Macromedia Rolls New Flex Builder Tool
512915
Macromedia (Quote, Chart) took the wraps off its first developer tool for its Flex platform that it says will encourage more people to build rich media and Web-facing applications.
308848
(InfoWorld) - While the landscape for rich Web development technologies is getting crowded, industry dignitaries at The Rich Web Experience conference in San Jose, Calif. Thursday nonetheless saw a place for the various entrants in this space. The field of technologies has grown to include AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript), Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun's JavaFX, said Neal Ford, application architect for Thoughtworks, who moderated a panel addressing rich Web development. Audience members also gave a nod to the Ruby, Python, and Groovy languages. Panelist Scott Davis, an author and consultant, said he originally thought that AJAX would rule the world. "It runs in any browser," Davis said. But his horizons have expanded. "Quite honestly, I've gotten really interested in Flex recently," Davis said. The recent open-sourcing of Flex has made it more attractive, he stressed. AJAX drew affirmations with reservations from panelist Jon Ferraiolo, an IBM Web architect who manages the OpenAjax Alliance. "My perspective is that AJAX works today. It's fantastic, it does nearly everything you want to do except for multimedia types of things," Ferraiolo said. "I think there's room for Flash, Flex; there's room for Silverlight. These things are going to be the cutting-edge applications that require the latest features," said Ferraiolo. With the proliferation of mobile devices however, HTML browsing will not be available on all these systems, and the iPhone does not have Flash and probably will not have Silverlight either, said Ferraiolo. AJAX, however, is always there and is open and can be counted on, he said. "There is a continuum of experience that needs to be looked at," said Josh Holmes, an evangelist at Microsoft who is speaking on Silverlight at the conference. There is the standards-based Web with HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and there is AJAX, he said. Moving on, there are platforms optimized for a particular OS or hardware that can render 3D graphics, said Holmes. "My personal opinion is that Silverlight and Flex are definitely on that heavy, rich but not quite platform-optimized edge," Holmes said. There are benefits to both, he said. Another panelist sided with Flex for enterprise usage. "In the enterprise space, I tend to recommend things like Flex because the development is much faster to get up and going," said Bill Scott, AJAX evangelist at Yahoo. "Creating a desktop style [application] in AJAX is still really hard," Scott said. AJAX does fit into a lot of areas, but none of the rich Web technologies will rule the world, he said. Panelists also addressed the question of application-testing. "Yes, testing is absolutely crucial, and as an industry, it's something we have not taken seriously for the last couple of years," Davis said. "I think this is a space that the market realizes isn't served really well right now," said Ryan Breen, vice president of technology at Web performance tester Gomez. The Crosscheck open-source testing platform was cited by panelist Stuart Holloway, co-founder of software developer Relevance. The issue of tools for JavaScript was raised. IntellliJ, said Davis, "has got killer JavaScript support, and it's got wonderful CSS support," he said. But lately, he has been developing with the simpler TextMate tool. "I've found that the overhead of a big heavy tool is less valuable to me than having something that's easy for me to bring up, bring down, refresh," Davis said. This lighter format seems to fit the Web development model, he said. Panelists and an audience member also mourned the lack of staying power of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). "SVG just breaks my heart," Davis said. "SVG had the opportunity to be kind of a unified solution. I wish it would come back strong, but I'm not holding out hope." Silverlight, Holmes said, uses XAML instead of SVG. "My opinion is SVG has kind of stalled and there were some things that were needed beyond it," so Silverlight uses other technologies instead, Holmes said. Ferraiolo said he was one of the initiators of SVG while at Adobe. "SVG was there in 2001, 2002, but Adobe decided to pull the plug on it despite the fact that it was on 200 million desktops," he said.
610422
For those that weren't able to make it to Adobe's webcast for combining Flex and PHP for web developers, the host Mike Potter has posted the slides for your review.   The session is targeted at PHP developers starting out with Flex.  I'll show examples of how to connect to a PHP datasource using three different methods - REST web service, JSON and AMFPHP.  I'll discuss the advantages and disadvantages to using each of them, and then show you how to extend your in browser application to the desktop using Adobe AIR.   You can find the slides here [pdf]. Also, if you want the full experience of the webcast and not just the slides, you can also sign up for the other session on July 17th.
217418
The tools, part of an upcoming Visual Studio update, is focused on making it easier to create customized Web applications.
5150
Macromedia made a play for eBay sellers Monday by debuting a custom version of its Contribute 3 Web content publishing application that&#39;s designed to speed the creation and upkeep of eBay Stores.
714800
Microsoft releases code for FlexWiki Web collaboration program--the company's third application to go public.
519536
Microsoft today released its third open-source offering called the FlexiWiki project on SourceForge.net. FlexWiki is a collaborative web-based authoring environment implemented on the Microsoft .
449392
When Macromedia&#39;s Flex was released, the company noted that it reflected the emergence of a push toward services-oriented architectures (SOAs), which resulted in applications that are
702834
Pierre-Alain Joye takes a look at building Cairo (a vector-based graphics library for PHP) on a Windows system.    While trying to get the cairo (and pimp) PHP binding ready to be released, I finally sit down and port Wez build cscript to cairo. It still needs some cleanup, a nice summary message but it works already. I tested it with Visual C++ Express Edition but it should work with other versions as well.   My next goal is to add the tests (nmake tests) and fix the nmake instal    He describes the process he went through to try to get things up and running, but is still having a few issues and has required a few tweaks to get it working. He also links to two resources: a ZIP of the development libraries and a ZIP ready to use package.
378949
Mike Potter has posted about an event happening this Thursday (June 28th) - a webcast to help developers learn more about integrating Flex and PHP.   Are you interested in building rich Internet applications with PHP as the backend data service? Join me this Thursday as I present at an Adobe online e-seminar. The session is scheduled for July 28th, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time.   You'll need to register for the event to attend and you'll get info on "why rich internet applications" and some examples of companies using it in their web-based applications.
767182
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., March 6  /PRNewswire/ -- GuiFX today announced the release of two tools to help designers create rich user interfaces for remote controls, touch panel control systems, kiosks, computer applications, mobile devices, and web sites.
16593
Adobe Integrated Runtime paves the way for Web applications that perform like desktop-bound programs.Images: Building apps on AIR
752565
The new beta API for Adobe ActionScript will allow developers to build Web-based applications using Adobe Flex and Flash software using a native API for improved performance over current methods, MapQuest said.
369892
The Mozilla people have jumped the gun on CSS3 and prematurely put an end to purely rectangular elements with their curved elements and borders. Here's a preview of what to expect in CSS3, and a demonstration of what you can do right now in Gecko browsers. By Peter Belesis. 1007
491285
During an early morning session on Thursday, Microsoft program manager Chung Webster introduced developers to some of the basic concepts of building Silverlight-capable Web applications, including the creation of customizable video controls.  The tools Webster used were the Beta 1 edition of Visual Studio 2008, the current beta of Expression Blend 2, and the Silverlight Alpha 1.1 version which uses Web services and C#.
645809
Mike Potter points out that the code from the previous PHP/Flex e-seminar [zip] has been posted and is ready for download.   f you have any questions, or are new to Flex and PHP, you should download the Flex / PHP Test Drive from flex.org/php. That page also has a link to the PHP FlexCoders email list, where you can post questions about Flex and PHP. If you have any questions about the code in particular, you can post them to this blog entry, and I'll be happy to answer them.   Also included in his post are instructions on getting things compiled and working to be able to use the example code on your system.
497179
Macromedia is offering a new version of its Contribute 3 software that will make it easier for eBay sellers to create custom eBay stores.