AIR Window Explorer: I Owe Daniel Rinehart A Beer
Daniel R., if you are listening, I know that you don't know me, but I owe you a beer.
This afternoon as I was working on my 360Flex presentation and example code I became very, very frustrated with NativeWindow and Window and all the various similarities and differences in the options for creating and manipulating this much-used feature in AIR. So I thought, "Let's Google this bugger and see if there is a chart out there that can help."
No charts, but I was intrigued by a link to Daniel's site: AIR Window Explorer. You've seen the Flex Component Explorer and the Flex Style Explorer, well, Daniel's app is in the same vein. Decide on your Window options, create and open the window. Click on the "Show Code" button, and you will see the code used to create the Window. Nice! This application isn't perfect, mind you, but it does give you a a good idea of what you can do with the Window and NativeWindow classes in AIR.
So, for saving me an hour (and a lot of frustration) today, I owe Daniel R. a beer. Not a crappy beer. A really great beer.
Hopefully Daniel will be attending 360Flex in August so I can repay him properly.
Comments (1) | 
Print | 
Send |
del.icio.us
| 
Digg It!
| 
Linking Blogs713 Views
360Flex Atlanta + Adobe = Special Event
Yeah, if you live here in Atlanta you should already be attending this event because you're attending 360Flex Atlanta right? It's a great conference focused on your favorite RIA platform? All for only $480.00 (and you get to sleep in your own bed and miss out on those tiny airline seats with no leg room).
Well, if you can't gnaw off the business-hours ankle chain your employer welded to your desk, then here's your chance to mingle with people just like you! 360Flex has invited members of the Atlanta design and development community to a little get-together being held at Stats Sports Bar not far from where 360Flex Atlanta is being held. Yeah, that does mean adult beverages. Yummy.
So come out and see what's up. But you need to RSVP. Get your details here, here or here, but RSVP.
Comments (0) | Print | Send |
del.icio.us
| Digg It!
| Linking Blogs846 Views
Ben Forta, AIR and Flex: So Popular, Atlanta Had to Move Their Event
Ben Forta, AIR and Flex: So Popular, Atlanta Had to Move Their Event
As an update to my previous post, the Flex and AIR Pre-release Tour's Atlanta stop received so many RSVPs that the meeting site needed to be changed to accomidate the audience.
If you are planning to attend, please use this page for directions to the event.
I look forward to seeing everyone there.
Comments (0) | Print | Send |
del.icio.us
| Digg It!
| Linking Blogs1052 Views
Atanta Stop for the Flex and AIR Pre-release Tour with Adobe's Ben Forta
UPDATED: 2008 - 01 - 18
Flex 3 and AIR are getting close to launch and in preparation, Ben Forta from the Adobe Flex/AIR product team is traveling to select cities to show off the great new features and help prepare us for this exciting launch.
Flex 3 is a feature-packed release, adding new UI components like the advanced datagrid and improved CSS capabilities; powerful tooling additions like refactoring; and extensive testing tools including memory and performance profiling, plus the addition of the automated testing framework to Flex Builder.
Adobe AIR is game-changing in so many ways, extending rich applications to the desktop, enabling access to the local file system, system tray, notifications and much more. Now you can write desktop applications using the same skills that you've been already using to create great web apps including both Flex and AJAX.
Don't miss out on the opportunity to see and hear about this highly anticipated release of Flex 3 and AIR during this special pre-release tour. Plus, in addition to giving away some one of a kind Flex/AIR branded schwag, we will also be raffling off a copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional (pending availability) and a full commercial copy of CS3 Web Premium at this event!
Event Information:
This event is on January 22, 2008 from 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
IMPORTANT: THE LOCATION HAS BEEN CHANGED!
South Terrace at Perimeter
115 Perimeter Center Pl NE
Atlanta, GA 30346
Driving Directions
RSVP
Comments (0) | Print | Send |
del.icio.us
| Digg It!
| Linking Blogs890 Views
Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5? Get your Official Adobe CS3 Leopard Support FAQ's Here
From what I've been hearing, the only people who are having big problems with using Adobe products with the newly released Mac OS X v10.5, codenamed Leopard, are ColdFusion developers. Find out how your favorite Creative Suite product performed in the Adobe CS3 Leapard Support FAQ (pdf). As the document looks today, Adobe says they will have updates in December to make Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, After Effects CS3 Professional, Encore CS3, and Soundbooth CS3 fully compatible with Leopard. Adobe Acrobat Professional will also receive an update in January 2008 to make it compatible as well. Products pre-CS3 may or may not work.
The reported problems with ColdFusion are that the server will not start after the update, and will not start after a clean install on Leopard. ColdFusion installs, but will not start and will log errors on start-up. You can follow Ray Camden's blog post and comments here. I wish I could be more helpful. It is completely understandable that ColdFusion doesn't work properly as Leopard updates a bunch of server-oriented software. And with fact that every Adobe developer and manager that I saw at MAX 2007 was carrying a Mac Book Pro makes me believe that Adobe will either provide a patch for the problem soon or at least give everyone the heads up on what we can do to make ColdFusion work on Leopard.
The AIR product isn't even out officially, with the second public beta released on the Adobe Labs site. AIR application users (and developers) are warned by Mike Chambers on his blog:
"I pinged the team and they they told me that they are currently doing some testing, and havent run into any major issues yet. However, we are seeing some reports of issues from developers online, so if you are currently working on an AIR app, you might want to wait a little while to upgrade until we have more information."
Sound advice, Mike. Sadly, most of the people who will be disappointed with Adobe are the very people who could not wait for their pre-ordered Leopard package was dropped at their door by FedEx so that they could update every Mac they own. (And, yes, I am jealous because I have no Mac of my own.)
Comments (0) | Print | Send |
del.icio.us
| Digg It!
| Linking Blogs1923 Views
Congrats to Local Award Winners Kenny Bunch and Alan Queen
I think that Kenny Bunch is an amazing guy. But, let me just say that somebody needs to promote him more because he is too damn shy to do it himself.
I was quite pleased to hear that Adult Swim received an Honorable Mention in this year's MAX Awards for their Adult Swim Interactive Video Commentary. What struck me as odd was that I know who did a lot of that work: Kenny Bunch and his company, Dreamsocket. And although the winner of the video category, HBO Voyeur, was great, I hope that Adobe, the MAX Awards Judges and the industry at large is paying attention: in my opinion, the interactive video experience that Kenny Bunch put together for Adult Swim is the future. Keep up the good work, Kenny.
Meanwhile, Alan Queen won the Wild Card category in the the Adobe AIR Derby with his entry Digimix, an AIR application that allows you to create and mix audio files. When Alan first showed this application at the Atlanta stop of the onAIR Bus Tour back in August he made the entire Adobe team speechless. Well done, Alan.
Comments (1) | Print | Send |
del.icio.us
| Digg It!
| Linking Blogs1057 Views
AIR Tip: Using showFlexChrome to Properly Skin the Employee Directory Example Application
AIR Tip: Using showFlexChrome to Properly Skin the Employee Directory Example Application
While I was preparing to present an overview of AIR at last week's Adobe Flash Platform User Group I started looking at the example application Employee Directory. After downloading the source code one of the first things I noticed was that the application had an application skin (which looked to me a lot like a Mac OS X skin) and I could not figure out why it was there. It didn't make a lot of sense to me that an application that looked like it did should have no "systemChrome" at all.
Today, while working on a different application I ran across the same problem and discovered a new feature in the beta (I believe) that didn't get placed into the source code for the example. I found the attribute showFlexChrome by looking at the WindowedApplication entry in the livedocs. Please note, although this is considered to be a style attribute, there is no CSS inheritance so you can't just place it into your CSS file.
Here's where I found the clue that made me check the language reference:
"systemChrome If you set this attribute to standard, system chrome is displayed, and the application has no transparency. If you set it to none, no system chrome is displayed. When using the Flex WindowedApplication component, the component applies its custom chrome."
I would suggest that something like this be added to that paragraph:
"When using the Flex WindowedApplication component, the showFlexChrome attribute can be used to control the Flex custom chrome. Setting showFlexChrome to false in conjunction with setting your root context's systemChrome attribute to false and transparent to true will display no system chrome at all.
Inside the Employee Directory example application's WindowedApplication I added the attribute showFlexChrome and set it to false. After adding this option the application looked and worked great.
If you are in Atlanta and would like to learn more about AIR, John Mason will be presenting "New Features in Flex 3 and AIR" on Wednesday, July 18.
By the way, I really like the look and feel for the livedocs for AIR.
Comments (1) | Print | Send |
del.icio.us
| Digg It!
| Linking Blogs1608 Views
Adobe Integrated Runtime Bus Tour Comes to Atlanta
In case you don't know, Adobe® AIR™ (formerly known as "Apollo") was released for prerelease on the Adobe Labs Web site this past Monday. AIR, which stands for "Adobe Integrated Runtime", is a product that will allow people to leverage their Flex applications to run on the desktop, as well as to create new desktop experiences with Flex. To use AIR, you will need to also download the Flex Builder 3 Public Beta which contains the AIR extensions that allow you to build for the AIR runtime.
Now, if you are like a lot of the people I know, you'll be saying to me "Leif, do I look like I have the time to beta test today?" Well, if that is the case then I have two items of interest for you.
1) The Adobe Integrated Runtime Bus Tour
The Adobe Integrated Runtime Bus Tour that will be heading to Atlanta on Tuesday, August 14. Since this is a big event, and Adobe has invested heavily in this tour, we will probably use this event as our August meetings for the Adobe User Group of Atlanta and the Adobe Flash Platform User Group of Atlanta.
You must register for this event!
To give you a couple of details about this event, they are holding this event at the Fabulous Fox Theatre, which is a very nice place to hold an event.
You will have four options for attending: day sessions (10:00 AM - 5:30 PM), evening sessions (6:00 PM - 9:00 PM) and all-day attendence (10:00 AM - 9:00 PM). The agenda includes Adobe employees Mike Downy, Mike Chambers, Kevin Hoyt, Daniel Dura and Christian Cantrell — all of whom are powerhouses inside Adobe.
2) AIR Preview at the Adobe Flash Platform User Group of Atlanta July Meeting
If you can't wait until August 14 and are interested in getting an overview of what you can do with AIR you could attend next month's meeting (July 10) of the Adobe Flash Platform User Group of Atlanta. I'll be showing off some of the basics of what you can do with AIR and show the development process of a simple AIR application from beginning to deployment.
I'll be updating the AFPUG site as I complete my presentation. Please RSVP.
Comments (1) | Print | Send |
del.icio.us
| Digg It!
| Linking Blogs1084 Views
