Archive for November, 2008

SitePen announces Dojo Extensions for Adobe AIR

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Rob Christensen | Comments (26)

The SitePen team announced the release of an exciting new open source new project called the Dojo Extensions for Adobe AIR. Adobe and SitePen worked together to define a set of useful API’s for common desktop functionality using Dojo-like constructors. For example, with this library, you can easily playback video and easily manage your windows all from HTML and JavaScript. The library is designed from the ground up to play well with the Dojo Toolkit as well. There is an excellent screencast recording by Peter Higgins of SitePen that introduces the library using a sample application.

The project is hosted on Google Code and the source code is available. A quickstart page and sample application is available for those interested in diving in. This is project is a work in progress, but provides a significant amount of functionality in its first release.

Some of the API’s includes:

  • dair.AIR
  • dair.Console
  • dair.Window
  • dair.Application
  • dair.fx
  • dair.Sound
  • dair.Video
  • dair.Icon
  • dair.File

Congratulations to the SitePen on the release!

Paul Robertson presents a detailed examination of AIR’s SQLite database

Posted on November 7, 2008 by Rob Christensen | Comments (0)

Adobe AIR team member Paul Robertson, a technical writer and expert on AIR’s SQLite database, recently presented a very insightful session titled at 360|Flex titled "AIR SQLite: An optimization conversation". If you are interested in learning more about AIR’s SQLite database, this video presents a deep dive on the topic ranging from architecture to best practices around performance.

Paul’s has made the slides from his talk available on his website. In addition, you can also find details about working with the local database in our documentation for Flex, Flash and HTML/Ajax developers.

Meet the Adobe AIR Team at MAX in San Francisco

Posted on November 6, 2008 by Rob Christensen | Comments (0)

Members of our team will be at our MAX conference from November 16th – 19th in San Francisco. Some of us will be presenting sessions including Oliver Goldman and Ethan Malasky while others will be helping to TA classes and answering questions at the Adobe booth.

On Monday, November 17th, there will be a "Meet the AIR team" session at MAX beginning at 9:30PM in room 2002. Members of our team will be present to answer any questions you might have related to AIR. If you’re planning on attending MAX, please be sure to stop by and introduce yourself — we’re eager to meet AIR developers in person!

MAX is really shaping up to be an amazing conference this year with record attendance numbers. If you have not purchased a ticket to MAX in San Francisco yet, it’s not too late to buy a pass. It’s a great way to network with other developers and designers, meet Adobe employees and learn about trends and technologies related to our industry. There will also be "sneak peaks" of technology Adobe is working on.

There are dozens of sessions covering Adobe AIR and related technologies including:

  • Building High-Performance Applications for Adobe AIR by Oliver Goldman (AIR team)
  • Maintaining security with Adobe AIR by Ethan Malasky and Peleus Uhley (AIR team)
  • Making Money with Adobe AIR by Grant Skinner
  • Building Desktop Applications Powered by Dojo and Adobe AIR by Dylan Schiemann
  • Adobe AIR Boot Camp by Duane Nickull (Adobe platform evangelist)
  • Breathe AIR into Your Brand by Lee Brimelow (Adobe platform evangelist)
  • Optimizing Adobe AIR for Code Execution, Memory, and Rendering by Sean Christmann
  • Adobe AIR Core Concepts for Developers Who Use Flash by Kevin Hoyt (Adobe platform evangelist)
  • Introduction to Adobe AIR: Building Your First Application by Rich Tretola
  • Liberate Your Data with Adobe AIR, BlazeDS, and LiveCycle Data Services by Christophe Coenraets (Adobe platform evangelist)
  • Developing Rich Applications with jQuery and Adobe AIR by Ed Finkler
  • Build a Database-Enabled AIR Application with Dreamweaver, PHP, and Ajax by David Gassner

Manage your WordPress blog comments with Moderator

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Rob Christensen | Comments (0)

blog-moderator.jpg

Daniel Dura, a platform evangelist at Adobe, recently released a very useful application called Moderator that’s been getting a fair amount of attention. If you maintain a blog powered by WordPress (2.6 or greater) and find it time consuming to approve comments on your blog, Moderator is the tool for you.

Moderator is a WordPress plugin and associated desktop application, built using Adobe AIR, that allows you to view and moderate comments from your desktop. Some of the features include:

  • Viewing unmoderated comments.
  • Dock and system tray notifications of the number of unmoderated comments.
  • Accept, delete, and spam comments from within the desktop client.
  • Close application window, or minimize it to the system tray while running.
  • Shows the Gravatar icons for the user who posted the comment.

For more information including download information, please visit Daniel’s Moderator product page. Congratulations Daniel for building an incredibly valuable application!