Aptana Updates for Spry and AIR
JavaScript is loosely-typed. Duh. If you’re developing JavaScript using Aptana however, the intelligence about your code makes it seem like strongly-typed bliss. It instantly picks up every little variable and function, and it knows all about the JavaScript libraries you include. Last night Aptana dropped a new update that now also knows all about Adobe Spry. Not to be outdone by themselves, this afternoon they also dropped an update to their AIR plug-in. Here’s a quick walk through of some of what’s new in Aptana as it relates to Adobe technologies.
When you create a new project using Aptana, you’ll eventually be prompted to choose any JavaScript libraries or frameworks you’d like to use. When you select that library, a recent version is automatically dropped into your project. You can choose more than one library too. Among those libraries you can select you will now find Adobe Spry 1.5! When the project gets created, a “lib” folder will also be created and all the Spry assets will be added. This addition includes not only the libraries, but also the samples, demos and widgets. More on samples in a moment.
I think it’s also important to note that Ext 1.1 has also been added to the list of libraries from which you can choose. Ext is what is used in the Fresh and Signet AIR sample applications, which brings me to…
This afternoon Aptana dropped a release of their AIR plug-in. There’s lots of subtle fixes to verbiage and the likes, but the update goes much deeper. An export wizard has been added to the File menu, and the exporter overall has some usability enhancements. The default AIR icons are now also created in your project. Easily the most impressive new addition though is over thirty (30+) feature-atomic AIR samples. Sound familiar?
The recent update to Aptana sports a new “Samples” view that has samples for Ext, MochiKit, Aflax and Scriptaculous. If you install the updated AIR plug-in you’ll also have a ton of AIR samples to reference. Easily the coolest part about all this though is that you can right click on a sample and run it right there; without creating and setting up a project!
Importing a sample even creates a default configuration so you can run the application right away. A little pointer here is that if you click on the “Adobe AIR” samples folder, a button with a question mark will activate on the panel. If you click that button (”View Help…” is the tooltip) then you’ll get an index of all the different samples and what it is that they do.
A cool side effect of all these new features is that if you create a new AIR project, you can select the Adobe Spry framework to be included.