Yeah, yeah, I know that there’s already ActionScript 3 encoders for a variety of image formats. I’ve used the PNG and JPEG encoders from the AS3 Core Library on numerous projects. These days, if you’re a Flex developer, PNG and JPEG support are baked right into the framework. So why TIFF? I mean, it’s not like browsers support the format. TIFF however is still very common in the world of document and scientific imaging. I ran across just such a need the other day, and necessity is the mother of invention. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, the “Cocomo” project lost it’s Beach Boys theme, and got an official name: Adobe Flash Collaboration Services (AFCS). I’ve been really fond of this project since I was first able to get my hands on it, but there were aspects of its approach that I just didn’t get. Last week I got a chance to pick Nigel Pegg’s (AFCS Architect) brain a little bit, and walked away with a much better understanding of some of the details. Last week, iLog also launched Elixir 2.0 with a calendar component (among many others). The two, I thought, were a match made in heaven, so here is a little collaborative calendaring experiment. Read the rest of this entry »
It surprises me just how frequently I hear somebody mention that they think Adobe evangelists should behave one way or another. Or that they should be more involved more in a certain aspect of business than they may be. The problem with these perceptions is that they assume all evangelists are identical in skill, and equally motivated by the same interests. It is with that in mind that I thought I would continue my series on the business of technology evangelism by exploring the types of evangelists. Read the rest of this entry »
The last time I wrote about my collection of JavaScript samples for Adobe AIR was in February of 2008. I had just updated the then 35+ samples for AIR Beta 3. Well, Adobe AIR has since launched (and released two minor versions), but the samples haven’t evolved. That is until today. I’m happy to announce that I’ve updated all the examples, combined them into a single project, and made them available as open source. Read the rest of this entry »
In the world of high technology, there’s a gap between what you have to offer and what your sales force can communicate. In many cases, the technology you have to offer simply can’t be effectively promoted in a single presentation alone. Your technology may require that you get hands-on with the customer’s environment. This means less cycles working new leads, and less customers you can touch, and spells disaster for a sales representative. This is the genesis for a sales engineer and I would suggest that there’s parallels for technology evangelism as well. Read the rest of this entry »
In my two previous blog posts I talked about using the system tray and notifications with Adobe AIR from JavaScript-based applications. As a proof of concept, more to myself than anything else, I also put together a sample application that uses these two techniques. The combined application, while far more complex than the atomic samples I included previously, shows both of the concepts in action. The result is an application that checks for recent Flickr photos and alerts you when they arrive. Read the rest of this entry »
While there’s a lot to consider when building notification windows, they are actually pretty easy because there’s minimal cross operating system (OS) differences for which you need to account. A common pairing with notification windows is system tray/docking which varies considerably across OS, and can be a little more challenging. More on that in a future post. For now however, let’s take a look at notification windows using JavaScript. We will walk through what a notification window looks like to AIR, and explore some of the various options you have when you want to alert the user. Read the rest of this entry »
Adobe AIR is designed to be consistent across operating systems. The result is that AIR applications can also run consistently across operating systems. The reality however is that there are certainly places that operating systems differ significantly, yet present metaphors that users expect. Among those more pervasive differences is the Windows system tray. The same metaphor exists, but differently for Mac, and may not exist at all depending on your Linux distribution. Let’s take a look at what is involved to use JavaScript to interact with the system tray in a cross operating system fashion. Read the rest of this entry »
In a previous post I described a process for analyzing the image type and dimensions of image files (PNG, JPEG, GIF) without having to actually display the image, or load it onto the Flash display list. It was called to my attention that the post did not also include image sizing, or generating thumbnails. While I want to cover an example of this, I think it also makes for an interesting discussion on image processing in general and Adobe AIR. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, another MAX North America has come and gone. In general, my perceptions of this year’s event puts it at among the best we have ever been able to put on - going back to Allaire, and Dev Con in Washington, D.C. Certainly, no event with record attendance of over 5,000 is going to please everybody, but the MAX team came really close. I had a total of six hands-on labs presentations, and an unconference presentation as well. Needless to say, I kept busy. Here’s a few thoughts on MAX 2008, as well as descriptions and content for my sessions. Read the rest of this entry »