Flex Developer's Journal News Desk covers all the technologies that undergird the Adobe Engagement Platform, including AIR, Flex, Studio, Creative Suite, Contribute, Acrobat, LiveCycle, CF, and Flash Lite.
The F2F meeting of
OpenAjax Alliance at NYC
on March 21st worked out
really well in my
oppinion. As a result of
the last F2F meeting in
October 2007, we formed a
new task force called
'Runtime Advocacy Task
Force' at OpenAjax. The
goal of Runtime Task
Force is to collect a
'wish list'
Apple CEO Steve Jobs may
think Flash is junk, but
Adobe says it's creating
a media player for the
iPhone anyway using the
software tools Apple just
released for third-party
use. Once built, Adobe
intends to distribute the
thing through Apple's
iTunes store, according
to what Adobe CEO
During the Q&A period
after one of my sessions
at the iPhone Developer
Summit last Thursday,
there was someone there
from Microsoft
Competetive Intelligence.
She asked myself and some
other folks who were
lingering nearby to
describe, in our unbiased
opinions, what we thought
was wrong
If you are evaluating
technologies for your
next rich Internet
financial application, do
not miss this one day
event 'Flex on Wall
Street' that will take
place in New York City on
April 18, 2008.
CommuniGate Systems, the
leader in carrier-class
Rich Media Internet
Communications, today
announced the
availability of Pronto!
2.0, the latest version
of its powerful, yet
lightweight Unified
Communications user
interface framework built
with Adobe® Flex® 3,
deployed in the browser w
This session will provide
attendees with an
overview of the iPhone
SDK, including discussion
of the App Store, Apple's
planned distribution
channel for SDK
applications. Keep in
mind that the contents of
the SDK and experiences
while using it are
covered under NDA, so be
prepared for m
Verb Exchange announced a
deal with interface
design specialist,
Nitobi, to develop the
desktop and web
interfaces for Tabrio, a
new way to stay in touch
with anyone, anywhere.
Verb Exchange and Nitobi
will work together to
enhance the Tabrio user
experience, making Tabrio
feature-rich
The work of Billy
Hoffman, lead security
researcher for SPI
Dynamics
(www.spidynamics.com),
which was purchased by
Hewlett-Packard last
year, has been featured
in Wired, Make magazine,
Slashdot, G4TechTV, and
in various other journals
and Web sites. Today
though he is in full flow
at t
These days RIA tools are
created mainly to two
groups of people: Web
Developers and UI
Designers. The second
group is represented by
creative people who can
design screens but are
not programmers. Big guys
are trying to come with
tools that would bring
together these two groups
of peop
Google said Tuesday that
it's going mobile with
its Google Gears
technology, the stuff
that's supposed to let
web-based apps run
unconnected to the web,
beginning with Windows
Mobile 5 and 6 devices
ahead of its own nascent
Android platform. Same
day, Microsoft came out
and made a vict
IBM says it's found a way
to make mashups secure
enough for business.
Because of inherent
browser insecurity,
mashups aren't really
viable for widespread
business adoption. But
what's a little thing
like viability compared
to the pressure of
keeping up with the
Joneses - in this case t
Sun Microsystems, a
creator and industry
leading advocate of
emerging technologies, is
revolutionizing and
redefining system-wide
management of rich,
standards-compliant,
Internet applications for
the next generation Web.
A singular vision -- 'The
Network Is The Computer'
-- guides Sun
Acquia has yet to price
its maintenance and
support subscriptions -
there should be a variety
of SLAs - but they're
supposed to include an
electronic update
notification system code
named Spokes for updates
that have been reviewed
for security and
compatibility and are
supported by Acq
Adobe's release last week
of its AIR 1.0 (Adobe
Integrated Runtime)
cross-platform platform
got plenty of ink. Much
of it missed the point.
And that's
understandable, given
that we are tumbling into
the next generation of
everything all at once
right now - SaaS and SOA,
Web 2.0, Blu-ra
These are the notes from
Adobe Education Designer
and Developer Conference
that Adobe put together
for people who are
teaching Adobe software
at various universities
around the country.
ILOG announced that its
graphical visualization
offering for Adobe Flex,
ILOG Elixir, is shipping
with feature and sales
channel enhancements.
ILOG also announced that
the product will be made
available to Independent
Software Vendors (ISV)
for OEM use through
ILOG's sales and support
Adobe greased up Monday
for its wrestling match
with Microsoft over who
gets to call the shots in
the all-important rich
Internet apps (RIA)
department, that blurry
future where web
applications and desktop
applications start
looking and acting like
each other. It finally
released its
I'm currently creating
many small applications
using AIR and Flex 3.
Most of them are
prototypes with the
purposes of showing AIR
features and the quantity
of code is small (600
lines at most). In this
context it does not make
much sense to use a
framework or architecture
such as Cairn
ILOG. a member of the
OpenAjax Alliance,
announced that its
graphical visualization
offering for Adobe Flex,
ILOG Elixir, is shipping
with feature and sales
channel enhancements.
ILOG Elixir, available
now, was warmly received
by the Adobe Flex
community during its Beta
period.
Eighteen months ago Flex
2 was released, which
literally changed the way
people think of rich
Internet applications.
Since then lots of things
have happened in the Flex
community. In 2007 Adobe
announced that Flex will
go open source, and now
it has happened. All
ActionScript 3 and Ja
In order to create a
multi user Flex
application, you can take
advantage of one of the
features of LiveCycle
Data Services: the
Messaging Services. The
Messaging Services allows
you to connect your Flex
application to a message
destination and
send/receive messages to
it from other cli
If I could pass just one
Flex advice that would
be: Use Data Transfer
Objects. Use custom Data
Transfer Objects to pass
data between server and
Flash tiers of your Flex
application. Do not use
XML. Yes, I know that XML
cool. Do not use raw
objects.
Question: What do AOL,
eBay, NASDAQ, The New
York Times Company,
Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and
Family Group's Nick.com,
Sharp Corporation and
others have in common?
The answer is that've all
launched pioneering Rich
Internet Applications
deployed on Adobe AIR, to
coincide with the
official
I am always being told
off by i-technologists
for quoting Picasso as
having said that
computers are useless.
But I still love his
reasoning: 'Because they
can only give you
answers.' Picasso, like
AJAXWorld Magazine, liked
questions. So we thought
we would share with you
what some of t
Microsoft today attempted
to exorcize the
interoperability bogeymen
that have haunted it
since it was first
discovered to be using
secret APIs 20 years ago,
bogeymen that now quote
European antitrust law at
it and carry writs from
the Court of First
Instance in Luxembourg.
To avoid fur
AJAXWorld in 2007 was
sponsored by the world's
leading rich web
technology providers
including: 3Tera,
Addison-Wesley, Adobe,
Apress, Backbase,
Bindows, Conference Guru,
Cynergy Systems, Dynamic
Toolbar, Extension Media,
Farata Systems, Flash
Goddess, FrogLogic,
GoingToMeet.com, Google
Ulitzer, Inc., which
initially made the
headlines with its 'job
descriptions from the
future,' announced today
that it will launch its
Ulitzer 'beta' site on
July 4, 2008, with 5,500
authors and 600,000
original articles,
published in more than
5,000 topic-specific
online journals. Eac
Parleys.com is a great
Web site with lots of
recoded videos of
technical presentations
on a wide variety of
Java-related topics.
While the original
version of Parleys has
been created in AJAX,
more advanced Flex and
AIR versions are now
available too. I had a
chance to chat with a man
Appcelerator, Inc. is an
open source software
company specializing in
products and services for
rapid rich Internet
application (RIA) and
SOA-based services
development. The
Appcelerator Platform
SDKs enable developers to
develop rich Ajax and
DHTML applications using
cross-browser wid
So is O'Reilly actually
condoning the hacking of
the phones? O'Reilly has
had a long and
prestigious history as
being the ultimate source
for *nix manuals,
including many books that
became so dogeared I
actually bought multiple
copies, including dozens
of 'in a nutshell' books.
Back in
OK, car manufactures go
Flex. Will they lose or
gain customers because of
that? Car manufacturers
want to have fancy
consumer sites. It's a
world of RIA, and having
interactive Web sites
should bring more people
to car dealerships. But
poorly performing Web
site can turn into lost
rev
4 of our 6 first quarter
projects have major
components in Java ME.
These are new
applications, from
companies who understand
the porting issues and
the complexities. This
quarter is not
particularly different
from other quarters: we
get far more work
designing applications
than design
The article is basically
'Flex rules, everything
else drools'. It goes on
and on about the good
things about Flex, while
giving only cursory
coverage of Flex
drawbacks. Meanwhile,
it's just the opposite
regarding the other
technologies, going on
and on about drawbacks,
and giving only
Web application
developers and designers
often give up on building
rich, interactive user
interfaces because they
lack the JavaScript
skills to make it happen.
AJAX development power
tools - including
Dreamweaver, Spry and
off-the-shelf AJAX
components - make it easy
to build rich user
This is the first in a
series of articles that
will cover best practices
of Flex development using
the code of the
soon-to-be-released open
source class library
theriabook. These
components were developed
by Flex and Java
architects from Farata
Systems. Over the past
couple of years we
Some of the most scared
people inside Yahoo right
now have got to be the
open source Zimbra crowd
that Yahoo acquired last
September for $350
million for its
Microsoft-opposing
enterprise-directed
e-mail and calendaring,
folks who just released
their webby AJAX-based
Collaboration Suit
Earth Live is an
application that
EffectiveUI has created
in collaboration with
Discovery channel. The
application helps people
to learn the world by
engaging them with a more
effective UI, so complex
information such as
climate change can be
digestible by a regular
person. The appl
We are entering an era of
Rich Internet
Applications (RIA), and
many enterprise
development managers are
facing the dilemma -
which way to go - remain
with tried and true Java
or .NET technologies or
less known (as yet) yet
AJAX, Flex, OpenLaszlo...
It's unlikely, however,
that Google, the target
of the proposed merger,
can do much of anything
other than raise dust -
like its move over the
weekend to raise the
specter of Microsoft's
possible monopolization
of the Internet and its
illegal leverage into
'new, adjacent markets.'
As t
Adobe has named Kevin
Lynch, a guy from the
Macromedia side of the
house, CTO, a chair last
warmed by John Warnock.
Lynch was previously
chief software architect
and senior VP of the
company's platform
business. His attention
is now supposed to focus
on AIR, Flex and Flash
Player and h
Because AJAX moves so
much application logic
from the server to the
client, it forces many
developers to master a
wider range of web
technologies than ever
before. T
Release of BlazeDS is a
great help from the Flex
enterprise adoption
perspective. On the
technical side, BlazeDS
provides a lightweight
replacement for LiveCycle
Dat
It's hard to overestimate
the importance of having
a good logging facility
when you develop
distributed applications.
Did the client's request
reached the server-sid
Web development is a
changing industry.
Technologies are born,
thrive, and then die,
while web developers
experience a great stress
helping their clients get
an Inte
It may only be a point
release but that doesn't
mean that Electric Rain,
makers of the #1 3D
modeling software tool
for Flash animators
hasn't come out swinging.
Wha