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Archives
May 31, 2006
Have you registered for Adobe Developer Week?
Have you registered for the Adobe Developer Week yet? If not, then you should register now. There are a limited number of spaces that we can have in each session, and some of them are very, very close to filling up. Overall, the online conference is 75% full, and it will likely be full by the time the conference comes around.
If you have other Adobe products that you're interested in that we haven't covered in this session, please comment in this blog and let me know what else you'd like to see. We've had a lot of comments thus far, and are using these to try and drive online Breeze sessions for this summer.
May 29, 2006
Join me at the Boston PHP User Group This Week
I'm presenting Flex to the Boston PHP User Group on Thursday. Come on out and join us, I should have some prizes to give away, as well as some cool demos showing Flex / PHP integration. We're starting at 6:30, and it should last about 2 hours or so. Register (for free) here. The location for the meeting is the IBM/Lotus building on 1 Rogers Street in Cambridge , MA. Link to Yahoo Map here.
May 26, 2006
Drupal with Flex Using Flex / Ajax Bridge
I'm a big fan of Drupal, and one of the things that I've wanted to do lately is create a better UI to some of their elements. In particular, the watchdog module that shows you all the activity in your site really annoys me. To sort the elements you need to refresh every page.
Ever wonder what it would look like to use Flex components instead of an HTML table? Well, probably something like this:
May 23, 2006
Google to distribute video ads with Flash
In case you missed the announcement, Google will now be deploying video advertising to sites using Flash for the video format. A small item to be sure in a hectic news day, but something to keep in mind when you're thinking of the format for your next Internet application. If you take a look at the top web 2.0 video sites, you'll see that most of them are offering video in Flash format. And now, Google joins them as well. This should mean a few things:
1) The rate at which the most recent Flash player is being distributed should increase, with these leading edge companies driving quick adoption of the most recent version of Flash player.
2) Large companies are validating the fact that Flash is the most widely adopted format for distributing video (and that the number of people with "Flash blocker" software is so low that its irrelevant)
3) With Flash video use expanding, more people will look at Flash as much more than a way to make simple animations, which should help the use of Flash as a delivery mechanism for the next generation of rich Internet applicaitons.
May 19, 2006
Adobe Online Developer Conference
Adobe will be hosting a week long, online developer conference in June of this year, focusing on providing information about Adobe Flex, LiveCycle, ColdFusion, ActionScript, RIAs and the Adobe Engagement Platform. The Breeze sessions start on June 12th and run to Friday, June 16th. We will be recording all of them as well, so you'll be able to watch them if you can't make it live, but if you can, join us as we launch our first combined (Adobe + MM) online event.
I'm really excited to be a part of this. Some of the sessions are giving an overview of the products, but others, like Building Applications with LiveCycle and Flex, will showcase some of the early integration work that we've completed to date. I think this is a great idea to show off all the Adobe products, engage the community in intelligent discussions after some brief presentations, and show off the use of Breeze for large scale meetings like this.
I'm interested in your feedback on the sessions we've decided on. What do you think? Are we missing some topics that you'd like to see covered?
Cool feature in Yahoo Maps Beta
Have you seen the beta for Yahoo Maps? Try finding a location, then right click on the map, select "Drive from here", then select another location and right click and select "Drive to here"...
Best use of right click in a flash app. Ever. :)
May 15, 2006
Passing Parameters from Flex to AMFPHP
I had an email the other day from a developer who was wondering how to pass PHP parameters via ActionScript. The answer is very simple... Let's take a look at some sample code from my PHP Gallery / Flex project:
public function getPhotosForAlbum( AlbumID:int ) : void
{
gateway = new RemotingConnection( "http://localhost/amfphp/gateway.php" );
gateway.call( "embededGallery.getPhotos", new Responder(onResultGetPhotosForAlbum, onFault), AlbumID);
}
You can see in this ActionScript code that the AlbumID is being passed to the "getPhotos" AMFPHP call. So easy, just add the parameters to the end of the RemotingConnection call, as a 3rd parameter.
Hope that helps some of you out!
LiveCycle Developer Toolbox Released, Again
Today we released the Adobe LiveCycle Developer Toolbox today. For those of you who have been following my blog or Adobe LiveCycle, then you'll know that this is the second time that we've released this. I think this time its up to stay. :) Last time we had some problems with the toolbox, which we've now fixed, so if you installed the last one, you should install this one instead.
If you're at all interested in LiveCycle, then this is really important for you. This one file allows you to extract a completely pre-configured setup of LiveCycle, which historically has been more difficult than we would have liked. We do plan on updating the toolbox on a regular basis, in step with updates to LiveCycle software. If you've got a proof of concept type application that you want to get up and running quickly, the toolbox is your best bet.
You do need to be a member of the Adobe Enterprise Developer Program to download and run the developer toolbox. Membership is available in the Adobe online store for $1495 per year or 1450 euros, depending on your location.
May 12, 2006
Heading to Mesh and JavaOne
I'm travelling all next week to Toronto and San Francisco. If you'd like to get together for drinks or snacks, shoot me an email or comment in this blog. In Toronto I'll be attending the first Canadian Mesh conference and discussing web 2.0 with all the other attendees, and listening to some great speakers. At JavaOne I'll be manning the booth for Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon, so if you're there, drop by and say hi. We'll be showing off LiveCycle and Flex software and will be happy to answer any questions.
A Flash / Flex Front End to PHP Gallery
A while back, I posted a message on the Gallery forums that I was working on a Flex application that acted as a front end to Gallery. Well, I think I hit a nerve with some people, because I've gotten emails about this every day, asking where the code was, how to help, what it looked like etc...
Well, now that Flex Beta 3 is out, I figured I better spend some time updating the application to get it working. First off, this is a very simple example. If you don't know PHP or Flex, then this isn't for you. This is something to look at and then improve on or use an inspiration for a better solution. Its a very simple application: a drop down listbox that gets a list of Albums from Gallery, and then a datagrid that shows off thumbnails of the photos, depending on which album is selected. I chose to build a completely Flex based application. Others may choose to use the Flex / Ajax bridge to create a Flex theme for Gallery and build the Flash front end using JavaScript. Its up to you.
Here's a screenshot, showing an album with 2 pictures of my cats, Gus and George.
Here's the source files in a .zip file. Use them as you like. The only thing I ask is that if you build something cool with Gallery and Flex, let me know, because many people are interested in this.
Here's what you need to do (I'm assuming you have Apache, PHP and MySQL going already).
1. Download Flex Builder from Adobe Labs.
2. Download AMFPHP from AMFPHP.org.
3. Download and install Gallery from Gallery.
4. Add some albums and photos to Gallery.
5. Extract AMFPHP to your website. I put mine at http://localhost/amfphp/
6. Extract the .zip fileand put embededGallery.php into the services/ directory in your AMFPHP install. Mine was at http://localhost/amfphp/services/embededGallery.php
7. In embededGallery.php, change http://localhost/gallery2 to point to your install of Gallery (I don't understand the Gallery APIs very well... I thought that I could create a full URL to the Gallery images, but it didn't work for me).
8. Create a new Flex project. I called mine FlexGallery.
9. Add FlexGallery.mxml, RemotingConnection.as and Thumbnail.mxml to the root of your FlexGallery application.
10. In FlexGallery.mxml, change http://localhost/amfphp/gateway.php to point to your installation of AMFPHP.
11. Right click on FlexGallery.mxml, choose Build as Flex Application. It should launch a browser that will play your Flex app. It will connect to your local install of Gallery and get the list of albums. Select an album, then your photos should appear below.
12. Profit.
Hopefully this helps out a few people. Again, its very simple. You should use this as inspiration to build a better Flex front end to Gallery.
May 11, 2006
Wondering About Apollo?
I've talked to more than a few people over the past few months about Adobe Apollo... If you haven't looked it up, CNET's News.com.com.com.com has a piece running now that gives an overview of what Apollo will be. The key parts:
"Apollo is client-based software that will run Flash applications separately from a browser, whether online or offline, he said."... "Microsoft and Java specialists are also building slicker Web development tools. But Adobe remains the incumbent when it comes to front-end design, said Peter O'Kelly, an analyst at the Burton Group."... "Apollo is designed to give developers a way to create applications that can render Flash animations as well as HTML and Acrobat files (PDF). That approach preserves the benefits of the Web but allows room for programs that can't be included now, Lynch said."
May 10, 2006
E-Business Application's Demo of Flex / Ajax Bridge
Alexei from e-Business Applications has posted a screencast that shows off integrating Flex with their Ajax based data grid. They're using Flex for the charting component, while the grid is populated with data from an Ajax call. Cool use of Flex and Ajax integration using the Flex / Ajax bridge.
May 09, 2006
Adobe Flex 3 Renames HTTPService Result
In case you haven't noticed, Adobe released the third beta of Flex Builder yesterday on the labs.adobe.com website. For those of you who are developing Flash applications with PHP backend systems and are following my tutorials, you should know that the result property of the HTTPService has been renamed to lastResult. So, in my previous tutorials where you were sending data to the PHP backend and then returning straight HTML, the datagrid may have looked something like this:
<mx:DataGrid id="dgUserRequest" x="22" y="128" dataProvider="{userRequest.result.users.user}">
Now, it needs to be:
<mx:DataGrid id="dgUserRequest" x="22" y="128" dataProvider="{userRequest.lastResult.users.user}">
I will work with the web team to get my article updated on the Labs wiki.
By the way, if you are working with Flex or Flashand a PHP backend, you should be using AMFPHP instead of encoding data in XML. That way you can transfer objects directly from PHP right into ActionScript. Check out my tutorial on how to do that here.
May 03, 2006
Flex Developer Derby Submissions
I'm happy to see that we've now got a page that lists the entries into the Flex Developer Derby. Now everyone can see what the competition looks like.
May 02, 2006
A Final Reminder - Learn More About LiveCycle 7.1
We're all set to go for tomorrow's online session with Product Managers from LiveCycle Print, Forms and Designer. They'll go over some of the changes in LiveCycle 7.1, including product and performance enhancements, and then answer your questions. The session should last between one hour and an hour and a half. The URL to join the session is adobe.breezecentral.com/r90735129/ Feel free to join that about 15 minutes before the session starts, which is at 12:00 Noon ET tomorrow. The session will also be recorded, so you can watch it at a later time, if time doesn't allow you to join us live. If you have any questions you want to ask, but can't make it, feel free to leave them as comments in this blog.
May 01, 2006
New Adobe LiveCycle Developer Center
Today the web team took the wraps off of the new Adobe.com, but more importantly to LiveCycle developers was the new Adobe LiveCycle Developer Center page.
There were some major changes that we made for this new website. First of all, the product specific developer centers are all gone, replaced by one overall LiveCycle Developer Center. This better reflects our current product strategy and future vision. Many of you are building solutions with LiveCycle Workflow, and integrating the various LiveCycle pieces into that overall application. It was confusing to know whether to go to the LiveCycle Workflow developer center for information on Workflow and say LiveCycle Forms, or just go to the LiveCycle Forms developer center. Plus, you had to check out two pages to see what new content had been posted. Now, one simple page will get you all the information about all the LiveCycle software, which should make things much easier to find.
As we have over the past 3 months, the page will continue to be updated every week, hopefully on Monday mornings, so visit it regularly if you haven't been.
Some things still need to be worked on. For example, we haven't tied assets from the Adobe Enterprise Developer Program to "Your Account" on the top of each page. That will take a bit more work.
However, overall, I think this is a big plus for LiveCycle developers, and I'm anxious to hear your comments.
If you have questions about the overall Adobe developer center changes, this FAQ from Craig Goodman may help you. Jonathan Wall also gives a great overview of Adobe's developer community, including events that we're hosting or attending, how to engage our team etc... in this article.