Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web

Loading and parsing XML microformats using Adobe AIR and Flex 3, FlexGala eSeminar

The September eSeminar organized by FlexGala is about to start at this url :

http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/remotexml/

This month Fabio Bernardi will talk about loading and parsing XML microformats using Adobe AIR and Flex 3.
The webinar will be recorded. The registration link will be published on the FlexGala Seminar page.
See you there !

New tutorials and articles published by FlexGala UserGroup

FlexGala has published some new contents dedicated to Adobe AIR and Flex 3 :

• PDF contents in Adobe AIR applications
  
• Develop a password generator using Adobe AIR and Flex Builder 3
• Programming Flex 2 Book's Review

FlexGala won't stop to publish the contents during the holidays. In fact thanks to the great supporter members the UG will be able to garantuee at least one article per week in August !

Pre-conference training day on Flex 3, LiveCycle Data Services and Adobe AIR at MAX Chicago

On the Adobe MAX 2007 blog has been published the pre-conference training day, a full-day hands-on training sessions. These are the tracks dedicated to Flex 3, Adobe AIR and  LiveCycle Data Services :

Flex 3: Integrating with ColdFusion
This session provides ColdFusion developers with hands-on, practical experience connecting their Flex 3 client applications to remote, dynamic data provided by ColdFusion and LiveCycle Data Services.

Flex 3: Integration with Java
This session provides experienced application developers with hands-on, practical experience connecting their Flex front ends to remote, dynamic data using LiveCycle Data Services.

Flex 3: Developing Rich Client Applications
Get hands-on, practical experience using Flex.

Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR): Bringing Rich Internet Applications to the Desktop
This full-day course will include everything you need to get started building applications with Adobe AIR.

My interview about Adobe AIR and Flex 3

When I was at the AdobeLive I was interviewed by ICTv, the web television dedicated to the IT world.

They asked me about Adobe AIR and what it means for developers and about the Flex 3 and open source plan. It was very fun !!

Adobe AIR, Flex 3 and Integration between Fireworks,Photoshop and Flash CS3 with Flex. All of these topics at the AdobeLive 2007

Today is the second day of AdobeLiveConference here in Italy.
I'm here with Enrique (and some enormous mosquitos) in the business room of the AdobeLive and we're about to start our presentation.

Enrique will present Adobe AIR (formerly Apollo) and talk about Flex 3 and new features.

After his presentantion I'll show the integration of the Adobe CS3 with Flex and Flex Builder.
It's incredible how many things designers and creative are now able to do to help Flex developersin creating the user interface of Flex applications.
Using Photoshop CS3, Fireworks CS, Illustrator CS3 and Flash CS3 , of course, they can export graphic symbols, layouts and components for the Flex enviroment.

With Fireworks CS3 you can now use the Exoprt as MXML features to convert a PNG layouts into MXML code. You can do this using the new Flex Component Common Library (you can also create your own Flex components using an image and a javascript JSF file).
The MXML code generated from Fireworks is ready to be edited and customized by the developer in Flex Builder.

With Illustrator CS3 you can create vector based symbols and export them as SWF files, ready to be used and imported in Flex. For example you can export  your vector symbols and then use them for change the style of a button flex component usign :

overSkin: Embed(source='styles.swf', symbol='mysymbol');
upSkin: Embed(source='styles.swf', symbol='mysymbol');
downSkin: Embed(source='styles.swf', symbol='mysymbol');

Then in Flash CS3 you can do whatever you want with the Flash CS3 Component Kit for Flex. You can interact in Flex with Flash contents, call public methods, refer to each single object.

If you're in Milan come to see the sessions !
They're great !

Adobe AIR Developer Derby. Win the trip of a lifetime

Adobe announced the Adobe AIR Developer Derby with some incredible prizes.
These are the category for the application you can present :

Best Business Application
Best Community Application
Wild Card
Grand Prize / Best of Show

Win the trip of a lifetime!
Use the Adobe® Integrated Runtime (AIR) beta software (formerly code named Apollo) to build the most unique Adobe® AIR™ application.  Then enter it into the Adobe AIR developer derby for your chance to win a trip of a lifetime or other amazing prizes.

Grand Prize / Best of Show
The Best of Show winner will receive the trip of a lifetime, a travel certificate valued at up to US$100,000, to be used for the travel of your choice!

Five category winners will each receive “The Ultimate Development Environment” to power your Adobe AIR development (and play) for years to come >> next page

Is Adobe AIR the final name for Adobe Apollo ?

The Warp blog has some suspects for the final name of Adobe Apollo.
As you can read on its blog, having a more in depth look at the images posted by Ted Patrick ( Flex 3 - Friday: Apollo) you can read the three words AIR :

so the question is :

Is Adobe AIR  just the name of the exentsion of the file, or it's the new name for Adobe Apollo ?

Apollo will have an embedded SQLite database

Great news from the Adobe side. Now that Ryan Stewart works for Adobe I hope he will give us more and more news like this :

Apollo will have an embedded database - The Apollo team has been working on adding SQLite to Apollo for a while and today it’s official that we’re going to be including it.

Gears opens the doors for offline Flash applications - Flash is a great way to deliver applications in the browser. The fact that Adobe and Google are talking and the fact that Gears is an open source project means that adding offline support to your Flash application is a possibility.

Gears and Apollo should have consistent APIs - Google and Adobe are working together with the aim of making the APIs for accessing the SQLite database similar for developers. The vision is that any Gears applications could be ported to Apollo (and vice versa) using roughly the same data structure that they use in Gears. The parallels will be great for developers.

Read the entire Google Gears with Flash and Apollo post

The Google Gears API will also be available in Apollo

I missed the first time I read it but in the Google Gears  press release you can read this quote from a Kevin Lynch comment :

"We're very excited to be collaborating with Google to move the industry forward to a standard cross-platform, cross-browser local storage capability," said Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe. "The Gears API will also be available in Apollo, which enables web applications to run on the desktop, providing developers with consistent offline and local database solutions."

Wow ... Now things gonna be more and more interesting.

Apollo porting of Kuler desktop is available for download

I received an email from Sami Iwata, the kuler community manager at Adobe, that pointed me out the release of Kuler Desktop developed in Apollo is available to donwload in Adobe Labs :

After the  sneak peek at the CS3 launch event, the cross-platform kuler desktop (built in Apollo) is available for download on Adobe Labs, along with the required Apollo Runtime. The kuler desktop offers the same RSS feed functionality as the kuler Apple Dashboard Widget but with a new form factor (see image). Users can view RSS feeds of the highest rated, most popular, and newest themes from the kuler site, search thousands of titled and tagged themes, search by kuler user name, and copy theme Hex values to the clipboard.

Thanks for the update Sami ;)