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June 12, 2007
Apollo (now AIR) Sample Applications
By now you have probably heard that:
- Apollo is now officially AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), and
- The AIR beta went live this week, and is available for download.
I did a lot more product definition for this release, and much less coding, but I did manage to write one interesting new application:
Salsa
Salsa is an Amazon S3 client which lets you easily manage your buckets and files in the S3 cloud. You can create and delete buckets as well as upload and download, drag and drop, and copy and past between your computer and Amazon S3. You can even manage multiple files at once. Salsa uses the open-source as3awss3lib ActionScript 3 S3 library that I wrote, so if you don't like the way Salsa works, you can write your own client.
Salsa, along with the other Adobe AIR sample applications (and their source code), is available here.
In addition to Salsa, I managed to update some of my old sample apps from the alpha:
MapCache
MapSnap is now MapCache. It lets you look up addresses using Yahoo! Maps, and save the maps for offline use. I used to call it MapSnap because all it let you do is create a snapshot of a map and save it, but now you can save the map, copy it to your clipboard, or drag and drop the map to your desktop. It's a simple but handy little app, and demonstrates the following:
- The AIR HTMLControl.
- Script bridging (calling JavaScript functions from ActionScript).
- Native file browsers.
- Drag and drop.
- Copy and paste from the clipboard.
Scout
I added forward and back buttons in Scout using the HTMLControl's new history management functionality. Otherwise, it's the same.
PixelPerfect
PixelPerfect is an example of a pure ActionScript 3 project (no Flex, no HTML, no JavaScript). I think it's actually the most useful AIR application that I've written so far, and I find myself using it on a regular bases. It pops up transparent rulers on your screen which you can use to measure things in pixels. For this release, I added multi-window support (you can open multiple rulers at once), and now the rules are always on top of other windows so they don't get lost. (I don't have a help dialog yet, but you can also change the transparency using your mouse wheel, move rulers with your arrow keys, and resize them with shift+arrow keys.)
All the beta sample apps, along with their source code, are available here on Adobe Labs.
Posted by cantrell at June 12, 2007 6:48 AM
Comments
Thanks for pixel perfect. It has come in very handy lately.
Posted by: Bryan Ledford at June 14, 2007 9:26 AM
I'm going to be very angry if you release AIR without me.
Posted by: DJ at June 20, 2007 5:28 PM
Cantrell, this is great work. But I could not find the source code on the adobe labs page. I am trying to learn to build an application with multi-window support and Pixel Perfect seems to do just that. Can you please let me know how to get the source?
thanks,
venkat
Posted by: venkat at June 21, 2007 8:40 AM
Small bug in Salsa: when I try and scroll a long list of files in my S3 account by clicking the scroller and draggging it then it turns into the little forbidden sign, it won't let me scroll that way. If I click anywhere on the scroll bar besides the scroller itself then the scroll works. This is on Win Vista.
Stefan
Posted by: Stefan Richter at June 27, 2007 5:52 AM
Thanks, Christian, for posting all these great apps! Could you tell me if AIR apps can use REST web services? (e.g. does Salsa use REST?) Thanks!
Posted by: E Lee at July 20, 2007 10:03 PM
Christian,
Is your Amazon wish list apollo/AIR app posted anywhere online?
Thanx,
Kalyan.
Posted by: Kalyan Katika at September 2, 2007 8:56 PM
Christian,
Can you address the issues with the Salsa source code... It does appear to authenticate. I'm guessing it's not your code, but rather the library dependancies changing.
Having said that, it would great if you could post a version of the Salsa source that actually works with the current versions of the libraries.
Again the AIR and the source files posted are appear to be out of sync, as one would expect the a compiled version using the same keys would authenticate. They don't
Thanks in advance!
Posted by: Dan at September 19, 2007 9:25 AM
Christian,
I'm very interested in utilizing the Amazon "Simple" services and your Salsa and as3awss3lib projects looked like a great starting place.
It appears that Salsa has been removed from the Adobe site with the new beta 3 release of Flex 3.
Is there another location where I can get the Salsa app?
thanks
Tom
Posted by: Tom Sobut at December 17, 2007 9:27 AM
The project is now called S3E, and is available on Google Code here:
Christian
Posted by: Christian Cantrell at December 18, 2007 7:33 AM
First off, I'd like to thank Christian Cantrell for creating this application as it is a fantastic demo of interfacing ActionScript with Amazon S3. However, while the application is able to download files and view/create buckets, it cannot upload files without experiencing error message 2038. The data seems to fully transfer to S3 but the error is triggered right at the end of the upload. For instance, for a larger file (say a 4MB PDF), you will see the upload progress bar go from 0% to 100% but it will then hang at 100% and then the 2038 error message will occur. Then the download fails. Any thoughts on what be occurring?
P.S. I am building the application, S3E, using Flex Builder ver. 3 beta 3. I am using the source code found at: http://s3e.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/
Posted by: TinStar at December 21, 2007 5:31 AM
Christian,
PixelPerfect had become my favorite application, until AIR was formally released. As I suspect you already know, downloading the new version of AIR torched PixelPerfect. I also notice that PixelPerfect has been dropped from the Adobe Application page. Is there anyway you can release a new version or tell me where I can get the source code so I can re-compile for the latest version of AIR.
Thank you,
Gary
Posted by: Gary at December 28, 2007 5:23 PM
I know absolutely nothing about code. A co-worker got me into AIR sample apps and I LOVED Pixel Perfect. People come to me wanting ads or banners to look like something they've seen, so to be able to start up Pixel Perfect and measure it right there is extremely useful. Thank you for that.
Is there expected to be an update for it in the future as it's not supported by the current version of AIR?
Thanks again.
Bill
Posted by: Bill at January 2, 2008 7:26 AM
I've been using Pixel Perfect for a while now, Its a great tool for css and web development. But the program no longer works...Is it possible to get an updated copy of the program? Thank you!
Posted by: Ian at January 3, 2008 6:26 AM
I had the same problem with an old version as well .
Go here (see below) to get the source code files and instructions. You will need to have flex and compile it your self, but even if you dont know anything about flex it has really simple instructions to follow on how to do it in the doc. Its really easy and if you dont have flex you can always download the the Flex 3 beta.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/labs/air/1/devappsflex/help.html?content=QuckStart_interacting_window_1.html
Posted by: Tyler at January 9, 2008 4:03 PM
I also used PixelPerfect constantly and missed it when the runtime changed. Here's the app as I recreated it for use with the latest version of Air:
http://education-technologies.net/downloads/PixelPerfect.air
Posted by: Iver Davidson at January 17, 2008 2:20 PM
Sorry for not responding sooner. PixelPerfect is still available, and has been updated to the latest version of AIR. It's available here:
http://code.google.com/p/pixelperfect/
I'll post the AIR file when we release 1.0, but for now, you'll have to compile it yourself.
Christian
Posted by: Christian Cantrell at January 18, 2008 10:20 AM
I'm using tortoise, and hitting this
http://code.google.com/p/pixelperfect/
However, i got this as a result:
Error: PROPFIND of '/p/pixelperfect': 400 Bad Request (http://code.google.com)
any clue, Christian?
Ken
Posted by: Ken Chang at February 13, 2008 3:15 PM
Ken,
I have no idea. I just checked the code out this morning on another computer, and it worked fine. Maybe something wrong with Tortoise? I've only used the command line versions of SVN.
Christian
Posted by: Christian Cantrell at February 15, 2008 10:52 AM
how i can find author of this blog?
Posted by: wesgcc at February 18, 2008 11:43 AM
Salsa is not available for download on the samples page. Where can I find it? Thanks.
Posted by: Sualeh Fatehi at January 26, 2009 4:47 AM
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