satish

Adobe Air 2.7 Now Available: iOS Apps 4x faster!

2011-06-14T19:36:00.000-07:00

New AIR 2.7 Features

- Enhanced rendering for iOS: AIR apps for iOS render up to 4x faster in CPU mode. This change will improve the performance of many AIR for iOS apps, including those built with the Flex framework. Watch the performance improvements

Desktop:

- Integrated support for Media Measurement: The Adobe AIR 2.7 runtime now includes the same built-in support for media measurement as Adobe Flash Player 10.3, allowing companies to simplify the collection of real-time, aggregated reporting data for how content is distributed and viewed by users. With direct support for Adobe SiteCatalyst, powered by Omniture, developers can implement video analytics for existing or legacy video players with as little as two lines of code

iOS

- Rossignol Experience: Ski season is coming to a close, but this fantastic app from this famous ski maker provides a rich interactive branded experience to learn more about Rossignal skis. Video demo.

BlackBerry Tablet OS

- Comb Over Charlie: Comb Over Charlie was availble on Android using AIR. This game is now available on the PlayBook . Soon to be on the iPad. 4.5 out of 5 stars!

BlackBerry Tablet OS version
Android version

Android

- G20-G8: This is the official app of the French Presidency of the G20 and the G8. Get real time updates and access to all the latest developments from the Summits and the preparatory meetings, as well as video reports and photos on the G20-G8 website.

Read more...

Zero-downtime Deployment in Tomcat

2011-06-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

If you thought Tomcat could not get any better, you thought wrong. Tomcat 7 introduces what is called Parallel Deployment.

Simply put, parallel deployment is the ability to deploy more than one version of your web application in parallel, making all versions available under the exact same URL.

Think about this for a minute. If you have a new version of your application, you can simply drop it into the Tomcat that is running the old one and it will Just Work™. In fact, they will both work. Tomcat handles all session management and traffic routing between application versions. No need to restart Tomcat. No need to stop processing requests. No need to talk to your boss about downtime. No need for your boss to talk to any customers about downtime.

The people who created this feature chose a surprisingly easy solution for how to tell Tomcat what is an alternate version of what. All you have to do is tack ## onto the WAR’s file name. Simple and effective, if a bit odd-looking.

There are a few things to consider when you want to start using versioned WAR files with your Tomcat server. So before you go off and change the deployment strategy at your company, check off the list below.

1) Internal caches should be write-through and expire quickly
2) You need sessions to be enabled
3) Where does logging go?
4) Disk files and directories need to be sharable
5) No TCP socket listeners
6) Your apps must be able to undeploy

For the complete walk-through and details on the items on the checklist, read more on http://java-monitor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1288

Android 3.1 Platform Highlights

2011-05-31T22:57:00.000-07:00

New User Features

New UI designed from the ground up for tablets

Android 3.0 is a new version of the Android platform that is specifically optimized for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets. It introduces a brand new, truly virtual and “holographic” UI design, as well as an elegant, content-focused interaction model.

- System Bar, for global status and notifications
Across the system and in all applications, users have quick access to notifications, system status, and soft navigation buttons in a System Bar, available at the bottom of the screen.

- Action Bar, for application control
In every application, users have access to contextual options, navigation, widgets, or other types of content in an Action Bar, displayed at the top of the screen.

- Customizable Home screens
Five customizable Home screens give users instant access to all parts of the system from any context. Each screen offers a large grid that maintains spatial arrangement in all orientations.

Read more

Google App Engine 1.4.3 released!

2011-03-31T21:10:00.000-07:00

Google has released version 1.4.3 of their cloud-based PaaS.
Google App Engine the latest enhancements to the Java platform side are particularly welcome.

Concurrent Requests – This one is a big #winning! Instead of firing up more app instances, a single app instance can handle more requests. It does require a configuration change in your application.
Java Remote API – This provides the ability to execute actions against your datastore remotely. Seeing that I am crafting webservices for this kind of thing right now, remote access could be a big deal. We’ll see.
Files API – About…time… Ability finally to be able to do file-like manipulation with their Blobstore. Let’s hope it is as awesome as it sounds.

Although not a huge release, there are some pretty big items in there that could have dramatic effect your applications.

Read more

JDK 7 Available

2011-02-23T17:57:00.000-08:00

Next generation of Java SE platform.

Read details

Flash Player 10.2 now available

2011-02-08T19:18:00.000-08:00

Flash Player 10.2 now available

Flash Player 10.2 is available from Adobe. Below I've highlighted the main changes in this release, but you can read about them in full detail on this page.
Stage Video! Basically means full hardware acceleration for video playback on Windows and Mac (something that started back in version 10.1). Suppliers such as Vimeo and YouTube will be upgrading their content to take advantage of this feature.
Full screen support on multi-screen systems
Support for custom native mouse cursors
Text-rendering enhancements
Support for GPU rendering in upcoming IE 9

Read More

JBoss AS 6 release

2010-12-29T18:01:00.000-08:00

What's New?

JBoss Embedded AS
ShrinkWrap
EE6 Multi-namespace injection
HornetQ integration
VFS 3 integration
Single POM Dependency for all the AS runtime
JBoss OSGi integration
Servlet 3.0
JPA 2.0
RESTEasy 2.0
Microcontainer 2.2
Management consoles deployed on demand
EJB 3.1 - Singleton, War support, Async, Advanced Timers, Embedded, JNDI, EE injection
New Apache CXF-based JBossWS stack
XA Recovery
SwitchBoard integration
EE 6 Web Profile certification
Weld 1.1
Added compatibility with the most updated JBoss technologies

Read more

Android 2.3 (codename Gingerbread) revealed

2010-12-07T18:57:00.000-08:00

Impressed with these new features:

SIP-based VoIP
The platform now includes a SIP protocol stack and framework API that lets developers build internet telephony applications. Using the API, applications can offer voice calling features without having to manage sessions, transport-level communication, or audio — these are handled transparently by the platform's SIP API and services...

Near Field Communications (NFC)
Android 2.3 includes an NFC stack and framework API that lets developers read NDEF tags that are discovered as a user touches an NFC-enabled device to tag elements embedded in stickers, smart posters, and even other devices...

Gyroscope and other sensors
Android 2.3 adds platform and API support for several new sensor reading types — gyroscope, rotation vector, linear acceleration, gravity, and barometer. Developers can use the new sensor readings to create applications that respond quickly and smoothly to precise changes in device position and motion. The Sensor API reports gyroscope and other sensor changes to interested applications, whether they are running on the application framework or in native code...

Multiple cameras support
Applications can now make use of any cameras that are available on a device, for either photo or video capture. The Camera lets applications query for the number of cameras available and the unique characteristics of each...

Mixable audio effects
The platform's media framework adds support for new per-track or global audio effects, including bass boost, headphone virtualization, equalization, and reverb...

Download manager, StrictMode, UI Framework, Extra Large Screens and many more.

Read more

New JSRs

2010-11-18T18:37:00.000-08:00

The following list contains new JSRs that have been recently submitted to the JCP. You are encouraged to read them and send your comments to the alias listed on the JSR. If no alias is listed on the JSR, please send your comments to jsr-comments@jcp.org.

Your comments are important. They help to decide whether a JSR is accepted or rejected.

334 Small Enhancements to the JavaTM Programming Language
Description: A successor to JSR 201 to enhance the Java programming language with an assortment of small changes to improve productivity. Changes must be simultaneously small in specification, implementation, and testing.
Spec Lead: Joe Darcy, Oracle

335 Lambda Expressions for the JavaTM Programming Language
Description: Extend the Java language to support compact lambda expressions (closures), as well as related language and library features to enable the Java SE APIs to use lambda expressions effectively.
Spec Lead: Brian Goetz, Oracle

336 JavaTM SE 7 Release Contents
Description: The Umbrella JSR for the seventh edition of the Java SE Platform
Spec Lead: Mark Reinhold, Oracle

337 JavaTM SE 8 Release Contents
Description: The Umbrella JSR for the eighth edition of the Java SE Platform
Spec Lead: Mark Reinhold, Oracle

Read more

Oracle and Apple® announced the OpenJDK project for Mac OS

2010-11-14T18:57:00.000-08:00

Oracle and Apple® announced the OpenJDK project for Mac OS.

Read more:

Flash Builder Burrito sneak

2010-09-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2010/09/flash-builder-burrito-sneak-3.html

Android applications does not use Java

2010-08-16T02:05:00.000-07:00

Android applications are written using the Java programming language. True. But those applications run on the Dalvik virtual machine. Not the Java virtual machine. Source code is owned/copyright by the author and is entirely unbound from any intellectual property concerns based around the syntax/grammar of that language.

Class libraries? Not Java either. Much of the core libraries come from Apache Harmony, and the rest are libraries that Google wrote. Given that Apache was never provided access to the Java Compatibility Kit, Harmony is not labeled as "Java-certified". Also note that Harmony is a clean-room implementation of the Java class libraries.

Flex Addon for Spring Roo

2010-07-28T18:50:00.000-07:00

This Flex Addon is a serious plugin for who is using Spring Roo in enterprise enviroment.

Have a look at the Flex Addon documentation:

Spring Roo brings brings a whole new level of productivity to building Java applications. From the Spring Roo Reference Guide:

"Spring Roo is an easy-to-use productivity tool for rapidly building enterprise applications in the Java programming language. It allows you to build high-quality, high-performance, lock-in-free enterprise applications in just minutes. Best of all, Roo works alongside your existing Java knowledge, skills and experience. You probably won't need to learn anything new to use Roo, as there's no new language or runtime platform needed. You simply program in your normal Java way and Roo just works, sitting in the background taking care of the things you don't want to worry about."

To learn more about Spring Roo itself, you'll find numerous resources from the project's homepage at http://www.springsource.org/roo

The Flex Addon for Spring Roo aims to raise the bar for developer productivity in building Spring-based RIAs with a Flex client by meeting the following goals:

1. Provide the fastest way to get a Spring project configured to use Spring BlazeDS Integration set up and running.
2. Eliminate the need to manually perform repetitive tasks such as keeping ActionScript and Java domain objects in sync.
3. Automate round-tripping code-generation of Flex artifacts with a focus on letting developers do what they do best - write code.

Flex 4.1 SDK and an update to Flash Builder 4.01 released by Adobe

2010-07-04T21:24:00.000-07:00

Adobe has released an update to Flex 4 SDK as well as to the Flash Builder 4.

These are the list of bug fixed in Flex SDk 4.1 by the Flex team and Flash Builder 4.01 Update.

It has been added minor enhancements to the SDK such as the Flex mirroring and bidirectional text.

The Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2 runtimes are now supported by the updater.

You can download the Flex 4.1 SDK manually or you can use the update system of Flash Builder 4 to update the IDE and the SDK automatically.

GWT- An Important Java Technology: Features, Future and Wishes

2010-04-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

From Javalobby.
GWT: http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/overview.html

The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) has become one of the most important Java technologies, as it gives it a credible web platform strategy. I used to be doubtful of the extra compilation step and developed with DWR and Dojo, but have since become a convert.

Cool features:

* A single code base for client and server.
* Great development tools, via Eclipse: refactoring, code navigation, etc. This was one of the reasons the creators of GWT chose Java as the source language. Server-side JavaScript certainly would have been a possibility, and compiling JavaScript to JavaScript is not unheard of, either.
* Very quick turn-around: after making changes, the server and client can be reloaded quickly to reflect the changes (only the first start of the client is a bit slow, subsequent reloads are fast).
* Development tools easy to install: All you need is two Eclipse plugins and you are done.
* IDE support: The Eclipse plugin helps with various coding tasks and errors (such as keeping Service and AsyncService consistent)
* Web application easy to install: GWT produces a WAR file. Drop it into a servlet container such as Jetty or Tomcat. Done.
* Fast and reliable GUI layout: Still limited compared to what Swing and SWT offer, but for the first time acceptable.

Extending the basic features: For someone who has already programmed Swing or SWT, it is very easy to get started with GWT. After a while, you will probably be looking for advanced features. Luckily, a lively community has grown around GWT to fulfill this kind of need.

* gwt-dnd: Implements Drag and Drop in pure GWT.
* Smart GWT: GWT does currently not have too many widgets. Smart GWT is a GWT wrapper around the SmartClient JavaScript client. While GWT is really good at this kind of wrapping, there is some baggage involved: load times of web applications increase, and there is a new API to learn.
* GWT Mosaic: Also extends GWT, but as pure GWT and with less widgets/features.
* Other wrappers for JavaScript libraries exist. But beware, some of them have very restrictive licenses.

What the future will bring:

* Currently, the GWT incubator hosts experimental features. Long-term, its parts will be migrated to either separate projects or the GWT core.
* A post reveals interesting things about GWT’s future. For example, it will get data-backed widgets.

What I am missing:

* More widgets: The current widgets are limited (menus don’t ensure that they are visible, no support for shortcuts, no resizable dialogs, no context menus, etc.) and there are not enough of them. I expect this area to improve quickly, though, now that all the important foundations have been laid (event handlers, modular CSS, layout panels).
* Switching back-ends: Many computers are only intermittently online. Programming an offline mode for a GWT application is difficult, because the server usually hosts important functionality. A hypothetical way of solving this is by installing a back-end locally. The client could switch between this back-end and the server. Managing installed back-ends should work similar to Java Web Start. A local back-end could also provide a GWT application with desktop features, because it has access to desktop resources such as the file system.
* Better client-side modularity: I love Eclipse’s modularity, especially when working in a team. You can have a core plugin that is extended via other plugins residing in separate projects. It would be nice if one could extend a GWT application in a similar fashion. On the server side that is possible via OSGi. On the client side, that is currently not possible.
* Sending binary data from server to browser: For example, one cannot create images on the server and send them to the client via RPC. Data URIs are a work-around, but a poor one.
* Annotations for hiding code from the client: If an object is transferred back and forth between client and server, there are often some server-only methods. An annotation would allow one to hide those methods. There is an issue for this feature. You can star it, if you would like to see it fixed.
* Instantiating classes via class literals: There is no Class.newInstance() in client-side GWT. One has to resort to sending a factory to the client.
* Two two useful methods: Class#getSimpleName(), String.format() are simple to implement, so I don’t see the reason for not doing so in client-side GWT.

Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4

2010-03-22T23:43:00.000-07:00

Apache HTTP Server Vulnerability Advisory for Adobe Flash Media Server Customers

2010-03-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

From PSIRT.

An important vulnerability was recently identified in Apache HTTP Server version 2.2.14 and earlier (CVE-2010-0425: mod_isapi module unload flaw). The flaw in mod_isapi could result in an attempt to unload the ISAPI dll when encountering various error states. This could leave the callbacks in an undefined state and result in a segfault. On Windows platforms using mod_isapi, a remote attacker could send a malicious request to trigger this issue, and as win32 MPM runs only one process, this would result in a denial of service, and potentially allow arbitrary code execution. This vulnerability has been fixed in Apache httpd 2.2.15.

Read more.

Flex and mobile, a whitepaper to create Flex application for mobile devices

2010-02-16T19:47:00.000-08:00

Adobe has realesed the first whitepaper where it explains that:

" The mobile version of the Flex framework (code-named “Slider”) will provide structure and guidelines for creating application experiences that translate well across platforms, and make it easy to build adaptable multiscreen applications. “Slider” may be used by a broad spectrum of Adobe customers, from traditional media brands and agencies to internal IT organizations. Initial applications built with “Slider” will range from simple companion applications that complement existing web or desktop applications, to more complex contextual applications where multiscreen delivery is a core requirement from the outset.

Flex and Mobile whitepaper.

2010-02-04T18:19:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it — AIR 2 beta 2 is now available on labs.adobe.com. Most expected printing features is now available. Don't miss the interview Ryan Stewart did with Rick Rocheleau, one of the engineers on the core technologies group who made this possible.

Discussing New Printing Features in the AIR 2 Beta 2 from Ryan Stewart on Vimeo.

Signals: Think Outside the Event.

2010-01-24T19:22:00.000-08:00

Signals are light-weight, strongly-typed AS3 messaging tools.
Wire your application with better APIs and less boilerplate than AS3 Events.

AS3 Signals
Video tutorial

Social Media for B2B Marketing: Free Whitepaper

2010-01-21T20:10:00.000-08:00

It’s here! B2Bento’s whitepaper on Social Media for B2B Marketing. Download for free. Read more

Adobe Flex Builder 3 for Linux

2010-01-03T21:24:00.000-08:00

More details @ http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flexbuilder_linux.html

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta 2 now available

2009-12-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

At Adobe MAX 2009, Adobe unveiled the next release of Adobe Flash Player that realizes the promise of a consistent, cross-platform runtime across desktop and mobile devices. Flash Player 10.1 beta 2 was released on December 17, 2010 and is available for download.

More details: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

Disabling event in Flex

2009-12-17T19:56:00.000-08:00

From InsideRIA.

Flex does not provide a way to temporarily disable event listeners and re-enable them later. You may want to do this to prevent endless loops. For example, when some code modifies the selectedIndex of a List, an event is fired. If you have a listener that reacts to the event, you may need a way of suppressing the listener's response under certain conditions. You have two choices:

* Couple the listener to the code that generates the event, so it knows when to ignore the event. This defeats one of the purposes of event-driven programming, separation of concerns.
* Suppress the event dispatch

My gift to you today, dear reader, is the EventManager class. This class remembers all event listeners assigned to an EventDispatcher, and can remove or re-instate those listeners with a single method call.

package events {
import flash.events.EventDispatcher;

public class EventManager {
private var dispatcher:EventDispatcher;
private var type:String;
private var listener:Function;
private var useCapture:Boolean;
private var priority:int;
private var useWeakReference:Boolean;

public function EventManager(dispatcher:EventDispatcher, type:String, listener:Function, useCapture:Boolean, priority:int, useWeakReference:Boolean) {
this.dispatcher = dispatcher;
this.type = type;
this.listener = listener;
this.useCapture = useCapture;
this.priority = priority;
this.useWeakReference = useWeakReference;
}

private static function disableFn(item:*, index:int, array:Array):void {
var em:EventManager = EventManager(item);
em.dispatcher.removeEventListener(em.type, em.listener, em.useCapture);
}

public static function disableAll(listeners:Array):void {
listeners.forEach(disableFn);
}

private static function enableFn(item:*, index:int, array:Array):void {
var em:EventManager = EventManager(item);
em.dispatcher.addEventListener(em.type, em.listener, em.useCapture, em.priority, em.useWeakReference);
}

public static function enableAll(listeners:Array):void {
listeners.forEach(enableFn);
}
}
}

package {
public class EMDemo extends ComboBox {
private var listeners:Array = new Array();

override public function addEventListener(type:String, listener:Function, useCapture:Boolean = false, priority:int = 0, useWeakReference:Boolean = false):void {
super.addEventListener(type, listener, useCapture, priority, useWeakReference);
listeners.push(new EventManager(this, type, listener, useCapture, priority, useWeakReference));
}

/** Prevent update events from being issued */
public function quietlySetIndex(newIndex:int):void {
EventManager.disableAll(listeners);
selectedIndex = newIndex;
EventManager.enableAll(listeners);
}
}
}

Castoven: Microwave with built-in YouTube player (video)

2009-12-08T18:42:00.000-08:00

Two researchers from Japan’s Keio University (which yours truly attended just until recently by the way) have developed a kitchen appliance aimed at the total web geek in you, a YouTube-powered microwave. The so-called Castoven [JP] is based on a conventional, unbranded model of “good quality” but sports a 10.4-inch LCD screen in the door panel.

castoven_3

Needless to say the researchers didn’t forget to build a set of speakers into the microwave, too. It’s connected to a Mac, but I suppose this would work with Windows computers as well. The concept, first made public in a research paper published last year [JP, PDF], is to make people’s everyday lives a little more worthwhile through mashing up web contents with electric appliances.

The main idea is to display a YouTube video whose length depends on the time you need to heat up what’s inside the Castoven. Say, you want to prepare a lunch box that takes 3.30 minutes to be ready. The Castoven would then automatically pull a video from YouTube with that length and display it on the screen until the meal is finished.

Adobe AIR 1.5.3 now available

2009-12-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

The Adobe AIR 1.5.3 runtime and SDK are now available for download. This release includes an updated version of Flash Player, security updates and several bug fixes. The developer release notes include critical information that all developers building AIR applications should be sure to read including important information related to certificate renewals (see earlier blog post) as well as bug fixes.

Highlights of some of the important changes in this release:

* If you have deployed an existing Adobe AIR application using AIR 1.5.2 or earlier and you want to update your application to use the 1.5.3 namespace, you will need to specify the old publisher ID of your application in your descriptor. Instructions on how to find your publisher ID and specify it in your descriptor are described in the release notes.
* The process for changing certificates in an update to a deployed application has changed. Beginning with AIR 1.5.3, certificate renewals will no longer be handled automatically and you will need to use the migrate feature of ADT. Please learn more about this topic by reading the release notes.

Critical issues fixed in this release:

* When an intermediate certificate expires, it is no longer possible to sign an application with a renewed certificate (fixed by removing the publisher ID).
* The AIR application installer crashes on Linux systems using AMD Phenom processors.

Updated Flex Builder for Linux Available on Adobe Labs

2009-11-25T18:03:00.000-08:00

The alpha 5 updated build of Flex Builder for Linux is now available on Adobe Labs.

Adobe AIR 2 Beta Available on Labs (Win, Mac, Linux)

2009-11-22T22:04:00.000-08:00

Adobe AIR 2 Beta on Adobe Labs.

AIR 2 includes several highly-requested features. Some of the prominent features of AIR 2 are:

* Server sockets
* Open documents with the user's default application
* Microphone data access
* .rpm and .deb packages for Linux
* Launch native executables
* USB mass storage device detection
* Global Error Handling
* UDP sockets
* TLS/SSL sockets
* DNS lookup
* Packaging an AIR application in a native installer
* Database transaction savepoints
* Screen reader support (Windows only)
* Printing enhancements
* Increased maximum size of NativeWindow
* Multi-touch events (Windows only)

Multi touch development with Flex

2009-10-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

New Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com : RIA in Cloud

2009-10-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM - News), the enterprise cloud computing company, and Adobe Systems Incorporated (NYSE: ADBE - News), today announced the availability of a new offering that unites the power of the Force.com platform with the richness and ubiquity of the Adobe® Flash® Platform to enable a new generation of cloud-based rich Internet applications (RIAs). The new offering, Adobe® Flash® Builder(TM) for Force.com, integrates the two platforms to bring the richness of the consumer Web to enterprise cloud applications to enable a significantly improved level of developer productivity.

"Adobe and salesforce.com share a common vision for accelerating developer success with cloud computing,"

Read more

The Actionscript Conference - TAC 09

2009-08-11T02:38:00.000-07:00

The Actionscript Conference(TAC -09
) is a community conference that with the focus on the Flash Platform. Attendents will see themselves immersed in a day of learning, knowledge exchange, and networking. TAC aims to bring topics on Actionscript 3.0, Flash development, Enterprise Flex, AIR, Integrating of Flash and other Platforms, and building Rich Internet Application to its audience.

It is going to be more excitement to attend the TAC-09 and it is going to be totally different from TAC-08. This time the more exciting thing is about the speakers. Please do visit the below provided link to check out more. I can say a good opportunity to meet, interact & experience.

TAC -09

Open Source Media Framework

2009-08-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

Open Source Media Framework enables developers to easily assemble pluggable components to create high-quality, full-featured playback experiences. The open aspect of the framework enables collaborative development for web video monetization, with lower costs and faster turnaround.

Learn more...

Home of India Platform Evangelism launched

2009-08-03T22:46:00.000-07:00

Take a look at Home of India Platform Evangelism.

New version of Flash Player and AIR is out.

2009-07-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

Adobe Flash Player 10.0.32.18

Adobe AIR 1.5.2 Installer

Getting started with Adobe Stratus

2009-07-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR 1.5 introduce a new communications protocol called the Real-Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP). The most important features of RTMFP include low latency, end-to-end peering capability, security and scalability. These properties make RTMFP especially well suited for developing real-time collaboration applications by not only providing superior user experience but also reducing cost for operators.
Learn more...

Adobe Wave Now Available on Labs

2009-07-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

Adobe Wave is an Adobe AIR application and Adobe hosted service that work together to enable desktop notifications for web publishers, large and small. It helps you stay connected to your community and lets users avoid the email clutter of dozens of newsletters and social network update messages.
Learn more.

Adobe Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst public beta available on Adobe Labs

2009-05-31T22:38:00.000-07:00

Flash Builder 4 delivers a long list of new features, plus improvements to many existing features.There are three main themes to this release: developer productivity, designer-developer workflow, and data-centric application development, more...

Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ is a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding.

Transform artwork created in Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe Illustrator® into functional user interfaces.
Create interactive prototypes with the ability to leverage them in the final product
Publish a finished project as a SWF file ready for distribution
Work more efficiently with developers who use Adobe Flash Builder™ 4 to create rich Internet applications (RIAs). Designers use Flash Catalyst to create the functional user experience then provide the project file to developers who use Flash Builder to add functionality and integrate with servers and services, more...

flex-mojos.

2009-04-19T01:48:00.000-07:00

It is basically a collection of maven plugins to allow maven to compile, optimize, test Flex SWF, Flex SWC, Air SWF and Air SWC.

Major features:

* SWF, SWC, AIR and Flex versions;
* RSL and caching framework support;
* Modules support;
* full cover to MXMLC and COMPC options;
* flex 3;
* use FLEX-OEM-COMPILER, means it faster, uses less memory, no need of references to local drive;
* flex unit support;
* asdoc support;
* no setup needed, no environment variables, no changes at flex-configs.xml, no needs to point your pom to any absolute path. Just maven life style.
* compatible with several unit testing frameworks: FlexUnit, FUnit, asUnit and AdvancedFlex
* library otimization
* html-wrappers generation
* code generation using GAS3

More info:

Maven the capable.

2009-04-19T01:30:00.000-07:00

I came to know about Maven only around 7 or 8 months back but what I see today is much much bigger the Maven. Maven is used for building process management for java-based projects. A combination of Flex+BlazeDS+Spring+Java+Hibernate on JBoss is also possible. The best article to read on this is by Mr.Sébastien Arbogast. The article is best one to start with and I simply followed the steps and at the end I could able to build and deploy a sample very smoothly. I agree with the statement "Maven makes developer life easy". POM(Project Object Model)is the core of Maven and interesting thing is there is a concept of Parent and Child POM.

Read Maven:

Open source platform - Titanium

2009-03-23T23:05:00.000-07:00

Titanium is the first open platform for building rich desktop applications.

* Open source
Titanium is licensed under the Apache Public License (version 2)
* Open web
Use standard HTML, CSS and Javascript to build rich desktop apps
* Open desktop
Run your apps on Windows, Mac and Linux
* Open API
Add rich desktop capabilities to your apps using a simple Javascript API

Learn more

Reducing the risk of malicious web attacks with HP SWFScan

2009-03-23T22:23:00.000-07:00

The HP Web Security Research Group today released HP SWFScan, a free security tool for Windows that helps developers find security vulnerabilities in applications developed with the Adobe Flash Platform.

SWFScan helps you find, fix, and prevent security vulnerabilities in your SWF applications and deliver more secure code without having to become a security expert. This tool is the first of its kind to decompile SWF files and perform static analysis to understand their behaviors. This helps identify vulnerabilities that lie under the surface of an application and are not otherwise detectable with traditional dynamic methods.

SWFScan can analyze any SWF file regardless of the Flash Player version for which it was targeted or version of ActionScript with which it was authored. Whether the SWF is located on your local computer or available via a public URL, SWFScan will decompile the bytecode and perform static analysis on it to understand the application's behavior and then check for known security issues.

SWFScan pinpoints the specific vulnerability in the code, describes how it can be exploited, and suggests remediation. We worked with Adobe specifically to ensure that our suggestions for fixing the code are in line with Adobe's security best practices.

Microsoft has officially released IE8

2009-03-19T19:20:00.000-07:00

Faster, easier and more secure, That is what the information available. So, I am gonna download and give a try. Will write on my experience with IE8 soon.

Data Visualization components with Flex SDK 3.3

2009-03-11T23:26:00.000-07:00

The new SDK 3.3 installation leverage features such as charts and the Advanced DataGrid. The library can be downloaded from the main Flex download page:

To install the library and related assets do the following:-

1. Unzip ‘datavisualization_for_SDK3.3.zip’ onto the SDK 3.3 folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\Flex Builder 3\sdks\3.3.0). This will extract the following into the SDK 3.3 installation
1. datavisualization.swc into the frameworks\libs folder
2. datavisualization__3.3.0.4852.swz and datavisualization__3.3.0.4852.swf into the frameworks\rsls folder
3. datavisualization_rb.swc into the appropriate frameworks\locale\ folder
4. DMV-source.jar into the lib folder
2. Open a command prompt or command shell and go to the ‘lib’ subdirectory in the SDK 3.3 directory tree e.g. C:\Program Files\Flex Builder 3\sdks\3.3.0\lib
3. Extract the sources for the data visualization components from DMV-source.jar by running the command ‘java –jar DMV-source.jar ../’ e.g. java –jar DMV-source.jar C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Flex NOTE: the folder named ‘projects’ and the file ‘dmv_automation_build.xml’ will be extracted into the fbpro folder

Ender Lib: faking threading in Flash

2009-03-07T20:50:00.000-08:00

Ender Lib creates an abstraction that emulates threads in Flex and Flash. While not physically possible to do in the Flash Player, much to our dismay, we can still roughly approximate them with a framework that provides yielding and scheduling.
Read more

ILOG Elixir 2.0 released.

2009-02-23T17:42:00.000-08:00

ILOG announced the release of Elixir 2.0 this morning. Elixir is the powerful Flex charting framework available through ILOG.

Elixir 2.0 provides several new modules to Flex: a calendar, heat maps, Gantt charts and pivot/OLAP charts. I'm particularly excited about the Gannt charts. I tried to build one of my own sometime last year and found it a much more daunting task than I'd originally imagined.

Elixir 2.0 also fixes a number of small bugs from Elixir 1.0, and pricing remains the same. Upgrades are available to existing users at a discount.

For the full list of details, click on over to the official ILOG Elixir blog.

BugQuash - help fix Flex

2009-02-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

The first official Flex BugQuash will occur Saturday , March 28th, from 10am-8pm PST. What's a BugQuash you ask? A mighty gathering of coding heroes from great to small coming together to fix as many bugs to the Flex SDK as possible in one day. The event is sponsored by Adobe but driven by the open-source Flex SDK community.

swizframework.

2009-02-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

Swiz is a framework for Adobe Flex that aims to bring complete simplicity to RIA development. Swiz provides Inversion of Control, event handing, and simple life cycle for asynchronous remote methods. In contrast to other major frameworks for Flex, Swiz imposes no JEE patterns on your code, no repetitive folder layouts, and no boilerplate code on your development. Swiz represents best practices learned from the top RIA developers at some of the best consulting firms in the industry, enabling Swiz to be simple, lightweight, and extremely productive.

Read more...

IP Validator Component.

2009-02-08T23:37:00.000-08:00

package
{
import mx.validators.ValidationResult;
import mx.validators.Validator;

//Class should extend mx.validators.Validator
public class IPAddressValidator extends Validator {

public function IPAddressValidator() {
// Call base class constructor.
super();
}

// Class should override the doValidation() method.
// doValidation method should accept an Object type parameter
override protected function doValidation(value:Object):Array {
// create an array to return.
var ValidatorResults:Array = new Array();
// Call base class doValidation().

ValidatorResults = super.doValidation(value);
// Return if there are errors.

if (ValidatorResults.length > 0)
return ValidatorResults;

if (String(value).length == 0)
return ValidatorResults;

var RegPattern:RegExp = /\b(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\b/;

var a:Array = RegPattern.exec(String(value));

if (a == null){
ValidatorResults.push(new ValidationResult(true, null, "IPAddress Error","You must enter an IP Address"));
return ValidatorResults;
}
return ValidatorResults;
}
}
}

WebORB Launched for Flex, Flash, AJAX and Silverlight

2009-01-15T18:57:00.000-08:00

What is WebORB?
WebORB is a platform enabling development, deployment and runtime execution of Rich Internet Applications. The product facilitates connectivity between rich clients created with Flex, Flash or AJAX and server-side applications developed with .NET, Java, Ruby on Rails, PHP or XML Web Services.

Launch of WebORB PDF Generator:

Midnight Coders has launched WebORB PDF Generator, a solution consisting of a SDK and runtime PDF generation engine that enables Flex, Flash, AJAX and Silverlight clients to create PDF documents from application data. The product is designed for organizations that need to support complex workflows and also capture Rich Internet Application data into customizable PDF documents for online or offline electronic or paper distribution.

Read more

Flash Media Server 3.5 is available.

2009-01-14T17:52:00.000-08:00

New features:
1. Webcam chat
2. Online games
3. VoIP and a range of other interactive possibilities.

The licensing costs have stayed the same, at $4,500 for Flash Media Interactive Server and $999 for Flash Media Streaming Server. The Developer edition is still free, and allows 10 simultaneous connections (can be used for commercial deployments).

Read more:

Importing REST web services in ActionScript with Flex Builder 4

2009-01-09T19:26:00.000-08:00

Among the many Flex Builder 4 new features there is the possibility to import REST web services into ActionScript classes, in the same way that the previous builder allowed to import SOAP web services. It can import from XML as well as from JSON data. This new feature can obviously be used to import into ActionScript any kind of services that dynamically generate XML or JSON content.

Read more:

Google Chrome 2.0 Pre-Beta Now Available.

2009-01-08T18:43:00.000-08:00

Many new things:
1. Form autocomplete, one of the most obvious missing features from the initial release.
2. Full-page zoom.
3. Autoscroll by middle-clicking on a page and indicating the direction and lot many more things.

Google Chrome 2

mx_internal

2008-12-14T01:12:00.000-08:00

mx_internal is a namespace used by the Flex framework to partition out functions and properties that may change in future releases of the Flex SDK.

You can access properties and functions in this namespace as shown below:

Snapshot.

2008-12-14T00:46:00.000-08:00

Snapshot is absolutely required in almost all the applications and the question is in how many ways we can achieve it and what would be the best solution. It depends on the requirement as such and the approach you follow to implement.

Snapshot can be achieved in more than two approaches:

Flex alone.

Flex and JavaScript.

Flex and Backend technology and the backend technology may be any language.

I will talk about each approach in detail and before that I would like to put a word that, depending upon the requirement you follow the approach.

Flex alone: Flex has provided with an API which is packaged in mx.graphics called ImageSnapshot.

Package: mx.graphics
Class public dynamic class ImageSnapshot
Inheritance ImageSnapshot Object

This class had basically have two methods:
1. captureBitmapData(source:IBitmapDrawable, matrix:Matrix = null, colorTransform:ColorTransform = null, blendMode:String = null, clipRect:Rectangle = null, smoothing:Boolean = false):BitmapData.
[static] A utility method to grab a raw snapshot of a UI component as BitmapData.

2.captureImage(source:IBitmapDrawable, dpi:Number = 0, encoder:IImageEncoder = null, scaleLimited:Boolean = true):ImageSnapshot.
[static] A utility method to grab a snapshot of a component, scaled to a specific resolution (in dpi) and encoded into a specific image format.

For more details on the API, please refer the Adobe livedocs.

Example:

bitMapData = ImageSnapshot.captureBitmapData(source, null);
var imageCom:IFlexDisplayObject =
// ImageCom is an mxml component in which the Image //component is added.
PopUpManager.createPopUp(this, ImageCom, true);
PopUpManager.centerPopUp(imageCom);

Flex and Javascript:

private function saveImage(comp:DisplayObject):void{
var bitmapData:BitmapData = new BitmapData(comp.width, comp.height, true, 0xffffff);

bitmapData.draw(comp);

var bytes:ByteArray = new PNGEncoder().encode(bitmapData);

var b64encoder:Base64Encoder = new Base64Encoder();
b64encoder.encodeBytes(bytes);

if (ExternalInterface.available){
ExternalInterface.call("saveImage ", b64encoder.flush(), comp.width + 10, comp.height + 10);
}else{
Alert.show("ExternalInterface not found");
}
}

Javascript function:

function saveImage(imgString, width, height){
window.open ("data:image/png;base64," + imgString, "", "width=" + width + ",height=" + height + ",resizable=0, toolbar=no, location=0,directories=0,status=0,menubar=0,scrollbars=0,copyhistory=0, left=120, top=150");
}

Flex and Backend technology and the backend technology may be any language.

In this approach, you can follow the second approach and instead of sending the base64 encoded bytearray to javascript, you can send it backend. In the backend technology the data is decoded and displayed.

Cocomo.

2008-11-19T19:15:00.000-08:00

Codename "Cocomo" is a Platform as a Service that allows Flex developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA (rich Internet applications). Comprised of both Flex-based client components and a hosted services infrastructure, Cocomo allows you to build real-time, multi-user applications with Flex in less time than ever before.
Read more:

Gumbo Skinning

2008-11-04T00:48:00.000-08:00

An excellent new skinning architecture of Gumbo enhances the code simplicity and maintainability. It is advised to follow a framework which ensures more readability and also you can speed up the process of skinning. I couldn’t able to stop myself to try this.

It is divided into four major piece of code:
• Model.
• Skin.
• Controller.
• View Specific Logic.

The model contains the properties and business logic for the component. For example, a Range model has properties for minimumValue, maximumValue, stepSize, etc., and methods for stepping by a line or a page. The model does not contain any visual or behavioral information.

The skin defines the visual elements of the component.

The controller is the interface between the skin and the model. It has several key functions:
• Defining the component behavior. For example, the FxButton controller has all of the mouse event handling logic.
• Defining the visual states of the component.
• Defining the parts of a component. For example, an FxScrollBar controller has 4 parts: up arrow, down arrow, thumb, and track.

The view-specific logic helps position and size the different parts of a skin. For example, FxHScrollBar and FxVScrollBar have different view-specific logic which determine the position of the thumb. To make a circular scrollbar one would have to override this logic.

Read more:

3 New Specifications have been added for Flex 4 (Gumbo).

2008-10-30T23:52:00.000-07:00

Arbitrary Type Interpolation - Functional and Design Specification

New Effects for Components and Graphics - Functional and Design Specification

3D Effects Support - Functional and Design Specification

Flash Player versions detection and embedding SWF files with SWFObject 2

2008-10-17T01:04:00.000-07:00

SWFObject is a small Javascript file used for embedding Adobe Flash content. The script can detect the Flash plug-in in all major web browsers (on Mac and PC) and is designed to make embedding Flash movies as easy as possible. It is also very search engine friendly, degrades gracefully, can be used in valid HTML and XHTML 1.0 documents*, and is forward compatible, so it should work for years to come.

var so = new SWFObject(swf, id, width, height, version, background-color [, quality, xiRedirectUrl, redirectUrl, detectKey]);

Create a new SWFObject and pass in the required arguments:
• swf - The file path and name to your swf file.
• id - The ID of your object or embed tag. The embed tag will also have this value set as it’s name attribute for files that take advantage of swliveconnect.
• width - The width of your Flash movie.
• height - The height of your Flash movie.
• version - The required player version for your Flash content. This can be a string in the format of ‘majorVersion.minorVersion.revision’. An example would be: "6.0.65". Or you can just require the major version, such as "6".
• background-color - This is the hex value of the background color of your Flash movie.
Optional arguments are:
• quality - The quality you wish your Flash movie to play at. If no quality is specified, the default is "high".
• xiRedirectUrl - If you would like to redirect users who complete the ExpressInstall upgrade, you can specify an alternate URL here
• redirectUrl - If you wish to redirect users who don’t have the correct plug-in version, use this parameter and they will be redirected.
• detectKey - This is the url variable name the SWFObject script will look for when bypassing the detection. Default is ‘detectflash’. Example: To bypass the Flash detection and simply write the Flash movie to the page, you could add ?detectflash=false to the url of the document containing the Flash movie.

more info: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/wiki/documentation

Flash Player update available to address security vulnerabilities

2008-10-16T20:01:00.000-07:00

Potential vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Flash Player 9.0.124.0 and earlier that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits these potential vulnerabilities to bypass Flash Player security controls. Adobe recommends users update to the most current version of Flash Player available for their platform. Due to the possibility that these security enhancements and changes may impact existing content, customers are advised to review this Adobe Developer Center article to determine if their content will be impacted, and to begin implementing necessary changes immediately to help ensure a seamless transition.

more Info: http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb08-18.html

The JavaFX SDK Has Landed.

2008-10-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

Technology that could change the way programs are created.

JavaFX would have built into it concepts such as animation, data binding, and a host of other concepts that, although supported in Java.

JavaFX SDK Preview was made publicly available at http://javafx.com/.
Plugins for developing FX with NetBeans can be downloaded from http://java.sun.com/javafx/ downloads/, which also contains links to Project Nile, a very exciting piece of work that makes plugins available to Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator so graphic designers can easily export their artifacts to FX, something demo'd very nicely by Rob Brewin at this year's JavaOne.

Generics in ActionScript 3, is it possible?

2008-10-06T03:42:00.000-07:00

What is Generics?
Generics is essentially the ability to have type parameters on your type. They are also called parameterized types or parametric polymorphism.
A couple of PLUS points on Generics:
• Greater type safety.
• The net effect, especially in large programs, is improved readability and robustness.

What is Vector Class in ActionScript 3?
It is one of the new ActionScript features included in the Flash Player 10 Public Beta is the inclusion of a Vector class. Essentially, the Vector class is a typed Array, and in addition to ensuring your collection is type safe, can also provide (sometimes significant) performance improvements over using an Array.
The Vector class lets you access and manipulate a vector — an array whose elements all have the same data type.
Two primary benefits:
• Performance: array element access and iteration are much faster when using a Vector instance than when using an Array.
• Type safety: in strict mode the compiler can identify data type errors such as assigning a value of the incorrect data type to a Vector or expecting the wrong data type when reading a value from a Vector. Note, however, that when using the push() method or unshift() method to add values to a Vector, the arguments' data types are not checked at compile time but are checked at run time.
For Example:
var a:Array = new Array();
//or
var b:Array = [];
Here is an example of instantiating a Vector that contains int types:
//var VARIABLENAME:Vector. = new Vector.();
var vector:Vector. = new Vector.();
Just as in an Array, you can initialize the Vector length to a specific size, by passing the length into the constructor:

Can I say:

If( Vectors in ActionScript 3 && Flash Player 10){
“Generics in ActionScript 3”
}else{
“Generics Not Found”
}

The 10 Worst Mistakes Career Changers Can Make by Barbara Reinhold

2008-09-23T21:17:00.000-07:00

Changing careers is never easy. Half the world thinks you've lost your mind, headhunters say you'll never work again and your relatives contribute the old "I told you so" routine. But for many burned-out, bored or multitalented folks who are sitting on skills they're not getting a chance to use, changing fields is the only way to keep from losing their marbles.

Regardless of your career-change strategy, never make these 10 mistakes:

1. Don't Look for a Job in Another Field Without Some Intense Introspection
Nothing is worse than leaping before you look. Make sure you're not escaping to a field that fits you just as poorly as your last. Be sure you do a thorough self-assessment first.

2. Don't Look for Hot Fields Unless They're a Good Fit for You
You wouldn't try to squeeze into your skinny cousin's suit, so why try a field because it works for him? People who are trying to help you will come along and do the equivalent of whispering "plastics" in your ear. Instead of jumping at their suggestions, take time to consider your options. Decide what you really want to do. When you enter a field just because it's hot, burnout isn't far behind.

3. Don't Go into a Field Because Your Friend Is Doing Well in It
Get thorough information about the fields you're considering by networking, reading and doing online research. Having informational interviews with alumni from your college, colleagues, friends or family is a fun way to get the scoop on different fields.

4. Don't Stick to Possibilities You Already Know About
Stretch your perception of what might work for you. Read some job profiles, and explore career fields you learn about from self-assessment exercises.

5. Don't Let Money Be the Deciding Factor
There's not enough money in the world to make you happy if your job doesn't suit you. Workplace dissatisfaction and stress is the number-one health problem for working adults. This is particularly true for career changers, who often earn less until they get their sea legs in a different field.

6. Don't Keep Your Dissatisfaction to Yourself or Try to Make the Switch Alone
This is the time to talk to people (probably not your boss just yet). Friends, family and colleagues need to know what's going on so they can help you tap into that large percentage of jobs that aren't advertised.

7. Don't Go Back to School Unless You've Done Some Test-Drives in the New Field
You're never too old for an internship, a volunteer experience or trying your hand at a contract assignment in a new field. There are lots of ways to get experience that won't cost you anything except your time. A new degree may or may not make the world sit up and take notice. Be very sure where you want to go before you put yourself through the pain and debt of another degree program.

8. Be Careful When Using Placement Agencies or Search Firms
Do some research to be sure to find a good match. Ask those who work in the field you're trying to get into or other successful career changers for suggestions. Try to find a firm that knows how to be creative when placing career changers -- not one that solely focuses on moving people up the ladder in the same field.

9. Don't Expect a Career Counselor to Tell You Which Field to Enter
Career advisors are facilitators, and they'll follow your lead. They can help ferret out your long-buried dreams and talents, but you'll have to do the research and the decision making by yourself. Anyone who promises to tell you what to do is dangerous.

10. Don't Expect to Switch Overnight
A thorough career change usually will take a minimum of six months to pull off, and the time frequently stretches to a year or more.
Changing fields is one of the most invigorating things you can do. It's like experiencing youth all over again, except with the wisdom of whatever age you are now.

Powerful Video Display Component of Flex 3.

2008-09-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

Flex supports the VideoDisplay control to incorporate streaming media into Flex applications. Flex supports the Flash Video File (FLV) file format with this control.

A much better tool to display video and far better than the previous one. If I take a metadata, property as example , Older FLV files contain only the height, width, and duration values but the new one has 11 properties a much useful properties again it depends on how much it is useful. Another couple of things I observed are the quality and the performance are much better.

Note: The VideoDisplay control does not support scan forward and scan backward functionality. Also, the VideoDisplay control does not support accessibility or styles.

A few powerful events I wish highlight:
• close
Dispatched when the NetConnection object is closed, whether by timing out or by calling the close() method.VideoDisplay

• complete
Dispatched when the playhead reaches the end of the FLV file.VideoDisplay

• cuePoint
Dispatched when the value of a cue point's time property is equal to the current playhead location.VideoDisplay

• currentStateChange
Dispatched after the view state has changed.

• currentStateChanging
Dispatched after the currentState property changes, but before the view state changes.

• playheadUpdate
Dispatched continuosly while the video is playing.VideoDisplay

• progress
Dispatched continuously until the FLV file has downloaded completely.VideoDisplay

• ready
Dispatched when the FLV file is loaded and ready to play.VideoDisplay

• rewind
Dispatched when the control autorewinds.VideoDisplay

• stateChange
Dispatched when the state of the control changes.

There are more than couple of problems faced by developers while using this component and the below mentioned are couple of them.
• There is no video smoothing option, Very very weird since that was introduced in Flash player version 6.
• You cannot get the netStream.bufferLength property, there is no getter for it. So you cannot display the buffer status.
• If you are encoding flv files which broadcast onLastSecond near the end, it will throw an error.
• Also there was a state problem, the player would go into unresponsive state while seeking or something like that which was completely messing up the video.
I observed each one has solution but each component has some limitation too. One cannot expect one component to do lot many things. I also would like to highlight that each component you use has some best practices to follow and I hope as long as any developer follow any such there will no problem as such.

Definitive Understanding Flex itemRenderers.

2008-09-22T22:28:00.000-07:00

An excellent article to understand the FlexItemRenderers in detail.
more: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/itemrenderers_pt3.html

A Much Better Reference for Flex Certification.

2008-09-18T02:57:00.003-07:00

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex_certification.html

Flash Player 10 released on 9/15/2008, no. of bugs fixed.

2008-09-18T02:57:00.002-07:00

Flash Player 10 release candidate was released on 9/15/2008 and includes several bug fixes. Please download the new version.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

List of Bugs fixed in Flex Builder 3.0.1

2008-09-18T02:57:00.001-07:00

http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=11425

List of Bugs fixed in Adob Flex SDK 3.1

2008-09-18T02:57:00.000-07:00

https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=11482

Deep Linking.

2008-09-17T22:14:00.001-07:00

One of the benefits of a Flex application is that the application can smoothly transition from state to state without having to fetch a new page from the server and refresh the browser. By avoiding the constant refreshing of pages, the end-user's experience is more fluid and continuous. In addition, the load on the server is greatly reduced because it need only return the application once, rather than a new page every time the user changes views.

However one of the advantages of a browser's page-oriented model is that an application's navigational state is usually clearly coupled to a URL. Thus, when the state of an application changes, the user can usually do the following:

* Bookmark the URL to get back to that state in the application

How it works: Deep linking relies on communication between the browser and the Flex application. The communication is bidirectional: if a change occurs in the application, the browser must be notified, and if a change in the browser occurs, then the application must be notified. This communication is handled by the BrowserManager class. This class uses methods in the HTML wrapper's JavaScript to handle events, update the browser's address bar, and call other methods. Another class, URLUtil, is provided to make it easier to parse the URL as you read it in your Flex application and write it back to the browser.

more: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=deep_linking_2.html

ActionScript 3.0 has made developers life easy.

2008-09-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

1. The removal of on()/onClipEvent() from Flash CS3 makes creating simple interactivity hard.
2. Getting rid of loaded .swf files is hard.
3. Casting DisplayObject.parent makes controlling parent movie clips hard.
4. The removal of getURL() makes linking hard.
5. The removal of loadMovie() makes loading .swf files and images hard.
6. ActionScript 3.0's additional errors make coding cumbersome.
7. Referring to library symbols dynamically is unintuitive.
8. Adding custom functionality to manually created text fields, to all movie clips, or to all buttons is cumbersome.
9. The removal of duplicateMovieClip() makes cloning a MovieClip instance (really) hard.

Being Independent and Making Money Using Flex by Jesse Warden

2008-09-09T00:47:00.000-07:00

http://jessewarden.com/archives/blingflex/

Powerful Garbage Collector of Flash Player 10 over Flash Player 9:

2008-09-09T00:44:00.000-07:00

Flash Player 9:
-------------------
The garbage collector is a behind-the-scenes process that is responsible for deallocating the memory used objects that are no longer in use by the application. An inactive object is one that no longer has any references to it from other active objects. In order to understand this, it is very important to realize that when working with non-primitive types (anything other than Boolean, String, Number, uint, int), you are always passing around a reference to the object, not the object itself - deleting a variable removes the reference, not the object. This is easily demonstrated:

// create a new object, and put a reference to it in a:
var a:Object = {foo:"bar"}
// copy the reference to the object into b:
var b:Object = a;
// delete the reference to the object in a:
delete(a);
// check to see that the object is still referenced by b:
trace(b.foo); // traces "bar", so the object still exists.

If I were to delete "b" as well in the example above, it would leave my object with no active references and free it for garbage collection. The AS3 GC uses two methods for locating objects with no active references: Reference counting and mark sweeping.

Reference Counting
Reference counting is one of the simplest methods for keeping track of active references, and has been around in Flash since AS1. When you create a reference to an object its reference count is incremented. When you delete a reference, its reference count is decremented. If the reference count of an object reaches zero, it is marked for deletion by the GC. For example:

var a:Object = {foo:"bar"}
// the object now has a reference count of 1 (a)
var b:Object = a;
// now it has a reference count of 2 (a & b)
delete(a);
// back to 1 (b)
delete(b);
// down to 0, the object can now be deallocated by the GC

Reference counting is simple, doesn't carry a huge CPU overhead, and works well in most situations. Unfortunately it really falls down when it comes to circular referencing. This is when objects cross-reference each other (directly, or indirectly via other objects). Even if the application is no longer actively using the objects, their reference counts remain above zero, so they are never removed. Here's a quick demo:

var a:Object = {}
// create a second object, and reference the first object:
var b:Object = {foo:a};
// make the first object reference the second as well:
a.foo = b;
// delete both active application references:
delete(a);
delete(b);

In the above example, both of my active application references have been deleted. I no longer have any way of accessing the two objects from my application, but their reference counts are both 1 because they reference each other. This can also be much more complex (a references c which references b which references a, etc), and is hard to deal with in code. Flash player 6 and 7 suffered from problems related to circular referencing in XML objects - each XML node referenced both its children and its parent, so they were never deallocated. Fortunately, player 8 added a new GC technique called mark sweeping.

Mark Sweeping
The second strategy employed by the AS3 (and fp8) GC to find inactive objects is mark sweeping. The player starts at the root node of your application (which is conveniently the "root" in AS3), and walks through every reference on it, marking each object it finds. It then iterates through each of the marked objects, marking their children. It continues this recursively until it has traversed the entire object tree of your application, marking everything it finds. At the end of this process, it can safely assume that any objects in memory that are not marked no longer have any active references to them, and can be safely deallocated. You can see how this works in the diagram below (green references were followed during mark sweeping, green objects are marked, white objects will be deallocated).

Mark sweeping is very accurate, but because it has to traverse your entire object structure, it is also costly in terms of CPU usage. Flash player 9 reduces this cost by carrying out iterative mark sweeping (ie. it occurs over a number of frames, instead of all at once), and by only having it run occasionally.

Flash Player 10:
-------------------
Adobe has announced the addition of the new Loader.unloadAndStop() method for Flash Player 10. Here is the description from the beta 2 release notes:

unloadAndStop — This new ActionScript 3.0 API adds unload functionality similar to the unload behavior in ActionScript 2.0. After calling unloadAndStop on loaded content it will be immediately removed stopping all audio, removing eventListeners, and becoming inaccessible through ActionScript.

It doesn't enable content sandboxing, or provide a complete mechanism for explicit unloading, but it does make it much simpler to free a loaded SWF for garbage collection. It's still possible to prevent a SWF from being unloaded, but it's much more difficult to do by accident.

Event Registration Performance in Flash Player 10

2008-09-08T21:53:00.000-07:00

event-registration performance:
Very good Article by Mr.Colin Moock.

In Flash Player 9, the time required to register a listener for a given event increases as the number of listeners already registered for that event increases. Here are the results of a simple event-registration test on a P4-2.6ghz machine running Windows XP:

* Registering 1000 listeners for an event took .06ms per registration (i.e., an average of .06ms to run addEventListener() once).
* Registering 20000 listeners for the same event took .47ms per registration.

The increased per-listener registration time results from Flash Player 9's implementation of a safeguard built into the event-registration system: when a listener asks to register for an event, ActionScript first checks whether that listener is already registered; if so, ActionScript rejects the registration request. Listeners are, thus, prevented from registering multiple times for the same event.

In Flash Player 9, the "already-registered" check uses a linear lookup, comparing the new listener to every existing listener before allowing the registration to proceed. If an event already has 20000 listeners, and a new listener asks to register, ActionScript must make 20000 comparisons before the registration can be allowed (hence the high ".47ms per-registration" cost in the test above).

Adobe has improved the situation in Flash Player 10 by using a hash-table lookup instead of a linear lookup when checking for the existence of listeners at registration time. Registering for an event with many existing registered listeners will, therefore, be much faster in Flash Player 10.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 in a special web broadcast on 23-09-08.

2008-09-08T02:48:00.000-07:00

An excellent opportunity to have a first look at Adobe Creative Suite 4.
http://adobe.istreamplanet.com/

The future of Flash Player, Flex, AIR, Thermo and more

2008-09-08T02:45:00.000-07:00

Very interesting article.

http://www.webkitchen.be/2008/08/26/the-future-of-flash-player-flex-air-thermo-and-more/

Award: Adobe Flex, Best of open source developer tools.

2008-08-13T20:15:00.000-07:00

Rich Internet applications
InfoWorld has given high marks to Adobe Flex Builder 3.0, which is a commercial product. We would also like to honor Adobe for open-sourcing the Flex SDK (although not the Flex Builder IDE) under the MPL model. This move opens the door for open source tools and applications targeting the Flex framework, which in turn is one of our favorite ways of producing rich Internet applications.

more:http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/2008/08/166-best_of_open_so-7.html

IntelliJ IDEA 8 preview - supports Flex debugging

2008-08-13T19:53:00.000-07:00

With a nod to the symmetry of it all, JetBrains today (8/8/08) released a milestone preview of the upcoming version 8 of its IntelliJ IDEA development environment, with new integration to JBoss Seam, among other enhancements.

more: http://www.cflex.net/shownewsitem.cfm?NewsID=636&ChannelID=1

Free Flex Book

2008-08-11T01:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flex3book&trackingid=DJHEO

Converting ActionScript objects to XML packets using the SimpleXMLEncoder class in Flex

2008-08-06T03:11:00.000-07:00

AnyChart by AnyChart

2008-08-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

Animated flash charts for web and desktop applications. You can easily create perfect charts to display in any browser, and there is no need to install any additional components to server. Beautiful charts will improve look of any web site.

AnyChart is a flexible Flash based solution that allows you to create interactive and great looking flash charts. It is a cross-browser and cross-platform charting solution intended for everybody who deals with creation of dashboard, reporting, analytics, statistical, financial or any other data visualization solutions.

Right Visualization helps you to turn your data into Right Decisions! If you need advanced, award winning charts and graphs, then AnyChart is the perfect solution for you.

A news: http://www.anychart.com/blog/

Summary

AnyChart by AnyChart

Create flexible, Adobe Flash based interactive charts. AnyChart is a cross-platform charting solution intended for everybody who deals with the creation of dashboard, reporting, analytics, statistical, financial or any other data visualization solutions. AnyChart is ideal for Web chart applications being fully cross-browser and cross-platform. It can be used with ASP.NET, ASP, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails, simple HTML pages or PowerPoint Presentations. AnyCharts uses XML as universal data interface, so you can visualize data from any warehouse: from files in text, Excel, CSV formats to MySQL, MS SQL, and Oracle database servers.

more: http://www.componentsource.com/products/anychart-anychart/summary.html

Announcing the Flex 3 Cookbook Book Giveaway

2008-07-30T01:29:00.000-07:00

Post your Flex Cookbook code recipe in the Adobe Flex Cookbook site at http://www.adobe.com/go/flex_cookbook between July 23 and August 19, and get a free Flex 3 Cookbook, the new Oâ€™Reilly Media book by Josh Noble, Todd Anderson, and numerous Flex contributors on the Adobe Flex Cookbook site. Recipes need to be your own original content, but can be reproduced from your own blog posts, flexcoder list or forum replies, and so forth. Bask in the glow of sharing your knowledge with other developers!

more: http://www.360conferences.com/360flex/

Exadel Flemingo

2008-07-24T01:34:00.000-07:00

Exadel Flamingo easily enriches Seam and Spring applications.

With Exadel Flamingo, Flex or JavaFX can be easily glued to Seam or Spring. And, in the future, Flamingo will be extended to provide glue for other RIA technologies.

Generates basic code for integrating Seam with Flex automatically
Allows developers on an RIA project to focus on business logic
Reduces time to market
Provides a common Seam integration layer to RIA technologies
Increases the value of Seam as a great technology for integrating the EJB layer with a wider variety of presentation technologies

more: http://www.exadel.com/web/portal/flamingo

WebORB

2008-07-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

WebORB is a platform enabling development, deployment and runtime execution of Rich Internet Applications. The product facilitates connectivity between rich clients created with Flex, Flash or AJAX and server-side applications developed with .NET, Java, Ruby on Rails, PHP or XML Web Services.

more: http://www.themidnightcoders.com/weborb/

Cinnamon remoting framework

2008-07-24T01:24:00.000-07:00

Cinnamon is a remoting framework based on the AMF3 protocol connecting clients written in AS3 with Java EE server applications. It can be deployed in every servlet container. It contains the following features:

Full support for AMF3.
Comes with its own Client API and does not build on top of the RemoteObject API of Flex, so it can be used with or without Flex.
Client Proxies of remote services implement business interfaces so you don't lose type safetey for remote method invocations like with RemoteObject.
Flexible server configuration: XML, annotations, custom Spring configuration namespace, programmatic configuration.
Many options how to map ActionScript classes to Java classes.
Extensible automatic type conversion for method parameters and bean properties.
Currently supports Spring beans and plain Java classes as services. Support for EJB3 Session beans and Seam components is scheduled for version 0.4.0.
Automatic source generation of AS3 service interfaces and proxies with Cinnamons Ant task.

more: http://www.spicefactory.org/cinnamon/

2008-07-24T01:09:00.000-07:00

BlazeDS is the server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology that enables developers to easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real-time to Adobe® Flex® and Adobe AIR™ applications for more responsive rich Internet application (RIA) experiences.

more: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/blazeds/BlazeDS

What's new in Flex 4 (code name: Gumbo)

2008-07-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

Gumbo and it has three core "Themes":
1. Design in mind (easier skinning, improve on graphics capabilities, tool integration)
2. Developer Productivity (automation, compiler enhancements)
3. Framework Evolution (support for Flash Player 10 and AIR 2.0 features, new components)

more: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Gumbo

Product Codename: "Thermo"

2008-07-24T00:17:00.000-07:00

"Thermo" is an upcoming Adobe product that makes it easy for designers to create rich Internet application UIs. Thermo allows designers to build on familiar workflows to visually create working applications that easily flow into production and development.

Features

Use drawing tools to create original graphics, wireframe an application design, or manipulate artwork imported from Adobe Creative Suite tools.
Turn artwork from Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks directly into functional components that use the original artwork as a “skin”.
Define and wire up interactive behavior, such as what to do when a user clicks on something, without having to write code.
Easily design UIs that work with dynamic data, such as a list of contacts or product information, without having access to the actual data source. Design-time sample data can be used as a realistic placeholder when laying out an application, testing interactivity, and choreographing motion.

more: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Thermo

flexmdi is now part of flexlib

2008-07-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

flexmdi is a robust, extensible Multiple Document Interface framework for Adobe Flex.

more: http://code.google.com/p/flexmdi/