SOSensible Blog

Mate Flex Framework

2008-08-29T00:00:00-06:00

If you have not seen this framework yet then it is worth checking out. Though not a 1.0 release yet it has features that make it better as ADS Technology than some alternatives. (Well, that is a subjective statement so you judge for yourself and watch the presentation.) I have worked some with this application and it was a delight. There is more to learn but with a few screencasts like this added to the site they could have a great introduction to the framework.

Mate Framework Home Page

Note: I am also very interested in simpler use of Modules in Flex. Mate offers a very nice way to integrate modules with the event based way of the framework.

ADS Technology Ratings

2008-08-28T00:00:00-06:00

This is a new standard that we at SOSensible are promoting. It is our creation and we find it very helpful. Let's get right into the explaination.

A - Accessible Technology

Technology should be used to make things more approachable. It's not just about what it can do but how it does it. I can remember growing up when we used to get out the slide projector or we would be in a public meeting and they would get out the movie projector and load in the media. This is nothing like today when we drop in a plastic disc to a player and hook a cable up to the projector or screen. We have taken many technology advances and wrapped them up into something that is clearly more approachable. Well, we should be doing the same thing in our code. Yes, there may be 'technical' arguments for why a complicated system may be a better solution. Yet, what often happens is the the common developer finds the code to difficult to follow and maintain. This can be because it has been written with spagghetti weaving of logic or because it has been written with design patterns that make sense technically but can not only make it less approachable but less sustainable if the correct tallent is not available. A good policy would be hire the technical superiour developer to come in and simplify the maintenance of the application.

D - DRY

This stands for "Don't Repeat Yourself". If we package up our logic that we use over and over then we can reuse it rather than rewrite or paste and edit it over and over. This is called encapsulation and it also has some other benefits. It allows for testing of the reused components and elements. Testing can make applications even more stable because it is tested. When updates are done regression testing will make sure none of the former tests are broken by bug fixes or enhancements. There is one more common advantage we have found. It often happens that because we eliminate redundant time consuming work and our code is packaged we find some common feature we would like to have but never get to can be added to this DRY package. This means because we develop DRY it often provides for extended features. (NOTE: jQuery, Prototype and other AJAX libraries are examples of programming DRY.)

S - Sustainable

It follows that normally just making things more approachable and DRY will make them more sustainable. Yet, that is not all that is needed. This could be an entire session or seminar for that matter. I will just say that (A) or (D) should never be done to the exclusion of being sustainable. All of these should be considered together and a decision made based on what implementation is being used.

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Well, I hope that gives people an idea of what DRY is. We do project consulting also if anyone needs any help. You can email us at ... info (-at symbol-) sosensible.com and we will see how we can help.

Ears and Eyes for AIR

2008-08-18T00:00:00-06:00

There are a number of ways to watch what goes on between an AIR application and the server. Yes the built in debugging is nice, but that doesn't tell us about what the AIR application says to other HTTP servers and what they answer back. There are a number of solutions to make this easier.

1. Fiddler This is a free dotNet solution.

2. Service Capture Paid for Solution. 35 bucks.

Both of these solutions are nice. Sorry Mac friends, but you will have to let me know what the solutions are for a Mac. This should get you talking with the CF server or what ever server you might be using.

A million and won?

2008-08-13T00:00:00-06:00

There is an interesting test that was run by a blogger on Inside Ria Blog Post. He took a challenge from another blogger to process a million records and share the results. His test was done in Adobe Flex and it was an Amazing result.

RIA Flex Soltutions

2008-08-11T00:00:00-06:00

Everyone knows a core part of Microsoft focus is the Office Suite. In particular the key apps are the word processor, spread sheet and presentation tools. Google is kicking out some very nice applications but Adobe is not short in offerings either.

Word Processing:
BuzzWord (Free)
This winner has the courage to do things different. The file list and the interface are different. Yet, unlike Office 2007 there is not the same shock factor as the Ribbon Toolbar concept. The creators of BuzzWord were on target when it came to usability. It should be also noted that BuzzWord is part of an online suite of collaboration tools. Esp. the offering of a screen sharing application. Again... all for free in basic versions.

Spread Sheet:
iDubee (By invite only, price not shared)
There is a screen cast ans this looks like yet another winner.

Presentations:
SlideShare (Free)
This is a wonderful presentation application.
Slide Rocket (Free)
This is another amazing application for doing online presentation. It is also worth mention that this program has an offline view application based on Adobe AIR.

It is clear that both convergence of concepts and sepeation are both being achieved. It is much like the old BBS days when smaller companies worked on many valid alternatives to the top sellers. There are other offerings out there for sure but this post is just a commentary on the progress we are making as people on the internet. Kudos to all the workers achieving!

DynaCloud or Automated Tag Lists

2008-07-19T00:00:00-06:00

Well, since we started working on SEO tools this is one of the type of things we are looking to do. I am not sure this specifically will be added to our library but it is worth looking at for the grand scope and power of tools. (Esp. since this weeks blogs have been full of jQuery stuff. ) Check out this page for details and examples. It is actually some very amazing concepts wrapped up into this plugin.

DynaCloud Plugin

I am looking at doing it this way or considering what it might take to do the same thing in ColdFusion. Of course there is one other issue that we are looking at building some of our tools as AIR applications. This means they may not need ColdFusion for this part of the application at all. (That is scary... imagine building something outside the power of ColdFusion?)

FlexCamp in Michigan July 30th

2008-07-03T00:00:00-06:00

It's actually a two day camp. Day two will be intermediate information.

FlexCamp Comes to Michigan

Flex Camp - Flex User Group page We hope many of you get to attend. This will be a great introduction and you will be amazed what you can do with flex!

Special Thought

Apparently the BBC has moved from MS solutions to an AIR (Flex desktop technology) based solutions. WOW, it's nice to see who is getting the power of this new approach. If you want to get a taste of what the BBC is doing, come to the FlexCamp and discover next generation desktop applications or browser side Flex apps. They both are taking the internet by storm!

BBC Story Links - MS dumped for Adobe AIR

Aviary Watchers

2008-04-29T00:00:00-06:00

Here is a cool technology company in the works. They have a suite of applications built with Flex/AIR and something very noteworthy.
http://a.viary.com/

Look at this front page and you will get a short taste of the cool abilities they are building. Move the mouse around the graphic and you will get a sense of the 3D spacial features they offer in some of the applications. Go to the tools page and you will see this company is looking to come out with a mix of products to knock our socks off!

CF and Flex

2008-02-22T00:00:00-06:00

Here is a great link for those who are looking to learn how to do integration. I am also working on creating some YouTube'd code demonstrations to help others get into the technology. :)

Adobe CF with Flex

Personally all of the demos that come from Adobe seem to be how to run the wizard and not how to code interaction. Perhaps I missed one and someone could bring that to my attention. Either way this set of tutorials should help others get into this better once they are completed.

Flex Org on CF

Flex Office Apps

2008-02-16T00:00:00-06:00

OK... more proof of concept for a growing platform. (Flex and AIR)

Buzzword - Word Processing

BList - Spreadsheets

Sliderocket - Presentation

Lovely Charts - Charts and Diagrams

Scrybe - Calendar, Lists, Note Pad, ? Sharing

All and all we can see that things are getting pretty interesting. AJAX is powerful because of the RIA (Rich Internet Application) abilities it has. Yet, Flex is without a doubt a pack leader in the RIA technologies. These applications are clear proof that the internet is just going to keep getting better for a time to come.

AIR Browsers Appearing

2008-02-14T00:00:00-06:00

If you have not heard yet, AIR runs "outside the browser" but that doesn't mean you cannot browse the web with an AIR app. The browser ability can be built into AIR because it includes the same base technology that Safari was built on! Good show!

Check out this AIR Browser

AIR is popular before it's time!

2008-02-04T00:00:00-06:00

Look at the list of AIR application providers. It's a veritable who's who of heavy hitters.

AIR Application Early Adopters

Inside RIA Launches

2008-01-24T00:00:00-06:00

Adobe and O'Reilly pull together to launch a new web site. This site will include great coverage on Flex, AIR and other technologies.

Inside RIA

Fles Design Guide

2007-11-19T00:00:00-06:00

Here is a site worth spending some time on. There are parts that are not complete yet so more good is on it's way. We should also notice that at this time some of the components are still in beta level status. Yes, I said components! (Isn't it nice that some of these cool standards can come prepackaged or at least example code ready for us to build our own variations.)

Here is the site link

* Part 1: Overview and discovering Flex
* Part 2: Planning your application
* Part 3: Structuring your application
* Part 4: Merging the web and the desktop
* Part 5: Designing content displays
* Part 6: Guiding with motion (Coming soon!)
* Part 7: Making your application fast (Coming soon!)
* Part 8: Making your application safe (Coming soon!)
* Appendix A: List of best practices
* Appendix B: For further reading

News Summary

2007-11-09T00:00:00-06:00

OK we have lots of great articles in the works... and we are back from our excursion to refactor SOS.

General News...

Flex Builder standard (without charting) is now 249 instead of 499!
DOJO is going version 1.0
COOP is on the verge of the official 1.0 release.
SOS is being rewritten with several things refactored out... and will have the same features, but in modular fashion.
We are about 1/2 way through creating our ColdFusion Bootcamp book.
We are started in refactoring out our Skinning to CFish (called Cuttle Fish)
We are going to refactor out our routing technology as a library also
... and much more to come!

Apollo and eBay

2007-04-21T00:00:00-06:00

Have you heard of the San Dimas project? This is eBay on the desktop! Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal. Truth is if there is more than one out on the market the consumer gets the better deal. I have my prefered favorite. Yet, the competition can be a good thing also. Let's hope the winner is never so clear cut that it destroys innovation and low costs!

Note: If you are interested in getting on the beta go here to sign up for the beta.

Flash CS3 components for Flex

2007-04-19T00:00:00-06:00

That's right. I just learned that Flash CS3 will have the ability to create fully interactive components for Flex. Imagine you wanted to start a costume site where people could pick the colors for costumes? Yes, you wouldn't want to design the costumes in Flex, but you could do this in Flash. Then export the component into Flex with full code hinting and more. Imagine your flash timeline names working as "states" attributes in Flex. If you don't quite get it... watch the labs site next week at labs.adobe.com and go here for details how to get Flash CS3 working for this new cool technique!

Do something incredible... mix your Flash skills in Flex apps!

Silver - Mirrors Parts of Flash

2007-04-18T00:00:00-06:00

Technology that works is a good thing, but we don't know that until silver hits the street with user applications. We will have to make some 'speculations' for now.

OK, Silver. That sounds kinda neat. Yet, isn't silver the description of the stuff that we make mirrors with? Silver would be a super cool name for a server cluster technology. Perhaps if this were a streaming server that took a video in and put it back out... that would be cool. In fact that might have been a good name for "Flash Communication Server". Yet, it just does nothing to tell you what it does. Sometimes when people give off the wall glitzy names it makes me think of people who name little dogs things like "General". Of course, don't think that silver won't be a good product because of all my teasing... but the name is off beat to what the product does!

Now, what does Silver do? Silver is described on this page like this...

Silverlight is almost 100% upward compatible with WPF. Animation, 2D vector graphics, media, text - they're all present in Silverlight and the concepts you've learnt in WPF carry forward (although Silverlight is a subset - it doesn't support WPF features such as 3D, data binding or templates). You can use the same tools (e.g. Expression Design) to generate content for Silverlight; you can take XAML from Silverlight and use it in a WPF application when you want to scale up and take full advantage of your local machine.

Silver comes from WPF. (This is a new presentation engine and language / XAML, xml based, library from Microsoft.) As he stated, it is a "subset". What is humorus to me is the number of ways that Silver "mirrors" Flash.

It does vector graphics and video.
They are trying to keep a small download size.
They want it to run on multiple platforms.
It has an XML language that you can use to program it.
It can be installed on the desktop... so we can guess they want it to reach beyond the browser.
It integrates with Expression development tools.

Questions: (Of course we will compare it with the mirror'd product, Flash.)

Does the lack of 3D mean you cannot wrap video on a surface like in Flash?
If the new features of the standard (Flash) don't get used until there are enough installations by most sites. How long will it take for Microsoft to reach that position?
Windows and Macs. Hmmm... what's missing here? Well Flash also supports the Linux platform. In fact the newer versions of Linux are including Flash 9 in the distribution. (Ex. FreeSpire 2.0 has stated this as one listing.)
What about AMF? AMF is a technology used by PHP and ColdFusion programmers to communicate with Flash. It is a binary format to package data between a server and Flash that can make the communication packet 1/6 the size of a typical soap communication. Is the the "secret wepon" the author spoke of on the site? Will this strength be added?
Flex apps are built to run inside Flash without required external controls. This means that an app isn't dependent on external libraries to do things. They can be included via Actionscript 3 inside the compiled SWF file.
Flex writes code with XML based language (or in pure actionscript if you like script) called MXML. This gets translated by the SDK or the Flex Builder into the Actionscript 3 language and compiled to the swf file. So, what's different in XAML? Will there be a XAML tool to compete with Flex Builder?
Flex Apps (swf files) can communicate through JS with the browser. This allows Flex apps to use AMF and do all the other cool features to interface into apps. Is Silver going to reflect that mindset also?

In summary, yes... if Flash weren't on the market this would be super cool. (And I also know this will inspire a better Flash/Flex featureset as things move foward!).

FLASH comparison for today.

Flash is proven technology.
Flash is mature.
Flash is the most wide spread technology of this type. (Including being on more mobile devices. If you count device for device including PCs. Flash is likely on more devices than Microsoft software!)
Oh, already widespread on Mobile devices and more.
Runs on Linux
Apollo... more than just a browser plugin. Flash that is free from the constraints of a browser.

I will be interested to see where silver goes. Perhaps in time it will have some bright unique features and do more than mirror the market leader. For now the best business decision is to use the market leader for more reasons than listed above. The reasons were so strong it was the main motivation for Adobe's aquisition of Macromedia. Flash can only be owned by one company, so it makes sense that because Microsoft wants control they would seek to mirror the platform. Yet, calling the product "SILVER"! LOL, that will make me laugh for a time to come!

Yahoo AP3 API

2007-03-09T00:00:00-06:00

Anyone know how cool it would be to have the vendor supporting remote services for Flex 2 applications? Well what if Yahoo supported Maps, org calendars, the search engine results, weather and the answer service! This is good news... and let's hope it's the path that others take as well.

Yahoo! AS3 API

Currently the maps are still AS2 with a wrapper that lets you manage them... so we will see how well that works for us.

Flex Communities

2007-02-28T00:00:00-06:00

The Flex technology was only too cool to start with... but now we are growing from a cool product to a maturing community. This is when Flex will start to shine. With development languages you can judge the stability and future of a platform in part by how well the community outside the vendor sales force is thriving. Here are a few sites for the Flex community that will reflect the direction that Flex is headed.

Let's also not forget the key locations on Adobe...

Flex Product
Flex Developer Center
Flex Documentation
Flex User Groups (note: we will be starting a ColdFusion/Flex User Group soon in Radford, VA)

Flex is winning award after award for innovation and best of class product. Get used to hearing people try to figure out what is so cool about Flex. It will be like the days when people said, "What is so cool about the internet?" or when they said, "What is so cool about eMail?". Flex embodies the future of the internet and the community is starting to come together to show exactly how special that will be for our work and our play. Stay tuned to this blog for another glimpse of what Flex will mean to you. (Granted... most of my posts will be aimed at developers.)