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March 31, 2006

Free Flex Link / Info

I made a post last weekend pointing out that the Flex SDK (Framework and compilers) would be free (for commercial and non-commercial use), and was surprised by the number of people who didn't know this.

Well, it turns out that we haven't really made it easy to find out and so are in the process of making some changes throughout the website and labs to make this clearer.

In the meantime, if you are looking for information on this from the Adobe website, we have a page that discusses the SDK and the fact that we will be releasing it for free (along with info on the free version of Flex Data Services.

From the page:

Along with beta 1 we are announcing that the Flex framework will be made available free of charge through the Flex Software Development Kit, which will include the command line compiler and documentation required to develop, compile, and deploy Flex applications that connect to XML and SOAP web services with no additional charges or server licensing required. We also plan to make Flex Data Services 2.0 free of charge for use by a limited number of concurrent users on a single, non-clustered server.

You can find more info here.

Posted by mesh at 4:19 PM | Comments (1)

ActionScript 3 Reserved Words

Posting here so I can quickly find it in the future.

List of ActionScript 3 Reserved Words.

Posted by mesh at 2:25 PM | Comments (4)

Andre Michelle : ActionScript 3 Compute Spectrum

Andre Michelle has put together a nice example of how to take a sound, compute its spectrum, and then visually render it.

You can view the entire example here.

(make sure to check out the rest of his site, for some really amazing demos and examples).

Posted by mesh at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2006

Hacking the iriver U10 with Flash

If you are lucky enough to have an iriver u10 device, then check out this post from Justin Every-Church that shows how to customize the iRiver u10 through manipulating its built in Flash files.

Among other things, this allows you to change the SWF used as the background.

You can read the entire post here.

Posted by mesh at 2:10 PM | Comments (0)

Sweet Flex 2 Color Picker

Check out this nice Flex 2 Color Picker that Tinic Uro put together. (Tinic is one of the engineers on the player team).

You can view the example here (source included).

Posted by mesh at 10:04 AM | Comments (1)

March 29, 2006

Screencast : JSON / Flex 2 / AS3 Tutorial

I uploaded a screencast of me building the example that I put together in yesterday's JSON tutorial.

It is a simple example that shows how to use JSON serialized data within an ActionScript 3 / Flex 3 app.

You can read the entire tutorial here.

You can view the screencast here.

Posted by mesh at 1:21 PM | Comments (1)

Reminder : Flex 2 Public Beta 2 is available

I know this is old news for most, but I just wanted to make a quick post and remind everyone that Flex 2 Public Beta 2 is available for download on labs.
This includes:

One thing that I wanted to point out is that we now have an SDK only download of the Flex Framework and command line compilers (including MXMLC). We did this to make it easy for developers on Mac and Linux to start playing with the technology, without having to first jump through hoops. We will be releasing the final version of the SDK for free for both commercial and non-commercial development.

We have also released update builds of the open source ActionScript 3 libraries.

Finally, we released a new library called FABridge that makes it easy to communicate between the Flex Framework and JavaScript.

Make sure to also check out the beta 1 to beta 2 migration guide. We did an API scrub between betas 1 and 2, so some of the API names have changed.

Check out this link to find out more information on the Flex 2 Family of technologies.

So, if you haven't already, make sure to download the new builds and check them out.

Posted by mesh at 12:26 PM | Comments (1)

March 28, 2006

Tutorial : Using JSON with Flex 2 and ActionScript 3

One of the little gems you will find in the open source ActionScript 3 libraries that we released on labs, is the JSON class found in the corelib library. This class, written for Adobe by Darron Schall, makes it super simple to both serialize and de-serialize JSON data. What is JSON you ask? From the JSON website: JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write. It is easy for machines to parse and generate. It is based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language, Standard ECMA-262 3rd Edition - December 1999. JSON is a text format that is completely language independent but uses conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many others. These properties make JSON an ideal data-interchange language. In a nutshell, JSON is a way to serialize data using JavaScript syntax. It is fairly compact, and easy to use. Furthermore, it has become increasingly popular due to the growth of AJAX applications, and the browser's native support of de-serializing JSON (via eval()). If you look on the main page of my weblog, the Reading / Doing section on the left is actually a small AJAX widget I created that shows my latests diggs, delicious bookmarks, and items added to my ta-da lists. It gets its data from a JSON feed on the server, which is periodically generated by a PHP file. So, to show how to use JSON within a Flex / Flash application, we will load the JSON feed from my site into Flash and display it in a datagrid. Nothing earth shattering, but it will show how easy it is to use JSON. I am not assuming that you know anything about Flex / ActionScript or JSON. Because of this, the tutorial will be pretty long, as I want to make sure I cover every step of the process.
You can view the completed example here. (Requires Flash Player 8.5 beta 2). First, you need to make sure you have the following installed: You can grab Flex Builder and MXMLC from labs (the MXMLC compiler is included with the Flex Builder install, and also in the SDK download (in case you are on MAC or Linux). Once you download the zip file for the corelib library, unzip it and you should see three subfolders: src, bins, docs. You can link the project against either the source, or the SWC. For this example, we will use the SWC since we don't need to edit the source code any. Once Flex Builder is install, open it and make sure that you are in the Flex Development perspective. Window > Open Perspective > Flex Development Next, make sure the navigator view is open (it is usually on the left). This view shows all of your projects and files. If the view is not open, you can open it via: Window > Show View > Navigator Right click in the navigator and select: New > Flex Project Name the Project "JSONExample" and make sure "Use default location" is checked. Then, click the "Next" button (not finish), this takes us to a screen that will allow us to add items to our class path, or to link against libraries. (you can access this at anytime, by selecting the project, and then selecting Project > Properties). Select the Libraries tab, and click Add SWC. Browser to the corelib.swc file which was including in the bin directory of the corelib zip file. Click the Finish button. The first thing we need to do is to add a datagrid to display the data. Our grid will contain two columns. One for the title, and one for the type of service (delicious, digg, tada). Make sure that the JSONExample.mxml file is open in the editor (double click it in the Navigator), and then switch to design view (click the Design button in the top left of the editor). This brings us to design view which allows us to visually layout and manipulate our components. Once you are in design view, you should see a Components view. If not, you can open it via Window > Show View > Components. This view contains all of the built in (and any custom components) that are available to the project. Select a DataGrid component from the Controls folder and drag it onto the stage. Once on the stage, resize it so that it takes up most of the space. The grid should snap to the edges when it gets close. Make sure the grid is selected then go to the Flex Properties view. It should be open on the right, but if it isn't you can open it via Window > Show Views > Flex Properties. We need to do two things here:
  1. Give the control an ID
  2. Set the layout constrains
Select the Id field at the top of the Flex Properties panel, and enter "grid". This basically gives the grid a variable name so that other controls and ActionScript can reference it. Next, scroll all the way to the bottom of the Flex Properties view to the Layout section. This will show your component with anchor points. Make sure that the following check boxes are checked: This basically tells the controls to keeps its sides the same distance from the application's sides, even if the app / windows resizes. At this point, we are ready to switch back to source view, and load the JSON data. So, switch back to source view (click the Source button in the top left of the editor). You code should now look something like this: [code] [/code] Lets add an HTTPService tag to actually load the data. Add the following tag right under the Application tag. [code] [/code] If you save this, you should get an error in the problems view (Window > Show Views > Problems): Call to a possibly undefined method 'onJSONLoad' This is ok. We just need to define the onJSONLoad event handler. But first, lets look at the code we just wrote:
  • id - Give the control a variable name so we can reference it later.
  • url - the url that points to the JSON data we are loading
  • resultFormat - the format that we want the data returned to us in. (In this case, just the raw text).
  • result - event handler that is called when the data loads.
At this point, your code should look something like this: [code] [/code] Next, we need to create a script block to define our event handler function. Add a Script tag block just below the Application tag: [code] [/code] and then inside the Script block, lets define our event handler. You script block should now look like this: [code] [/code] If you look at the API docs, ResultEvent is the type of event broadcast when the data has loaded from the service. Next, all we need to do is:
  • Get the raw JSON data from the URL
  • De-serialize it from JSON to ActionScript
  • Set the data as the dataProvider for the grid
Here is the completed function, with comments: [code] [/code] Notice that we also added some import statements to bring in the relevant classes. The actual JSON de-serialization part is pretty trivial and consists of this one line of code: [code]var arr:Array = (JSON.decode(rawData) as Array);[/code] JSON.decode returns a Object (since it doesn't know before hand what it will be de-serializing), so we have to cast the result to an Array using the "as" operator. (can't cast using Array() for legacy reasons). At this point, we only have two things left to do:
  1. Actually tell the service to load the data.
  2. Customize the DataGrid to map to the data we are passing it.
Telling the service to load the data is easy. Since we want it to load the data as soon as the app loads, we can just specify in in the creationComplete event for the app (this is called once the app has been loaded and the controls laid out). (You can think of this as the same as onload in HTML / JavaScript). We just need to add this attribute to the Application tag: [code]creationComplete="service.send()"[/code] Remember that service is the id / variable name for our HTTPService control. Basically, this says when the app has loaded and initialized, tell the HTTPService control to load its data. Finally, we need to tweak the DataGrid to show our data. In this case, we only need to tweak the columns within the DataGrid. First, remove one of the three column tags, since we only need two. Next, we need to add better column heading titles (through the headingText attribute), and map each column to a property in the data we loaded. If you look at the JSON data, you can see the following fields in each item:
  • title
  • src
  • url
  • date
For this example, we will just show the source and title. We specify this for each column through the dataField property. So, the new columns should look like this: [code] [/code] Basically, this tells the first column to use Service as the column title, and get its data from the "src" property of the loaded data. The second column gets it data from the title property. The completed code should now look like this: [code] [/code] If you debug / run your app, you should see a datagrid that contains all of the data from the JSON feed. (You can debug by clicking the little Bug icon on the toolbar, or selecting Run > Debug). If you are feeling generous, you can also easily publish your source code. Go back to Flex Builder, and select the JSONExample. Then select Project > Publish Application Source. Once you do this, re-run your application, and then right click on it and select View Source. This is a pretty simple example, but it shows how easy de-serializing JSON in ActionScript is (serialization is just as easy). You can view the completed example here. (Requires Flash Player 8.5 beta 2).
Updated : You can also view a screencast of this tutorial. Here are the links for the resources used in the tutorial: I will update the post with images a little later, and am considering doing a screencast of building the example. If you liked the tutorial, make sure to digg it. Post any questions, suggestions and / or corrections in the comments.

Posted by mesh at 11:09 AM | Comments (13)

Starting podcast : What would you like to hear?

I think I am going to start up a new podcast pretty soon. I already have an idea what I am going to do on it, but wanted to check here and see what everyone would be interested in hearing about, or who I should invite onto the podcast?

Suggestions? Post them in the comments.

Posted by mesh at 12:44 AM | Comments (9)

March 27, 2006

Nice Newsmap of MXNA posts

Check out this Newsmap of the most popular posts on MXNA. Created using the Flex 2 / ActionScript 3 beta from labs.

You can view it here.

Posted by mesh at 8:49 PM | Comments (2)

Flash Player 8.5 Public Compatibility Release

As Emmy blogged last week, we have just posted a beta version of Flash Player 8.5 targeted at testing compatibility with existing sites. As always, backwards compatibility is one of our primary goals with the Flash Player, and Player 8.5 is no different.

So, take some time to download the player, check your content, and make sure everything is working correctly. If you find issues with existing content, let us know so we can fix them.

Note, if you are already using the Flash Player 8.5 beta from labs, then you can continue to use that build and report any compatibility issues.

You can download this bits, as well as find information on where to report issues from here.

Posted by mesh at 1:22 PM | Comments (9)

New Open Source ActionScript 3 Libraries Posted to Labs

I just updated new builds of the open source ActionScript 3 API libraries that we released. The new builds have been updated to work with the beta 2 release of Flex (Flex Builder 2.0 and MXMLC). Each zip includes the following:

  • library swc
  • API documentation
  • complete source
  • complete FlexUnit test suites

The libraries available include:

  • corelib - General utility libraries as well as security hash (MD5, SHA1) and serialization (JSON) classes.
  • FlexUnit - Flex and ActionScript 3 unit testing framework
  • Flickr - Library for flickr web api.
  • Mappr - Library for Mappr web api
  • RSS and Atom libraries - RSS (all versions) and Atom APIs. Also includes generic parsers for RSS and Atom.
  • Odeo - API for searching for podcasts on Odeo.
  • YouTube - API for searching for videos on YouTube.

All of the libraries have also been released under the following open source license.

I don't think there are many new API or API changes. We did add an SHA1 class to corelibs (created by Darron Schall), and we fixed a bug with the docs so that they now correct show events.

If you have any issues with the zips or files, or suggestions for new libraries and APIs just post in the comments. Ill post more on individual libraries in separate posts.

You can find more information, as well as grab all of the libraries from here.

Posted by mesh at 12:31 PM | Comments (1)

March 26, 2006

Article on New Features in Flex 2 Beta 2 release

Eric Anderson has written a good overview of some of the new features in the Flex 2 beta 2 release that is on labs right now. This includes

  • Flex Framework 2
  • new and free Flex 2 SDK (which includes the compiler and framework)
  • ActionScript 3
  • Flex Builder 2.0
  • Flash Player 8.5

You can read the entire article here.

You can download all of the bits from labs.

Posted by mesh at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2006

Flex is Free

 

Flex is Free

 

Ok. I know that is a little annoying, but I keep seeing fundamental misunderstandings around Flex pricing.

So, just to clarify, the Flex 2 SDK, which includes the Framework, compiler, debugger, docs, etc... will cost nothing. Nada, zilch... You ill be able to build and deploy Flex 2 apps using the framework for absolutely no cost (commercial, non-commercial, semi-commercial, etc...).

Btw, we will also have a completely free version of Flex Data Services (more on that in a seperate post).

So, if you want to start playing with the Flex Framework, then you can head over to labs, and download the beta for (you guessed it) free.

Posted by mesh at 5:44 PM | Comments (13)

March 24, 2006

Screenshots : Flow : Flex 2 Mashup Application

I just posted some screenshots of an Flex 2 based application called "Flow" that Christian, Danny and myself have been working on.

Kevin showed this at FlashForward, and I showed it during the WebDU keynote. It is an application that utilizes the ActionScript 3 libraries we created and released to allow you to easily search and move through different sets of online data and media.

We had planned to release this with the recent beta 2 release, but hit a bug with the compiler, and will now be releasing it (along with all of the source) with the next public beta release.

Couple of things we were really impressed with while working with this:

  • The modular nature that the Flex Framework made it really easy for all of us to work on and debug the project at the same time.
  • Styling was for the most part much easier than we expected (mostly using CSS). We did run into a few issues though where we had to create our own skins.
  • Flex Builder made it much, much easier to learn the new apis, and develop and debug the app. It probably would have taken us three times as long to develop without Flex Builder.

The app was design by Ty Lettau of the XD team. This was the first time we worked with the XD team, and it went really well. Basically, we met with Ty and explained the app and discussed the design. He then came back to us with design specs and interaction flows, which we implemented when building the app. We have saved all of the design specs, and plan on posting those when we release the app.

You can download the Flex 2 and Flex Builder 2 betas from labs.

You can view all of the photos here.

Posted by mesh at 3:05 PM | Comments (5)

Flex beta 1 to beta 2 Migration

If you haven't already started playing with the Flex 2 public beta, make sure that you first check out the beta 1 to beta 2 changes / migration document. We did an API scrub between beta 1 and beta 2 so the names of a lot of the APIs changed. Also, make sure that you type all method returns, or else you will end up with a ton of warnings. If your method does not return any values, then type the return as void, like so: [code] public function foo():void { //dont return anything } [/code] You can view the document here. You can download the Flex 2 beta bits (Flex Builder 2, Flex Framework 2, ActionScript 3, FlashPlayer 8.5) from here.

Posted by mesh at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2006

ActionScript 3 Libs and Beta 2

Just a quick note, but we have not yet released beta 2 compatible ZIPs of the ActionScript 3 libraries that we released with beta 1. We need to track down a couple of issues before we can rebuild the zips.

This means that you cannot use the library SWCs in the beta 2 builds of MXMLC or Flex Builder. However, the actual source for the libraries have been updated to beta 2 (Flickr still has one or two issues), and thus you can grab the source, and link against that (just add to your classpath).

The libraries include:

  • RSS / ATOM
  • General Utilities / security hashes / JSON
  • Mappr
  • Flickr
  • Odeo
  • YouTube
  • FlexUnit


I will post here once the new zips are online (I am also putting a note up on the libraries page).

You can find more information on the libraries here.

You can get the library source from here.

Posted by mesh at 3:21 PM | Comments (1)

Flex / ActionScript 3 Development SDK for Mac / Linux

With the release of Flex beta 2 last week, we also added a new SDK only download. This makes it easy to download and install the SDK on Mac, Windows and Linux (no more install on Windows and copy to Mac).

While this does not provide support for Flex Builder, it does allow you to create, compile and debug your applications on Mac, Windows and Linux using your editor of choice (including Eclipse).

You can download the SDK from here.

Posted by mesh at 2:25 PM | Comments (5)

Flex 2 beta videos

I just noticed that we have uploaded some new Videos of the Flex Builder and Flex Framework engineers, demonstrating some of the new features in the beta 2 Flex release on labs.

You can find all of the videos here.

You can download the beta 2 bits of Flex Builder 2, Flex Framework, ActionScript 3 and Flash Player 8.5 from here.

Posted by mesh at 11:11 AM | Comments (5)

March 21, 2006

Google Finance : Flash / Ajax integration

Google just launched a new finance portal, and they are using the Flash / JavaScript integration kit to integrate some Flash charting and Ajax integration.

This is similar to MeasureMap's use of the kit (MeasureMap was recently acquired by Google). It is a really nice combination of Flash and Ajax, and demonstrates how each can be use in a way that takes advantage of their individual strengths.

You can check out the implementation here.

You can find more info on the Flash / JavaScript integration kit here.

Posted by mesh at 1:34 PM | Comments (1)

March 20, 2006

At Mix 06 this week

I am in Vegas for the Mix 06 conference this week. If you are here for the conference and want to hang out you can reach me at mesh@adobe.com. (I will also be at the party tonight).

Posted by mesh at 9:27 AM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2006

wish-apollo

We announced this during the keynote at FlashForward, but I wanted to make sure everyone was aware of it.

We have created a wish-apollo mailing list to allow developers to submit ideas, feature requests, and bribes to the apollo team.

wish-apollo@adobe.com

What is Apollo? Apollo is a cross platform / device runtime that will allow developers to deploy applications that leverage Flash, HTML and / or PDF to the desktop.

We are in the early stages, so now is the perfect time to send in your comments.

Posted by mesh at 2:57 PM | Comments (25)

March 15, 2006

Review of Goowy : Flash / Ajax Mail Client

Discusses a lot of the advantages from the integration of Flash / HTML / Ajax.

Read it here.

Posted by mesh at 3:16 PM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2006

Flex 2 Style Explorer is Available

The Adobe Consulting Team has posted a Flex 2 version of their Flex Style explorer.

This is an application that allows you to visually tweak the styles of the Flex components, and then get the resulting CSS to use in your application.

I just finished up working on a highly stylized application with Flex 2. While CSS / Styling support is very good in Flex 2, it can be difficult to figure out just what style does what you need. This application helps solve that problem.

You can view the application, as well as read more about styling in Flex 2 here.

Posted by mesh at 9:46 AM | Comments (3)

March 1, 2006

WebDU 2006 Keynote

I am at WebDU in Sydney all week. This is consistently one of my favorite conferences in the year, and this year's conference looks like it might be the best yet.

I gave the opening keynote this morning, which was a lot of fun, and a real honor for me. I spoke about Macromedia and Adobe joining together, and how I am excited about the opportunities it presents for the Flash Platform.

At Macromedia we always had a clear vision of where we wanted to take the platform, and what we needed to do to get there. We simply did not have all of the resources we needed to act as quickly on the vision as we needed to.

Joining up with Adobe means that the combined company now has the resources to take the Flash Platform to the next level, and create THE platform for creating next generation, cross platform rich applications and content.

This was the key theme of the keynote, and we covered the following:

  • Flash Player 8 adoption has been the fastest ever. After just 5 months we have had over 500 million successful installs (5 million a day). We are on a path to hit 50% penetration in the next couple of months, and 80% well under a year.

  • Mobile : Bill Perry shows off some new content for Flash Lite 2 and Flash cast, and announced the availability of Flash Lite 2 today.

  • FlashPlayer 8.5 / ActionScript 3 : talked about the fundamental performance increases that the new virtual machine provides, as well as the productivity improvements that AcitonScript 3 and the new APIs (e4x, regular expressions, display list api, etc...) provide for developers.

  • Flex Product line : discussed the Flex product line, and broke it down between Flex Framework (which will be released for FREE!), Flex Builder, Flash Player 8.5, and Flex Enterprise Services.

  • Flex Builder 2 - discussed the advantages of building Flex Builder on top of Eclipse platform. This gives us a solid platform to build Flex and ActionScript specific functionality on top of (gives us a head start). Gives developers a common platform to develop with across technologies (ActionScript, Flex, ColdFusion, PHP, JavaScript, etc..).

  • Built an MP3 player within Flex Builder using the Flex framework (took about 5 minutes). (App was originally created by Sho). I love this demo because it really shows off how easy Flex Builder and the Flex framework makes it to create, layout, style and program applications. I am not sure if this is on labs yet, but I will post to it once it is.

  • Announced the new open source ActionScript 3 libraries that we released. These include APIs for JSON serialization / de-serialization, Flickr, Mappr, RSS / ATOM, Odeo (podcasts), YouTube (video) and a bunch more. These are currently in beta and you can download them from labs. (I will post more on these later).

  • Showed a Mashup app that Christian, Danny and I built over the past couple of days that use the new APIs. The app, named "flow" allows you to create stream of conscious flows between different services and media types. We will post the code for this in the next couple of weeks, and we will try to get the app on line soon.

  • Discussed Apollo. This is a next generation platform we are working on for deploying Flash / HTML based applications to the desktop. Apollo Will provide all of the desktop APIs and functionality you would expect from a desktop application, while allowing developers to leverage the technologies the are already familiar with (Flash / Flex / JavaScript / HTML / Ajax). And yes, it will be cross platform, developers have 100% control over application control (not running in some wrapper / shell), and you will be able to create applications using HTML / JavaScript / Ajax just like you will be able to with ActionScript / Flash / Flex.

Anyways, it was a lot of fun and seemed to go well. I will be here the rest of the week (in a session on User Experience right now) hanging out in sessions or in the xbox room (Halo anyone?). Make sure to say hi.

Posted by mesh at 4:27 PM | Comments (11)