Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web

Flex SEO Contest:expose valuable data from Flex to search engines to win copy of CS4 Master Collection

I want to follow with interest this cool contest created by Ryan inspired by the Peter's post:  SWF Indexing in some of his Flash files :

Flex SEO Contest
But what I’m most worried about is how we can expose valuable data from Flex (and Flash) to search engines in a way that makes the user experience better. So I’m starting a contest in the hopes that the community can learn the best way to expose data from a Flex application to search engines.

Rules
I’ve come up with a phrase: “Fleximagically Searchable” which currently has absolutely no results on Google. In two months, whichever Flex application is number one in the search results wins. Here are the rules:

• It has to be a Flex application
• “Fleximagically Searchable” must be dynamically loaded. It can’t be static text inside of your application. - But I don’t care how you load it, in fact that might make a difference in how Google ranks you.
• The first link must be deep linked directly into where you load “Fleximagically Searchable” into your application. Feel free to use any deep linking methods out there.
• Nothing in your code can dynamically load the phrase automatically. It has to be the result of a user interaction.
• You must provide source code and be willing to talk about exactly what you did.
• Multiple entries are allowed if you want to try different things.

Read the full article on Ryan's site.

I'm now an official Adobe Flex Certified Instructor (ACI)

The path to get the Adobe Certified Instructor (ACI) certification was a long process but now I'm done.
Now I'm an official Flex 3 Certified Instructor, so I can start  to teach Adobe Flex Official Training courses:

• Flex 3: Developing Rich Client Applications  New
• Flex 3 and LiveCycle Data Services: Integrating with Data and Messaging New
• Flex 3 and LiveCycle Data Services: Integrating with ColdFusion New
• Flex 3: Building Charting and Dashboard Applications New
• Flex 3: Extending and Styling Components New
• Flex 3: Developing Rich Internet Applications

So in a few time we'll schedule these official Flex 3 courses that they'll add to the Comtaste's Flex, Livecyle Data Service and Blaze DS courses published.

And I'm in a training course in Adobe Italy right now to teach Flex 3 to some Adobe's Solution Partners :)

Using Flex 3 with BlazeDS and Java (JEE) training course released by Comtaste (London,Milan,New York)

Comtaste Training is proud to announce its new training course about Flex 3 development using BlazeDS. The course is the result of several enquiries made by our clients about those topics.
I've worked on the outline of the course and it's ready and I've just published it on the italian section of Comtaste's site (I'm working on the english outline for this training course):

Enterprise Flex Applications: Using Flex 3 with BlazeDS and Java (JEE)

The Flex 3 and BlazeDS course adds to Comtaste's course programs and it is the open source alternative to the Enterprise Flex Applications:Using LiveCycle Data Services and J2EE (Java EE) training course.

The Flex 3 with BlazeDS is a 3-consecutive-day lessons and we're scheduling it in the following three locations: London, Milan and New York City.

Enterprise Flex Applications: Using Flex 3 with BlazeDS and Java (JEE): Overview

BlazeDS is the open source technology released by Adobe and based on Java Remoting and web messaging. BlazeDS allows developers to easily connect to J2EE distribuite (Java Enterprise)architecture and to carry out real time data pushing to Rich Internet Applications created with Flex 3 or to desktop applications created with Adobe AIR. BlazeDS uses AMF format to transfer data in binary mode, a technique that increases the performance of the application compared to XML or SOAP formats. In this course we will illustrate the techniques to install, configure and connect Flex and AIR applications to BlazeDS in Java server logic, and how to exploit the characteristics of this technology.

Training objectives
The final laboratory of this course will allow participants to built complex and interactive Enterprise applications distributed in Java Enterprise JEE architectures.

New algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash and Flex (SWF) by Google search engine

I just wanted to pass the news I've just read from the Google Official Blog:

Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we've improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe's Flash Player technology.

In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find.

Now that we've launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results and snippets. There's more info on the Webmaster Central blog about the Searchable SWF integration.

Adobe has published the SWF searchability FAQ on the Developer Connection Center.

Enterprise Flex apps with Livecycle DS and BlazeDS

Tomorrow I'll be in Adobe Italy headquarter in Milan to present the following event : Enterprise Flex Applications with LiveCycle Data Services and BlazeDS.

During the event I'll show examples,  share development approaches to use Flex, LiveCycle Data Services and BlazeDS in enterprise contexts (mainly with J2EE). The event is based on Comtaste's courses oriented to enterprise Flex 3 development :

• Enterprise Flex Applications: Using LiveCycle Data Services and J2EE (Java EE)
• Enterprise Flex Applications: Usign Flex 3 with  BlazeDS and Java (JEE)

If there'll be the time I want to discucss about the benefits of using AIR  in enterprise's world. 
So if you want to know more about the features of BlazeDS and Livecycle DS my advice is to partecipate. See you there !

The event is totally free but you need to register to it.

Migrating from AIR 1.0 to 1.1 and Flex SDK 3.0.2

Yesterday the AIR 1.1 was released by Adobe.  AIR 1.1 is a small release that introduces  international support to  applications.
From a development point of view if you're suing Flex 3 to create the AIR application you need to take some manual steps in order to include     support for AIR 1.1.

You nedd to download the 3.0.2 build from http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+3     and install it by unzipping it to a location of your choice.

Adobe has cool articles to read about this new AIR 1.1 release you should read:

• AIR 1.1 FAQ  
• Developing Flex applications for AIR 1.1
  
• Building multilingual Flex applications on Adobe AIR
• Developing Adobe AIR 1.1  applications with Adobe Flex 3
• Building a multilingual HTML-based application
• Building multilingual Flex applications on Adobe AIR
  
  

Flex SDK to support cross-versioning: the Marshall Plan

Reading the Alex Harui's blog, I found  this interesting post about a new Adobe Open Source project called the Marshall Plan. I read that the  "Marshall Plan" is the nickname for the SDK feature to support cross-versioning.

Thus, the Marshall Plan is really two things:

• Cross-Versioning Support: SWFs are in the same SecurityDomain but different ApplicationDomains and may have been compiled by different versions of Flex.
• Untrusted Application Support: SWFs are loaded into different SecurityDomains and cannot access the main application or the Stage and other restricted resources.

This is something I want to  investigate on.

Vote to nominate Flex SDK as Best Tool or Utility for Developers

On the Flex Team official blog Matt Chotin wrote that the SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards are open, and wouldn't it be great if Flex were a winner?
Click here to nominate Flex SDK and select the "Best Tool or Utility for Developers" category.

Flex, Livecycle Data Services, BlazeDS and AIR development for the Enterprises

For Adobe Italy Comtaste has created a series of  free events where we'll talk about the use of Flex, Livecycle Data Services, BlazeDS and AIR development in enterprises contexts.

The first event will be in Rome on June 18 : AIR development for Enterprise desktop applications

We'll show how to create desktop applications using AIR and how to integrate them to JEE enviroments with  LiveCycle Data Service and BlazeDS.

The second event was scheduled in Rome on July 2 and Milan on June 25. The tile of the event is  Enterprise Flex Application with  LiveCycle Data Services.

The events are totally free but you need to register on the Adobe Events site.

User Experience on RIA cateogry in our company's blog

Comtaste is continuing to grow.  Our development team gained a talented and experienced JEE and Flex developer and our blog has a new author, Kira Garfagnoli, that will publish articles about  user experience in the RIA world.
Her first post has been published two weeks ago :

Flex rich interface design: why big companies choose Flex

and many others will follow.
I'm so enthusiast to be part of this growing !

MultiMania 08 is over but I had awesome time !

Unfortunately I know I won't have the time to prepare a detailed summary post about my visit and partecipation at the Multi-Mania Conference 2008.
I just want to say that it was an awesome experience and I had great time with the rest of the speakers (Koen, Peter, Aral, Ralph, Serge and many others).
Everything worked great and was well organized by Koen and the other stuff of the crew. Thanks for your support.
I want to point out a detailed overview post of the conference made by Peter Elst that published some videos with also some minutes of my presentation :

Marco Casario - Flex with AJAX

Grails plugin for Adobe Flex, Livecycle DS and BlazeDS

Grails is growing more and more and it's gaining an important role over the Java community. Grails is an open-source web application framework that leverages the Groovy language (a cool dynamic language) and complements Java Web development. The Grails framework is built on top of  Spring , an establised enterprise framework. 

The community is huge and you can now find a lot of interesting and useful plugin system  to speed up andintegrate integrates Grails with technologies Java people care about like GWT, DWR, JMS, IntelliJ, search operations are based on Luceneand and others.

Recently a new plugin for Adobe Flex, Livecycle DS and BlazeDS  is available for the Grails framework:

Grails Flex Plugin

the installation of the plugin is very easy. It's enough to launch it using this command line :

grails install-plugin flex

And you'll be ready to specify a Grails service as a remoting destination for Blaze DS or Livecycle DS using the expose property to your service class :

static expose = ['flex-remoting']

Grails is a framework for which I'm very eager to know more. I hope this summer I'll find the time to write some tutorials about the use of Grails plugin for Adobe Flex, Livecycle DS and BlazeDS.

Grails plugin for Adobe Flex and BlazeDS features

* Automatic configuration of Flex related web descriptor elements - For Flex to work configuration of servlets etc. are required in the web descriptor. This plugin automatically does this configuration.
* Eposing Grails services as Flex remoting destinations - When using Flex remoting services each Java service need to be configured within Flex using xml configuration. When exposing Grails service classes with this plugin this configuration is not needed anymore. The service class will automatically be registered within the Flex message broker.
* Participation in reloading of exposed Grails services - This plugin participates nicely with the reloading facilities of Grails. When creating new services or exposing existing services, they will be registered in the Flex message broker without restarting the application
* Embedded BlazeDS libraries
* Embedded Flex Webtier Compiler - When installing this plugin it will automatically install the Flex Webtier Compiler to your web application (within the WEB-INF folder). In development mode this Webtier Compiler is automatically enabled.

Multi-Mania is about to kick-off and I'm arrived in Belgium

Everything is ready for the kickoff of  Multi-Mania 2008. And Koen wrote that the conference is fully booked with more than 1000 regitered users !

I was transported from the Brussel airport by car together with Rob Chiu, Susanna (his girlfriend) and Dave from Indianapolis. It was a long trip but I had a lot of time with them :)

This year we have over 30 speakers  in 4 simultaneous tracks on topics like design, development, video, audio, 3D and game development and also have 3 workshops on Adobe AIR, Flex,  Flash Media Server and Microsoft Silverlight.

Thomas has released the conference mobile guide developed using Flash Lite. You can download it via his blog : www.thomasjoos.be

This is my agenda :

- Ruling the web - Aral Balkan
- SQLite in Adobe AIR - Peter Elst
- Having fun with Flash and AIR - Wim Vanhenden
- Design Challenges, Standards Solutions - Stephanie Sullivan
- Flex with AJAX - Marco Casario
- Flash 2D and 3D Effects - Ralph Hauwert
- The Pixel Whisperer - Mario Klingemann

But I'm curios to follow the Rob Chiu's session.
My session will be tomorrow at 3 PM. See you there guys !

New support for JavaScript in NetBeans 6.1

Ok I have to admit it. I'm a fan of NetBeans. And with the new features added on the recent next release, NetBeans 6.1 is nearer to AJAX and RIA development.  The famous IDE introduced the support to JavaScript, PHP scripting language, support for embedded CSS and  HTML.

NetBeans TV has published an interesting webcast to show the new JavaScript Editor in NetBeans IDE 6.1 :

NetBeans IDE 6.1 contains a completely new JavaScript editor which provides many advanced editing capabilities such as intelligent code completion, mark occurences, instant rename, on-fly analysis of JavaScript libraries, support for many Ajax frameworks and more. Watch this screencast to discover the new and exciting JavaScript-related features.

Now I'm waiting for the Flex 3 support :)

Flex Cookbook site re-skinned and a new search/commenting feature for the Flex Developer Center

The Flex Team added some awesome features to the Adobe Flex Developer Center. First of all the Flex Cookbook site has been re-skinned in order to improve the readibility of Flex 3 code.

Moreover two new great features have been added: a community-powered search and a post's commenting feature.
The community-powered search is designed to help people to find the best answer to their questionsearching thorugh the expert’s blog in the community, other than the Flex Developer Center.

The latter, the commenting feature, allows users to add comments to Flex Developer Center content.

360Flex San Jose's schedule

The next stop of 360Flex will happen in San Jose on August 18 - 20. On the conference's site the session's schedule was published and as you can read on your own it looks excellent (as usual).

You can download the 360Flex San Jose schedule from the site.

Flex and AJAX Quality Assurance automated testing with Borland Silk 2008

Testing Flex and AJAX applications is challenging because the nature of the application itself can communicate between the client and the server in a different ways. We're not anymore in a context where the standard web application submits via GET or POST requests with an easy-to-understand format.
Flex 3 for example supports Mercury QuickTest Professional that allows developers to create  applications that are tested by Quality Control (QC) professionals.

Now we have a new tool. In fact, Borland released then new Borland Silk 2008, an automated testing tool for Flex and AJAX applications:

Borland Silk 2008 consists of three parts. The first is SilkTest 2008, the functional and regression-testing product designed to support Web 2.0 applications and built on Adobe Flex. With this version, Borland replaced the custom object oriented language it used to develop automated tests in favor of the Java.

The second part is SilkPerformer 2008, the enterprise-class load and performance testing solution. This new version supports testing the scalability of Web 2.0 applications in Flex and AJAX (define).

Finally there is SilkCentral Test Manager 2008, which is designed to act as the test management console, handling test assets, security, and providing assistance to manual testers. It's been upgraded to greater scalability and performance over a distributed network.

Borland said it chose to emphasize Flex in this release because it's the best choice for RIA development in the enterprise. "The reason is you have a vendor to go to who is in control of the spec and will answer the calls. We're not neglecting AJAX, but there are 200 flavors of it. We went deep and complete with Flex, but we're working with an existing customer base for AJAX testing," he said.

I'll speak at Multi-Mania conference.Registrations are now open

Multi-Mania is totally free event dedicated to multimedia topics that happen in Belgium.  The speaker list has been published on the site and it keeps getting great.
I'm glad to be one of the speaker for the Multi-Mania conference and I'll present a session about Flex and AJAX. In this session I'll introduce different approaches to communicate AJAX and Flex together to create better RIAs. Showing lessons we've learned in Comtaste during real world projects development, you'll learn :

* how to send and receive objects from Flex and the AJAX page
* how to use the Flex AJAX Bridge
* understand the benefits of the AJAX Data Services
* how to create a desktop application with AJAX and AIR

You can read more about the conference on Koen's blog.
So , what are you for. Multi-Mani reagistrations are open and it's free.

Calculating the ROI for enterprise applications that use Flex 3

| View | Upload your own

Raffaele Mannella, my business partner at Comtaste, has published the slides of his presentation at 360Flex. The topic was very interesting because he showed the benefits achieved as a consequence of adopting Flex to re-design an enterprise application.  The benefit was measured in terms of the time saved to execute an ordinary operation (cashing a check) by using the Flex re-designed application respect the time that was formerly necessary to execute the same operation by using a "common" Oracle form-based application (simple html using the "traditional" logic of 1 click=1 page).

You can read the entire post on the Comtaste's blog entry :  Measuring the ROI of choosing Flex for Enterprise RIAs

Garbage Collector in ActionScript 3

The garbage collector of actionscript 3 works in 2 different ways to know which object should be deleted from memory: the reference counting method and the mark&sweep.

Emanuele, one of our senior developer at Comtaste,  wrote an interesting article on our company's blog about the Garbage Collector in Flash Player 9 and ActionScript 3.

Reduce the size of a Flex 3 application avoiding unnecessary references with the getQualifiedClassName() method

There are many ways you can use to control and optimize the performance of your Flex applications acting  both on the server as well as on the client side. The first optimization you can implement is by reducing the time tha application takes to start.
Externalizing assets and searching for  linker dependencies are simple approaches that can save the end user a lot of time in  loading te Flex application.
It's common for developers that at the end of a Flex application they are inadvertently linking in some classes that they never use.
I've found that another common error is to let the compiler to include classes that the application won't use for its entire life. That's a shame !
So an important step to check before compiling and deploying a Flex app is to check that you're not including unused classes.
There is a useful method that helps you for this scenario : the getQualifiedClassName().
This class comes from the flash.utils package and it returns a String that contains the fully qualified class name of an object.
You can use it in such kind of situations where you have to compare one or more classes without linking them into the SWF file.
This is a simple scenario where we want to remove all the Button classes inside our application without  causing that class to be linked into the SWF if not used inside the file:

<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
        initialize="removeSomeChild()">

    <mx:Script>
    <![CDATA[

    private function removeSomeChild():void
   {

        myTxt.text += "\n The number of children at the beginning " + numChildren;

        for (var i: Number = 0; i <= (this.numChildren-1); i ++)
        {          

            var childClassName:String = getQualifiedClassName(getChildAt(i));

            myTxt.text += "\n This is the full name of the class: " +  childClassName;

               switch (childClassName)
            {
                case "mx.controls::Button":
                removeChild(getChildAt(i))
            }

        }

      

        myTxt.text += "\n Children alla fine: " + numChildren;
    } 
  ]]>
    </mx:Script>

   

    <mx:TextArea id="myTxt" text="Ciao" />

    <mx:Button />

    <mx:ComboBox />
    <mx:TextInput />

</mx:Application>

The use of the getQualifiedClassName() method the following  classic syntax ensures us  to exclude the Button class  from being compiled into the SWF file :

getChildAt(i) is mx.controls.Button

Note: Removing a DisplayObject from the  DisplayList don't destroy the object neither remove it from Flash Player' s memory.The object will continue to exist even if not as a child of any other container.

Exctract and learn from the Flex 3 data visualization source code (the charting controls, the AdvancedDataGrid classes, the OLAP classes, and the automation classes)

Each time I tell that Flex 3 is open source, during my Flex 3 courses and sessions, people don't believe it.  So I copy the entire Flex 3 SDK libraries into a new Flex 3 project and show them the actionscript classes fo the SDK. Then I go ahead and tell that not only the standard Flex 3 SDK is open source, but also the charting controls, the AdvancedDataGrid classes and all the stuff that come with the Professional version of Flex Builder 3 are open source.

In order to open the data visualization source code  we must have these two requirements :

1. a Flex Builder Professional license key,
2. then you can extract the data visualization source code (the charting controls, the AdvancedDataGrid classes, the OLAP classes, and the automation classes)

The approach is very simple because all you have to do is to use the  DMV-source.jar in the Flex Builder 3\sdks\3.0.0\lib  folder and extract it.
Today I found this clear and cool post on the Flex Doc Team's blog that illustrates the required steps to
exctract the data visualization source code :

The syntax to extract the data visualization source code is as follows:

> java -jar DMV-source.jar {license-file-location} {output-location}

Once again kudos to the Flex Doc  Team ! Go, read it and use the Flex 3 SDK as the first step for learning a better way to develop in Flex 3 !

Why you should consider Spring in your Flex, BlazeDS and Livecycle DS scenarios

Today during a presentation about the use of Flex in enterprise scenarios, while I was illustrating the benefits of using the factory mechanism of BlazeDS to integrate it with Spring, a developer asked me why use Spring for Flex development (I guess he does not come from the Java world).
I think that the answer could be obvious to most of you but I want to share my thoughts with you about that topic. Feedbacks and opinions are appreciated :)

Spring is an open source framework that helps a lot the developers' life to make it easier.There some factors you have to consider when you develop a Java application. In fact using the standard JEE approach you'll tend to write a lot of unuseful and repeatedly code or implementing J2EE design patterns that are workarounds for technology limitations rather than real solutions to a problem. This is where Spring can save you a lot of time.
Spring uses the Inversion of Control (IoC) pattern that runs in any environment.

From  Wikipedia: The Inversion of control - also known as IoC - is a concept, and an associated set of programming techniques, in which the control flow is inverted compared to the traditional interaction model expressed in imperative style by a series of procedure calls. Thus, instead of the programmer specifying, by the means of function calls, a series of events to happen during the lifetime of a programme, they would rather register desired responses to particular happenings, and then let some external entities take over the control over the precise order and set of events to happen.

The container used by Spring is very lightweight and reduces the  startup time by instantiating components dependencies when it creates them.
Moving out the configuration code to provide dependencies we use Spring to assemble and manage the application components (Spring beans).

Spring Beans are Java objects so in order to access these Spring objects from Flex you have to use BlazeDS or Livecycle Data Services and then configure the destination to point at.
The essence of Spring is in providing enterprise services to Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs).
The POJO term was coined by Josh MacKenzie, Martin Fowler, and  Rebbecca Parsons to intend a Java object that doesn't implement any special interfaces.

Then using the SpringFactory  you can use Flex destinations with dependency-injected instances of Spring objects.
Having dependency injection containers allows you to configure the application consistently in one place. 

The SpringFactory was developed by Jeff  Vroom (http://weblogs.macromedia.com/lin/README.txt) and is also available on Adobe Exchange.

More information on the Spring framework can be found at the Spring's homepage. And don't miss the Christophe's article on Flex and Spring

My Flex 3 Solutions book examples checked against Flex 3 final release

Recently the examples of my Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers book have been updated against Flex 3 final release. So now all the examples of the book work great in Flex 3.

You can donwload the new files on the book's site flexsolutions.comtas.com.

AdobeTechConnection Workshop: Flash Media Server 3, Flex 3 and AIR

Adobe Italy and Comtaste has organized, with the support of FlexGala, the first  of a long series of workshop dedicated to  Rich Internet Application development. This kind of event is a totally free real training session. In fact we've requested to all partecipants to bring their laptops to follow the day.
In this first meeting we've talked about Flash Media Server 3, Adobe AIR and Flex 3.  Matteo and I have taken examples and demos we usually use for Comtaste's training courses about these topics.
People were very interested and we gave the basics to stream a video content using the Flash Media Server 3 and ActionScript 3 (with Flash CS3 as well as Flex Builder 3).
In the second part of the morning we showed how to export the streaming video on AIR using flash CS3 and Aptana.
Adobe Italy has supported the event offering the possibility to make a raffle for donating a Flip Video Ultra device (it's so coool !).

You'll find all the slides and demo example on FlexGala Adobe user group site.

360Flex Europe - Day 2

360Flex Europe day 2 is over and the conference is about to finish. Day three is underway. These two days has been incredible fun and intensive. I met a lot of people, attended great sessions but unfortunately I missed the dinner of yesterday night with some friends (for business reasons).
This is the list of sessions I attended yesterday :

• Raffaele Mannella - The benefits of a Rich Internet Application in Enterprise Environments
• Greg Wilson: LiveCycle ES, Adobe's Enterprise Backend Platform
• Sakri : Invalidation Routines, Pounded into Your Cranium Once and for All!
• Zohar Babin: kaltura platform - Open Source Online Video Editor Built in Flex 2
• Shashank Tiwari: Flex Integration Under a Few Emerging JavaEE Scenarios

Sakri's session was very interesting. Each time I saw a presentation about invalidation and validation routines I learn something new. Raffaele, my business partner, made an interesting session about  the financial aspects involved in  mesuring the retunr on investment of a Flex RIA.

Moreover I gave a last-minute presentation about the integration of J2EE and Flex using BlazeDS improvising some examples and demos. I think there was some problem with a missing speaker so Tom asked me to cover the session. It was fun and the audience (only a few people) were experienced Java developers so I felt at ease :)

At the end of the sessions we had great time with some of the spekaers and some other friends having the aperitive in Milan outside the hotel (the hotel is very expensive for drinking ;)).

360Flex Europe - Day 1

360Flex Europe day 1 is over. And it was awesome. I'm very happy to have the first edition of 360Flex Europe happens here in Milan, Italy. The conference does not reach the sold out but this is a good thing because with less people you can have a better networking activities and spend more time with people in a relaxed enviroment !
These are the list of sessions I followed yesterday:

• Koen De Weggheleire: Flex and LiveCycle Data Services
• Michael Labriola: Dense and Hot - An Introduction to Your Application's Start Up
• Marco Casario:
• Luca Mezzalira: Flex Bitmap Effects!  and Eros Marcon: Video Streaming with Flex and Flash Media Server

This is a report of the first day, briefly. Koen introduced the Livecycle Data Services development giving an overview of the possibilities that the DS gives to Flex developers, as you can see from the image on the right. He made a very clear and linear presentation, targetted to the audience, and moreover Koen is the only developer able to crash a Mac OSX system :) Great job mate !
Michael Labriola presented a very interesting topics talking about what happens under the hoods of component lifecycle architecture. It was very interesting and he's a great presenter. He can also speak italian very well with a fucking cool pronunciation ... that's incredible ! You rock man ;)

I'll talk about my session, Better Flex and AIR Applications Using AJAX, on a dedicated post :)
At the end of the day we reached Sumi for a dinner with some people from the european communities.
We had great time all together and Sumi is so sweet with all of us spending her time "making community". She's lovely!

360Flex day 1 was awesome. I had cool time with Koen (hey man your last name is unutterable), Cyril, Michael Labriola, Luca and Matteo. Plus a lot of new people known.

Tom and John made a wonderful job, putting on bad-ass conferences with excellent  good speakers.

360Flex Europe is about to start

Yesterday  I arrived in Milan (I use to live in Rome) for the 360 Flex Europe. There was a dinner organized by Tom and John and the other speakers.
We had great time as usual and we spent about one hour playing at the pool table with Koen , Cyril and Sakri.

And don't forget that the entrance for today is totally free !!! So if you live in Milan that's the right occasion to come and join the 360Flex Conference !
My session will start after the lunch at 2.30: Better Flex and AIR applications using AJAX.
See you there !

Porting a Flex 2 application to Flex 3 SDK: all you have to know.

Last week I hold a Flex 3 and AIR 1 training course at Adobe Italy's Office for some partners. One of the question was about the porting of Flex 2 applications to the new Flex 3 SDK. I think this is a pretty common question that may occurs during a Flex 3 course so I wanted to share this link to all trainers as well as Flex developers.

The FlexDoc team wrote a blog post about the migration from Flex 2 to Flex 3 that will save you a lot of time :
Migrating applications from Flex 2 to Flex 3

Kudos to FlexDoc team... again ;). You made Flex developers' life much easier ;)

New Adobe Flex 3 and Adobe AIR training courses in New York City, London and Milan

Some weeks ago Comtaste has launched its new training courses on Adobe Flex3 and AIR for late spring-early summer 2008. One of the greatest news for us are the new venues in New York City and London.
First courses to be scheduled are:

"Flex 3 and Flex Builder 3: Developing Rich Internet Applications with the new Flex 3 SDK"  in Milan and London 26-29 May, abd  New York City - Manhattan 2-5 June

"Developing desktop applications with Adobe AIR, Ajax and Flex"  in Milan 14-17 April, New York City - Manhattan 9-12 June, and  London 23-26 June.

Our educational proposal is mainly the result of our strong experience in real world enterprise projects. Our courses reflect our clients' training needs that our consultants have encountered in the day by day running of enterprise-class projects, where Flex and AIR are also connected to backend applications under robust and rigid JEE architectures or other server side technologies.

Training programs and other details on company's website www.comtaste.com/en/training.htm

My 360Flex schedule

I think I'm the first this time sharing the personal 360Flex Europe ... so what are you waiting for :)
Tom and John made an awesome job making 360Flex Europe a memorable event. There are lots of opportunities to network and learn with attendees and speakers.
It was so hard finalize the agenda and I'm pretty sure I'll play around a lot trying to see as much as possible. There are a lot of friends that I do not want to miss !

Monday

• Koen De Weggheleire: Flex and LiveCycle Data Services
• Michael Labriola: Dense and Hot - An Introduction to Your Application's Start Up
• Marco Casario: Better Flex and AIR Applications Using AJAX
• Luca Mezzalira: Flex Bitmap Effects!  and Eros Marcon: Video Streaming with Flex and Flash Media Server

Tuesday

• Sean Wesenberg: Cairngorm from a JSF Perspective + Embedded Charting in Non-Flex Apps
  
• Raffaele Mannella - The benefits of a Rich Internet Application in Enterprise Environments
• Greg Wilson: LiveCycle ES, Adobe's Enterprise Backend Platform
• Invalidation Routines, Pounded into Your Cranium Once and for All!
• Zohar Babin: kaltura platform - Open Source Online Video Editor Built in Flex 2
• Shashank Tiwari: Flex Integration Under a Few Emerging JavaEE Scenarios

Wednesday

• David Bigelow - Making and Protecting Money with Flex!
• Mihai Corlan: Developing Data Intensive Flex Applications in Flex Builder 3.
• Rostislav Hristov: SWFAddress 2.0 - The power of deep linking in Flex"
• Ivan "Mars Spider" Zambanello:Code Behind for Custom Advanced Components
• Borre Wessel: Cairngorm Deepdive - Where It Came From and Where It's Going
• Christophe Jolif - Hands On with ILOG Flex Components and Dan Thomas: Development Best Practices

My FITC 2008 Flex Daily Solutions slides

I've posted the slides for my presentation at FITC 2008 Amsterdam: Flex Solutions for your daily development.

Some of the session highlights:

•How to architecture Flex application: design pattern in Flex (view helper, model locator and front controller)
•Use the open source library: exploring the flexlib project
•How to optimize the use of RPC class with the AsynchToken
•Trace Network traffic using the trace and flashlog.txt log file
•Debug applications using the Logging APIs
•Flex Builder IDE Optimizations
•How to overcome the cross domain policy
•Using the Proxy Service of BlazeDS
•Focus on Flex 3 new features: the new Collection classes and theAdvancedDataGrid
•Flex Inspirational Quotes

| View | Upload your own

FITC rocked !

It was great catching up and meeting some new faces, and I hope to see you all again soon!

360Flex Europe Day 1 is for free !Day 2 and 3 are now only 240 euros

That's a great news, especially if you were not sure to partecipate to 360Flex Europe yet. From th 360Flex blog:
Thanks to our sponsors, they're very happy to announce that day one of 360|Flex Europe will be free to all. Yup, you read correctly: Monday, 7 April, of 360Flex will be open to the general public.

Day 1 of the 360Flex Conference is now Free.
This means that anyone who shows up on Monday April 7 at the conference will get in for free. They can enjoy any of the 9 great sessions, the Adobe Keynote and the FREE Flex 101 hands on training. 

Because Day 1 is free, we've knocked a third off the price of admission.
Therefore, it's now only 240 euros to attend on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Adobe Photoshop Express: Photoshop goes online with Flex (an AIR version coming soon)

That's great.  Adobe has launched the public beta of Photoshop Express, a Flex-based  Rich Internet Application. The fantastic thing is that it is totally free !
The RIA  allows you to store, sort and show off digital photos with eye-catching effects.
Reading the Ryan's blog I've read that Adobe has also got some social networking integration so you can quickly edit Facebook, Photobucket, and Picasa (Flickr is coming soon I hear)

Thanks to Serge Jesper for the update: John Nack is saying that an AIR-version is coming soon which will enable offline image editing and printing services.

My session at 360Flex Europe: Better Flex and AIR applications using AJAX

I've just finished my blurb about the session I'll held at the 360Flex Europe. There were a lot of different interesting sessions in my mind: Flex and Java integration, Livecycle Data Services development, introduction to BlazeDS development .... But at the end I've decided for a topic where we're really involved in this period in Comtaste:  integration between Flex and AJAX.
We're working in two projects where we're using the Flex AJAX bridge and other tecniques to communicate between Flex and AJAX, and the AJAX Data Services.
So my session we'll be titled  Better Flex and AIR applications using AJAX and I'll give you what Ive learned in these months about Flex and AJAX integration. Here it is a description of the speech :

So many people believe that Flex and AJAX are competitor. Of course they're both great technologies to develop Rich Internet Applications. But they're old friends.
AJAX is the right choice because of its open nature and standard based languages, while Flex is good for interoperability in browsers (because of the ubiquity of Flash Player) and for its large set of components ready to use and to extend.
In this session I'll introduce different approaches to communicate AJAX and Flex together to create better RIAs. Showing lessons we've learned in Comtaste during real world projects development, you'll learn :

* how to send and receive objects from Flex and the AJAX page
* how to use the Flex AJAX Bridge
* understand the benefits of the AJAX Data Services
* how to create a desktop application with AJAX and AIR

As Serge Jesper wrote on his blog, the 360Flex Europe has an impressive speaker list that has a great mix of well established names but also a bunch of cool new names.
New speakers means  new fresh voices and ideas that they can share  and we can learn from. I personally know most of the new speakers and they're all great Flex developers.

Let's see on Monday at 2.30 pm. Download the 360Flex schedule.

Flex Data Services is now free using WebORB for .NET

I've missed the news while travelling. I read on Serge Jesper's blog that Midnight Coders has changed its business model and it will release WebORB for .NET for free !

WebORB for .NET provides advanced features for your .NET infrastructer for data pushing, RemoteObject using AMF3 and message broadcasting.

This is a great news for all enterprise Flex  developers that use .NET framework ! Now we have BlazeDS released as Open Source, the AMF3 Specifications released as open sourse, the WebORB for .NET for free, the Flex 3 SDK open source.....

That's awesome !

Discount code for FlexGala's members for the 360Flex Europe conference

360Flex Europe is very close and there are a lot of good reasons to partecipate (you can read Comtaste's post). The price to join the event is very low considering the 3 days of technical sessions that you'll be able to attend.
FlexGala has the opportunity to give a discount coupon to receive a special discount of 60 euro. It will decrease the price to 300Euro for the entire conference. If you're a member of FlexGala you'll receive the newsletter with the code to insert in the registration page. Or you can email me and I'll be happy to send it to you !

And if you're not sure if come or not at the 360Flex Europe you should have a look at the speakers, sessions and at the following points :

   * Low cost - Only €360 for 3 days of conference (300 if you're member of FlexGala)
    * Over 30+ great speakers (including yourselves)
    * 80 minute sessions, so there's plenty of time for Questions and Answers
    * 1GB USB thumb drives, for all attendees

See you there !

Goodbye Boston.New York and AJAXWorld 2008 here I come!

On Saturday I arrived in New York  and after a quick journey I leeft the Big Apple to go meeting Alessandro Pace in Boston. We spent an incredible day and he was my "Cicerone" showing me all the interesting stuff in Boston, Cambridge, Harvard, the MIT, the Boston College and a couple of sweet and awesome places for drinking and eating !

This morning I'll leave for New York again where the AJAXWorld 2008 Conference is waiting for me (actually not only me ;)).

Thanks Alessandro for the awesome day spent together. I'll wait for you to see in Italy :)

All is ready for the AJAXWorld Conference 2008 in New York

I'm preparing my luggages for my tomorrow's flight to New York city. I'll spend 5 days in the Big Apple for speaking at the AJAXWorld Conference 2008. And it will be the occasion to go meeting my friend Alessandro in Boston on this weekend !

My presentation will be about our development experiences we had in integrating AJAX with Flex widgets in some of our internal applications and projects. You can see 2 of them at these links :

YuBuk.com (use the advanced search and go to the Map view)
YouThru.com

So I'm sure I'll have great time. I'm thinking about some friends of mine that live in NY to have some great time with them !

Flex and AJAX integration.I need some real world examples

On the next week I'll speak at the AJAXWorld Conference about the integration between Flex into AJAX applications. I'll show some examples on the Flex AJAX bridge classes and the AJAX Data Services, but my plan is to spend some time in showing some real projects.

Comtaste has developed a great example of this integration (you can see it online visiting YuBuk portal) but my plan is to show more real world case studies.
I know Google Finance that is a good one. But I would show more !

If you have more examples please send me a comment or an email. Thanks for your help ;)

Financial Services based on Flex for the Il Sole24ore

Il Sole24ore announced its Flex based platform  : XPLANE XTRA. The system allows you to monitor in real time many quotes, handle your portfolio, access to online data, and use advanced tools for filtering and sorting the data.
You can see a demo of the product on its site. (thanks to Gianfranco for the news)

The Il Sole 24 ORE Group is multimedia publishing group operating in the sectors of news and information and specialist publishing for professionals and businesspeople.

The flagship publication is the daily newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, which has more than 1.2 million readers and which has distinguished itself for its authority and integrity, as well as for the accuracy of the information it provides.

The Il Sole 24 ORE Group is an authoritative point of reference for the worlds of finance, economics, and government and provides an integrated publishing system by taking advantage of the strengths of the various media available.

Flex 4 (codename Gumbo) is beginning active development

Adobe has published some rough information about the next release of Flex 4 (codename Gumbo) on the Adobe Open Source site :

These milestones are very much a work in progress:

Milestone	Date
Scope determined	April 2008
Beta 1	Late 2008
4.0 Final	2009

Flex 4, codenamed Gumbo, is now beginning active development. The product plan is not yet complete, but a few themes are under consideration:

• Design in Mind: provide a framework meant for continuous collaboration between designer and developer. Probably involves an additional component model that integrates with the existing Halo components.
• Accelerated Development: take application development from concept to reality quickly. Features could include application templates, architectural framework integration, binding improvements.
• Horizontal Platform Improvements: features that benefit all application and user types. Features could include compiler performance, language enhancements, BiDi components, enhanced text.
• Broadening Horizons: expand the range of applications and use-cases that can leverage Flex. Features could include finding a way to make the framework lighter, supporting more deployment runtimes, runtime MXML.

Flex 3 and AIR courses updated

We've just updated our Flex 3 and AIR courses on Comtaste's course catalogue :

• Flex 3 and Flex Builder 3:
  Developing Rich Internet Applications with the new Flex 3 SDKs
• Developing desktop applications with Adobe AIR, Ajax and Flex

The first course, Flex 3 and Flex Builder 3: Developing Rich Internet Applications with the new Flex 3 SDKs,  guides students in a step-by-step learning process that begins from the basic notions of Flex3 and Flex Builder 3 to the development of complex front end applications that communicate with remote data sources.
The second one, Developing desktop applications with Adobe AIR, Ajax and Flex,  introduces the participants to the development of Rich Applications with Adobe AIR using its capacity of being able to access the File System, to modify the Windows of the system, to function even in offline mode and to use the notification mechanism of the operative system.

Comtaste is a company focused in RIA development with Flex, Java, PHP and AIR. Our trainers are first of all experienced developers involved in several enterprise projects. Moreover they are very communicative instructors that can give students the right balance between theory and real world examples and contexts.
That's why many companies in the last months chose Comtaste as their t