Flight
Just a quick plug for Jacob Wright et al's Flight Framework. I've been using it for some time on a couple of projects; it's a very useful, dependable project. Thanks guys!
Labels: Flex
Flex, AIR, ActionScript, all things Flashy.
Just a quick plug for Jacob Wright et al's Flight Framework. I've been using it for some time on a couple of projects; it's a very useful, dependable project. Thanks guys!
Labels: Flex
I've had the chance to get a lot deeper into the web analytics world these past few months. I took a class taught by Clint Rogers where we explored analytics in general and its possible applications to online education. It was a paradigm-shifting experience.
Labels: Flash, Flex, technology, Web Analytics
Below is the Google Docs presentation part of the class discussion I'm leading tomorrow in the "Advanced Topics in Flex" course at Utah Valley University.
Labels: Flex
Found an annoying bug that corrupts the htmlText inside a TextArea when using RichTextEditor in Flex.

I've been lucky over the years to always have someone that can build the back-end data structure for a project. But, as a result, I've let myself become less knowledgeable as I should be on what technologies to use and work best in certain situations. So lately I've been trying to get up to speed in this area and have been playing around with RubyAMF, AMF PHP, and SWX PHP as solutions for Flash/Flex to server communication.According to Adobe, the company plans to contribute the proven technologies from LCDS to the community through BlazeDS. The two LCDS technologies included in the first release are the Messaging Service and the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Services:
Labels: AMF, BlazeDS, Flash, Flex, Flex Data Services, LiveCycle Data Services
Quick tip on how to pass ...rest arrays to another function. I ran into this on my current project at work and wasted a good half hour or so before I figured it out. Duh!
Labels: ...rest arrays, actionscript 3.0, Flex
Yahoo! Developer Network releases ASTRA, the ActionScript Toolkit for Rich Applications. A collection of Flash and Flex components, code libraries, toolkits and utilties developed by Yahoo! for ActionScript developers.
Labels: Components, Flash CS3, Flex, Yahoo

I got the chance over the last few months to work on a very cool project that required some pretty advanced (well, complex at least) architecture and abilities. I thought of LiveCycle Data Services and decided to look a little more into what it could do.
First, LiveCycle Data Services is really powerful. It includes four basic services that run as "middleware" (i.e. between the server and client sides). The services are Proxy Service, Messaging Service, Data Management Service, and Remote Object Service. My project only required the Messaging and Remote Object services, and believe me, I really only scratched the surface on these technologies. There are many, many cool things you can do with LCDS.
That being said, I wanted to record here a few thoughts and pieces of advice for others who are just starting to get to know this technology.
First, and probably the most daunting for me, was that you're going to have to get to know Java servers. My experience up until this point had been strictly limited to Windows or Linux running Apache, and even in those areas I was practically a beginner. Believe me, it was quite the task to get to learn Java servers. LCDS comes with an installation of Adobe's integrated Jrun server, which I ended up using, although you can use a number of Java servers (JBoss, Jrun, etc).
Second, and you might have seen this coming, but you'll need to get to know Java itself to a degree. I would say this largely depends on the requirements of the project, but for mine luckily it wasn't too bad. Also lucky was the fact that learning to write basic Java classes really wasn't that bad either. ActionScript 3.0 is a great prep :)
Finally, get to know Google. This is kind of tongue-in-cheek, but there were more than a bunch of times that I ran into a wall with either the server, LCDS or Java in general and I spent a lot of time trying to search for answers. One extremely helpful resource that I referred to a lot was David Gassner's Lynda.com series on Flex Data Services. It's slightly outdated, but still contains a lot of relative and extremely helpful tips on building your LCDS project in Flex. Here's a few things I saved for future reference, maybe they can help you out:
Hopefully this helps if you're just getting started with LiveCycle Data Services. Again, I really had a blast with this technology overall and hope to be able to use it again in the future. Feel free to post any useful thoughts or pieces of advice you've come across as well!
Labels: Flex, Flex Data Services, LiveCycle Data Services

If you're like me, you are sick and tired of people treating web application development like the redheaded stepchild of website building. If you're like me, you've been handed too many projects that lack a defined scope, have inadequate analysis, exhibit poor implementation, and too often completely skip the process of evaluation and testing ("The client will test the product, right?").