With the help of some very talented authors and editors, Wrox has finally pushed out Professional Adobe Flex 3, a fantastic resource and reference book for any Flex 3 developer! I was lucky enough to be able to take part in this project, joining the team as a Technical Editor, and as such, I've really been able to see the breadth and comprehensiveness of the topics covered. From the book...

In recent years, Flex has become the leader in rich Internet application (RIA) development...This comprehensive, in-depth resource provides you with the foundations of Flex 3 and shows how you can maximize your use of Flex 3 to create unique experiences on the Internet and the desktop.

I've read many Flex books in my time, and this book delivers. Weighing in at a hefty 1300 pages, Professional Adobe Flex 3 takes no expense in breadth or depth. It covers the basic topics such as ActionScript and MXML fundamentals, working with components, extending components, styling and skinning, working with complex data, states, charting etc. It also covers more advanced topics such as integration with various server systems, remote-procedure-calls (RPCs), streaming video, messaging and data services with LCDS, MVC application architecture using Cairngorm, etc.

Also, what I really like about this book is that it covers many other important, but often omitted topics, such as logging, unit testing, documentation, localization, coding standards and best practices, profiling, automation, and performance strategies! This book goes on and on. This is definitely a must-have for any serious (or upcoming) RIA developers!

^*If anyone here has picked it up and wanted to say a few words (good or bad), please do! Leave a comment or send me an e-mail...charles [at] whoischarles [dot] com :)

Charles

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about a simple Flash embeddable photo widget. The idea behind it was that it could be used by people as just a simple photo slideshow that can easily be dropped onto a website or blog. As I was playing around with it a bit more, I found another potentially useful application as well...a photo viewer.

With just a few more minutes, and a couple of extra lines of code in the original Fisheye Widget, I made a very simple Fisheye Viewer.

With just a few changes, you can easily modify the look and feel of your viewer. Try making it a vertical slide on the right of the main window...

There's nothing groundbreaking here, but something that people can hopefully make use of. Just as with the Fisheye Widget, you can easily re-create your own Fisheye Viewer by downloading the source, dropping your own image files into a folder named "images" alongside your SWF files, do some modifications in init() based on your photo set, re-compile, and you're done...you're own custom Flash Fisheye Viewer!

Fisheye Viewer

Enjoy!

Charles

I was in the process of writing a post when I found that I needed a quick, preferably Flash, embeddable photo-viewing widget. I did a quick search on Google and didn't come up with anything, at least anything I wanted to use. So, I decided to create one...kinda. What you see below is based off of the Fisheye Component written by Ely Greenfield.

The sample that is provided by Ely actually runs on LiveCycle Data Services and also employs some other components in addition to the fisheye itself for things like modifying and editing the component's state. What I've done is simply extracted the fisheye component alone and turned it into a simple custom embeddable widget. For you to use it, all you have to do is download the source...

Fisheye Component Widget

...drop your photos into a folder named "images" alongside the FisheyeWidget.swf, do some modifications in the init() function based on your photo set, and you're done. It's ready to put on your website!

Enjoy!

Charles

^*Again, I didn't write the Fisheye. This is an adaptation of the Fisheye Component written by Ely Greenfield.

As you may have heard, Adobe has made a partnership with Zend Studios (the keepers of PHP, and the Zend Framework) to ensure that Flex/AIR development with PHP is as seamless as possible. This is *huge* news for PHP developers out there, myself being one of them. Christophe Coenraets, Senior Technical Evangelist at Adobe, came by the Adobe Seattle site last night to give a presentation to a couple of local user groups in town and I managed to pick his brain about the new partnership...what to expect, and what's in the works.

Well, as mentioned in the press release, a key deliverable for the collaboration is integration of the Action Message Format (AMF) into the Zend Framework. For those of you unfamiliar, AMF is a binary message protocol supported by Flex. Using AMF is preferable to other types of messaging formats, such as RESTful XML and serialization over HTTP for various reasons. First, XML and serialization (say with JSON) is plain-text, and so it isn't very secure. Second, since it is plain-text, it's inefficient. Binary, not only obfuscates the message, but compresses it significantly. So, native AMF support in the Zend Framework is huge for developing enterprise-level applications!

Also, given this integration of AMF into the Zend Framework, Zend and Adobe are also working to make a more unified IDE! They already have a good start...Flex Builder is built off of Eclipse, and Zend Studio is also built off of Eclipse. What Christophe showed us last night is that even though nothing has been released in terms of a unified IDE yet, you can start using one now anyways. Simply download Zend Studio (the PHP IDE), and install the Flex Builder plug-in for Eclipse, but specify the Zend Studio installation directory as your base Eclipse folder instead. Once this is done, you have a single portal for both your Flex, AIR, and PHP projects!

All of this is in it's earliest stages, but seeing steps in this direction is very exciting. I can't wait to see what's next :)

Charles

I've just finished my presentation at the 360 Flex Conference this morning and it went really well. We had a really good turnout and there were some great questions. As promised, I am posting my slide deck and sample code (client and server) here for everyone to download and try for themselves. For those of you who weren’t there but are interested in what was covered, here is snapshot of the samples that I talked about…

• Why Flex & PHP
• What can I build with it?
• How can I build with it?
• Demos
  • Flex & PHP using REST
  • Flex & PHP using JSON
  • Flex & PHP using AMF
  • Flickr example

If you had any questions or comments, feel free to let me know! Thanks to Tom Ortega for getting me involved, and of course, thanks to everyone who came!

Flex & PHP 101 - Flex & PHP for Rich Internet Application Development

Server-Side PHP Code

Client-Side Flex Code

Charles

I was just recently asked to be a presenter for one of the seminars at 360|Flex in Seattle next month! The previous presenter, Mike Potter, was unable to make it so I am gladly filling in for him. I'll be covering integration between Flex front-ends and server-side technologies, particularly PHP. I will talk about common integration techniques using either a REST-based architecture, serialization via JSON, or binary messaging with AMF. My class in particular will be on the second day (Tuesday, August 14th), first thing in the morning -> 8:30am - 9:50am (schedule). I hope to see you there and if you have any questions, I'm in contact with the event coordinators, so feel free to ask!

See the schedule and register for the event at…

http://www.360conferences.com/360flex/

Charles

I just finished my presentation at UBC and it was another great event. We had a good attendance and some really really good questions. I was very pleased to see how enthusiastic a lot of the students were. I was also pleased to see some very good criticisms in the audience. This is a positive thing. I very much appreciate criticism. It means a few things - people are listening, they are interested about the technology, and they are giving opinions on how to improve it, and to me, these are the most valuable because ultimately, it will be these people who will be the ones using it!

I also enjoyed this presentation a bit more because it gave me the chance to speak about Apollo. I've worked with it in projects prior, but wasn’t able to say anything about it simply because of how early in development it was (and still is). I'm really excited though to see Apollo hit the masses and hopefully see some very cool applications flood the web.

As always, here is my presentation slide deck from the event. See you on the flipside…

Charles

Looks like I’m scheduled to present again at my future alma-mater, UBC. Last time I was there, I did a presentation on the joys of Flex. This time, I get to show off Apollo! Ooooooh. As usual, food and drinks will be provided, and we will be accepting resumes. This is a great chance to see some of the new and exciting technologies that Adobe's brewing up, and if you're familiar with Apollo at all, then you know what I mean. Hope to see you there!

^*oops, looks like I forgot to add the event details :p

When: Tuesday, February 13rd, 2007 from 5:30pm - 6:30pm
Where: DMP 110 @ UBC (Hugh Dempster Pavilion, 6245 Agronomy Road)

Charles

Since starting at Adobe, I’ve been exposed to a lot of the new and exciting technologies that they are releasing…Flash 9, Flex 2 and Apollo! What do they all have in common? They all are based off of the Flash Player 9 run-time. So, just as an experiment out of curiosity to see what kind of base these future technologies will have in the coming years, I decided to research and crunch some numbers. After only a few minutes, I was quite pleasantly surprised. The next few posts will be dedicated to my results. I am trying my best to keep all (except for the conclusion and possibly the comparison sections) unbiased and simply matter-of-fact posts. See for yourself…

• Flash Player Adoption Rates (part 1) - Adoption Trends
• Flash Player Adoption Rates (part 2) - Worldwide Use
• Flash Player Adoption Rates (part 3) - Conclusion

Charles

This is a quick glance at the worldwide usage of Flash Player across all versions. A look at the graph below will tell you that the Adobe Flash Player is used on an approximate 96% of all Internet-connected computers!¹ This is a staggering statistic. A closer look at the graph will show that the Flash Player has a significantly higher presence than Windows Media Player, a difference in the area of hundreds of thousands of users. And considering that Windows Media Player is bundled with every version of Microsoft Windows, then that’s quite a feat.

Comparison
In addition to the Windows Media Player comparison that I mentioned above, I would also like to compare it to PHP and AJAX. As with the previous post, I am choosing these because they are some of the most popular Internet technologies today. Again, I will mention that the measure for PHP is based on all computers deploying and/or hosting websites, while the comparison with Flash Player is measured against all computers connected to the Internet. The AJAX results are taken from a study conducted by eWeek.com's Evans Data².

PHP has an estimated worldwide use of 37% as of early 2006, roughly one year ago³.

AJAX, after well over 2 years of popularity, is being used by as much as 25% of developers (of those surveyed in Brazil) to as little as 18% of developers (of those surveyed in North America)⁴ as of August 2006.

Flash Player 9 has already matched those numbers after only 6 months with an estimated worldwide adoption rate of 35%⁵ and across all version, a worldwide adoption rate of 96%.

¹http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/
²http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2009845,00.asp
³http://www.phparch.com/issuedata/articles/article_226.pdf
⁴http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2009845,00.asp
⁵http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html