows you how to arrange elements evenly about the perimeter of a circle and how to recreate the Silverlight loading animation. The Expression Blend designer makes it easy to arrange items around the perimeter of a circle. Arranging shapes in this fashion is a common UI pattern.
10 Things to Know About Silverlight Prism

1 Jul 2009 | 11:51 pm

As Prism becomes one of the hottest topics in Silverlight, Erik Mork decided to provide the top 10 things that he thinks every developer should know about Prism. 1. Prism is a collection of libraries for implementing best-practices in Silverlight Now, Prism actually contains more than just the libraries (it also has source code, examples, quickstarts and excellent documentation), but the key thing is that Prism is a tool for creating testable/maintainable applications.[...]
SilverBullet #5 – System.Windows.ApplicationServiceContext

1 Jul 2009 | 11:49 pm

In the 5th part of the SilverBullet series, Timmy Kokke talks about the ApplicationServiceContext class, which can be very helpful detecting if your Silverlight 3 application is running offline. Here are the previous parts of Timmy's SilverBullet series: SilverBullet Part 1 – System.Environment, SilverBullet Part 2 – System.Json, SilverBullet Part 3 - System.Windows.Input.FocusManager, SilverBullet #4 – System.Windows.ApplicationIdentity. When running Silverlight outside the browser, there’s the possibility that the computer that is running the applications is disconnected.

Serge Jespers
Video: Schematic shows multi-touch wall. Runs on Flash. Built with Flex.

Serge Jespers

25 Jun 2009 | 1:04 pm

Microsoft has (rightfully) gotten a lot of attention with their Surface multi-touch table. Schematic has now raised the bar. In Cannes at the Cannes Lions festival, they were showing a 3.5m (12ft) x 1.5m (5ft) multi-touch/multi-user intelligent wall which puts the Surface to shame. The massive display gives attendees instant access to the complete festival program, 3D maps of the event and surrounding area, and information on local restaurants and bars. The Touchwall also helps delegates schedule meetings with each other and trade contact information via email. The presentation layer is built…
Adobe and HTC Bring Flash Platform to Android

Serge Jespers

24 Jun 2009 | 4:46 am

There’s been a lot of buzz about Flash on mobile devices the last couple of days and today HTC announces the release of the first Flash enabled Android phone. This HTC Hero delivers a more complete Web browsing experience and provides access to a broad variety of Flash technology based content available on the Web today. Users can browse and discover a broad set of Web content and applications not supported by mobile phones in the past. People can also view YouTube videos using Flash technology, and enable full screen viewing mode by simply double tapping the screen. The HTC Hero…
Adobe MAX logo in The Matrix?

Serge Jespers

24 Jun 2009 | 4:04 am

Ok… ok… I know… This is a “little bit” geeky. Especially because I was able to spot this on a computer screen in the background and it only appears for a couple of frames. But seriously… Is that the MAX logo I see in The Matrix? Ok… It probably isn’t, but it’s pretty darn close if you ask me! Now that we are the topic of MAX, I’m actually very excited about this years edition. If you look at the schedule, you should get a pretty good idea of what’s coming at MAX. I’m scheduled to do some exciting sessions… But more…
Nokia releases Flash Lite components

Serge Jespers

22 Jun 2009 | 3:33 am

I can’t believe I missed that but a few weeks ago Nokia released a free set of Flash Lite components on Forum Nokia. The set consists of a button component, contacts list component, list component, media data component, popup component and scrollbar component. They’re all very easy to use and also customizable. Kudos to Nokia for releasing these! Flash on!
Google adds external resource indexing for Flash sites/apps

Serge Jespers

19 Jun 2009 | 7:09 am

Exciting news resonated through the Twittersphere today as Google announced that they’ve now added the ability to index external resources for Flash sites and applications. When your Flash based site or application loads content from another file (text, HTML, XML, script, another SWF, …) Google can now also index that external content. While Ichabod – the headless Flash Player that Google uses to enable this – offers even more functionality than what Google offers today, this is obviously really exciting news. If you want to learn more about Ichabod, definitely check…

Silverlight | WPF | Microsoft.Net
2009 Microsoft MVP Award

joel

1 Jul 2009 | 9:02 am

This morning I received an email that Microsoft has chosen to renew me as a MVP. I am thrilled to continue to have this opportunity. This years has been crazy as I continue to write my book, articles for Microsoft and learn what its like to be a consultant with Neudesic. I am very excited for what this next year will bring and am reenergizes to be even more committed to my involved in the Microsoft community. I look forward to being an active part of the growth of Silverlight and WPF.
A fond farewell and new begining

joel

26 May 2009 | 10:25 am

Today is a very exciting day for me; tomorrow I begin a new chapter in career as I join Neudesic as a Principal Consultant II. For years I have listened to the community talked about the amazing talent Neudesic has attracted, and I am so very excited to be a part of that team.I started my career as a consultant, and am honored to have n an opportunity to return to that type of development.I have never been as passionate about a technology as I am about Silverlight. I am excited to be a part of an organization that sees the great opportunity that lies within that technology. Last week…
Developing a casual game with Silverlight – Module 5

joel

22 May 2009 | 10:18 am

This week Microsoft published the latest issue of the Expression Newsletter. If you have not seen the newsletter its a great series of articles focused on using Silverlight and the Expression tools to create amazing rich interactive solutions. In this latest issue I was asked to contribute the fifth of a six part series of articles on exploring the process of designing and building a casual online game in Silverlight .. Here is what the series will include. Module 1: Getting Started – Architecture / framework Module 2: Movement and collision detection Module 3: Design – Sprites, boards…
Perspective 3D Screen flip with PlaneProjection

joel

7 Apr 2009 | 9:31 am

Almost a year ago I created a Silverlight 2 example that demonstrated how you could use a procedural animation to duplicate one of the transitions used on the iPhone. When a iPhone user goes to make a phone call, if you choose to display the keypad there is a cool 3D flip that occurs. Back in SL2 it was a pretty lengthy animation that never quite duplicated the correct amount of 3d perspective needed to make the flip look realistic. Thankfully in Silverlight 3 we now have perspective 3D which allows us to take 2D objects and rotate them in 3D space. For this example I will use PlaneProjection…
Developing a Casual Game with Siverlight 2 – Module 4

joel

21 Mar 2009 | 8:32 am

This week Microsoft published the latest issue of the Expression Newsletter. If you have not seen the newsletter its a great series of articles focused on using Silverlight and the Expression tools to create amazing rich interactive solutions. In this latest issue I was asked to contribute the fourth of a six part series of articles on exploring the process of designing and building a casual online game in Silverlight 2.. Here is what the series will include. Module 1: Getting Started – Architecture / framework Module 2: Movement and collision detection Module 3: Design – Sprites, boards…

Ryan Stewart - Rich Internet Application Mountaineer
HTC Hero is the First Android Phone with Flash Support

ryanstewart

24 Jun 2009 | 4:50 am

The Flash Platform is coming to Android. Today HTC is shipping their Android-based HTC Hero smartphone and it’s the first Android device with Flash on it. There was a lot of news this week about Adobe delivering the full Flash Player 10 experience in the browser and this is an important step towards this. We’ve set up a section on the Adobe Developer center with HTC Hero information and Adrian Ludwig has a good video that shows off what you’ll be able to do with the device there. Adobe’s mobile evangelist Mark Doherty also has a lot more info. One of the cool things…
Congrats to the Flash Lite Developer Challenge Winners

ryanstewart

18 Jun 2009 | 9:13 am

I was lucky enough to be asked to judge the Flash Lite Developer Challenge in which we gave away a lot of prize money ($15,000 USD for each category winner and $30,000 USD for the grand prize). I continue to be impressed with what you can do with Flash Lite. I’m busy working on my own Flash Lite application and these guys put me to shame. My favorite out of the bunch is Little Spender because I think it’s an easy to use and well designed little application. Be sure to check out all the winners, Mark Doherty has some great YouTube videos of all the winners in action. And we also…
Tech Talk with Ryan Stewart on REST APIs in AFCS

ryanstewart

17 Jun 2009 | 11:53 pm

This was posted a couple of days ago but I forgot to blog about it. I got a chance to talk with Raffaele Sena on the Adobe Flash Collaboration Service team about some of the things you can do with the REST APIs that we expose in AFCS. You can use any language you want (the SDK comes with the biggies including Java, PHP, and ColdFusion) to manage rooms and integrate authentication into your own environment. Make sure to check out the AFCS forums if you’ve got any questions.
MAX Registration Open and Sessions Starting to Finalize

ryanstewart

17 Jun 2009 | 10:12 am

Registration is now open for MAX 2009 in Los Angeles from October 4th - 7th. If you register before August 31st you get the early bird pricing of $200 off. I’ve been involved with MAX this year as a camp manager and seeing how this all comes together from the inside is impressive. We’ve got a ton of content this year including a number of “BYOL (bring your own laptop)” labs that will let you get some hands on experience with the tools and technologies. MAX is also a great place to come mingle with the community’s best and get a chance to talk with the engineers…
The RTMP Spec is Released, Published, and Available

ryanstewart

15 Jun 2009 | 2:06 pm

Today we’ve published the RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) specification as part of the Open Screen Project so that anyone can download it and add RTMP functionality to their applications or code. We announced that we were going to be opening it up earlier this year and now it’s available. RTMP is one of the core (and probably most interesting) parts of the Flash Player. It’s what enables a lot of the rich media as well as real time collaboration features inside that have made the Flash Platform so successful. By publishing this spec we’re giving every developer…

RefreshingApps.com - Showcase
LoomTV desktop

freshairapps@gmail.com

30 Jun 2009 | 12:42 am

LoomTV is hoping to be the new social media player from Germany. Already available via the browser LoomTV desktop takes that experience to your desktop with Adobe AIR. It combines media from the likes of YouTube, GoogleVideo, BlipTV, Dailymotion and more with extensive social features built it. You can share you playlists and favourites with friends. Watch what you want! Search and collect videos for free! The UI features a Heads Up Display (HUD) type of approach that reappears upon mouse movement. The interface alows for may features to be available at one time including searching, radio…
Lupo

freshairapps@gmail.com

29 Jun 2009 | 5:28 am

This is one for the Flex developers in the house. Lupo is a fantastic AIR application focused on providing an easy mechanism for translating and localising Flex applications. Built by David Deraedt (http://www.dehats.com) who has a lot of experience in technical translations especially with Adobe technologies. With lupo manager, an Adobe® AIR® application, easily extract strings from your source code, manage resource bundles and implement i18n logic in your Adobe Flex® / Adobe AIR applications, in a very productive way. This is not a free application and costs a very reasonable 99€…
Joost desktop

freshairapps@gmail.com

23 Jun 2009 | 3:49 am

Joost, the Internet TV service created by ex Skype founders started out using peer to peer application based off the Mozilla platform. Come 2008 and Joost relaunched using the Flash Platform as media delivery and you could access it through your web browser. AIR developer Paul Yanez working closely with Joost has created a most needed desktop version of the player. Thus completing a lifecycle of desktop to browser to desktop again! The player includes Twitter integration where you can tweet out your playing habits without exiting the Joost desktop AIR application. When I first tried the…
NihongoUp

freshairapps@gmail.com

18 Jun 2009 | 5:25 am

NihongoUp is a Japanese learning tool built in Adobe AIR by Philip Seyfi. Improve you kana IME typing speed and learn Japanese particles in context. I must admit I know absolutely nothing about Japanese and I’m not going to pretent I do. That said it’s a great looking application with some subtle interactions. All this comes packaged in this Japanese learning game which will keep you motivated during you study of this beautiful, but demanding language So if you know any Japanese then please comment on how you find this AIR application and your experiences. Design eye Nice colours…
Pixel Window

freshairapps@gmail.com

18 Jun 2009 | 1:16 am

PixelWindow is a great lightweight AIR application for measuring elements onscreen in pixels created by Christian Cantrell It creates a transparent window that acts like a pixel ruler with its width and height reported in the center. Just drag it around and resize it to measure whatever you want. Yes a simple but very useful idea for designers everywhere. Just click and drag the window around to position and use the arrow keys to finely move into position. Multiple rulers are available making simultaneous measuring a sinch. Rulers are settable to be always on top of other windows and presets…

Anthony's Blog
EffectiveUI & Qwest Featured at Forrester Customer Experience Forum

anthonyfranco

30 Jun 2009 | 3:42 pm

Rebecca Flavin, our CEO and one of our clients, Stephanie Copeland (Vice President Business Market Solutions at Qwest Communications) presented an awesome session today at the 2009 Forrester Customer Experience Forum. The session was packed (in fact, it was the most attended session of the hour) – it was my first real attempt at being [...]
Apple’s iPhone 3Gs will Change Your Life

anthonyfranco

20 Jun 2009 | 6:28 am

It is quite nice working for a company that is constantly adopting new technologies. I can justify purchases of new gadgets to myself saying “its for research, after all I’m in the biz” :D One of my favorite gadgets of course is the iPhone. I went out and bought a first gen iPhone 3 days [...]
Could Apple enter the cloud computing market? Could Adobe help?

anthonyfranco

24 May 2009 | 8:58 am

This is total speculation, but I believe it would be very possible for Apple to enter the cloud computing space. A recent article in the Charolette Observer (found via a mac rumors artile) is claiming they are offering Apple a huge tax break to set up a billion dollar server farm in North Carolina. Apple [...]
Why Our Website Sucks

anthonyfranco

12 May 2009 | 3:57 pm

First, “suck” is too strong a word. The original goal when we developed our site 3 years ago was to show what we do rather than try to describe what we do with fancy marketing copy. The site certainly does that – we often hear: “I went to your website and instantly understood what an RIA [...]
What Do You Do Guaranteed?

anthonyfranco

23 Apr 2009 | 2:49 pm

This is the BEST thing I think I’ve ever seen … (thanks tim wood for introducing me to this!)

Peter deHaan
Flash Builder beta serial number extension site is now live

24 Jun 2009 | 4:47 pm

According to the Flex Team Blog, the Flash Builder 4 beta extension serial numbers are now available for all Flex Builder 3 customers through http://www.adobe.com/go/flashbuilderextension.
Nightly Flex 4 Language Reference ZIPs now available

24 Jun 2009 | 1:29 pm

For those "hardcore" Flex-thusiasts out there, this may very well make your day! If you routinely download the latest Flex 4 Nightly SDK builds from http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+4, you'll be pleased to know that you can now download the language reference for the very same build! Oh no you didn't! OH YES, WE DID!!!1! You can still browse the Flex 4 Language Reference at http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/gumbo/langref/, as well as the user docs at http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/gumbo/html/, but if you want to see the latest and greatest version of the language…
Reminder: Upcoming Open Beta Meetings

19 Jun 2009 | 7:07 pm

Just a friendly reminder that we have some Flex Open Beta Meetings scheduled for early next week: Open Beta Meeting for new and beginner Flex developers When: MONDAY June 22nd at 10AM – 11AM PDT Where: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/openbeta/ (Please enter the room as a ‘guest’ using your First and Last name) Open Beta Meeting for intermediate and advanced Flex developers When: TUESDAY June 23rd at 9:30AM – 10:30AM PDT Where: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/openbeta/ (Please enter the room as a ‘guest’ using your First and Last name) As always, note the timezone so you don't miss the…
Today in Open Source Flex SDK Commits (6/18)

19 Jun 2009 | 11:38 am

Here are a few of the more interesting API changes in the beta Flex 4 SDK from Thursday: [svn:fx-trunk] 7952: PARB changes for RichEditableText, TextArea and TextInput [svn:fx-trunk] 7953: Small PARB effects change (oversight, should have been in Monday's commit). [svn:fx-trunk] 7967: PARB changes to TextGraphicElement/SimpleText/ RichText and to text styles in general. [svn:fx-trunk] 7972: PARB changes to rename the @font-face / [Embed] property cff: to embedAsCFF: [svn:fx-trunk] 7979: ButtonBar PARB changes: For more information on the various PARB renames, see the master list at:…
Today in Open Source Flex SDK Commits (6/17)

18 Jun 2009 | 10:51 am

Here are a few of the more interesting API changes in the beta Flex 4 SDK from Wednesday: [svn:fx-trunk] 7916: Last of the List PARB changes - selectedItems is now a Vector of Objects and selectedIndices is a Vector of Numbers. [svn:fx-trunk] 7918: Round 2 of effects PARB changes. [svn:fx-trunk] 7925: PopUpAnchor PARB Changes [svn:fx-trunk] 7938: PopUpAnchor PARB Part 2 [svn:fx-trunk] 7939: Slider PARB Changes For more information on the various PARB renames, see the master list at: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Rename+List. Curious about what else is goin' on in the…

Kevin Towes on Online Video at Adobe
Adobe MAX (from online video perspective)

16 Jun 2009 | 2:43 pm

Today Adobe released the session list for Max 2009. This year Max will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, October 4-7. Max has over 200 sessions and 100 hands-on labs. I've listed below some of the sessions that will focus on Online High Quality Video. There are 7 sessions, 2 labs and 2 Labs where you will bring your own laptop. Speakers for these sessions is an equal blend consisting of Adobe and community experts including Rob Reinhardt, Fabio Sonnoti, Will Law, Greg Hamer, Matthew Kauffman, Michael Thornburgh, Laurel Reitman, Florian Pestoni, Tomas Krcha and Kevin Towes (me).
RTMP Specification Now Available

15 Jun 2009 | 2:48 pm

It’s great to see so much buzz about the Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) protocol and Flash Media Server, and today we’ve made the protocol specification available to everyone who wants to use it – for Free! We’re really excited about the opportunities to add new data sources, communications, and media to new and existing applications in Flash. You can now download the Adobe RTMP Spec it for free here RTMP was first introduced in Flash Player 6 enabled by Flash Communication Server 1.0 (now called the Flash Media Server). This was also the time when audio and video…
M6 Web (France) selects Adobe Flash Platform for TV on Demand

3 Jun 2009 | 11:44 am

I talked about M6 Replay at this year's NAB conference in Las Vegas. M6 Web launched a Television on demand service in France that streams popular commercial programming on the web and recently moved their service on to the Adobe Flash Platform (Flash Player / Flash Media Server). They are also responsible for streaming the live Euro 2008 soccer games. When they relaunched the service using Flash, they had over 1 million unique visits after 2 months and viewers (on both MAC and PC) responded! We surpassed M6 Replay’s audience size record one month after moving to the Adobe…
New Video Tutorial on P2P in Flash

2 Jun 2009 | 10:16 am

This is my new favourite Blog: Flash Realtime by Tom Krcha. Tom is an Adobe evangelist who has a keen interest in Flash Media technologies. Tom just posted a new video tutorial describing the basics of P2P in Flash. This is a must-watch video to learn how to use Adobe Stratus service with ActionScript in Flash Player 10. Did you know that Flash Player is the most adopted P2P client on the planet? Currently over 75% of all connected PC's have Flash player 10 installed. This means that you can build real time applications that use little to no bandwidth that reach the vast majority of people.
Adobe Dynamic Media in the Rocky Mountains

28 May 2009 | 1:34 pm

There is a lot more to video then just putting it online (although that's my personal favorite part). At Adobe we spend a lot of time thinking how to create an integrated experience starting when you first capture the video to the point of publishing. FMS is part of an organization within Adobe called Dynamic Media which includes all the video creation and distribution products such as After Effects, Premiere, Flash, Flash Media Server, OnLocation and many more. Our group has also been described as "Anything at Adobe that Moves". It's really exciting to see how the products have come together…

Deitte.com
Brightcove News: Trial Accounts, Open Positions, and Usability

8 Jun 2009 | 10:44 pm

Trial accounts: I think that Brightcove has had 30-day trial accounts for awhile, but we've been promoting them a lot more recently. If you want to check out what we've done in Flex and Flash, sign on up. Brightcove is Hiring: If you're in Boston or Beijing, we have some positions open right now that you may want to look at for QA, system engineering, and project management. I bring this up only to help out Brightcove and my blog readers in the current job market, and of course not at all because your mentioning of my name gives me a referral bonus. New Brightcove.com: The website was…
Flash Builder 4: It's Fast

8 Jun 2009 | 7:53 pm

I just did some stopwatch performance tests of Flash Builder 4 against Flex Builder 3, using the same files that I did for the faster Flex 3 SDK tests. Here are the results: Build All, in seconds, after changing two UI classes Flex 3: 42.5 Flex 3 fast: 36 Flex 4: 38 Flex 4 with libraries: 26.5 Build All, in seconds, after changing a ModelLocator Flex 3: 47 Flex 3 fast: 36.5 Flex 4: 34 Flex 4 with libraries: 26 The projects with libraries were very impressive. For these admittedly simple performance tests, I'm seeing the best Flex 4 project as 70% faster than the regular Flex 3 project. The…
Image Effects in AS3

25 May 2009 | 11:46 am

If you want to know more about manipulating images in Flash, I have an excellent new book to recommend. It's Foundation ActionScript 3.0 Image Effects by Todd Yard, a coworker of mine at Brightcove. I was the technical editor of the book, and I really enjoyed reading it and learned a lot about a lot of AS3 APIs that I haven't used before. It goes over the basic drawing API, blend modes, many other bitmap manipulations, Pixel Bender, the Flash Player 10 3D APIs, a custom (and newly open sourced) animation and effects library, text effects, video effects, and more that I'm sure I'm leaving out.
Brightcove News: Audio Players, the State of Advertising, and More

18 May 2009 | 6:58 am

Dev articles There are new development articles about using ads without an ad server and dynamically loading a player in Javascript. You can find more articles on the developer blog. New Brightcove blog I just found out about Ashley Streb's blog, and given he's my manager at Brightcove, I will say it's the most fantastic blog of all time. Seriously, though, check it out as as it has a lot of good info on video sitemaps, creating BEML components in Flex, and EC2. Audio support Now leaving the video-only world, Brightcove 3 has some support for audio players, as shown in a Universal Music…
Wordle

25 Apr 2009 | 8:16 am

I can't remember the last time I used a Java applet, and so I couldn't help but post about Wordle, a fun (and perhaps useful) way to spend a few minutes. The site provides a lot of options for creating word clouds from text or links. The image above is from the site and is created from just entering http://deitte.com. The one annoying part of the site is that I had to use a screen capture program, Bug Shooting, in order to get the image to embed. But you can link to word images you create on their site. Wordle can also be helpful for surveys or other text from customers to visualize the…

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