Flexcoders @ my.opera

I just created a Flexcoders group for my.opera. I figure there are a lot of programmer type people in this community who may at least be interested in the technology and this could be a good place to look for answers in the community. It's my first group though so please be patient as I learn the ropes. For those of you who don't know what Flex is, you can either read some of my posts on the subject or go to Adobe's website. The group will be their to focus on anything in the Flex framework ecosystem, much of which is still in development.

Last Day of Flex 360

Yesterday was the last day of the Flex 360 conference and it was a whirlwind. Along with checking out of the hotel and making sure to get to the airport on time I still had a conference to attend, including the final keynote. I don't have all my notes about what I did yesterday, so bear with me as I describe the highlights of the day. ...

The morning started out with the final keynote of the conference that included short talks on some community projects. One cool non-project community development was Flex Authority, which is a community driven zine that will be coming out in early summer. As for projects there were short demonstrations of OpenFlux and Degrafa that were great. The highlight was the last project which was a social musical notation program complete with keyboard( QWERTY not the 88s ) entry. A very cool program that I think is still not open to the public and unfortunately, no name was given.

Of the talks I went to yesterday, 2 stand out for very different reasons. One talk was about video in Flex and the other was about architecting AIR applications.

The presentation on video in flex stands out because, I realized I actually understand this concept quite a bit. The company I work for, Provis Media Group, is all about the powerful use of video on the web and I've been dealing with video and the flash player since day one. This doesn't mean I didn't learn anything. One glaring detail I learned is about the index on H.264 files that can keep HD videos from streaming progressively. The answer to that problem can be found here. The main thing I got out of this session, that can be applied to more than just video, is the usefulness of creating components based on the flex framework. It takes a little extra work up front but it can save a ton of time in the long run.

Architecting AIR applications stood out because it made me realize how much I hadn't thought of. The talk was led by a former .NET developer who went to web applications and now, thanks to AIR, is back to making desktop applications. Because of his background, he had a perspective about architecting an occasionally connected app that was different than the standard line. It was a great talk and I've got a lot of researching to do on new approaches. The main thing that got driven home was while tools like Cairngorm and Pure MVC have their uses, especially for web apps, their are some limitations when creating a desktop app. It's important to have many more tools and good OOP knowledge and practice under your belt so that you don't fall into the 'Golden Hammer' syndrome.

To finalize, Flex 360 was awesome and I hope to go to many more of these types of events. There is a Flex 360 event in Europe happening in April, I believe and I would love to go there, even though I know I wouldn't really get to see any of Europe. So if you are in Europe, check out 360 Flex Europe coming to Milan very soon.

Flex 360 - Day 2

Today was day two of Flex 360 here in Atlanta and definately the geekiest group of presentations so far. And by geekiest I mean best. My days presentation list included presentations on item renders, deep tour of the new open source Flex SDK, the big bang of your applications start up, open source flex community projects and enhancing flex presentations with bitmap techniques. ...

Building Components that use Item Renderers
One thing that I hated in Flash and Actionscript 2 is the API for generating Item Renderers. The documentation was poor and so were many of the examples that people created on the subject. With Flex there are 3 ways of doing custom item renderers and building an advanced item renderer seems much easier than before. On top of it all, this presentation made me see the reasons behind the item renderer API. I have a feeling I will be creating quite a few in upcoming projects.

Deep Dive Tour into the Open Source Flex SDK
One of the biggest pieces of news with the release of Flex 3 was the fact that it is now officially open source. This presentation was showing the open source project and what pieces of the Flex Framework are a part of the open source project. Along with that we got to get a high level overview of the compilation process. Both Java and Actionscript files that weren't available before are now available for viewing. I may or may not ever contribute to the project but I did get some new ideas about what I could do with this level of access. There is a whole world to blog about inside the Flex repositories.

Dense and Hot: The big bang of your application's start up
I missed the presentation about what's coming in Flex 4 to be in the packed presentation. It was worth it. With everything that is going on at startup, you have a lot of opportunity to slow down your application unless you understand its nature. I learned about application, and really all components, lifecycle as well as the best times to take certain application initialization actions. The onCreationComplete event usually is seen as the best time to do things when you look for examples online and yet it probably isn't. There could be a blog posting on this topic coming soon.

Open Source Flex Community Projects
While I have been very interested in open source projects for flex and flash, this presentation got me interested in some projects I might have dismissed for various reasons. Projects like the physics engines for actionscript or Degrafa. From now on I'll be keeping my eyes open, just in case they can help me with the projects I am working on in ways I wouldn't have originally thought of.

Enhancing Flex Presentations with Bitmap Techniques
Coming from a pure actionscript background, there are many things I already understand about BitmapData objects. I also learned a lot in a previous e-seminar about bit blitting. However, this class focused on the benefits of creating Flex framework components that benefit from bitmap data. There are a lot of opportunities to create applications that can just wow people while still being very easy to use. This is an untapped area of RIAs and occasionally connected applications. Expect to see some posts and possibly some tools or components based on this subject in the near future.

Again and again I am seeing the benefits of coding in the Flex framework versus pure actionscript. Obviously Flex is based off of actionscript, but I could get the best benefit by writing actionscript that allows me to code in the flex framework. Things just get so easy when you take advantage of the framework, I don't know why I have fought it for so long.

Flex 360 - Day 1

Monday was the official first Day of the Flex 360 conference here in Atlanta, GA and so far it has been a blast. I took some classes on FlexUnit, Custom Components, the Ribbit API and building a brand as an independent developer. Then after the classes we had the Adobe party that was the party to mark the release of Flex 3, AIR and Blaze DS. ...

The first class I took was on Flex Unit, a unit testing library for Flex, Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3 files. I got to see a good workflow for using it, including automation using apache Ant. I also learned about a relatively new testing framework called dpUnit that I really want to check out. It's created by the guys at Digital Primates.

The second class I took was about creating polished custom components. In this class the presenter used the example of FlexMDI, a window management system that he was a part of creating, to show some of the important things you need to take into consideration when creating a reusable component. A great presentation and I got to see some of the inner workings of an awesome library for flex.

The third presentation I went to was about the Ribbit API, a way to handle telephony through flash. With this system you can make and receive calls, as well as make and receive messages. There are also some new features of the system coming through the pike. It will be fun to see what I can create with this API.

The final presentation was led by a Doug Mccune and from Scale Nine, Juan Sanchez. It was all about building the brand that is you. It reinspired me to build the Daryl Ducharme brand. Let's just say, I think I will be blogging more about Flex, AIR and other fun related topics.

After that we walked over to the Stats sports bar for the Adobe party to celebrate the release of a few products in the Flex family. Don't forget the official launch of Flex as an open source project. This party had a ton of people and we all were talking Flex, AIR and related issues. It's nice to just be able to geek out sometimes. Some people played Rock Band and Guitar Hero until they closed the private lounge area we were in. Good times, I just wish I had a chance to talk to more of the people at the party. Well, there are 2 more days to this conference. I better get to bed so I can get the most out of all the sessions tomorrow.

Flex 360 - Atlanta

This week I am at the Flex 360 conference in Atlanta. As this is the first Flex conference I've been able to go to I am very excited. Today is the official first day and I am sure they will talk about how Flex 3 and AIR are now currently live, since that is exactly what happened as of sometime last night. I wonder what other nuggets of information they have in store for us. I'll share with you what I can. ...

Today may be the official first day of the conference but yesterday was the day of hands on pretraining. Since I got here early in the morning I went to the all day Flex 101 session. While the session was very basic, it was a 101 session after all, I learned that many people coming from other backgrounds might need more help jumping into the fray. So, while I will still try to write my articles on cool tips and tricks you might not know about, I will start to write more articles at the 101 level to help people jump right into the Flex platform. With AIR finally in release, it is an exciting time to be a part of the flex community.

Well, off to the keynote. I'll write more as I hear it.

Nader, Meet the Press

Yesterday I talked about when we might find out whether or not Ralph Nader will run for President in the upcoming election. Yesterday was the 8 year anniversary of when he made his announcement in 2000. The 27th of this month is his birthday. Today I got an email from the Nader Team that I believe gave me the answer. This is almost as exciting as when Jericho was coming back to the WWE. ...

Here is the text from the email I got:
Ralph Nader will be on NBC's Meet the Press with Tim Russert this Sunday, February 24, 2008.
As you know, we've been exploring the possibilities in recent weeks.
And here's one question that keeps coming up:
What's been pulled off the table by the corporatized political machines in this momentous election year?
Answer:
Cutting the huge, bloated and wasteful military budget, adopting a single payer Canadian-style national health insurance system, impeaching Bush/Cheney, opposing nuclear power - among many others.
Who will pick up these issues and put them back on the table?
Hope you get a chance to tune in to watch Ralph Nader this Sunday on Meet the Press.

Here is the description from the Meet the Press site for this Sundays show.
2004 Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader joins us exclusively this Sunday to talk about whether or not he will enter the 2008 race for the White House.  Plus, a political roundtable with insights and analysis on the political future of John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama featuring David Brooks, Jon Meacham, Michele Norris and Chuck Todd.

It looks like we will have our answer Sunday. It looks like the things Ralph Nader needed to run are in place. Pro bono lawyers, enough volunteers, enough money, enough interest in general.

8 Years ago today

In 2000, consumer advocate Ralph Nader announced his entry into the presidential race, bidding for the nomination of the Green Party.

Will we find out today if he is running? NaderExplore08.org

Or will he wait until his birthday on the 27th of this month?

AIR for Linux in the works

For those who do not know AIR stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime. It is Adobe's way of taking your Flex, Flash, Javascript and HTML knowledge and allowing you to create desktop applications. It is very cool technology that should have version 1.0 coming out soon. Always touted as cross platform, AIR has really only worked on 2 operating systems Windows and Mac. However I just read a post on the Adobe Blogs that says they are looking for pre-beta release testers for AIR on Linux. ...

AIR on Linux will allow Adobe's technology to spread more in the open source community, which has often belittled Adobe for its proprietary ways. As Adobe opens up more and more, mainstream users of Adobe products might see the possibilities available to them in Open Source software. Since Apps that are built on the AIR platform could be run on Windows, Mac and Linux - these apps could help people make the transition. So if you are interested in helping to get Penguins into the AIR then visit James Ward's RIA Cowboy blog to found out what you need to do.

Friday Humor with the end..

This week showed the end of the writers strike, which has been very serious for many. For others the strike, though still serious, offered a good topic for humor. I've showed them in the past doing jokes about the strike so now I will share The A The Daily Show's and The Colbert Report clips that celebrate the end of the WGA Strike. ...

Je t'aimais, je t'aime et je t'aimerai

I first heard Francis Cabrel during a French Podclass( 72 & 73 ) I was listening to. I thought it was good and the songs I heard reminded me ever so slightly of Jim Croce( or maybe I could just hear his 'stache ) and a little Neil Diamond. I hadn't heard him in a while until I came across a post that had the song Je t'aimais, je t'aime et je t'aimerai. I've been trying to listen to some french music lately to help me with learning the language so I looked for some videos and found one for the song. Since, loosely translated, it means I loved you, I love you and I will always love you I thought it would be a beautiful piece to listen to and watch for Valentine's day. ...

Original Lyrics:
Mon enfant, nue sur les galets,
Le vent dans tes cheveux défaits,
Comme un printemps sur mon trajet,
Un diamant tombé d'un coffret.

Seule la lumière pourrait
Défaire nos repères secrets
Où mes doigts pris sur tes poignets,
Je t'aimais, je t'aime et je t'aimerai...

Quoi que tu fasses, l'amour est partout ou tu regardes
Dans les moindres recoins de l'espace,
Dans le moindre rêve ou tu t'attardes
L'amour, comme s'il en pleuvait,
Nu sur les galets...

Le ciel prétend qu'il te connait
Il est si beau c'est sûrement vrai.
Lui qui s'approche jamais
Je l'ai vu pris dans tes filets.

Le monde a tellement de regrets
Tellement de choses qu'on promet.
Une seule pour laquelle je suis fait
Je t'aimais, je t'aime et je t'aimerai...

Quoi que tu fasses, l'amour est partout ou tu regardes,
Dans les moindres recoins de l'espace,
Dans le moindre rêve ou tu t'attardes.
L'amour, comme s'il en pleuvait,
Nu sur les galets...

On s'envolera du même quai
Les yeux dans les mêmes reflets,
Pour cette vie et celle d'après
Tu seras mon unique projet.

Je m'en irai poser tes portraits
A tous les plafonds de tous les palais,
Sur tous les murs que je trouverai
Et juste en-dessous j'écrirai

Que seule la lumière pourrait...

Et mes doigts pris sur tes poignets,
Je t'aimais, je t'aime et je t'aimerai

Translated lyrics:
I loved you, I love you, and I will (always) love you

My child naked on the sea-washed pebbles
The wind in your ruffled hair
Like a new year in my life
A diamond fallen from its box
Only light could
uncover our secret caresses
where my fingers nestled on your wrists
I loved you, I love you, and I will (always) love you

And no matter what you do
Love is everywhere you look
In the most hidden recesses of space
In the smallest dream in which you linger
Love falling as gentle rain
naked on the sea-washed pebbles

The Sky pretends to know you
He is truly beautiful, that's for sure
He who never draws near
I saw Him trapped in your net
The world has so much remorse
So many promised things
But only one for which I was made:
I loved you, I love you, and I will (always) love you

And no matter what you do
Love is everywhere you look
In the most hidden recesses of space
In the smallest dream in which you linger
Love falling as gentle rain
naked on the sea-washed pebbles

We'll fly away from the same pier
The eyes within the same reflections
For in this life and the one after
you will be my sole purpose
I'll leave soon to hang your portraits
on all the ceilings of all the palaces,
on all the walls that I can find
And just below them, I will write
that only light could....
And my fingers nestled on your wrists
I loved you, I love you, and I will (always) love you

And as an extra Valentine's day bonus here is a live version of his song "Je l'aime à mourir". There is some good banter at the beginning.