RIA Development with Adobe Flex and Flash

Adobe has now released AIR 1.5 which is the second significant update to the AIR runtime since its debut on February 25, 2008. The developer community response to AIR has been outstanding with more and more applications appearing every day. With over 260 applications on the Adobe AIR Marketplace and well over 25 million installations of applications deployed using Adobe AIR. Some of the new features in this release include, encrypted local database, Flash Player 10 capabilities, better SEO Search Engine Optimization, and WebKit update.

The Adobe User Group of Atlanta February 2009 Meeting
Ann Fracas and Phil Lee present Adobe Acrobat Tips and Tricks

About This Meeting:

Feb. 19, 2009 - Learn how easy it is to streamline your paper-based business processes and transform piles of paperwork into secure, productive, interactive electronic forms. Some of the topics that will be covered include the following:

• Reduce Paper
• Reduce Travel
• Improve Processes
• Decrease risk
• Secure your Intellectual Property
• “I didn’t know Acrobat could do that!”

Who Should Attend:

• Adobe Creative Suite 3 and 4 Users
• Adobe Acrobat 9 Users
• People Who Create and Manage Documents
• InDesign Users Going Digital
• and anyone who uses Adobe Software

About The Presenters:

Ann Fracas:
Ann is an Acrobat Specialist for Adobe Systems, Inc. working with accounts to leverage existing Acrobat products, understanding the advantages of the new features, maximizing the licensing options, and strategically grow the footprint of Acrobat within the account to help businesses reduce risk, improve processes, react to market changes more quickly, and impact their bottom line.

Phil Lee:
Phil is an Acrobat Specialist for Adobe Systems, Inc. working with accounts to leverage existing Acrobat products, understanding the advantages of the new features, maximizing the licensing options, and strategically grow the footprint of Acrobat within the account to help businesses reduce risk, improve processes, react to market changes more quickly, and impact their bottom line.

More info at the Adobe User Group Atlanta Website

Adobe continues the advancement of Flash Lite applications by launching the Distributable Player Solution at labs.adobe.com. This solution enables developers to create rich applications for the latest version of Adobe Flash Lite and distribute their content to millions of open OS smartphones, providing a better on-device user experience. It has been designed to mimic the successful Adobe Flash Player desktop model of content-triggered downloads, in the effort to make sure that devices will always have the latest Flash Lite runtime. The distrubution model will enable you to deliver free or paid applications through direct-to-consumer distribution or your existing distribution channels.

Got a Netflix account? Now you can manage your Netflix queue right from your desktop using a new Adobe AIR application called Queued. This little application was created primarily to show how AIR and the Dojo Toolkit can be used together to create (RIAs) rich internet applications, Queued is open-source, BSD-licensed software. With Queued, you can access your Netflix queue from your desktop, search for movies to add to your queue, rate movies, and you can even view Instant Watch movies. More info at ReadWriteWeb including a youtube demo movie.

There are some really great online meetup groups now for Adobe Flash and Flex. John Mason runs one of the best right here in Atlanta. But you don’t have to be here in Atlanta to join in the fun!

If you’ve been using Cairngorm, the Adobe Flex framework for Flex and AIR, for any length of time. You may have wished there were some better features to the framework. Well, thankfully the folks at Universal Mind had the same thought and developed the UM Extensions for Cairngorm. The extensions are open-source under BSD licensing and will greatly benefit your Cairngorm code.Thomas Burleson from Universal Mind will present this month on the extensions and how to use them.

The project link to download the extensions and the documentation can be found at..
http://code.google.co…

Common Cairngorm myths can also be a fun read..
http://code.google.co…

About the Speaker:
Thomas Burleson is a Universal Mind principal architect for Flex, Coldfusion, and Java web solutions. With over 20 years development and leadership experience, he has delivered applications and custom business solutions for numerous commerical and vertical markets. He has significant experience with user-interfaces, database and software architectures, product delivery, and technical leadership and mentoring. Most recently he lead the development efforts for the online Flex applications at Sherwin-Williams; now available for public use. He has also lead development efforts to create Flex-based CRM tools for clients in the health and manufacturing markets.

To rsvp and get the url for the connect session at -

http://ria.meetup.com/10

Adobe Systems Incorporated just announced that Palm is joining the Open Screen Project and will be supporting the Flash player. The Open Screen Project is a broad industry initiative dedicated to enabling standalone applications and full web browsing across televisions, desktops and mobile devices taking advantage of Adobe Flash Platform capabilities. The work of the Open Screen Project will help deliver Adobe® Flash® Player for smartphones on the new Palm® webOS™ platform.

In May of last year Adobe announced the Open Screen Project which is dedicated to driving rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. Some of the industry leaders already supporting the project include industry leaders, including ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless.

Adobe’s been trying to bring its Flash technology to the iPhone for some time now. The lack of Flash support is a real problem for iPhone users, as Flash technology is the most widely used format for delivering animations, videos (YouTube, Hulu, NBC.com, etc.) and interactive applications on the Web.

Learn more about how top companies are using the Adobe Flash Platform with Adobe LiveCycle to enhance their business at Adobe Day in Boston. Demos will include combining the productivity of Flex and FlexBuilder with the power of LiveCycle, giving you the tools to build custom services that drive RIA client applications, adding capabilities such as streaming media, collaboration, and real-time data streaming leading to improved web-based user experiences and, ultimately, driving revenue growth. Rumor has it that Ben Forta from Adobe Systems will be at this event presenting some of the sessions. Learn more and register here.

This months Adobe Edge magazine just hit my mail box and as always it has some really good articles. The Adobe Flex component team is in the process of designing a new skinning and component architecture, codenamed “Spark.” The main focus of Spark is to separate the layout from the logic as much as possible. With Flex 3, much of the layout is intertwined within the ActionScript class, which is why Flex we have to spend so much time working in the code. With the current Flex component architecture, applying stylized designs and functionality requires an in-depth knowledge of how the components are structured and fairly high proficiency level with ActionScript. Check out the full Edge newsletter article for more information about how Gumbo will improve component architecture and if you like what you see sign up for the Adobe Edge Newsletter.

While checking my twitter updates this morning I caught a link from fellow Adobe Fireworks fanatic Tom Green regarding an iPhone Design Toolkit. Metaspark (creators of Notespark) just posted a completely editable PNG iphone mockup file created in Adobe Fireworks. They built the template for both CS3 and CS4 versions. This is a really tight graphic mockup with precise attention to detail. If you are developing for this Apple iPhone this may save you some time and effort.

Apple iPhone Mockup

Adobe AIR Marketplace

Adobe launched a new version of the AIR Marketplace this week with a number of enhancements that should make it easier to find AIR applications as well as make the process for submitting them much easier. There are quite a few new applications being added and they are still offering a free developer certificate so that you can sign the AIR apps you create. Some of the new features include the following:

The ability for a developer to specify a link to purchase the application. While the Marketplace does not enable e-commerce transactions directly, users can click on a link to purchase an application from the the developer’s website.

Enhanced feedback support where users can rate, review, comment and flag an application to provide feedback to the developer. In addition, users can share applications with colleagues and friends and also subscribe to RSS feeds from the Marketplace.

A new self-service web interface that allows developers to manage their profile and applications. Developers can also view download statistics, ratings and reviews through a new application dashboard.