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Posts Tagged ‘AIR’

License your Flex and AIR applications

If you need an easy and affordable way to secure your application against license sharing and ‘keygen cracks’, Zarqon just may be the answer you’ve been looking for.

A good friend of mine, Cliff Hall, is most known for the PureMVC framework which was inspired by his his lack of love for the Cairngorm framework. Well, Cliff apparently was irritated by the inability to create licensed products with Flex and AIR too, so he did something about it. Zarqon. He has created very useful tool for creating a licensed Flex and/or AIR applications. How you implement your app is totally up to you, Zarqon just helps you easily issue and validate licenses.

Are you a software skeptic, me too! No worries, there a free 30 day trial license that will allow you to fully evaluate the product and make a decision about whether it’s right for you.

It is now in “beta”, but if you begin implementation of a Zarqon-licensed product within the trial period that you plan to launch, let him know and you just may get a free license. Even if you do have to buy a license, it won’t set you back but $25.

I’m going to start my testing immediately and I’ll let you know my  thoughts later.

You can read all about it and sign up for the Beta at http://zarqon.net

Unemployed? Learn Flex!

Adobe Flex Builder 3 software is currently available for free for software developers who are affected by the current economic condition and are currently unemployed.

https://freeriatools.adobe.com/learnflex/

Of course there are three restrictions. You must attest that you are:

  1. Unemployed
  2. Using it for personal use
  3. Not using it for commercial or production use

UPDATE: The program was suspended, the last I looked, due to the high volume of applicants. But keep checking. You never know.

Use AMF with JavaScript in Adobe AIR

I’ve been working with Adobe Flex since its beta and have been a long time believer in using Action Message Format (AMF) as the communication protocol. I’ve also been working with Adobe AIR since its beta, but had only used AMF with Flex-based AIR applications. Until now…

I was working on a JavaScript-based AIR application (some refer to this as an AJAX-based application) recently where they wanted to use AMF, but didn’t want to hide a SWF in it to facilitate the AMF communication. Since there are other Flash Remoting gateways available, like openAMF and AMFPHP, it would be great if I could just use a JavaScript library to do the communication with those gateways.

If you look at examples in Flash that do this type of connection, you’ll notice that they use a NetConnection class. Guess what?! That class is also available in the JavaScript API for AIR. Yes, its that simple!

So with a simple refactoring of the same code from Flash, I was able to get my JavaScript-based AIR application to communicate with a Flash Remoting gateway. This example assumes you have installed a Flash Remoting gateway somewhere, that you replace [my_flash_remoting_gateway] with the gateway root and you’ve created a class with a method that you can invoke.

<html>
<head>
<title>JavaScript-based Flash Remoting</title>
<link href="sample.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
<script type="text/javascript" src="lib/air/AIRAliases.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="lib/air/AIRSourceViewer.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function doAMF()
{
var netConnection = new air.NetConnection();
netConnection.connect("http://[my_flash_remoting_gateway]");
var responder = new air.Responder(onComplete, onFail);
netConnection.call("HelloWorld", responder);
}
function onComplete(results)
{
alert( results.length );
}

function onFail(results)
{
alert(results)
}

</script>
</head>

<body>
<h3>Get data over AMFPHP</h3>

<ul>
<li>Has access to AIR APIs:
<input type="button" onclick="doAMF()" value="Make AMF call"/>
</li>
</ul>

</body>

</html>

Here is an example class in PHP:

<?php
class HelloWorld
{
function HelloWorld()
{
$this->methodTable = array
(
"say" => array
(
"access" => "remote",
"description" => "Pings back a message"
)
);
}
}
?>

Denver Flex Users Group

Our new site is RIA5280.org and is growing fast!

The Denver Adobe Flex UG has been meeting for a year and a half now with great success. We have had great topics, great speakers and great involvement from the community.

We”ve taken the next step in expanding our community by revamping the website. We are using a free service from CollectiveX for group sites. It has almost all of the features we would like to have as a group and it”s free. They also have a la carte services for low fees.

Our next meeting is Jan 8th, 2008 where we”ll have Jeff Barr from Amazon out to speak with us and show off some of the cool things Amazon is doing.

We also have a special Adobe AIR presentation on Jan 21, 2008. Adobe is preparing to launch their newest product that allows web developers to build desktop applications. This meeting should not be missed!

I look forward to seeing you all there.

Getting Started with Flex

When teaching or consulting Flex, you will often be asked for examples of how to do “xyz”. Here are few links that will help.Flex and CF:
Integrate Flex with CF security

File Upload:
File Upload in Flex/Flash in Internet Explorer

File Upload Using Flex/Central/Java

Architecture Ideas:
Cairngorm and an associated Breezo that will help explain the design patterns.

Adobe AIR Training

Just wanted to let everyone know, the Adobe certified AIR course that I have been building is almost ready. It will be offered as a beta class until the full product release. AIR 1.0 will be released on… ;)

This class is for those who already know Flex and ActionScript, basically you should have experience with classes and creating event listeners.

I’ve taught it at Adobe MAX in Chicago and will teach it at Adobe MAX in Barcelona. The reviews have been very positive (the last one ended with an ovation).

You should see the class appear on Adobe training partner sites later this year.

AIR Training is coming

My blog has been quiet lately due to a number of reasons, but the #1 reason is that I”m working on the AIR: Building Desktop Applications with Flex course for Adobe. Having been an instructor for many years and a developer for even longer, this is a great opportunity for me to give back to the community. And for those of you who have seen me in action, know that I do a lot of giving.

You can attend the first ever AIR class at Adobe MAX in Chicago and the second at MAX Europe in Barcelona. These are a pre- and post-conference course for which you can register.
I”m really excited about the course and I”m sure you will be too!
Speaking of giving, in addition to being at the MAX conferences, I”ll also be at AJAXWorld Expo in Santa Clara in September.

Top 10 Reasons to Get Flex Builder 3

If I were to create a Top 10 List, which I don”t, this would definitely be my list for “Why you have to upgrade to Flex Builder 3.” I actually got this list from Ted Patrick and enhanced it a little.

Top 10 List:

  1. With the new code model, search, refactoring, auto-complete you will code 3X faster
  2. The application Profiler will allow you to see and tune memory and performancern
    • You will learn so much about coding in AS3 from this it”s unreal
  3. Compiles faster!
  4. Maintain projects across SDKs, 2.01, 3.0, and onward (YES!!!)
  5. You will be able to build AIR applications and debug them seamlesslyrn
    • Easily turn Flex applications into Desktop applications
  6. You will be able to work with Web Services (SOAP) using strong typing
  7. Get new advanced data visualization components (AdvancedDataGrid, TreeDataGrid) and hierarchical data providers
    • Components that we had to build in the past
  8. Enhanced design view for pixel perfect layout and advanced constraintsrn
    • Coders, don”t knock this. Try it out and you”ll see the benefits real quick
  9. Skinning and styling from Illustrator, Fireworks, Flash, PhotoShoprn
    • This is awesome!! Quickly and easily bring comps in directly from the design tools
  10. Seamless support for Flex Framework Caching RSLs ( smaller FX swf files )

    11. Now if that”s not convincing enough, you don”t know Flex!

CFSWITCH Performance Issue in CFMX 7

You will find this on a couple blogs, but since I”ve given presentations on ColdFusion performance since the Allaire days, I thought I should share.

My friends at webapper discovered an issue with CFSWITCH under load where the expression was a string.

In my presentations, I often encouraged the use of CFSWITCH over using if/elseif logic. This practice was a result of load testing applications with SilkPerformer. Under load, an application will show its true colors.

I still do recommend this practice, but now with a caveat. It has been found that string expressions in the CFSWITCH tag do not perform as well as numerics. Therefore, you should try to make these expressions numerics or evaluate if changing to CFIF/CFELSEIF would help your application.

Thanks Daryl for an excellent find!