I’ve seen a couple blog posts recently from Emanuele Feronato about shuffling an image using the BitmapData class in Flash. It’s a great overview and I highly recommend checking it out if you’re into image manipulation with Flash. I remember the days when such effects were only possible through movie clip duplication and heavy use of masking. What I thought was interesting however, is that he uses an image linked in from the library. (more…)
There was an interesting post on Ajaxian last week about a testing utility for XMLHttpRequest. Kris Zyp had written RESTTest for his own uses and talked about it during his session at The Ajax Experience. There were requests to make his utility openly available, so he did just that. The comments on the post point to other such utilities; all of which I have problems with that Adobe AIR can solve. (more…)
I often find myself inspired by the questions that I encounter on the public AIR forums. Today I saw a question about using AIR to select a random image file from a user-selected location on disk. What piqued my interest was that the selected directory was to be populated by capturing images from a web camera. (more…)
Adobe AIR continues to march forward, and at MAX 2007 AIR Beta 2 was released. To accompany this release came new versions of tooling to include Flash CS3, Flex Builder 3 Beta 2, Dreamweaver CS3 (including a new version of Spry), and Aptana’sAIR plug-in. Part of the requirement for the Aptana team was a Beta 2 set of JavaScript-based AIR samples. My Beta 1 samples shipped with the previous version, and I’ve updated those samples for Beta 2. (more…)
One of the questions I encountered regularly during the AIR Bus Tour was about encryption using AIR. There’s an obvious sensitivity towards having an application remember certain details (like passwords) about the user, and then storing that data in the clear in a text file. During AIR Beta 1, I suggested that folks use one of the various ActionScript encryption libraries. I’m happy to report that AIR Beta 2 includes an “encrypted local store” for developers to use. (more…)
The first MAX Europe has come and gone, and I’m super-thrilled to have been a part of it. I had a number of hands-on presentations, all around developing and deploying AIR applications. I also had two speaking sessions, one on using Aptana for AIR development, and one on script-bridging with AIR. Following is a recap of the session contents for each, and any assets that were created. (more…)
It is unfortunate but true that the HTML control in AIR Beta 2 does not yet support Flash content. Depending on the requirements of your application however, you shouldn’t let this stop you from using Flash content in your HTML-based AIR application. Huh? It’s important to remember that the HTML control is integrated, and indeed part of the very display pipe that is the Flash Player in AIR. To demonstrate this I put together a very simply Flash Video (FLV) player using HTML, JavaScript and AIR. (more…)
Flash Remoting. The product now more commonly referred to simply as “remoting” is woven deep into the very fabric of many of Adobe’s technologies. It’s available in ColdFusion and LiveCycle Data Services on the server. Of course you know you can use it from Flash and therefore Flex on the client. Did you know however, that this also extends to JavaScript in AIR? (more…)
Monday I set out to build a desktop Flash Video player using HTML, JavaScript and AIR. When I assumed the size of the video to be played, I was able to knock the project out in just a few hours. On Tuesday I decided that playing a specific sized video wasn’t good enough, so on Wednesday, I set out allow my player window to resize to a user-selected video. And that’s where my problems began. (more…)
I was very happy this year to be so heavily involved in MAX sessions. The attendance at the conference and those sessions was amazing. With a few exceptions, I heard a lot of positive remarks about presenters and their content. I’m already looking forward to next year in San Francisco, CA. In the meantime, here’s a recap of the sessions, and their related content. (more…)