Just saw a very nice presentation given by Adobe Evangelist Christopher Coenraets over at InfoQ. The presentation was mostly about doing HTML5 design/development with Adobe products such as Illustrator and Dreamweaver. He also shows how to test your site for browser compatibility (for layout specifically) using Adobe BrowserLab. He then shows off some experimental technologies, you will have to watch the video for what exactly and finishes off by demonstrating some cool Flex/AIR features using various tablet devices.
Very cool presentation indeed, so what are you still standing around here for, go watch it!
2011-03-23
Adobe AIR 2.6 released
Adobe released yesterday AIR version 2.6 which contains numerous changes. One of the big things with this release is to bring back iOS support to AIR development. As you know there was a big hoopla last year about other development tools compiling for the iOS platform, well since the change late last year, companies like Adobe can again support iOS development (using AIR in this case) once again.
The biggest change that I see and welcome, cause I actually tried to do AIR development on my iPhone 4 late last year, is that the Packager for iPhone (PFI) is no more, the AIR Developer Tool (ADT) which comes standard with the AIR SDK, now handles the iOS platform as well; making it easier to package and deploy an application to an iOS device.
Of course there are numerous changes, and rather than me listing them all here, some other wonderful people have done that already, so there is a nice feature list (courtesy of Christian Cantrell) and quick video (by Ryan Stewart) showing off some of the new features.
You can download the Adobe AIR 2.6 SDK here and get the run-time here.
The biggest change that I see and welcome, cause I actually tried to do AIR development on my iPhone 4 late last year, is that the Packager for iPhone (PFI) is no more, the AIR Developer Tool (ADT) which comes standard with the AIR SDK, now handles the iOS platform as well; making it easier to package and deploy an application to an iOS device.
Of course there are numerous changes, and rather than me listing them all here, some other wonderful people have done that already, so there is a nice feature list (courtesy of Christian Cantrell) and quick video (by Ryan Stewart) showing off some of the new features.
You can download the Adobe AIR 2.6 SDK here and get the run-time here.
2011-03-17
Flex is sexy
This week I got called into my President's office to talk about the new web application I've been building over the past few months. He wanted to comment on certain elements of the UI, some of which are little changes that totally make sense to me and that I will certainty do.
However he got me at the "it's not so sexy". He tried to explain it to me, but he couldn't find the correct words to express what he meant by that. So I tried to ask him various questions, such as: is it the colors? Do elements look floating in space? Are elements misaligned? And he would always answer with "it's not sexy". He then went about telling me how the first 9 children (applications) I had built were sexy and how this one was not. How it wasn't very Apple-like. Then it hit me, the first 9 applications are all Flex based! And this last one was purely done in HTML.
This reminds me of how the Flex engineers are always fond of saying how alot of Flex applications use the default theme, and that skinning is not done as often as they would like. Of course they were saying that about Flex when it was version 2/3, and hence we got version 4, were you can skin everything about it to your hearts content. Needless to say, I use the default theme, cause skinning is just not a priority for us.
So now I have to go make little visual changes, meaning make changes to the CSS, and possibly even add some gradients here and there to give it more umph! Not to say it's not possible, it totally is... just that... all this to say... with only that default theme... Flex is sexy :)
However he got me at the "it's not so sexy". He tried to explain it to me, but he couldn't find the correct words to express what he meant by that. So I tried to ask him various questions, such as: is it the colors? Do elements look floating in space? Are elements misaligned? And he would always answer with "it's not sexy". He then went about telling me how the first 9 children (applications) I had built were sexy and how this one was not. How it wasn't very Apple-like. Then it hit me, the first 9 applications are all Flex based! And this last one was purely done in HTML.
This reminds me of how the Flex engineers are always fond of saying how alot of Flex applications use the default theme, and that skinning is not done as often as they would like. Of course they were saying that about Flex when it was version 2/3, and hence we got version 4, were you can skin everything about it to your hearts content. Needless to say, I use the default theme, cause skinning is just not a priority for us.
So now I have to go make little visual changes, meaning make changes to the CSS, and possibly even add some gradients here and there to give it more umph! Not to say it's not possible, it totally is... just that... all this to say... with only that default theme... Flex is sexy :)
2011-03-05
Molehill demo
Here is a demo of the 3D capabilities found in the Flash Player version codenamed "Molehill" (will this be in Flash Player 11 some day?). Actually the demo compares the performance of the "Molehill" APIs versus how things run in version 10 and it is impressive. Go check it out!
Flex testing frameworks
As we all know, creating applications is loads of fun, but since we are not perfect developers, we do tend to create applications with bugs in them (but you know, that doesn't happen often :) ). And because of that, we need to properly test our applications, including our Flex/AIR applications. I have mentioned various testing frameworks many times on my blog, but just came across this list of 10 unit testing frameworks with a brief description to each.
Not on this list if RIATest, an application used to perform recording and playback of Flex/AIR applications, which is what we use at my company.
In any case, research and use the one you fell is best for the job so that you can deliver the best applications out there!
Not on this list if RIATest, an application used to perform recording and playback of Flex/AIR applications, which is what we use at my company.
In any case, research and use the one you fell is best for the job so that you can deliver the best applications out there!
2011-02-28
Creating AIR applications using Google's GWT
Just saw this cool project on Flexcoders: gwt4air. Gwt4air is project that allows you to use Google's Web Toolkit (GWT) to build Adobe AIR applications without having to learn MXML or Actionscript at all. For myself personally this has never been a problem, as I am fond of saying, if you know Java, you know MXML and Actionscript. Mind you, there are some things to learn, that goes without saying when learning any new programming language, but the similarities between the two technologies is so similar that the learning curve is small.
But with gwt4air, that learning curve is further minimized, and this now becomes one of these easiest ways for someone to immerse themselves in Adobe AIR programming coming from a Java development background. Basically write some Java code and voila, an AIR application is born! Then once the programmer is comfortable with that, they can then take the next step of programming directly in MXML and Actionscript, using the compiler, etc... Just another great tool for a great technology I say :)
But with gwt4air, that learning curve is further minimized, and this now becomes one of these easiest ways for someone to immerse themselves in Adobe AIR programming coming from a Java development background. Basically write some Java code and voila, an AIR application is born! Then once the programmer is comfortable with that, they can then take the next step of programming directly in MXML and Actionscript, using the compiler, etc... Just another great tool for a great technology I say :)
The Incubator
Adobe has a new thing over at the Labs web site: the Incubator. The Incubator contains pre-beta versions of the Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR. These versions are highly unstable, but do contain the latest cutting edge features that developers might want to play around with and get a glimpse into the far future and help mold it at the same time :) But it is important to remember that such features might never actually be included into any final release of these aforementioned products.
And just to give you an idea of what currently can be done with the Incubator version of the Adobe Flash Player (codenamed "Molehill"), check out these cool videos!
And just to give you an idea of what currently can be done with the Incubator version of the Adobe Flash Player (codenamed "Molehill"), check out these cool videos!
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