Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web

Developing Loosely Coupled Flex 2 Components article

I finished a new article for WDDJ on Flex 2 :

Building Loosely Coupled Flex 2 Components article

Most of you know how important is to break your Flex 2 application into small logically pieces.
Flex 2 allows developers to break into small external pieces the project, creating separated MXML files and maintain them separately.

The  Building Loosely Coupled Flex 2 Components article explains and guides you through the the process of dividing Flex application
into logic modules designing MXML components using custom event models.

The Building Loosely Coupled Flex 2 Components article will be out with the next issue of the WDDJ magazine !

Handling data with Flex 2 quick start samples

Adobe published new Flex 2 samples on Flex 2 Quick Start to understand basic concepts and learn how to code top tasks :

Defining data models

Using data binding

Validating data

Formatting data

Flex 2 course in Bergamo, Italy

For the entire week I'll be teaching Flex 2 in Bergamo:

Flex 2 course, Developing Rich Clients

They will be five days full of interesting topics due to the presence of advanced J2EE developers (the students) and the project they want to develop using Flex 2 !

Ruby on Rails on Oracle

Oracle.com site wrote a tutorial on how to use RubyOnRails on Oracle database :

Ruby on Rails on Oracle

This article is not intended to be a booster piece for Rails nor is it an expose. It’s simply an introduction to the technology. It contains both praise and criticism. At times the criticism might appear a bit heavy handed (especially to Rails enthusiasts), but don’t be fooled. Using any Web application framework is going to be tricky, whether it’s J2EE, ASP.NET, or PHP. In the long run, you can be a lot more productive with Rails than you can be with many other Web application development platforms, but it takes time to learn the ropes.

Getting started with Acrobat forms

AcrobatUsers.com, the Adobe Acrobat User Group site, publihsed the first in a series of related articles by PDF Conference founder Carl Young looks at some of the fundamental issues  in creating and using Acrobat forms:

Getting started with Acrobat forms

Rich Internet Applications and Rich Enterprise Applications: Adobe Apollo

There are rumors,thoughts and ideas on the interesting topic of Adobe Apollo and the difference from RIA and Rich Enterprise applications.
In my opinion, RIA or REA are the same thing. They refer to a new approach for improving the user experience of applications.
Theyboth reply to a lack of a rich user interface. It's not a security matter.
The container that will run these apps is not important. It could be the browser, it could be the JVM, it could be the Flash Lite player of your mobile.
The thruth is that the Flash Player wins the play for the best choice when you want to add interactivity and create rich UIs.

Things are different for AJAX that in order to work requires the browser.
Apollo should have the potential to break the limits of web applications !

Read also this posts on Apollo :

Misconceptions about Rich Internet Applications and the enterprise (read the comments too)

Why Adobe Apollo is so important

Flex 2 getting started article

If you passed this last months sleeping :) and now you want to join the Flex revolution don't continue to waste your time and read this great article that introduces you to Flex 2 development :

Join the Flex Revolution

Implementing Interfaces within Flex 2 Custom MXML Components

Soon I'll publish some tips I learned from a project that integrates Struts framework with Flex 2. Meanwhile developing this project we created some Actionscript 3 classes that communicate with Struts sessions and we needed to implement some interfaces into our Flex 2 MXML Components.

We used the implements command defined as attribute in line to our custom MXML components that automatically implement interfaces just as other ActionScript classes can :

<cust:Profiles  implements="IUpdate" />

Into the Profiles.mxml files, inside the mx:Script block :

<mx:Script>
        <![CDATA[

            public function UpdateSession():ArrayCollection {
                // your code here

            }
                  ]]>
    </mx:Script>

And the Actionscript interface named IUpdate.as :

interface IUpdate {
    function UpdateSession():ArrayCollection;
    // code removed
}

I learned that it's possibile to implement multiple interfaces by separating them with commas:

<cust:Profiles  implements="IUpdate, IWhatever" />

Porting from Windows Mobile to S60

Found this document with example at  Nokia Forum :

S60 Platform: Porting from Windows Mobile (with Example) v2.0

This document examines the issues involved in porting existing C++ applications from the Windows Mobile platform to the S60 platform and in creating new, highly portable applications that target both platforms. The documentation package includes an example application written for the Windows Mobile platform and reimplemented to the S60 platform to illustrate the concepts discussed in the document.

Flash Player 9 on Linux: where are we?

Today a student asked me when he will be able to see a Flex 2 application run under Linux.
I did not remember when the Flash Player 9 release date was fixed but with a simple search I found the info (by Emmy Huang, Product Manager for Flash Player at Adobe) :

Wasn't there supposed to be a simultaneous release of the Linux version of Flash Player 9?

A. Not exactly. We never said it would sim ship. We did say that we were skipping the v8 port to get a start on porting v9 (formerly known as v8.5). We are working on it, and expect to release in early 2007. Which means a beta should be here very soon. For progress and updates, check Mike's Penguin.SWF blog.

I think Linux users won't be happy to hear that !