Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows...

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

IDEFactory... currently in Beta… soon in production…

When using Adobe Flex to build enterprise scale systems, the limitations of Flex Builder becomes not only very apparent, but also a limitation for productivity and flexibility (note the irony :-) )

However, a group of talented developers have started on the quest to deliver architectural features to us inside Flex Builder… fortunately they have decided NOT to change the base, but build it as a plug-in to Eclipse / Flex Builder.


IDEFactory… looking really good sofar (however not in this picture :-) )…

http://www.idefactory.com/

RSL and the lack of a build-in map over class-definitions

In response to the lack of Reflection in ActionScript and the emergence of techniques such as RSL and Modules and the combination of these two, several initiatives have been launched to facilitate a map of class definitions within a SWF.

One is the SWFExplorer by ByteArray which is still in a very early stage of development, but it appears to become a simple and easy way to get the definitionNames from a SWF at Runtime.

Another is the getDefinitionNames by Dennis Kolyako which is a bit more complex in its implementation than SWFExplorer, but yields the same gross results.

SWFExplorer overall seems to fit the OO design model of Flex more than the latter implementation by Dennis which seems to match a more traditional Flash Authoring design model.

Adobe Flex training in a nutshell: Flex in a Week

Adobe has started an initiative they call "Flex in a Week".

It consists of a predefined set of tasks which put in sequence presumably should take the average intro-level developer about a week to complete…

Days 4 and 5 are still to be defined, but sofar it looks like a nice way to get new developers started… :-)
 

Check it out…

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videotraining/

Guice (pronounced 'Juice')

Guice (pronounced 'juice') is a lightweight dependency injection framework for Java 5 and above, brought to you by Google, however the principles are sound and could be used for other frameworks too.

Writing factories and dependency injection logic by hand for every service and client can become tedious. Some other dependency injection frameworks even require you to explicitly map services to the places where you want them injected.

Check it out... exciting stuff
http://code.google.com/p/google-guice/

Curved Scrollbar

Charles Petzold did a simple implementation of a curved scrollbar in XAML.
Nevertheless its probably more cool than useful, I have decided to do an implementation in Flash to match...



However... check the original posting by Charles...
http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2008/08/Curved-ScrollBars.html

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

.NET Reflector... no more Lutz Roeder

It appears that Luts Roeder have decided to leave development and maintenance of .NET reflector...

If you have ever used Reflector, you probably already know how cool a tool it is...
Creator and Inventor has left it to Red Gate to continue the further development...

Check it out...
http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/opinion-pieces/the-future-of-reflector-/

Friday, August 22, 2008

ClassMappings between WebORB and Adobe Flex

Basically there are three methods to obtain a classmapping between WebORB and Adobe Flex.

1. ClassAlias in WebORB configuration.
2. ClassAlias in your ActionScript code through the "registerClassAlias" class.
3. ClassAlias in your ActionScript classes through the RemoteClass metatag.

1. ClassAlias in WebORB configuration
Add the following to your WebORB configuration file (This can also be done through the WebORB management console):


Name of ClientClass
Name of ServerClass
Name of assembly


2. ClassAlias in your ActionScript code through the "registerClassAlias" class.

var clientClass:Class = getDefinitionByName( clientClassName ) as Class;
registerClassAlias( serverClassName, clientClass );

3. ClassAlias in your ActionScript classes through the RemoteClass metatag.


[RemoteClass(alias="com.companyname.namespace.ClassName")]


The result is almost identical (some differences in behavior exists, but outside the scope of this short note) and will eventually mean that serverclasses returned and send to the server will be serialized and deserialized between the two class-definitions automatically by the WebORB server and the Flas Player respecitively.

The other Adobe Flex ACE's in Europe

Among ACE's in Europe within Flex, there are currently 3 others...

They are as follows...

Xavi Beumala from Barcelona... he had just been hired by Adobe Consulting when I last saw him to Flex 360 in Milan. A very sympathetic guy with great talent with the will to bring it far.

Dirk Eismann from Hannover... last i saw him it was at MAX in Barcelona where he was working for Herrlich and Ramuschkat. Extremely skilled and versatile developer which I have the outmost respect for.

Giorgio Natili from Rome... a real trailblazer and a true community leader from central Italy with a community of more than 3000 active users and 100.000 visits every month. I met him last time I was in Italy, a real fire-spirit...

Peter Elst from Belgium... one of the nicest guys in the community and on top of that an innovative and tech-savvy cool guy who contributes more to the community than averages...

...so obviously I am in very good company and I only hope that I some day can grow to match these true icons in the community and contribute as much as the have...

I got my Adobe Community Expert (ACE) designation today

I was delighted to learn today that I have been designated an Adobe Community Expert (ACE). Many know the program as the segue from Team Macromedia.

It may take a few days to get the listing on the site, however I look forward to continuing to contribute to the Flex/RIA and broader Adobe community.



Check out the existing ACE's on the listing...
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/all.html

Saturday, August 02, 2008

The MyLifeBits Project

I try to keep the clutter on this blog to an absolute minimum, I try to attain this by carefully considering what to blog about and by having a personal blog which tries to cover all the non-technical stuff I find relevant to share.

However, sometimes very interesting comes along which does not exactly reside in my knowledge domains but is technical enough to belong here, and hence "forces" me to blog about it in "The Combined Corner".

One such things is The MyLifeBits Project by Mr. Gordon Bell at Microsoft.

Ever try to remember who you bumped into at the store a few days back? Or exactly what the company president said at the morning meeting?

Well, you're not alone. And IBM researchers are working on software that just may help you better recollect all the forgotten pieces of your life.

This week, the company unveiled software that uses images, sounds and text recorded on everyday mobile devices to help people recall names, faces, conversations and events. Dubbed Pensieve, the software organizes bits of collected information, stores them and then helps the user extract them later on.

"Today, we're flooded with information. It's an information overload and we're not capable of handling it," said Eran Belinsky, an IBM project leader. "This would relieve us from the anxiousness or need to try to remember everything. And there's the issue of trouble with recollection. [It's like] your index is broken. You know you know something, but you can't get there. This could help people having trouble with their memory reconstruct their memories."

IBM's project is akin to one that of Mr. Gordon Bell and a couple of other scientists at Microsoft Research have been working on for the past nine years. Bell, a longtime veteran of the IT industry and now principal researcher at Microsoft's research arm, is developing a way for people to remember different aspects of their lives.

MyLifeBits has Bell supplementing his own memory by collecting as much information as he can about his life. He's trying to store a lifetime on his Dell laptop. Collecting telephone conversations, music, lectures, books he's written and read and photographs he's incessantly taken, Bell is amassing a great database of his life.

Interesting stuff... :)

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