Andrew Schwabe's Blog - Adobe Flex

iPhone 4 goodness

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:23:00 -0400

Well the day has come. I have an iphone 4. It has been jailbroken, and unlocked for t-mobile and other carriers. I even trimmed my old-school full size t-mobile sim card to fit in as a "micro sim." Overall, the process was not bad at all, although I did manage to play with some settings that messed up my network and had to restore from the firmware once -- such a newbie move, i know... This time around its nice and healthy :) Want to know what else my little pocket workhorse has? Flash player. Thats right. A nifty little port of the flash 10.1 for android has been hacked to run on iphone (ipad too). Its called "frash" and was an app to click and install right from cydia. Can't get any easier than that. Chew on that Apple. So far, I am very pleased with the new phone. It performs great, multitasking works surprisingly well, and even my bits of flash content work right in mobile safari. Whatever credibility Steve Jobs had left about his war on Flash, and Flash not running well on iphone hardware blah blah is all gone. The public answered and brought it anyway. Its not polished (yet), but thats only because theres just a handful of hackers releasing the software that people want while the big software companies sit in their seats of power scowling, pointing fingers and blaming each other for not meeting the consumer's needs. Why was flash such a big deal anyway? It don't NEED it to live, but on occasion I really WANT it. The last thing any techno gadget poweruser wants to be told is "you can't do what you want." Besides, how can anybody ignore technology in use by 90+% of the web? Steve Jobs can apparently, but nobody knows why. I don't understand why you don't just give customers what they want? Well anyway, I'm just happy knowing that when I need or even just want it, I've got it. Way to go flash, you finally made it home to my little iphone :) (that little unintentional rhyme is no crime, just an added bonus for the rest of us)

Apple vs the world (or "how i'm gonna get flash on my iphone anyway")

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:33:00 -0400

The pressure is building up on Apple. They have stated their case about how they will only support html5 on their IOS platform (ipad and iphone). Their mis-information about how all other technologies hurt the internet has had surprising impact given its pure foolishness. The best technologies the industry has seen (and the strongest companies) have always had a plan for ushering in new technology while being backwards compatible with the old. This serves many purposes -- it eases people into new technology, while supporting the old, and it generally gives longevity to infrastructure which is pretty important given the pace at which technology changes. Apple's viewpoint is very narrow minded. They have said in not so many words: "eventually in the future, we think we will all be doing it this way, so lets just pretend it is already the future, and only use that technology, anything else won't work anymore." Whether you like browser plugins or not, and whether you think they are a part of the future or not, they are a HUGE part of the internet today, and not supporting them isn't visionary -- its stupid. Apple needs to wake up from their rebellious ways, and become a team player. Their self imposed "better than thou" position in the industry will only take them so far, and will eventually cause people to start hating them. It is already starting, with iphone users defecting to use Android phones. Why? because Android is *actually* an open platform. Apple says IOS is "open", but that is just a complete lie. They are pretty far from open. The only way an ipad or iphone is "open" is if it is jailbroken. The very fact that "jail breaking" tools exist for ipad and iphone show that Apple's devices are not open, and that the technology community isn't satisfied with Apple's tight restrictions. The mentality in this community is: if we spend a couple hundred dollars of our hard earned money on a device like iphone, then let us use it however we want. Don't make it a premium price, and then handcuff us. Here is where consumer need and industry compatibility intersect and a spark is created. I've whined about not having flash on iphone for a long time. Apple says "we want 100% control over how and what you see" and the underground community has reacted by jailbreaking. What makes this even more exciting is that the iphone 4 is more powerful than previous models (although not quite up to snuff when compared to the new Android phones). It is slick and easy to use, and will make people happy if it does what we want. The underground community has once again responded, and made a commitment to hack flash to work on the iphone. You heard it right -- in fact the same people who made this commitment, have apparently already gotten it to work on ipad! I am sure this will infuriate Steve Jobs, but I honestly don't care. It is obvious that all his rules and closed mindedness are focused on bringing in more money to Apple, and NOT giving end users the core features that they want. Maybe breaking this major rule of his will make him wake up, and support it legitimately once the world proves to him that his views (and accusations) on Flash are just purely fantasy. So for me, I'll stick with iphone instead of switching to Android. The real reason is not b/c I am "sold" on Apple's device, but because I know Flash is coming :)

Android OS on iPhone ?

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:03:00 -0400

Yes its actually true... This may be a little old (released in April 2010), but quite interesting! So many of us are wondering what turn Apple will take next, and when, if ever, they will every start playing nicely with Adobe. Seems that the underground community isn't thrilled with that lack of progress, so people have been actively working on getting linux to run on iphone hardware, and now have managed to get a build of android OS to run on iphone 2G (1st generation). Yes, this potentially means the ability to have flash apps running on your iphone hardware. Not yet, but potentially. Check it out: Source: http://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/2010/04/ive-been-working-on-this-quietly-in.html

Flash Builder 4 (aka Flex 4 aka "Gumbo") is released!

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:27:00 -0400

Lots of aka's (i know). Flex 4 SDK (open source) has been out for a while, or at least as a public beta. Now that Flash Builder 4 (the new IDE that replaces Flex Builder 3 -- note the product naming difference), there is a lot to be excited about. A new skinning system that brings in the best of declarative graphics and fixes quirks with scale 9 and manual skinning of components. Supposedly everything is a lot more efficient and light weight. Flex 3 was pretty to look at, but a bit memory intensive. I don't have specifics on that yet, but all improvements are welcome to make it scalable for larger apps. It is also designed for backward compatibility, so hopefully all our Flex3 apps compile nicely. Looks like a great upgrade! If you are into ColdFusion/Railo as well, be sure to check out their bundle of Flash Builder 4 and ColdFusion Builder at a good price. Here are some details: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/overview/

My new articles on packt publishing

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:44:00 -0400

Packt Publishing asked me to write a bit about Railo. It took me forever due to being busy (as always), but here they are! Enjoy and share the love. Introduction to Railo Open-Source CFML Engine:
http://www.packtpub.com/article/introduction-to-railo-open-source Tutorial: Rendering web pages as PDF using Railo
http://www.packtpub.com/article/rendering-web-pages-pdf-using-railo-open-source

Adobe Announces AIR/Flash support for Android Mobiles

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:55:00 -0400

Well, it is finally happening -- the rest of the world is moving on, right around the big iPhone road block. With Android being a fast growing platform, and Adobe giving official support to build native Flash/Flex apps optimized for mobile processors, this puts the pressure on Apple again, to either bend to what consumers want, or face loss of market share. [More]

JavaScript Hack Enables Flash on iPhone

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:41:00 -0400

Ok, well it isn't exactly what we want, but it shows that the development community is thinking beyond Apple's stranglehold on iphone OS. According to Wired, Tobias Schneider has written a javascript runtime engine for processing .swf files that is compatible with iphone. [More]

iPad from Apple... thumbs up or thumbs down ? -or- Another Adobe Flash Crusade

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:35:00 -0400

Hmm, can anybody guess what my first question was about the new Apple tablet computer-like-device-thing ? [More]

Multi-web configuration for Railo 3.1 and BlazeDS

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:54:00 -0400

Seems like lots of people are having a problem with Railo configured for multiple websites on a single host, but also need to support AMF via BlazeDS. The common symptom is when you restart railo services, sometimes you will get a big error instead of your web page that says something like:


MessageBroker failed to start: flex.messaging.config.ConfigurationException: MessageBroker already defined from MessageBrokerServlet with init parameter messageBrokerId = '__default__'

Here is what I found to work for me: 1. Read this post by Roland Ringgenberg at the railo google group and follow the directions to install the java jar and edit the flex/services-config.xml file:


    
        
        
                
		
        	
            	yourcustomBroker

2. For me, railo runs on port 8600 internally, and I have IIS configured to serve up content. BlazeDS however doesn't get mapped through IIS, so you need to talk on the native port (again, for MY configuration, YMMV). So to access it, i needed to open TCP port 8600 through the firewall. 3. Once i could talk to the server over port 8600, I changed my flex app that uses remoting to point to http://myserver:8600/flashservices/gateway/ and eveyrthing worked great! One other interesting observation... When using Flash remoting with CF7/8/9, you can talk to your CFCs and invoke methods that are set to "public." With BlazeDS, your methods need to be marked as "remote" to be accessible. Minor syntax difference, but a huge impact on security. make sure you secure your CFCs!

Flash on iPhone? Not really, but kind of, sorta...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:36:00 -0400

At MAX, Adobe announced a way to build apps and deploy on iPhone. Huzzah! Isn't this what we have been asking for for a LOOOONG time? Not really.... [More]

CF United 09 Presentation Files - Google App Engine and Flex

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:42:00 -0400

Ok folks, here are my preso files for my CF United 2009 talk on Google App Engine and Flex. Is this the final version? Sure. Until I change it. I shall resist doing that... Here is the powerpoint presentation download: 294_Andrew_Schwabe_Google_App_Engine_Flex.ppt Here is the full download (warning, this is big!) Contains all 4 google app engine java projects, all 4 flex projects and the powerpoint file. The download is big because of all the jar files. I will try to have a USB key with me so if you want a super fun time instant copy instead of downloading it, I should be able to do that. Full download (94MB, zipped): CFun09_GAE_Files.zip For those of you web surfers interested -- demo 4 project includes a fix for allowing Flex app using AMF to retrieve Google Account information (using ajax and a custom auto servlet) so your Flex apps can determine if you are logged in, and get your user identifier if you are logged in.

CF United Update: Google App Engine + Flex

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:02:00 -0400

My talk at CFUnited has changed a bit... Since the topic was chosen a while back, Google has released a Java developer environment and eclipse plugin for Google App Engine (GAE). Since Java is a whole lot closer to CFML than python is, I've updated all my code and presentation to focus on the Java application architecture, and how to connect it to Flex. I've even got some tidbits on how to get CFML running on Google App Engine ! Be sure to come on out and learn about the exciting new "super scalable" web application system running on Google's free hosting infrastructure.

FusionDox 2009 is released!

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:53:00 -0400

After many months of hard work, we have released the 2009 edition of FusionDox. Lots of fun things in this edition, including PDF previews of documents, a document conversion API so you can write your own code to convert documents, split/merge PDFs and more. New Flex/AIR based FusionDox client (aka the FusionDox Authoring System) for live editing MS Office/OpenOffice documents directly through your browser, and it works for Macintosh and Linux computers too! There is some preliminary info online, with more to come. http://www.fusiondox.com/

Converting a query to Array ... and Back again, for Flex sake...

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:36:00 -0400

There have been a few blog posts on how to convert a query into an array of structures. Here is Ben Nadel's, Here is Carlos Gallupa's, and there are more out there. Now that you are a master at converting query to array-of-struct, how about converting it back to a query? No, not just for kicks, but perhaps for that crazy array you built, that you now want to pull via CFC into a Flex app ? (this is the reason I bothered, b/c u know that CF queries get auto-translated into ArrayCollections in Flex, don't you ??) [More]

CF United Speaker Interview

Tue, 12 May 2009 16:26:00 -0400

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past? What would you tell someone who hasn't been to CFUnited before? Yup. I've been speaking at CF United events for the last 4-5 years or so. Lost count. CFUN is cool because you get to hang out with all the movers and shakers in the industry. 2. Why should people attend your session(s)? Why not? I'll be showing an example of using Flex to talk to Google App Engine (GAE), so its just pretty darn cool. 3. Do you have any projects in the works that you will be revealing at CFUnited? I'm hoping to have a brand new product ready to demo called FusionDox Access, which is a way cool easy way to share large files with people, and easily integrates into your web projects. All build in Flex of course :) 4. Besides your topic, what other sessions are you looking forward to? Flexy goodness, especially looking forward to Flex 4 graphics enhancements. 5. What are some of the hot topics you'd like to see at RoundTable discussions? How to beat down the industry's impression that ColdFusion is dying. 6. Where can people find you at CFUnited? (At the bar, networking, working, in your room, etc.) Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes. Also email me. aschwabe(at)gmail(dot)com. 7. What's the latest news with you? Has anything changed since last CFUnited? New version of FusionDox is coming out. See http://www.fusiondox.com/blog/ 8. What is unique about CFUnited? Everything is approachable at CFUN. Talk to whoever, everybody is sincere about wanting to transfer knowledge so that everybody grows. 9. When you are not working what do you like to do in your free time? Playing guitar, riding my motorcycle (bmw k100), going to the shooting range with the family, travel, eat, drink, being merry. 10. Feel free to make up your own question and then answer it. Q: Why? A: Because.