Flex Developer Blog

Not the Cairngorm You Used to Know

2009-10-21T03:08:00.000-07:00

In my recent go at the Flex frameworks landscape (which resulted in merely a mud map rather than a normal map), I seem to have proceeded from Cairngorm being the starting point. Endorsed and promoted by the Iteration Two substratum of the Adobe staff, the framework appears to be the most obvious string to pull. Believe it or not, Cairngorm is oftentimes picked over third-party offerings not because it suits a project best or because it turns out handy in projects of varying complexity, but due to the simple preconception that Cairngorm is the architectural framework and is by far the safest decision for the enterprise, as per the business perspective.

For the Flex community, in contrast, the situation has never looked as flat as that. Developers have repeatedly voiced their frustration with the framework (or the micro-architecture, if you like this one better). Some even went as far as to dub it "a collection of anti-patterns" (I am pretty positive it came from Theo Hultberg), overwhelmingly directing their criticism at the Singletons reliance and a lot of boilerplate code to be written to get comparatively simple issues settled.

Whether you choose to subscribe to the exact wording is a question of secondary importance. The sure thing is that Cairngorm, as a set of patterns transplanted from the J2EE environment, has had its issues. More than that, longevity may become and adverse factor, in the sense of its proximity to the concept of aged. All this could not help but result in a paradigm shift, an inversion of control, or the second generation of Flex frameworks if you will. A rethink of the hibernating how-do-you-pronounce-it-correctly was literally forced into motion by this altered conceptual environment. For a long while, Cairngorm appeared utterly deserted, to the bewilderment of newcomers. Yet now, right as the rethink announcement (or rather the heads-up as I see it) oscillated the air and was tapped into keyboards and through cables out to the big blue world, it became overwhelmingly apparent that Cairngorm is not just undergoing change; it is literally engulfed in change.

For Cairngorm, responding to the paradigm shift means embracing it. It will no longer be just an MVC framework. More than that, it will no longer be a framework at all but is rather supposed to become a foundation comprising a set of guidelines, tools and libraries, in other words, a collection of best Flex practices good across frameworks. What these practices are and how universally applicable the foundation is going to be is yet to be revealed. At the moment v.3 is bogged in drafts. In a way, the situation is reflected by a tweet which reads that Cairngorm 3 “is more documentation than code”. The code that is there, however, signals a strong reliance on Parsley (ironically, a framework overlooked in my mud map), which is not necessarily a good thing for the expectations Cairngorm will have to meet. Yet the beta still has all the chances to adjust its comprehensiveness.

Whatever Cairngorm ends up as, it no longer qualifies to continue bearing the legacy label. It is here that a rename wouldn’t hurt, provided one were for consistency and nomination transparency.

iPhone under Siege

2009-10-09T06:24:00.000-07:00

I wonder if there is still someone out there who has not bothered to drop a line or two about the big Flash Player announcement which has at last put the commitment spelled out by the Open Screen Project into motion. The release of Flash Player 10.1 will now mean consistent user experience via a full-fledged cross-device version of the player, with enhancements like HD video and GPU acceleration (probably one of the most-awaited features and a response to the dangling issue of battery life and resources usage) delivered right to high-end mobile devices produced by 19 out of 20 leading makers. Beta releases for WinMobile (with the timeline for Silverlight implementation remaining indefinite) and Palm webOS are slated for later this year, while Symbian OS and Google Android will follow shortly after that. Even Research In Motion chose to opt in. Google, as opposed to “proprietary” and “data locked in”, well acknowledges the want of standardization. You can try and guess who the odd one out is.

Apple so far has the least Flash-friendly track record, at least in mobile. You probably remember last year’s statement that Flash Lite was just not good enough for iPhone. Now, with a significantly different player version, the sentiment, however, has remained pretty much the same. This time though the resistance will take much more devotion since the vendor of the substantially successful mobile device is now marooned on a zealously defended patch of no-Flash land. Apple has put some effort into pushing alternative standards that would allow bypassing the dreaded integration, trying to cover various functionality areas by means of solutions such as the ~~infamous~~ vigorously-discussed HTML5 video/audio tag stalled by the codec split, or HTTP streaming that, while providing solutions for a number of known limitations, still has the workaround feel about it.

There might be claims that Flash Player compromises security, and it is indeed an underbelly to any kind of uniformity. However, the flaw to such an approach is its disregarding the benefits of cross-device consistency for both the end-user and the developer. Secondly, there might be resources and/or bandwidth hogging concerns, which again have yet to be tested in motion. There might even be considerations like people finding Flash-based advertising obtrusive. But there’s one more thing that Apple would never openly admit. And this thing is about App Store and control over what runs on iPhone.

Therefore, an interesting question is whether and probably how iPhone will cease to be marooned.

The Evolution of Flex Data Services

2009-10-04T23:35:00.000-07:00

The definition of rich applications developed with Flex entails far more than just a slickly implemented user interface. A good deal of the magic happens to sit behind the scenes, at the application’s backend. The core of an app’s beauty is oftentimes its real-time nature, and it’s the way that the actual app talks to the server that makes all the difference. However, apps are not created inherently equal (which is good, because they are functionally heterogeneous).

The distinction basically refers to large-scale enterprise applications and their humble real-world fellow apps, which is in terms of talking to server is LifeCycle Data Services versus BlazeDS, which in turn set themselves apart against open-sourceness.

The data services department of the Flash platform has not suffered an excess of attention on the web, even more than that, the state of documentation available as of now turns out so disappointing that it happens to work in a somewhat intimidating fashion.

A quick Data Services taxonomy should probably start with Flex Data Services, which went on to become LifeCycle Data Services, proprietary. An open source flavor was then made available with BlazeDS, a subset of the impressive LCDS feature array. This subset is best described as made up of two critical components, i.e. data remoting via RPC services that invoke remote Java objects and real-time client-server messaging for Flex and Ajax apps making use of the open source AMF protocol. Apart from that, there is also a single-CPU free version of LCDS (formerly LCDS Express Edition that could be integrated into ColdFusion 8), and a paid subscription offering for BlazeDS that provides certified builds with ongoing support on the part of Adobe (LCDS Community edition). ColdFusion 9 beta, by the way, includes BlazeDS.
In enterprise settings, LifeCycle DS can do some impressive heavy-lifting in managing large sets of data. It’s a costly solution that will pay off when applied against costly challenges, but is surely not always appropriate. It is here that BlazeDS might be able to step in (providing there is a suitable server configuration available) to enable push messaging. At the outset, one may get the erroneous impression that BlazeDS is a heavily clipped LifeCycle DS, but there’s certainly more to the story.

In fact, hands-on experience has revealed that with BlazeDS and LifeCycle DS messaging acquires certain variations in meaning which makes implementation decisions not as obvious as it might seem at the outset – as usual, the devil is to be located in the details. The pub-sub environment achievable with BlazeDS is strictly speaking not quite data push – although when applied with due care and by due means, the long-polling/data streaming approach can live up to the push messaging task at hand.

A Note on Flash SEO

2009-09-25T06:38:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a myth that search engines can’t reach into Flash. Then there emerged an announcement that Google can crawl and index SWF files, but not files loaded by SWFs (XML, HTML, plain text, or another SWF file). Then we saw a post that stated this particular issue was resolved. Does it make SWF fit the web as it is now as perfectly as good old HTML? The answer is still no. SWF files have become somewhat less opaque, but are still far from becoming fully transparent. Noteworthy is also the fact that SWF indexing is a valid discussion topic pretty much exclusively with Google.

The now aged Big Crawling Breakthrough was powered by Adobe’s providing Google with a headless Flash player dubbed Ichabod (oh the headless reference) that enabled Googlebot to make its way through apps in SWF in a virtual user-like capacity, thus dragging all the text (out of static and dynamic text fields) to the light and recognizing links as it came along. As it turned out, the problem is what comes up is plain text matter, with no discriminations made as to whether given fragments belong together and their semantic structure. Therefore, what the search engine gets is not much to work with. “Raw” SWFs do not even have their XMP meta titles and descriptions indexed – yet, hopefully.

Ichabod might have improved visibility. The lay of the land in terms of searchability, however, remained pretty much intact. Progressive enhancement will still remain the only well-argued response to that. Putting basic markup and content as the universally accessible foundation and progressively weaving more advanced elements in is not even as much a good SEO decision as it is a universally sensible usability practice, which importantly enough includes browser experience (good SEO is primarily about non-disruptive experience after all).

Speaking of making SWF browser experience a better one, there are a couple of points of note here. First off, embedding, which reads “SWFObject” – around since 2006, and surprisingly enough, often disregarded. Reliance on the dynamic publishing method is by far the best option that allows stipulating appropriate fallback content, structured and marked up. Second, deep linking – the main thing the web is about. Essentially this is a way to provide an app with multiple entry points so that users (and SEs for that matter) would not have to navigate all the way to the desired part. It is a named anchor SWF solution – you establish a relationship between an app state and a URL that does not cause a reload of the whole app. This is achievable via the SWFAddress or URL Kit libraries, or the BrowserManager class that works as a proxy between the app and the browser.

Where to go (some shoot-from-the-hip suggestions):
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/alternative_content.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/ora_seo_flash.html
http://www.insideria.com/2008/09/advanced-flex-deep-linking-wit-1.html

A Flex Frameworks Mud Map

2009-09-17T02:13:00.000-07:00

In software development, there are better practices, as well as there are worse ones. The former are probably somewhat less numerous, but what they offer is a reasonable solution to a common problem. Among these practices there is a strong tendency towards abstraction. Some of these reach the framework level where they are no longer able to develop in and of themselves – a downside that in reality keeps maintainability and organization intact. Using a framework is not exactly the only way to efficiently develop solid applications. In an episode at the Flex Show, Francis Lukesh (the person behind HydraMVC) elegantly pinned down the essence of a framework by saying that “frameworks are not created, they are extracted.” There is a certain point in looking at what others have condensed into an organized whole. This may appear the exact thing you are trying to incorporate.

Reflecting on the issues including, if not limited to, abstraction, extraction, interaction and frameworkitis, I thought it would be a moderately good idea to wrap ideas up in some sort of a diagram, and this mud map is what I have whipped up so far (with regard to the MVC architectural pattern):

Disclaimer: the framework landscape reflected by the present mud map may be subject to amendments, which are most welcome.

Perspectives on how things are supposed to work may differ. Opinions on whether these perspectives need to be borrowed and internalized differ as well, which is best illustrated by the ongoing effort aimed at creating yet another implementation. The question, however, is not what framework is the best. The question is what makes a framework work for you, and even better, whether you need a framework at all. However, digging into a framework to see its inner workings is a completely different can of worms, i.e. highly advisable. There’s a great basic framework walkthrough at Insideria, by the way. Oh, and there's going to be a framework session at MAX, too.

Online Experience Readefined

2009-09-10T04:48:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, in the mornings, I allocate some time to reading Adobe blogs (that’s after I’ve skimmed the news places and am not indulgently and therefore guiltily absorbing myself in the New Yorker). Believe it or not, I consider it a worthwhile activity. Come to think of it, reading as such is a highly worthwhile activity. More than that, there are people who seem to be in sync with how I feel (gasp!). And here I mean not the reading one occasionally blurts out when they have nothing particular to say concerning what they are up to in their rare leisure hours, but actual reading. Even if that refers to the weird mobile device activity some practice in the subway.

Wait, this is not the path the rambling is supposed to follow. Anyway, a couple of days ago my Adobe blog morning starts with a re-post with this note at the top:

“This is a mirror of http://anirudhs.chaosnet.org/blog/2009.09.01.html which has been down due to too much traffic.”

That’s where I start smelling good news I’ve been oblivious of for the unforgivable several days. That’s also where I get more grounding for the whole people-in-sync idea because it’s all about this brand-new Readefine tool – another hello from Flex 4 and Text Layout Framework in particular.

Readefine is a content beautifier app – it works with plain text, RSS and HTML alike (well, not that completely alike right now, since certain HTML is capable of bringing the app to a complete halt; pending to be resolved). What the app essentially aims at is making reading off the screen much easier by organizing the text, laying it out in columns, prioritizing pagination over scrolling and applying nicer, typeset-style fonts to it. Readefine’s creator, Anirudh Sasikumar, highly welcomes feedback. For now, there’s only a web-based version available, but in the future Readefine will be available on the desktop as well.

Anyway, what has made the framework possible asks for some of the spotlight, too. In brief, TLF (a very transparent explanation is to be found in this slideshow) is Adobe’s high-level implementation of FTE (the Flash Text Engine, created by InDesign team).The framework is written in ActionScript and has sprouted components for both Flash CS4 and Flex 3.2/4. Naturally, it is extensible and modifiable – we’ll be able to see the new components used to craft Readefine open-sourced sometime soon. Which reminds me, TLF itself, along with OSMF (Open Source Media Framework) was moved to open source as recently as in late July this year in as yet another step towards an open Flash platform. TLF supports multiple languages and aspires to bring “print-quality typography to the web”.

Looking for a Balanced Enterprise Ecosystem: Flex, Alfresco and CMIS

2009-08-14T06:38:00.000-07:00

One of the underlying premises for the emergence of the Flex framework – a fresh leaf within the Flash Platform – was its perceivable enterprise flavor. Whatever the skeptics may claim (referring to factors such as the status of ActionScript to the absence of across-the-board programming language for both the server and the client), the framework’s integration in the enterprise world is getting increasingly tangible, especially given its open-source status. In the enterprise world, Flex has its word to say not only in data visualization but, with reliance on LifeCycle, AIR et al., can turn out one of the options to leverage content management systems.

In enterprise content management Flex can come into play following the open source path, which is Alfresco (which is not an exclusive solution – there are Flex UIs for Documentum, etc.). The integration of Alfresco into LifeCycle ES (although not open source in itself), has indicated that Flex developers can in fact benefit by getting their feet wet in ECM. The Flex (an intuitive user interface)/AIR (a desktop runtime)/LCDS (real-time apps) to Alfresco symbiosis seems to be a rather productive one, one that opens up opportunities for building rich apps backed by a CMS. After all, Flex is the UI choice, whereas ECM solutions are notorious for the out-of-the-box user experience they offer.

Furthermore, over time content management gets curiouser and curiouser by moving towards a better, i.e. standardized, ECM world. CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services – an effort akin to the database standardization wave way back) 1.0 is round the corner, and, as an open-source player on the ECM market, Alfresco has been doing some heavy-lifting in implementing the current versions of the standard and thus forwarding it towards its first full-fledged self, with other big fish in the pond staying somewhat lukewarm as to their vision of how CMIS fits content management. And it’s here where Alfresco tends to the exclusive end of the spectrum. Via synergies with Alfresco, the Flex folks can look for new spots to tap the framework into content management. One of the recent examples of such a spot is a repository browser – CMIS Explorer for Alfresco by Shane Johnson (which could ultimately become a user-friendly [desktop] app offering access to any CMIS-compliant CMS). Offers some food for thought, doesn’t it?

Wave on AIR, in the Cloud: Adobe Wave Beta

2009-08-05T00:19:00.000-07:00

The Adobe community is busy fiddling with Wave, a beta project recently released for evaluation by Adobe (although the pre-announcement came in at last year’s Adobe MAX). Wave is an AIR application and, on the flip side, a service hosted by Adobe that allows users to stay tuned by receiving immediate push notifications right on the desktop from the content publishers who have signed up for the service.

On signing up (which involves getting an API token and setting the topics the notifications appear under), publishers embed a Wave badge, customizable with a specific background and foreground, a company logo and thumbnails on their pages. Note that in order to sign up, publishers are required to provide e-mails associated with the specified site.

Followers who decide to opt in can just click on the badge. All the subscribed notifications will be displayed within a single app. If the desktop app hasn’t been installed yet, the click on the badge will result in a seamless download of the necessary software. Wave is designed to bypass issues related to e-mail-based subscriptions such as the accumulation of newsletters and group notifications, as well as spam and phishing.

Now the valid question to ask is what distinguishes Adobe Wave from other widgets, and RSS in particular, because as soon as you hear “feed” you think “rss”. Wave’s terminology inventory does in fact include feeds, although these, as I gather from what people are saying, acquire a different meaning. First of all, there are two types of feeds available with Adobe Wave – (1) broadcast and (2) point-to-point notifications, that allow for extended opportunities for publishers to reached targeted categories of their audiences. Second, Adobe Wave is a push notification service, as opposed to RSS, which relies on polling – that means, with Wave, you will be immediately notified of any changes in the category you are monitoring. Note the latter part – for instance, it is possible to subscribe to the “fine-grained” type of notifications, such as Facebook status updates. Another thing people are predicting is a considerable degree of likelihood of streaming media support – and that, my friends, is a completely different can of worms.

Given the beta status of the project, it’s still open for tweaks and enhancements. The issues referred to as of now (in the usability department) concern (a) the add button website gallery and (b) the cumbersomeness of the badge perceived by some of the early users.

(b) Is the badge ugly? Well, not so much, but the footprint it takes is really sizeable since the service also handles downloads. The potential solution is a badge hosted by Adobe, with just a URL provided, and the one on hand right now is linking an image to a separate page for opt-ins (you can see the info here).

Additionally, some valuable tips based on personal Wave installation experience are to found at http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2009/7/28/My-experience-with-Adobe-Wave. Have fun and give a shout about what you think of Wave.

Update: There is a Wordpress Wave plugin available.

Data Visualization that Comes in Many Shapes

2009-07-28T08:19:00.000-07:00

Rows and columns of data can be fun, especially as you watch the evolution of tabular info to dynamic data viz applications. Even if you are not the one to make it happen. Pure data make a pliant kind of material, and what this material ends up as is an open horizon. Take data, couple it with an idea, a modified version of Papervision3D and a lot of work – and there you go, a ground-breaking video for Radiohead (couldn’t get this one out of my mind once I mentioned it in the previous post). But what I would like to look into at the moment is not 3D and Flash but rather statistical data visualization and Flex.

Flex, as an open source framework, has sprouted a number of directions to follow – starting with the data visualization package as part of Flex itself, through libraries and ultimately arriving at a whole framework utilizing a different programming focus. Yes, I’m talking Axiis here – a “data-driven layout engine for Degrafa geometry” built on Flex 3. It was created by Tom Gonzales and Michael VanDaniker and presented to the public during this May’s 360|Flex Indy. The project was released under MIT license and is fully open for community contributions – in his Flex Show interview, Tom Gonzales stated he is not interested in any commercial gain other than attracting offers for interesting data visualization projects. For graphics and geometry, Axiis overwhelmingly refers to Degrafa, hence the visual pleasingness. As a Flex+Degrafa framework, Axiis takes on the declarative approach and relies on data binding intrinsic to Flex, under the umbrella motto of achieving more with less code. Axiis is supposed to set layouts of various complexity (these may involve child levels) in a relatively easy and hopefully more intuitive way than can be expected of the existing toolkits, i.e. without referring to procedural coding. The markup approach is its basic distinction from Flare (essentially a version of Prefuse, a toolkit for Java), which is an ActionScript (read “object-oriented/procedural”) library. This leads to some interesting implications: Tom Gonzales hopes the transparency of markup will result in Axiis being adopted by the non-Flex man in the street.

The creators of Axiis position their project (still a very young alpha) as a framework aimed at ensuring the flexibility and room for customization and fine-graining necessary with the majority of advanced data visualization projects. Axiis is a framework rather than a library of components, primarily designed to eliminate the difficulties to be encountered once you come up with something unthought-of in standard Flex charting components. All in all, the foci of the framework advertised as of now are innovation (i.e. going beyond Cartesian), intuitive markup and powerful graphics.

Whether you are Axiis or Flare largely depends on your coding preferences and requirements set forth by the project at hand. Axiis does look a valid option, provided you feel comfortable with what it originates from – Degrafa experience will get you going within an impressively short time span (“if you know Degrafa, you know about 80 per cent of what you will need with Axiis”), although a lack thereof should by no means be a deterrent.

I believe it would also be of interest to have a look into two other offshoots: the Flare-based JuiceKit (an SDK for building information experience applications) and the community-driven BirdEye (an information visualization and data analytics library based on ActionScript and growing on and out of other open-source libraries, including Degrafa).

Flex Events Heads-Up: 360Flex

2009-07-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

Although the activity in the Flex department never dulls, there are major events that take place annually. These certainly include Adobe Max 2009 and RIAdventure 360. In spite of the fact that the dates were set quite a while ago, i.e. no ground-shattering news here, and the events are in the middle of their preparation stages, i.e. nothing specific to discuss yet, I thought it might be worthwhile to have a roundup of the info available and have a look if there are any hints as to the agenda.

Adobe Max 2009 will be held in autumn (October 4-7) in LA. This year’s highlights are social computing, cloud computing and rich content across devices. As it is to be expected of a technology event, the conference will not only bring the community together and facilitate learning and sharing, but will also provide showcasing opportunities, which includes participation in the Annual Adobe Max Awards (project submission/nomination deadline is July, 31). In the way of a quick flashback let me remind you that last year’s finalists include the Radiohead House of Cards video and NASDAQ Market Replay. Early bird discounts for conference passes are applicable till the end of August. Speaking of birds: MAX will traditionally allocate time and space for Birds of a Feather (BOF) meetings – technology-focused and Adobe-independent. Important: this year there will be no special MAX Europe event, although there will be opportunities for those interested to tap in online.

Moving on to RIAdventure 360, a.k.a the future of RIA event, a.k.a. the pre-Christmas cruise, - December 3 through 16, West Caribbean, 70 attendees (plus friends/families). Bits and parts on speakers are already being drip-fed into the cloud – for instance, Ryan Stewart and Doug McCune have already confirmed their active involvement. I consider it pretty safe to believe that this is going to be some discussion – Doug McCune is “skipping Web 3.0 and going straight to 4” (reads his blog header, at least today, because yesterday it proudly announced that Doug “was 2.0 before your grandma was 2.0”).

As skeptic as some may be of Adobe’s approach to open-source, my personal take is that community involvement builds up as it should, with Adobe paying due attention to what it (I mean the community of course) has to say. The subject of the present post offers a fair example of that: guys and gals from the community can speak their minds as to what they would like to discuss at MAX. For that purpose, a topic submission and voting site has been set up. Although the topics submitted are still subject to review, it is still a chance to get one’s voice heard. The ideas submitted by now include automating Flex testing with Ruby, Ruby and Flex in terms of RIA development, ColdFusion for RIA and more.

Flash on Android

2009-07-06T23:33:00.000-07:00

Adobe Flash, aspiring for cross-device support, is reinforcing its omnipresence by making the strategic move of reaching further into mobile. On June 24 HTC announced the release of Hero, the first Android phone to support Flash – this time Flash Lite 3.1 (plays SWF files created with Flash 9 as long as ActionScript 3.0 is not involved; compatible with ActionScript 2.0). It should be noted that Flash support will not be made downloadable by other Android users.

Flash integration basically means enhanced user experience while surfing the web, with Flash video and interactive media becoming available. At present the web is characterized by considerable reliance on Flash, from games and dynamic ads to streaming video. It is hardly surprising that it is video content that receives most of the attention given the fact that the bulk of Internet video is Flash-based. With Hero users will be able to view YouTube and Yahoo videos in full-screen mode enabled by simply double-tapping the screen. The device also ensures seamless audio experience.

Since HTC has joined Open Screen Project – an industry effort aiming at making Flash-based content fully accessible across screens – more advanced steps taken with a view to integrating the new Flash 10 in FTC devices are to be expected. In the meantime, we’ll watch Adobe step up its marketing effort ensuring the Flash platform remains at the forefront - and make the relevant adjustments to the Flash/Flex development effort, of course.

Now Available at Technorati.com

2009-07-02T02:43:00.000-07:00

If you are a regular visitor at www.technorati.com, you are welcome to check out Flex Developer blog right there. I hope you'll enjoy the reading - feedback will be greatly appreciated.

The Flash – Flex – Flash Cycle: Builder ConFusion

2009-06-29T08:02:00.000-07:00

With the Flash Platform, the recent naming overhaul is not actually surprising – that got its share of attention back in 2008, right after a branding shift with a particular focus on Flash became obvious. While not exactly a bombshell, this piece of news managed to evoke a pretty strong reaction, demonstrated mostly (and close to exclusively) by Flex developers. Apparently, the opportunities for the Flex camp to distance themselves from the formerly fishy Flash (oh the lovely sample of alliteration) are becoming increasingly limited.

Although the Flex Builder to Flash Builder rename is somewhat stale news, if you will, I can’t see water ripples within the Flex community leveled off. Renames always turn out painful – part of the discomfort emerges out of inertia, while perhaps another part is built out of resentment, but what is clear now is that both those hailing the change (or at least able to trace the logic behind it) and those yet reluctant to do so agree that there is some confusion to follow. Even now, with the new products still betas, it feels weird reading things like “Flex 4 is included in Flash builder”. Just figure explaining the nuances to an unsuspecting customer…

What referred me back to this topic is a recent Flex Show roundtable, during which savvy Flex folks voice their opinions on the matter, revealing a couple of ideas of interest. The overall sentiment seems to fall into the “it’s a shame, but there’s nothing really that can be done about it” range. However, there’s more than just attitude expressed: a couple of shady zones likely to cause most of the confusion are referred to, one of which is in relation to Flash CS4 Professional.

The official Adobe take on it is that the rename allows for “better naming consistency for the Flash family of tools”. One of the lines to be traced here is the argument that since the outcome of using Flex Builder is a SWF file to be run with Flash Player, why not include the Flash component in the tool name. Second, there is an issue of two somewhat contradictory moves of making a distinction between the open-source and the enterprise and simultaneously pulling the Flash name into the spotlight by erasing past negative (if presently completely ungrounded) connotations, although Adobe will apparently continue to promote the Flex framework and encourage its usage (you bet). And then again, it can be a purely marketing move accounted for by both greater Flash recognizability and the Silverlight rivalry.

By and large, nothing has essentially changed – Flash Builder will be the same developer-oriented tool, with additional features, too. That doesn’t annihilate some bitterness though – the Flex camp as opposed to the generally “less professional” Flash camp feel themselves robbed of part of their legitimate territory. No one will seriously consider the rename a full-fledged reason to opt out of the Flex framework, but it’s probably the beginners who will face the bulk of difficulties in getting to know the lay of the land in Adobe Flash/Flex.

Data Visualization and Tour de Flex

2009-06-18T03:45:00.000-07:00

The great thing about Flex is its being utterly spectacular (if handled with due expertise and care, of course), or, in other words, visually and otherwise rich. Actually, Flex has the potential of working genuine wonders – for instance, today I spent a whole hour packed with sheer excitement on discovering Tour de Flex Planetary Dashboard - who would resist the temptation of sharing the opportunity of viewing live, beautifully visualized data from Tour de Flex right, left and center? Now, here’s a killer piece of news for Flex enthusiasts: a dashboard contest has been announced. For those daring enough to try and create something as fascinating (and, why, really cool) as Planetary Dashboard using the real-time Tour de Flex data, you are provided with a headstart of application samples and instructions. The key thing to observe is naturally the coolness factor.
Reference note: Tour de Flex, launched in November 2008, is a desktop application (with a limited functionality web version available) for exploring what Flex has to offer. It serves as an excellent reference resource for Flex developers and offers a comprehensive overview for those unfamiliar with the platform. Moreover, as illustrated by the above, Tour de Flex does not remain static, but works as an opportunity for individual developers to showcase their achievements.

Adobe Flex for RIA development

2009-06-11T01:06:00.000-07:00

iTechArt Group focused on a new web development direction for rich Internet application development - Adobe Flex framework. If you need to find more information about it, you can either look at page Flex Development

Flex Development Company - iTechArt Group

2009-04-02T06:21:00.001-07:00

When it comes to creating RIAs (Rich Internet Applications), one of the options worth considering is certainly Adobe Flex. Flex is a powerful open-source development framework enabling you to build highly interactive, visually rich and customizable solutions for a wide array of purposes.

On seeing the framework’s high potential, iTechArt’s took up Flex shortly after its release. Our team of experienced Flex developers has been extensively using the Flex framework for building and delivering various solutions specifically tailored to the customers’ needs. Our achievements in Flex development are highly appreciated by our customers and recognized by Adobe, with the company’s Adobe Solution Partner status naturally following.
iTechArt’s Flex outsourcing team is ready to help you get the most of what Flex has to offer. Here is a fraction of the countless options to meet a variety of business needs, for either independent applications or components:

•Business applications and systems, including those for data visualization, presentation and management. You can have statistical data pulled from a number of resources, visually displayed through dynamic charts and graphs, and update your information whenever necessary and without having to refresh the page.
• Highly interactive web solutions, including e-commerce
• Web components and user interface elements – animated multimedia banners, cursors and buttons
• Video-, audio- and text-based communication and networking solutions
• Video streaming applications
• Flex-based digital signage allowing you to use visually rich and dynamic content which can be easily updated and adapted to a particular environment.
• Solutions for computer games
PLUS
• Deployment
• Security and usability testing
• Flex consulting

Our previous outsourcing projects include e-commerce platforms, web mail portals and online casino solutions (see the showcase). In addition to vast expertise in Flex programming proper, our team is experienced in the following working combinations:

• Flex and Ajax/Java programming
• Flex and ColdFusion development
• Flex and .NET programming
• Flex and PHP programming

This enables to adapt a given application to the customers’ specific needs and requirements and allows extending functionality available with the primarily media/data-centered Flex environment. Our Flex developers work within the agile development framework, which means we value flexibility, welcome creativity and are oriented on continuously delivering single solutions.

ActionScript Overview

2009-03-02T08:18:00.000-08:00

ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language most commonly, yet not exclusively, used to develop website and Flash Player-based applications. ActionScript was initially created as a scripting language for controlling simple 2D animations in Flash.

ActionScript 1.0, which appeared in 2000 with Adobe Flash 5, was initially based on the set of basic scripting commands in earlier Flash versions and was influenced by JavaScript and ECMA-262. The 2.0 version featured compile-time type checking and class-based syntax and thus allowed for a more structured OOP approach.

Finally, ActionScript 3.0, being a yet another step in enhancing capabilities achievable with ActionScript, might look quite similar to 2.0 at first, but is in fact a significantly restuctured version of the scripting language. ActionScript 3.0 is based on ECMAScript with formalized features of ActionScript 2.0, and is compliant with ECMA-262 standard.

ActionScript features a new ActionScript Virtual Machine 2, which substantially extends the potential available with AVM1. The latter will continue to be supported by Flash Player to ensure backwards compatibility. By creating ActionScript 3.0, Adobe set out to achieve a number of goals, including increasing safety and simplicity and ensuring better performance. Interactivity and diversity by means of Flash-based applications and content is achieved with Flash, Flash Media Server and Flex. The Flex product line was the first family of Adobe products allowing to work with ActionScript 3.0.

For information on custom Flex development services you can visit iTechArt's Flex programming page.

What is Flex?

2009-02-17T04:18:00.000-08:00

Flex is a technological framework used for building Flash-based Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) compatible with major browsers, desktops and operational systems.

Flex and Flash, just like Ajax and JavaScript, are related technologies, with the former being a set of tools intended for developers rather than designers. Flex is primarily used for interactive and data-centred applications, yet in case there arises a necessity to maintain a content-based focus as well, with Adobe Flash 3 you can use the Flex Ajax Bridge to integrate the two technologies.

If you need web applications which would be most attractive for visitors, i.e. prospective clients, Flex development is certainly a good idea, with the broad range of features such as dynamic animations, sound, video, etc. available. Moreover, running Flex applications is unlikely to pose any difficulties: Adobe Flash player is being used by an overwhelming majority of net surfers. Those who by some chance don’t, are free to get it from Adobe.

Video:What's Flex?