Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web

Open-source Flex 3 is a big deal for Adobe, Gartner said

eWeek dedicated a great focus about the Adobe's announcement to open source Flex 3 SDK.
If you read the Adobe Open-Source Move Sets Showdown with Microsoft and move  the second page, you'll read the opinion of a member of Gartner Group and Burton Group say that moving to open source Flex 3 is a big deal :

Mark Driver, an analyst with Gartner, called the move to open-source Flex a big deal, noting that it helps Adobe competitively against incursion by Microsoft. "I think it will help head off Silverlight and remove concerns of proprietary nature of Flex in the Web world," he said.

"Open-source co-creation is a powerful way to build a strong development community," said James Governor, founder of the RedMonk market analysis firm. "Adobe's decision to open-source the Flex SDK is a radical move which should attract a new class of developer to the platform."

Richard Monson-Haefel, an analyst with Burton Group, agreed that Adobe's plan to open-source Flex is a good idea.

Read the full Adobe Open-Source Move Sets Showdown with Microsoft article.

Flex 2 , Actionscript 3 and Apollo articles on Flex User Group

The April issue of FlexGala's newsletter is out with a lot of interesting articles on Flex 2 , Actionscript 3 and Apollo :

• L'oggetto File di Apollo: copiare, muovere file o directory nelle applicazioni Flex 2 per il desktop
• EJB3 e Flex 2: Web, Timer e Message Service - Parte 4
• Servlet, JSP, EJB3, Struts, Hibernate: integrare Flex 2 con il mondo Java
• Leggere directory con Adobe Apollo con il metodo listDirectory() della classe File
• Cross domain Scripting, ovvero come caricare SWF in applicazioni Flex 2 usando il metodo allowDomain()
• Sviluppare Pannelli e Gadget con Adobe Apollo
• Adobe Apollo e Flex 2: Usare il FileSystem per lavorare con i file
• EJB3 e Flex 2: Interfacciare Flex con gli Ejb3 - Parte 3

How does Adobe Flex open source's plans benefit Flex developers ?

On the Adobe Labs has been published a series of FAQ about the Flex Open Source plans.

I listed the more interesting questions from a Flex developers point of view :

How does this announcement benefit Flex developers?
Web and desktop developers using Flex will now be able to directly discuss ideas and proposals with project committers, submit code through the open bug tracking system, or contribute enhancements directly to the Flex project. Over time, Adobe also plans to introduce new subprojects that extend the core Flex Project.

How does this announcement benefit participants in open source projects?
Under the terms of the Mozilla Public License (MPL), open source project owners will be able to use Flex to develop parts of their applications, extend it and contribute to the community, or incorporate some or all of the SDK itself into their projects, provided they continue to comply with the license terms of the MPL.

Will the commercial version be different from the open source version?
Our goal is to make the initial open source distribution as close to the commercial distributions of the Flex SDK as possible. Due to restrictions on some components that have been licensed from third parties or come from other Adobe products, some portions of the current free Flex 2 SDK may be made available in binary form only.

Flex SDK Open Source Group : http://groups.google.com/group/flex-open-source

Adobe to Open Source Flex 3 gives Developers Ability to Enhance Flex Framework

Found the press release on Adobe site :

Adobe to open source Flex

Adobe Systems today announced plans to release source code for Adobe® Flex as open source. This initiative will let developers worldwide participate in the growth of the industry's most advanced framework for building cross-operating system rich Internet applications (RIAs) for the Web and enabling new Apollo applications for the desktop. The open source Flex SDK and documentation will be available under the Mozilla Public License (MPL).

Available since June 2006, the free Adobe Flex SDK includes the technologies developers need to build effective Flex applications, including the MXML™ compiler and the ActionScript™ 3.0 libraries that make up the popular Flex framework. Together, these elements provide the modern, standards-based language and programming model used by leading businesses such as BMC Software, eBay, salesforce.com, Scrapblog, and Samsung to create RIAs deployed on the ubiquitous Adobe Flash® Player.

Read the full Adobe to open source Flex press release

Adobe will open-source Flex 3 (Moxie)

An article on CNET talked about the decision of  Adobe Systems  to open-source Flex, its development framework for building Flash and Apollo-based applications :

Adobe to open-source Flash tool Flex

(via CNET article) : The company on Wednesday is expected to announce the move, which will start when it releases a beta of the next version of Flex 3, code-named Moxie, in June.

By the time Adobe releases the final version of  Moxie, which will be called Flex 3, near the end of the year, it expects to have a fully functioning open-source project, company executives said Tuesday. Adobe intends to use the Mozilla Public License.

The company said it will open-source the Flex software development kit, which includes a compiler and libraries designed to speed up development. It plans to continue to sell Flex Builder, an Eclipse-based development tool, and Flex Data Services, server software for accessing corporate databases.

Flex is one of a growing number of alternatives for building so-called rich Internet applications, which sport an interactive front-end interface. Using the development framework, programmers create an application that can run within Adobe's Flash Player or Apollo, its "player" for desktop applications.

The company chose to create an open-source project for the Flex software to garner good ideas and contributions from developers outside Adobe, said Jeff Whatcott, vice president for product marketing at Adobe's enterprise and developer business unit.

Offline AJAX applications with Dojo Offline Toolkit

Dojo released the Dojo Offline Toolkit :

Dojo Offline is a free, open source toolkit that makes it easy for web applications to work offline. It consists of two pieces: a JavaScript library bundled with your web page and a small (~300K) cross-platform, cross-browser download that helps to cache your web application's user-interface for use offline.

You can see a video of a presentation from Radar Oreilly blog.

See a photo of who's calling you with your Nokia S60

This is the tip of the mont of the Nokia S60 newsletter. Other than this tip, the featured application of the month,chosen by the S60 newsletter ,  is Mobizines, the Flash Lite webzine application.

See a photo of who's calling you with your Nokia S60 : instead of just seeing the person's name, see their photo when they call as well.

1. From the main menu choose "Contacts" then scroll to highlight a particular name.
2. Choose "Options" then "Edit".
3. When the contact's details open up, choose "Options" then "Add thumbnail".
4. You'll then be prompted to choose a photo from your device, find the appropriate photo and press "Select".

Looking for a Symbian Developer

The  Allen Partners is seeking an experienced mobile device developer to support and enhance its existing metering infrastructure for mobile devices and to architect and implement new client-side solutions for Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm, Java/J2ME and BREW devices. You will get the chance to work across the core areas of the business with a superb team of experienced professionals. This is a great opportunity for someone interested in working in a start-up environment and directly contributing to the success of first-mover in a rapidly growing and dynamic market.

The Skills Needed
We need a mobile device developer who has experience in at least one of the following mobile device areas: Symbian, Palm, Java/J2ME, BREW, Windows Mobile using C++. The job requires close collaboration with a number of groups within the company, so strong communication skills are necessary and crucial to success of the position.

Shoot me an email if you're interested in !

Passing Actionscript Value Objects to Flex 2 pop up (TitleWindow) window

In a past post I showed how to cast a DataGrid selectedItem into an Actionscript Value Object.
When you develop a master/detail page a good solution should be to load detailed data on a pop up window. In Flex 2 to create a pop up window you use an istance of the PopUpManager class and its createPopUp method :

var user:Student = DataGrid( event.currentTarget ).selectedItem as User;
var myPopUp:IFlexDisplayObject = PopUpManager.createPopUp (this, myTileWindow, true);

myTileWindow( myPopUp ).myUser = user;
PopUpManager.centerPopUp( myPopUp );

Note that the myPopUp instance is data typed as IFlexDisplayObject.
The second argument,  myTileWindow, of the createPopUp method is a MXML component.
In order to pass the selected user object to the new pop up window we write the following code :

myTileWindow( myPopUp ).myUser = user;

On the myTileWindow.mxml file we have to declare a myUser variable data typed as User in order to make the pop up vailable to receive the data :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:TitleWindow
xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
layout="absolute" width="320" height="240"
showCloseButton="true"
borderAlpha="1.0"
creationComplete="addEventListener( CloseEvent.CLOSE, closeMe );"
>
<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
import mx.managers.PopUpManager;
import mx.events.CloseEvent;
import com.casario.vo.User;

[Bindable]
public var myUser:User;
private function closeMe( event:CloseEvent ):void
{
PopUpManager.removePopUp( this );
}
]]>
</mx:Script>
<mx:Label x="183" y="10" text="{myUser.firstname}" />
<mx:Label x="183" y="30" text="{myUser.lastname}" />
<mx:Label x="183" y="50" text="{myUser.email}" />
</mx:TitleWindow>

On the next page you can view the Actionscript Value Object.

The first Adobe Apollo guide (in italian)

AUGItaly created a section dedicated to Apollo where it published the first guide of Adobe Apollo :

Apollo Guide : Developing Rich Desktop Application

The guide grows every day, and we add 2 articles per week.

Thanks to all contributors !