Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web

Android 2.3 (codename Gingerbread) revealed

Google has released an introduction video about the new features of Android 2.3.
There are a lot of new interesting stuff especially if you're a game developer (it would be cool for AIR for Android developers too).

What I'm really interested in is the adoption of the NFC (Near Field Communication) system, a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 centimeter distance. It will allow Android owners to use the mobile devices for paying without using the credit card, as well as communicate with other phones.

See a video of the CEO of Google talks about that.

Getting certified in Flex 4 - Some considerations on the Flex 4 (9A0-129) exam

I've just completed and successfully passed the Flex 4 exam (9A0-129). As an Adobe Certified Master Instructor (ACI) it was mandatory to update to Flex 4 succeeding this new exam (in order to teach the upcoming Flex 4: Developing Rich Internet Applications course). 

Now that I'm fresh I want to share some considerations with you that might be helpful for preparing for the exam.

The Flex 4 exam has changed a little bit compared to the Flex 4, not only in terms of new features and questions but also in some of the topic areas.

Topic Areas for the  Flex 4 exam (9A0-129):

• Creating a User Interface (UI) (% of Flex 4 exam 34%)
• Flex system architecture and design (% of Flex 4 exam 17%)
• Programming Flex applications with ActionScript (% of Flex 4 exam  20%)
• Interacting with data sources and servers (% of Flex 4 exam 14%)
• Using Flex in the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) (% of Flex 4 exam 15%)

These are some of my considerations that might help you in focusing on the right path to get certified in Flex 4:

• If you know Flex and you spend your time in developing Flex 4 applications the exam will be very easy. But it requires that you have a good knowledge of LCDS/BlazeDS and AIR 2.0 too.
• There are some basic ActionScript 3 questions about class modifiers (private, public ...), invoking external custom components, implementing read-only properties, using the getter/setter methods, drag and drop methods and events, and so on. They should not be a problem for you.
• Dispatching custom events: this is a very important topic so prepare yourself to get some questions about dispatching custom events, extending the Event class, the Flex event flow (three phases: capturing, targeting, bubbling).
• Cross domain policy questions: simple questions on security sandbox and how to access to methods and properties from SWF files served from other domains. 
• I did not find any question about UML, while in the Flex 3 certification exam I remember a couple of them. It does not mean that UML questions do not exist as well.
• I got a couple of questions about BlazeDS client architecture. Particularly on the communication between Flex client components and BlazeDS. Remember that a Producer and a Consumer objects have to share the same destination, why use the AsyncMessage class and the IMessage interface, what takes  the send() method as parameters, which data type pass to the message.body property 

• Study methods and events of the AsyncMessage class and focus your attention on the send() method of the Producer class:
  
  var message:AsyncMessage = new AsyncMessage();
   message.body = "message";
  message.headers.chatUser = "Marco Casario";
  myProducer.send(message);

• If you don't use Livecycle Data Services 3 (LCDS) on a daily basis, before getting the exam take the time to have a strong look at them. 
• Take a tour to the model-driven application development. Understand the set of tools needed to build an end-to-end model-driven application:  Flash Builder, the Modeler, and the LiveCycle Data Services server. 
• Practice on the tasks that allows you to build an end-to-end model-driven application:

Install LiveCycle Data Services, Flash Builder, and the application modeling plug-in.
Configure a JDBC data source.
Configure Remote Data Services (RDS) on the server.

Configure Flash Builder to use RDS.
Configure server-side debug logging.
Create a J2EE server project in Flash Builder.
Build a model and generate code.
Create and run a Flex client.

• The Flex 4 exam includes questions on the AIR 2.0 SDK, too. So, practice on the basics: the File class, how to point to a location to open a file, how to connect to a database, the FileStream class, the properties of the SQLConnection and SQLStatement, how to execute multiple statements in a transaction, and so on.
• AIR security privileges: have a look at the different privileges for setting the security sandbox.
• Digitally signing your AIR installation files with and without using a certificate
• There's a new API in AIR 2.0 that  lets an AIR application execute native processes on the host operating system: it's the The NativeProcess class. The AIR applcation can monitor the standard input (stdin) and standard output (stdout) stream of the process as well as the process's standard error (stderr) stream.
• See how to create native application installers for distributing AIR applications: EXE installer file for distribution on Windows, a DMG installer file for distribution on Mac OS, a DEB or RPM installer file for distribution of an AIR application on Linux.

 This is all I can remember :) 

There are no shortcuts to success the Flex 4 certification. So my advice to save your money is to get the exam when you really gain experience with Flex 4, Blaze DS, AIR 2.0 and LCDS !

Good luck ! 

Integrating the Adobe Flash Platform with Microsoft .NET: WebORB and Amethyst's partnership

Today Midnight Coders and SapphireSteel Software announce a technology partnership to provide a uniquely powerful solution to integrate the Adobe Flash Platform with Microsoft .NET.

When it comes to building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for the .NET environment, developers prefer to use the Visual Studio IDE.  Up until now, Visual Studio was easier for pure Microsoft environments (such as for Silverlight client to .NET services), but Silverlight doesn’t have nearly the installed base that Flash has (99% of all Internet-enabled desktops). 

With the release of SapphireSteel’s Amethyst, developers now have an easy way to create Flash-based applications right inside Visual Studio. The problem of linking Flash with .NET is solved by Midnight Coders’ WebORB which provides end-to-end client-server application development across the two platforms. The Midnight Coders and SapphireSteel Software technology partnership is aimed at implementing seamless integration of Amethyst with WebORB. This will give Visual Studio users a simple and elegant way of creating data-driven Flash Platform applications with a .NET ‘back end’.

Microsoft Visual Studio developers can now develop Flex 4 applications with Amethys Professional

Yesterday SapphirSteel Software has released the final version of Amethyst, the Flex development plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio.

For the first time, Visual Studio users have access to a full suite of integrated development tools for the Adobe Flash Platform,” says Huw Collingbourne, Director of Technology at SapphireSteel Software, “Amethyst gives Microsoft developers the ability to design, code and debug Flash and Flex applications without being forced to use an unfamiliar IDE.

 

“Moreover, Amethyst is a truly ‘visual’ system, not just an ActionScript editor. Developers can drag components from the Visual Studio Toolbox and drop them right into the Amethyst Designer in order to create sophisticated Flash-based user interfaces. In fact, Amethyst looks and works just like the C# and Visual Basic environments so there is really almost no learning curve for an experienced Visual Studio user coming to Amethyst.

 

“With Amethyst, Visual Studio programmers have a real alternative to Microsoft’s own tools for creating applications for the WPF/Silverlight platform. Amethyst users have immediate access to the Flash Platform for developing both desktop and browser based applications”

 

In addition to its visual Designer, Amethyst also has powerful editing features includes code folding , extensive ActionScript syntax coloring options and user-configurable code formatting. It provides fast IntelliSense and a superset of the refactoring capabilities provided as standard for C#. It also has a powerful ‘multi-process’ debugger which gives programmers the ability to debug multiple separately compiled programs (Flash SWFs) simultaneously.

 

Visual Designer

The Amethyst Designer supports Adobe’s Flex 3, Flex 4 and AIR frameworks. It integrates fully with the Visual Studio tools such as the Toolbox, the Layout toolbar, the Properties panel and the code editor so that users can easily create and edit Flash-based user interfaces inside Visual Studio.

 

 

IntelliSense

Amethyst supports all the standard IntelliSense features including code completion, snippets (code templates), navigation bars to find methods and classes in the current code file plus Go To Definition and Find All References to locate references to classes, variables and methods throughout an entire project.

 

 

Refactoring

Amethyst supplies a range of automatic refactoring options (to help restructure the user’s code) including: Rename, Auto-generate getter and setter methods (‘encapsulate field’), Extract code into a new method, Move a class to a new package, Promote local variable to parameter, Remove parameters and Reorder parameters. All suggested refactoring changes can be previewed prior to starting a refactoring operation.

 

 

Integration with Adobe Tools

Amethyst can import projects created by Flex Builder, Flash Builder or the Flash IDE (CS3, CS4, CS5), so that teams of developers can work on a shared codebase. When a project is shared with the Flash IDE, animators may use Flash’s timeline-based development while programmers have access to the advanced editing and debugging tools of Amethyst.

 

 

Debugging

The unique ‘Amethyst Cylon’ debugger supports simple breakpoints, conditional breakpoints and ‘break on hitcount’. It integrates with the Visual Studio debugging windows including the Watch windows, the Call Stack and the Immediate window. Programmers are able to evaluate expressions interactively in the Immediate window. The Amethyst Cylon debugger provides multi-process debugger including ‘listen and attach’ to enable the debugging of multiple compiled files (SWFs) simultaneously. When the debugger is in ‘listen’ mode it will auto-attach to one or more SWFs when they are loaded so that the programmer can debug by stepping out of one program into a different one in a single debugging session.

Note that you may male installations of Amethyst for VS2008 and VS2010 onto the same system (they coexist fine). It requires a commercial edition of Visual Studio as Microsoft does not permit 3rd party languages in the Express editions.

 

There are quite a number of tutorials here:

http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Tutorials/Amethyst-Tutorials/article/amethyst-tutorials-index

 

The best one to start with is this one which summarises the essential features:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYFV0tRhbfw

It is also possible to install Amethyst into the free Visual Studio Shell edition:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=40646580-97FA-4698-B65F-620D4B4B1ED7&displaylang=en

Flex Addon for Spring Roo

This Flex Addon is a serious plugin for who is using Spring Roo in enterprise enviroment.

Have a look at the Flex Addon documentation:

Spring Roo brings brings a whole new level of productivity to building Java applications. From the Spring Roo Reference Guide:

"Spring Roo is an easy-to-use productivity tool for rapidly building enterprise applications in the Java programming language. It allows you to build high-quality, high-performance, lock-in-free enterprise applications in just minutes. Best of all, Roo works alongside your existing Java knowledge, skills and experience. You probably won't need to learn anything new to use Roo, as there's no new language or runtime platform needed. You simply program in your normal Java way and Roo just works, sitting in the background taking care of the things you don't want to worry about."

To learn more about Spring Roo itself, you'll find numerous resources from the project's homepage at http://www.springsource.org/roo

The Flex Addon for Spring Roo aims to raise the bar for developer productivity in building Spring-based RIAs with a Flex client by meeting the following goals:

1. Provide the fastest way to get a Spring project configured to use Spring BlazeDS Integration set up and running.
2. Eliminate the need to manually perform repetitive tasks such as keeping ActionScript and Java domain objects in sync.
3. Automate round-tripping code-generation of Flex artifacts with a focus on letting developers do what they do best - write code.

Flex 4.1 SDK and an update to Flash Builder 4.01 released by Adobe

Adobe has released an update to Flex 4 SDK as well as to the Flash Builder 4.

These are the list of bug fixed in Flex SDk 4.1 by the Flex team and Flash Builder 4.01  Update.

It has been added minor enhancements to the SDK such as the Flex mirroring and bidirectional text.

The  Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2 runtimes are now supported by the updater.

You can download the Flex 4.1 SDK manually or you can use the update system of Flash Builder 4 to update the IDE and the SDK automatically.

Flex 4 Cookbook (eBook version) at $9.99. O'Reilly Ebook Deal of the Day. Only $9.99. Any O'Reilly Ebook

I've just received this email from O'Reilly. It's a great deal and I thought to share it. You can buy our latest Flex 4 Cookbook at 9.99 USD :  http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596805623/

It's a one Day Only offer (5/21/2010).

Only $9.99. Any O'Reilly Ebook. Choose any O'Reilly ebook from our list of over 2,000 titles.

Enter code FAVFA in the O'Reilly cart. One Day Only: 5/21/2010

O'Reilly Ebook Deal of the Day is so popular, we want to make sure you know about it, and give you the chance to choose.

Download in 4 DRM-free formats:

PDF, .epub, Kindle-compatible .mobi, and Android .apk. Learn more.

Flex 4 Graphics: Display Bitmap Data in a Graphic Element (excerpt from Flex 4 Cookbook)

This excerpt is from Flex 4 Cookbook.  If you'll enjoy this excerpt, buy a copy of Flex 4 Cookbook.

Display Bitmap Data in a Graphic Element

Problem

You want to display a raster image within a graphic element.

Solution

Use the BitmapImage element or supply a BitmapFill to a FilledElement-based element and set the source property to a value of a valid representation of a bitmap. Optionally, set the fillMode of the graphic to clip, scale, or repeat the image data within the element.

Discussion

Bitmap information from an image source can be rendered within a graphic element in a FXG fragment. The BitmapImage element can be used to define a rectangular region in which to render the source bitmap data, or any FilledElement-based element can be assigned a BitmapFill to render the data within a custom filled path. fillMode is a property of both BitmapImage and BitmapFill that defines how the bitmap data should be rendered within the element. The values available for fillMode are enumerated in the BitmapFillMode class and allow for clipping, scaling, and repeating the bitmap data within the defined bounds of the element. By default, the fillMode property is set to a value of scale, which fills the display area of an element with the source bitmap data.

The following example demonstrates using both the BitmapImage element and BitmapFill within a MXML fragment to display bitmap information:

<s:Application xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"

               xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"

               xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx">

    <fx:Script>

        <![CDATA[

            import mx.graphics.BitmapFillMode;

        ]]>

    </fx:Script>

    <s:Graphic>

        <s:Group>

            <s:layout>

                <s:HorizontalLayout />

            </s:layout>

            <s:BitmapImage id="img" width="450" height="400"

                           source="@Embed('assets/icon.png')" />

            <s:Ellipse id="imgEllipse" width="450" height="400">

                <s:fill>

                    <s:BitmapFill id="imgFill"

                                  fillMode="{BitmapFillMode.REPEAT}"

                                  source="@Embed('assets/icon.png')" />

                </s:fill>

            </s:Ellipse>

        </s:Group>

    </s:Graphic>

</s:Application>

The source property of a BitmapImage element or the BitmapFill of an element, when declared in MXML, can point to various graphic resources. The source could be a Bitmap object, a BitmapData object, any instance or class reference of a DisplayObject-based element, or an image file specified using the @Embed directive. If a file reference is used, the image file path must be relative as it is compiled in; there is no support for runtime loading of an image when using FXG elements in MXML markup.

Decreasing startup time of a Flex 4 application using virtualization: the three rules - Part I

I've spent several days presenting the new Flex 4 features for many of our enterprise clients. As it's simple to understand, most of the time is dedicated to the brand-new Flex 4 List based components. 

Spark List-based components bring a lot of new topics to consider when developing Flex 4 applications: the DataGroup container, virtualization, the dropdown list, custom item rendere and more.

One cool thing about DataGroup is that it supports virtual layouts. As each time I show this topic I get many questions, I've promised myself to write some posts to explain what a virtual layout is.

DataGroup container replaces Repeater container. Taht's a good move from Adobe because the Repeater often comes up with memory leaks.

Virtual layouts allows you to create only objects that need to be shown onscreen and to recycle item renders.  So it's just a matter of how item renderer are created and handled by the layout. 

For allowing a DataGroup to recycle item renderers there are 3 requirements that must match:

1. the useVirtualLayout  property set to "true"

<DataGroup>

        <layout>

            <HorizontalLayout useVirtualLayout="true"/>

        </layout>

</DataGroup>

2. at least an itemRenderer specified and none itemRendererFunction used:

 <s:DataGroup dataProvider="{ myAC }" id="dataGroup" width="100%" height="100% itemRederer="renderer.myRenderer">

3. instead of using data binding within the item renders,  use the override of the set data (not mandatory but highly recomended):

<s:ItemRenderer xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" 

    xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx" 

    xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark">    

                   <fx:Script>

                     <![CDATA[                       

                       override public function set data(value:Object):void

                       {

                           super.data = value;

                         if (value== null) 

                             myText.selected = false;

                         myText.text = value.firstName.toString();

                        }

                     ]]>

                    </fx:Script>                

                    <s:states>

                        <s:State name="normal"/>          

                        <s:State name="hovered"/>

                        <s:State name="selected"/>

                    </s:states>                    

                    <s:Rect left="0" right="0" top="0" bottom="0">

                    <s:fill>

<s:SolidColor color="0xCEDBEF" color.hovered="0xA8C6EE" color.selected="0xCCCCCC" />                           

                        </s:fill>

                    </s:Rect>

                    <s:RichText  text="{ data.firstName }" horizontalCenter="0" />

</s:ItemRenderer>

As you can easily deduct, choosing to use a virtual layout could represent a huge performance gain when your dataProvider works with many items.

I want to add more info about his topic, and I'll write a new piece of information about that soon. In the meantime have a look at this examples:

Creating a recyclable item renderer

Note that the Spark List turns on virtual layout by default.

Flex 4 Cookbook ready to be pre-ordered !

Flex 4 Cookbook by O'Reilly is finally and ready to be pre-ordered. I'm very glad to co-author the book with other huge and well known authors such as  Joshua Noble, Todd Anderson, Garth Braithwaite,Rich Tretola.

Flex 4 Cookbook has hands-on recipes for everything from Flex basics to solutions for working with visual components and data access, as well as tips on application development, unit testing, and Adobe AIR. Each recipe provides an explanation of how and why it works, and includes sample code that you can use immediately. You'll get results fast, whether you're a committed Flex developer or still evaluating the technology. It's a great way to jumpstart your next web application. 

 

Topics include:

• Using Spark Component
• Text Layout Framework
• Groups and Layout
• Spark List and ItemRenderer
• Images, bitmaps, videos, and sounds
• CSS, styling, and skinning
• States and Effects
• Working with Collections
• Using DataBinding
• Validation, formatting, and regular expressions
• Using Charts
• Services and Data Access
• Using RSLs and Modules
• Working with Adobe AIR 2.0

Pre-order it on Amazon !