Its been a crazy busy summer so far! Here is quick status of the stuff that I’ve been doing.
Work
Lots of ActionScript 2 - oh yay! But, it is still needed for some clients. Not a whole lot of exciting stuff there, but it is keeping me busy!
A bit of fun with Flex and ActionScript 3 - we’re working on some super secret code for a local company who is updating their site. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to squeeze in a few ‘voids’ between all the ‘Voids’ to create a cool component docking framework and SharedObject Manager class. I’ll see what everyone here says about sharing the code and share what I can.
Projects & Ideas
I’ve been playing around with lots of APIs and such lately. Trying to wrap my brain around the Social Graph - what is it good for, some really good ways to use it. So, I’ve signed up with tons of different Social Networks and services to see what is out there and what people are doing with it. You can check out the Social Links on the right for a list of those that I actually use regularly.
I’ve also got a couple of projects that I’ll release to the wild when I actually get around to finishing them:
Remember The Milk AS3 Library - this will probably end up on Google code
The book that I was helping Chris Korhonen out with has been released. Yay Chris!
Travel
Just spent the last 2 weekends driving down to New Mexico so Aidan could spend a week with his Grams. Has a few good meals in Santa Fe and got to relax a bit - good stuff.
Pretty sure I’ll be going to 360Flex in San Jose in August. From what I hear - it is a damn fine conference and one of the more fun/interesting conferences for Flex - so I’m excited!
Other than that, don’t have much else planned. Possibly go out to Virginia to see my Dad and/or Austin to play a little.
A very lightweight firefox extension (originally) to manage all your sqlite databases. This extension will be useful to developers who want to create and play with sqlite databases. Thanks Jun!
A code generator Clear Data Builder 3.0 will become available free of charge. Clear Data Builder (CDB) was released as a command-line open source code generator a.k.a. DaoFlex.
Protonotes are notes that you add to your prototype that allow project team members to discuss system functionality, design, and requirements directly on the prototype.
Use Assembla spaces for rapid software development, and agile team collaboration. Get free workspaces with unlimited team size and integrated tools like wiki, discussion, alerts, chat, ticketing, Trac, Git and Subversion.
Mate framework has been created to make it easy to handle the events your Flex application creates. Mate allows you to define who is handling those events, whether data needs to be retrieved from the server, or other events need to be triggered.
While working on a presentation about Native Windows & Adobe AIR I ran into the Screen class. The screen object provides information about the display screens available to an application allowing you to position applications/windows on different screens. I say screens and not monitors because of a little caveat that the livedocs have in them:
Note that there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondance between screens and the physical monitors attached to a computer. For example, two monitors may display the same screen.
I thought I'd have a little fun to get my code fingers back after a week in Cabo San Lucas, and create a little AIR app that identifies each screen. The basics are:
Identify the Screens - I knew I had 2 screens, so that was easy. The screens property is an array of Screen objects, so you can work with as many as the user has.
Create something to identify the windows - I used transparent windows with a label to make things simple.
Restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications will be removed
The device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player will be published
The Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services will be published
Licensing fees will be removed – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free
What does it really mean? Well it could be the promise of a universal application platform and the ability to write an application and deploy it everywhere. But, we know, with the likes of Apple and Google, who haven't really taken to the flash platform, that probably isn't the case. To me it means that Adobe is allowing the community as a whole to participate in the direction that the flash platform takes. To develop what what the community wants and thinks needs to be developed. This is a good thing - yay Adobe and yay Flash!
The Beatport Downloader launched officially on April 22nd. This is an application that the team here at Realeyes built. The official downloader description follows:
The Beatport Downloader allows you to download and organize your recently purchased tracks with one click. No more incomplete or lost music, easily see the status of all your downloads. Organize your music like never before through the Downloader's folder naming preferences. This feature allows for full control of how you store and search your music library. Install the application by clicking the Install button to the right. If you do not have Adobe® AIR™, it will ask you to install that first. Learn more about Adobe® AIR™ below.
About Beatport:
Beatport is the first authentic digital music store designed to service the evolution of the digital music culture, redefining how DJs and enthusiasts acquire their music. Beatport.com allows users to access the world of club music through secure, legal, hi-speed, high quality downloads in MP3, MP4 and WAV formats on a pay per download basis. With hundreds of labels and thousands of users world wide, Beatport is recognized as the leader for online, electronic dance music.
So if you haven't checked out Ted Patrick's blog yet, do so now and keep an eye on it all week!.
He's going to be posting new info on Moxie (Flex 3). So check it out, there are some really interesting additions to Flex Builder in the upcomming release.
Looks like Eric Feminella has released an updated version of Cairngen. Since I posted about the 1.0 release I figured that I'd let you know about the udpate as well.
New features in Cairngen 1.2:
Complete support for Cairngorm 2.0
Complete support for Cairngorm 2.1
Complete support for Cairngorm 2.2
Added logging capabilities for all targets
Abstracted user / project specific properties. User properties are now located in the project.properties file.
I'm a senior developer at RealEyes Media, Adobe Certified Instructor and Adobe Certified Professional. Here you'll get my ideas and experience Flex, Flash, ColdFusion and related technologies as well as some generally off the wall stuff.
