Farata Systems      

Flex 2 has been released in the Summer of 2006 and it was a mini-revolution in the RIA space. Almost nobody knew about Flex 1.5, but now almost everyone at least heard about this software. Flex 3 has been released in early 2008. It has a number of useful new features, but it was not a major release. In my opinion, a more modest 2.5 would suffice. We are expecting now. Flex 4 will come to this world next year and while Flex team has announced a number of very interesting syntax improvements, I’d love to see more fundamental improvements in this great RIA tool.

The roadmap for Flex 4 has the following statement:“Features could include compiler performance”. The word “could” does not sound too promising though. I really hope that Flex team will find a way to change “could” for “will”.

Flex compiler is slow. During eighteen months between releases of Flex 2 and Flex 3, Adobe was not able to make any serious improvements in this department. Flex framework is well designed, and one of the most popular words among developers who start using Flex is “cool”. And it is cool as long as you keep working with small applications. But you’ll start using this word less often if you start working on a real-world project that includes say 50 views.

Add a melancholic Flex Builder IDE on top of a slow compiler, and it becomes irritating at times. During eighteen months between releases of Flex 2 and Flex 3, Adobe was not able to make improvements in this department either. Other than fixing sporadic out-of-memory errors, and a new profiler it’s pretty much the same tool. Besides being slow, periodically, Flex Builder starts rebuilding its workspace, which is a process with an uncertain ending.

My current application consists of one Java and about 25 Flex Builder projects (it’s split into separate modules and libraries to avoid creating a large monolithic application) and one Java project. Now you need to be very careful with inter-project dependencies to make sure that Flex Builder will not choke up.
This project for whatever reason started with the Cairngorm framework that performed its role perfectly – it acted as a crazy glue. With its requirement to register all events and commands in a central location, all modules are glued together, which defeats the purpose of modules and puts fragile Flex Builder on its knees.

By the end of this year Jetbrains will release IntelliJ IDEA that will support Flex, which should be a good IDE – these folks know how to create IDE’s. But it’s going to be using the same Flex compiler, so I do not expect major performance improvement s comparing to Flex Builder.

The other serious problem is that Flex generates large bytecode (swf files). Any mid-size application produces about 1 MB of code that has to arrive to the client before the user will be able to work with the application. Intranet users will not complain because they are sitting on a fast LAN, and loading this megabyte takes about 10 seconds. But Internet users sitting on the low-bandwidth network will the wait for a minute to see the first screen of your application written in Flex. One of the main advantages of RIA is that the users would not need to go through ten roundtrip to the server to purchase an item online. On slow networks, people were abandoning these sites. Flex applications store the state on the client (your shopping cart, billing a shipping info, et al) and there is no need to o these round trips to the server.But the users want to see this only page faster.

Flex 3 somewhat mitigates this problem by allowing creation of applications, which caches Flex framework on the disk of client’s PC. If before your Flex application was a monolithic 1Mb, now it turns into two smaller parts: 500KB of your code plus 500Kb of so-called Flex framework RSL, which will be downloaded to the client’s PC only for the first time, and if you are lucky, the user may already have this cached frameworks as a result of visiting other Web sites created with Flex. It’s a step in the right direction as long as the user is willing to wait on his 500kbps “broadband”.

There are some tricks that improve perceived speed of a Web application – an application can display something using a pre-loader while the rest of the application parts are being downloaded. But you still need to download this initially hefty application. Flex produces swf files with only two frames. To see your main application screen (the second frame) all required code has to be loaded (the first frame). Will the end-users wait?

Farata Systems has written a utility for Flex Builder 3 called Fx2Ant 3.0 (it’s in Beta now), which uses Adobe’s optimizer and automatically generates optimized Ant scripts for Flex Builder’s projects reducing the size of produced code. But I want the original swf files to be a lot smaller.

A number of Flash developers embraced Flex and started creating their widgets with Flex framework. But after the project development is done, some of them will re-write a large portion of it (again) in Flash removing the fat Flex framework that turns a 50K Flash widget into a 300K Flex equivalent.

I like Flex - it’s the only game in RIA town at this point. In2009, the situation will change though. Competitors will offer their RIA platforms, and will give Adobe a run for the money, which is beneficial for all of us – every Microsoft needs its Google, if you know what I mean.

Yakov Fain

New specification on GMXML syntax for state has been posted http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Enhanced+States+Syntax

The idea is to make states more declarative and eliminate scripting as much as possible (completely in most cases). That should allow better model for programmatic skins for designers and simplify integration points.

Personally I think it is much simpler model, and it is going to get better acceptance just because of that. I would reserve my final review till the time new code generator is available so I can see integration points for really cinematographic applications our clients learned to love.

It looks also that MXML compiler goes through major overhaul. Please note “color.down” syntax – finally we see departure from old conventional XML markup toward DMXML ( Dynamic MXML). Seriously, if the new compiler is going to depart from pure XML syntax, let us talk about the new MXML syntax now – including color.runtime.down and other data related things that go way over simplistic CSS model.

I would also expect States have extensions for substate or at least device formats given Flex 4 release timeline. In other words,  what works for desktop is different from console and definetly from the phone – including selection of the controls, events and scripting. I would expect compiler to emit different SWFs for different format with full support through hierarchical states.

For majority of applications it is very significant change in the way customization and skinning is done. Switching to programmatic skins approach allows significantly reduce the size of flex applications and provide “streamable” applications with core functionality loadable fast. I do believe that major overhaul of tools to support it even with current model has to be done way before Flex 4 release. For large applications I have seen benefit in 30%–40% size application reduction and main problem for wide adoption is “dark programming” that makes it art of few.

Well, thanks to Flex team for “heads up” – back to daily tasks

 

Sincerely,

Anatole Tartakovsky

Farata  Systems

 

 

  

In today’s cooking class you’ll add to your cookbook a delicious recipe. It’s quick and won’t cost you a dime. I’m sure you’ve been in one of these situations when you have unexpected guests arriving in 20 minutes and need to make a good impression. Let’s do it.

Ingredients

1. Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
2. Adobe Flex Builder 3 plugin version: http://www.flex.org
3. Adobe BlazeDS 3.0: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/blazeds/download+blazeds+3
4. Clear Data Builder 3.0 Beta plugin for Eclipse from Farata Systems:
   http://www.myflex.org/beta/site.zip
5. Apache Tomcat 6.0 http://tomcat.apache.org/download-60.cgi
6. IBM DB2: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/express/ .
   If DB2 is not spicy enough for you, replace it with other seasonings like MySql Server, Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle.

Out of these ingredients only Flex Builder 3 is not free unless you are a student, faculty or are willing to cook it with a 60-day trial version.

Time of cooking

After all ingredients are installed, creation of a basic CRUD should take you less than 10 minutes.

Video

If you prefer to start with watching a nine-minute video of how this CRUD was cooked, you can download the screencast at this URL (5Mb).

Detailed directions

Detailed directions of how to prepare this CRUD can be downloaded at this URL.

Serves more than 10,000 people

With this tasty RIA CRUD recipe you can feed more than 10,000 people. Tomcat 6.0 uses a non-blocking I/O, and apparently there are benchmarks showing that it can withstand as much as 16,000 concurrent connections (see this article for details ).

This recipe uses the beta version of Clear Data Builder (CDB). Originally, CDB was released as a command-line open source code generator called daoflex. It was submitted to Adobe Flex component exchange about two years ago and quickly became one of the most downloadable components. Its next incarnation was a commercial plugin CDB 1.1 for Flex 2 (see http://www.myflex.org ). And the upcoming release of CDB 3.0 is a freely available Eclipse plugin, which is a yet another contribution of Farata Systems to Flex community.

The other free products that Farata Systems will release this Summer include:

- Fx2Ant 3.0 – a generator of optimized Ant build scripts for your Flex projects
- Log4FX 3.0 – an advanced log facility for Flex/Java projects
- DTO Creator – a utility that can take any Java data transfer object (formerly value object) and
create an efficient and customizable matching ActionSript DTO

Stay tuned.

Yakov Fain

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I’ll be running public Adobe Certified Flex 3 training class on June 2–6, 2008 in New York City.
Details at http://www.faratasystems.com/?page_id=46

It’s a small (10 people) hands-on class. You bring your own laptop and by the end of the class you’ll build and take home a fancy looking online store.

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Hope to see you there,
Yakov Fain

I know, it’s not nice and I should behave as if it’s not that important to me, but I can’t. During the last two and a half years I’ve been writing, openly speaking, whistle-blowing, and whispering that AJAX is a wrong way to go for developing rich Internet application. But 99% of the software developers were singing hosannas to AJAX.

Forrester was selling this 7-page report for $379, while I’ve written dozens of pages for free. But who am I! Forrester said that AJAX does your body good. The author of that report has published yet another article explaining when it makes sense to use  AJAX. But it seems that Forrester is turning 180 degrees now.

Here’ a new 8-page report that costs only $775 titled “Ajax Disappoints Power Users Looking For Web 2.0-Style Business Apps”.

I wonder if people who purchased the first report are entitled for the money back even though they did not ask for it within three weeks from the date of purchase?

To Forrester recruiters: I am happy with my current employer.

Yakov Fain

It’s official: Flex 4, codenamed Gumbo, is now beginning active development.
Adobe has published their first plan of what should be included in Flex 4 that is scheduled to release next year. 
According to Adobe,  these are the four major themes that will affect Flex 4:

“Design in Mind: provide a framework meant for continuous collaboration between designer and developer. Probably involves an additional component model that integrates with the existing Halo components.

Accelerated Development: take application development from concept to reality quickly. Features could include application templates, architectural framework integration, binding improvements.

Horizontal Platform Improvements: features that benefit all application and user types. Features could include compiler performance, language enhancements, BiDi components, enhanced text.

Broadening Horizons: expand the range of applications and use-cases that can leverage Flex. Features could include finding a way to make the framework lighter, supporting more deployment runtimes, runtime MXML.”

Obviously, there’s a hope that upcoming Thermo release will bring together developers and designers. I’m cautiously optimistic here.  It’s great that a  designer’s tool will automatically generate MXML.  A developer will pick it up and re-factor .  But will the tool be smart enough to reverse-engineer the re-factored code and present it back in a visual form to the designer for further work? That is a million dollars question.

Accelerated development is definitely the right way to go. Code generators, templates is a must and even Flex 3 with its wizards was a step in the right direction.
I’d allocate the highest priority to the compiler improvement and IDE.   Flex Builder IDE works fine on small-size projects, but in the real world environment it’s not fun to work with. And I’m not even asking for a decent refactoring or some code editor improvements.  I want it to be faster. I do not want it to hang.  I do not want it to painfully rebuild the workspace for 30+ seconds.

Making the framework lighter is also a big ticket item.  A swf that uses Flex framework should be smaller in the “merge in” mode. One item that I do not see addressed in these plans is printing.  Flex printing is rudimentary and has to be addressed.

I wonder if Adobe has set an easy to use way for Flex developers to submit their suggestions to be included in Flex 4 that are reviewed and answered by Flex team? 

Since Flex is an open source product, we should have a say too. Looking forward to get a hold of Flex 4 Beta 3 when ready.

Yakov Fain

My e-book (PDF) “Enterprise Software Without the BS” is available for free download.

What’s this book about?

Why some people are more successful than others.
In which ways are some people a little “better” than others?
Why people fail job interviews?
Will IT outsourcing hurt your career?
What’s a reasonable salary for a person with YOUR skills?
Are there underpaid or overpaid people?
How often should you change employers?
Do you even want to have an employer or would you rather work as an IT contractor?
Do you want your child to be a programmer?
How to publish your book?
Me coming to America.

What’s one of the main motivations of innovations in the corporate world? You can get the book at this URL.

If you are evaluating which technology to use for your next rich Internet financial application, do not miss a one day event Flex on Wall Street that will take place in New York City on April 18, 2008. This is your chance to meet with real-world practitioners who have been using Adobe Flex for developing financial systems and can address your concerns and help you in making a Deal/No Deal decision.

My colleage Victor will be talking about designing financial portals with Flex. I’ll be presenting on specifics of trading and monitoring appllications that use Flex and Java.

Let’s discuss you�RIA plans there.

See you there,
Yakov Fain

This caught me by surprise – isn’t it a bit too soon? One of the most interesting features of this Flex release is configurable modules.  This new release also features lots of new controls. I like the grooved panels. The Web site to promote the new Flex is done in Flex too (finally!).

Check out the “Flex Customizer” menu. This option reads, “Just because you don’t have your own design studio does not mean that you can’t customize a Flex.”

The menu “Build a Flex” is even more intriguing, “Sure, we could guess at what you want in a new Flex, but it’s always better to get the facts straight.   So in anticipation of its arrival, take a few minutes to configure your own…”

Visit all new Flex Web site for more details.

Yakov Fain 

RIA applications are extremely susceptible to network problem. Even small probability of the lost/misdelivered packages, becomes significan when multiplied by the sheer amount of the small packages. Lost/duplicate/reordered packages and high latency/low bandwidth cause significant issues for applications fully tested on 100% reliable intranets and then released in the wild of unreliable WAN communications.

For the last 2 years we have been using different linux boxes (VMs and physical ones) to simulate different WAN problems. The setup process is tedious, and has limited resolution as most of the linux kernels are working on 100/250Hz. Fortunately, finally there is a product that solves most of setup problems with simple portable appliance that has to be in the toolbox of any Web 2.0 professional.

Mini Maxwell - Easy to Use, Portable, Network Emulator

Bringing latency up to realistic 200ms and package loss to unrealistic 10% would quickly expose problems in error handling code. It will also give you quick feel for robustness of the code. Next to check if duplicate/out-of-sequence packages affect the application. Financial applications also need to check for effect of corrupted data.

Depending on the protocols used by application, different remedies are available. Obviously, if you are using WebServices and similar old high-level protocols you have very loosely bound communications making implementation of QoS layer impossible. As number of HTTPRequests is limited by browser (2 for IE), latency can cause performances slowdown and timeouts. Missing packages escalate the issue with connection startving even further.

If you are using any AMF implementation, your case improves significantly. First, latency is less of a problem as Flex would automatically batch the requests together. Implementing symmetrical checkpoints on both client and server endpoints allows trivial package recovery in case of loss and duplicates. Nevertheless, lost packages are still a problem as they cause timeouts.

Robustness gets much better if you move to connected protocols – either RTMP or new BlazeDS long pull. Usually you can service anywhere between 80% to 100% of the users with them. Using opened connections and 2 way sockets is ideal for high performance and reliable protocols. Comparing them to HTTPRequests is like comparing highway with multiple lines going in each directions to single-line road. More applications started using connected solutions for tasks different from regular RPC to modules loading implementing streaming the same way you stream movies. As they evolve, we should see more open source products that provide transparent implementations using mixture of protocols. In meanwhile, we can do most of it using Flex built-in fallback channels.

Hope this helps,

Anatole

   

 

Fast spreading rich Internet applications require new skills for development of what was known as boring-looking enterprise applications. In the past, development of the user interface was done by software developers to the best of their design abilities. A couple of buttons here, a grid there, gray background.  There users were happy cause they did not see any better. The application delivers the data – what else to wish for?  Enterprise business users are not spoiled and works with whatever is available  – they need to take care of their business. It is what it is. Is it really?  Not anymore. I’ve seen excellent (from the UI perspective) functional specs for financial applications made by professional designers.  Business users slowly but surely become first-class citizens! The trend is clear: developer’s art does not cut it anymore.  You need to hire a professional Web designer for your next Web application.

The vendors of the tools for RIA development recognize this trend and are trying to bring designers and developers closer to each other. But the main RIA tools vendors, Adobe and Microsoft, face different issues.

Adobe is a well known name among creative people (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash) and now they are trying to convince developers that they have something for them in the store (Flex, AIR).
Adobe is trying to win developers hearts, but does not want to scare designers either. In addition to various designer-only tools, they are developing a tool called Thermo that will allow designers create Web application without knowing how to program.

Microsoft comes quite from the opposite side – they have legions of faithful .Net developers, and now are creating tools as a part of the Silverlight offering  trying to convince designers to create UI for RIA in Expression Design and Expression Blend IDEs that produce code for .Net developers.
Recently, I’ve attended an interesting event for educators. Adobe has invited professors from different schools discussing what has to change in the curriculum of Visual Design and Software Engineering disciplines so designers can understand programming better and software developers would be a better at designing user experience. In my opinion, it’s a complex and not necessarily achievable goal.

Do we need to breed new creatures called d-e-s-i-g-n-o-p-e-r and d-e-v-i-g-n-e-r?

I do not think so. Developers are from Mars, designers are from Venus. I know this first hand. My son has graduated from School of Visual Arts majoring in classic animation. I am a software developer. We are people from different planets even though he is my son.  Several times I’ve approached him offering to teach him Flex programming so he could have double his income. He rejects saying that it’s boring to sit in front of the computer all day writing code. He does not find boring spending hours drawing or animating, go figure.

No one will be able to make me a good artist either.

If I’d be staffing a RIA project I’d rather hire two different talents – a creative person and a Web developer…budget permitting. But if the money is tight, I‘ll have to bring on board either  designoper or devigner.

Yakov Fain, developer

I was preparing my slides for the upcoming AjaxWorld Conference in New York next Tuesday, where I compare different technologies for creating rich Internet applications. The slides for the big players on the market are ready, but I was looking for one more – something that would fall into a category of cool RIA. And I found one.

These days RIA tools are created mainly to two groups of people: Web Developers and UI Designers. The second group is represented by creative people who can design screens but are not programmers. Big guys like Adobe are trying to come with tools that would bring together these two groups of people who currently live in different planets. For example, Adobe is going to release Thermo Beta this Summer – it allows designers to drag and drop and Flex code will be automatically generated based on their creative movements. Many people can’t wait to get their hands dirty with Thermo. In my opinion, it’s a useful tool for creating a small application or initial prototyping of an enterprise Flex application, but when I’ll get this code from the Web designer, I’ll start ripping it apart and refactoring anyway. The first version of Thermo will not allow designers to work with it after a developer has refactored the code. Microsoft also creates very good tools like Expression Design and Expression Blend that bring together designers and developers.

I do not see anyone besides Adobe and Microsoft who has anything decent to offer in this area. Google is into search engines. Apple is into iPhone. Sun Microsystem’s dedication to building RIA based on Swing is a very rough, long and winding road. AJAX is a crowd of very good developers marching together to a dead end (what a spiel for a presenter at the AJAX conference!).

But besides Web Designers and Web Developers there is another and very large group of people involved with RIA – the users of RIA. The term Web 2.0 was never officially defined, by my definition is this:

A Web 2.0 application is the one that puts the user in a driver’s seat.

I was really impressed with a great and simple to use application called SproutBuilder (currently in Beta). This service allows you to build a rich flash widget in a matter of minutes.
For example, it took me about ten minutes to create this widget that includes a music and video players for my content, a calendar and a YahooMap component.

Then, you press the button Save, and it generates an SWF file ready to be played in Flash Player. They also give you an HTML link so you can easily embed this SWF file (hosted on their server) into your Web page.

It’s a eally nice and refreshing application that will turn a lot of regular users into creators of Web content. I do not know how creators of Sprout Builder will make money – they’ll figure it out, and

I would not be surprised to hear that they were acquired by Adobe, which is planning to make money off the Flash-based applications anyway.

Sprout has been built using Adobe Flex and Drupal.

Yours truly,
Yakov Fain

—

Got an email with a technical question. Responded.

Got this email back (did not change a word): “Thanks a lot for answering my question in such fast manner.  As a reward I’m going to buy the book of yours (I thought about doing that in any case)”

Responded, “I’m glad that you’ve decided to purchase our book, but I’m not exactly sure who’s rewarded The book goes out of print in a couple months and we are not going to write the second edition”.

This book  was about a year of really hard work of the three of us, and when I was done, I said to myself, “No more books. Never again”.  But I really like this book and it’s sad that it’s almost gone. The second edition would require too many changes (Flex is not standing still), and we decided to pass on this one. Thank you all readers from more than 60 countries who’ve purchased this book.

And here comes the new little e-book (PDF) that I’ve almost finished. It’s called “Enterprise Software without the BS“. This one is not technical, but covers such topics as writing resumes, looking for a job, working as an employee or a consultant, your salary/rate,  political stuff, outsourcing, and more. This e-book will be available as a free download in April.

Hope you’ll like it.

Regards,

Yakov Fain

If you are evaluating which technology to use for your next rich Internet financial application, consider attending a one day event Flex on Wall Street that will take in New York City on April 18, 2008. This is your chance to meet with real-world practitioners who have been using Adobe Flex for developing financial systems and can address your concerns and help you in making a Deal/No Deal decision.

I’ll be presenting there too and will be glad to talk with you personally about your RIA plans.

Yakov Fain

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 I’m attending an interesting conference Adobe Education Designer and Developer Conference  that Adobe put together for people who are teaching Adobe software at various universities around the country. Actually, there are a couple of people from England and Scotland too. I was invited because of the Flex classes that I teach at New York University. 

These are just raw notes from this trip.

Sunday 

I’ve arrived at San Francisco at noon and boarded a van that was going to drop me by the hotel. There were young girls giggling in the van, and here’s an excerpt from their conversation. “I went to a top less beach, and there was this hot looking boy with his mom top less. I do not want to see my mom’s boobs. The other girls responded, “Haven’t you seen them already?” This puts everyone in the van in a good mood.

I do not like shopping other than books and electronics. But when I’m in San Francisco, I always visit the Levis store. After checking into the hotel located at the Union Square, I decided to quickly check Google maps to see how do I get to the Levis store  from my hotel – I remember that it was very close to Union Square. Google readily helped me with the map, and I realized that I should be able to see the store from my hotel’s window. Sure enough, it was there. I wonder how did we find places and each other in the pre-Google era?

I’m talking to a professor from Minnesota. He goes, “Are you from Russia?”
“ Not exactly, but I lived there for a while.”
“ Is it right that Putin worth $24B?”
I don’t know the answer to this question, sorry.

Another professor is teaching Flex and AIR to future journalists. I am surprised. “What the journalists need Flex for?” “ We try to find ways to have more people read news. Flex and AIR allow to create applications that are very engaging and simple to use and having a better UI really matters.” Makes sense. I never thought of it this way…

Monday

Two busses are waiting by the hotel for the attendees – they’ll take us to Adobe where the conference will take place. The bus drivers are in their late fifties. They casually discuss what happened with their hard disks during the latest movie downloads, and that Microsoft Outlook is notorious for…

Peter Isaacson, VP, Worldwide Education

Bandwidth improvement. Better pipes allow to create more engaging user experience. People are using video, which was not possible in the past. New tools create new work flows, new teams of people communicating with each other. The new tools bring designers and developers together.

Graphic Designer – Web Designer -  Web Developer 
                         Mobile Designer – Mobile Developer

Adobe is ready to hear for the challenges that educators have so Adobe, educators and industry can talk and deal with these challenges. Adobe is willing to share its vision of how this should work.

Johnny Loiacono, SVP & GM, Creative Solutions.

Trends:
Gigabits meet gigahertz – substantial increase of processing power and storage capacities
Explosion in the number of connected devices
Business Models are evolving – subscriptions, pay as you go, open source
Proliferation of rich content
Applications Media consumption is changing.

The best device is iPhone, but it also has a problem – it does not run Flash. Please write Steve Jobs and complain about it. Internet video is experiencing Explosive growth – 134 million Internet user are watching Internet video. Flash Streaming videos is revolutionizing Internet. Experience matters.

When you look at BBC or CBS, the expectations goes higher. Spend some time at agencynet.com or gettheglass.com and look at the UI. People spend time if the site is engaging. And of course, the advertiser are interested in the Web site that keep user’s attention. Certain projects require both design and development capabilities. File compatibility – file formats have to be compatible so developers and designers who work on the same project can share the files. Adobe is heavily investing into Designer’s tools. They work on Creative Suite 4 and 5 and already started architecting 6.

Bandwidth is cheaper, and they will push more and more of their creative services as hosted services.

Photoshop Express - give to people who are constantly online some tools useful tools (this not an online version of the Photoshop). It’s a 100% hosted application where you can organize, store and edit your images. Free online services will make it available for students. The free version will get some storage limitations, but people will be able to use the high-end graphics tools. Skill demand of MXML and ActionScript is sky rocketing. Computer Science studies and Visual Media studies should collaborate.

Adobe is working on engaging faculties from Development and Designer interfaces.

David Wadhwani, GM, Platform Business Unit Flex and AIR

Experience will be cinematic David shows an apparel Web site. Clean design but not very interactive The new site is developed in Flex and deployed in AIR. Most of the screen’s real estate is taken by the content. Controls are at the bottom of the screen and can be hidden. The user can make notes to the items as he browse the site. David has uploaded the photo of his daughter and can match the clothing items available at the site to what she wears on the photo. Merging UI created by AIR (sales charts) with an expert system that finds an expert in a selected region with immediate dialing the expert. As they talk on the phone, the both parties share the screen. They do not leave the application’s screen.

Data will flow to the user. Standard eBay interface. eBay pushes data to you as things happen.

Parleys.com - if you are not online, you can still use video recordings of the JavaPolis conference. Applications become more network aware. Cost of deploying streaming media becomes more manageable. A bike tour. Each rider has a GPS unit on the back. You can watch online each rider online. The applications will break out from Web browsers. Play the music online finetune.com, and if you do not want to see the screen – you minimize it. They’ve created a desktop application finetune. Applications will jump out of the desktop. There are tons of hand-held devices. Insurgence of widgets…sort of a snack size applications. A simulated yacht screen – a screen installed on the yacht - the real time status of the yacht, the weather….

Adobe Technology Platform:

Designer-Developer tools: CS3, Flex Builder
Servers/Services – LiveCycle, ColdFusion, Flash Media Server, Flash Cast, Scene7
Frameworks: AJAX Flex Clients: AIR, Flash Player
Applications: Adobe Media Player, Adobe Buzzword, Adobe Acrobat Connect, PhotoSHop Express

Steven Heintz – the product manager of Thermo

Steven demoes the product.  Bridges Designer and Developer’s work flow. Designers think differently – they think conceptually in Photoshop. Developers just throw components on the screen. Bring the file from Photoshop into Thermo, and the photoshop file was converted into an XML. Then a designer start working with the artwork. Right-click, convert the artwork piece, say to a button, or a text box. It retains the picture perfect location, but generates the application that can be runnable in Flash Player. Adjust padding, add an action …. On rollover go to a new state, create transitions. You have a base state and detail state – similarly to Flex Builder, but without programming. Effects can be assigned graphically.

My first comments on Thermo

Thermo is definitely an interesting product during the prototyping phase. But I have an experience with the real world complex projects, and in one case the prototype was created given to me as MXML and in the other as Photoshop image. In the latter case Flex MXML had to be created from scratch, but in the former case I had to rip apart MXML that was given to me by the Web designer, case it had to be re-factored anyway. The other tough part I see is what to do if I refactor the code and the designer will need to make some changes afterward.

Is it backward compatible? I’ve asked this question and both Steven and David confirmed that they are aware of this and the roundtrip without breaking the compatibility will be addressed in the future versions of Thermo.

Important news for the Academia

Now Flex Builder is free is not only for students and faculty, but it also can be used for development of the administrative applications within the educational institutions.

Alan Lewis, eBay

Now I’m watching a demo of the new version of eBay that’s done in Adobe AIR. It’s noon here but already 3PM in New York. Is this why I’m thinking about food or I’m just not interested in eBay in general?

eBay’s attitude was that they’d never build a desktop application. It’s a Web application. The biggest problem of eBay was scaling business to serve more users.

An interesting comment by the presenter. In Web applications, there is a big concern to make the site visible to search engines. In some cases it become more important than user’s experience. In case of desktop applications, search engines are not important and designers can stay focused on the user’s experience.

A question from the audience. I see the value of AIR, but why it could not be deployed in Flash Player?
The answer. AIR can give you a better user experience, i.e. speed of navigation.

Lunch

During the lunch, I had a good conversation with Matt Chotin, the Flex product manager. I was interested in Flex support of HTML.  Flash Player 10 will have a lot better support for XHTML, for example components like HTML table will be naturally displayed by Flash Player.

Industry representatives: AgencyNet, Odopod

Twelve agencies got together ( SODA) and created a collaborative organization to pro-actively establish standards and share the knowledge with other agencies in advertisement and media.

You are in the bar? Bacardi Mobile, Flashlite application will offer you a cocktail. It’s interesting that the phone can be used in daylight or in the dark, so the colors have to be carefully selected.

MOJO Widget is a desktop application, but you can put it in any Web site, including Facebook. The clients select the videos to play, it’s a rich application with lots of features.

Four speakers from two agencies were trying to deliver the message that they need people who have exposure to both side of the fence – designers and developer. This session ignited the largest numbers of questions from the professors who were trying to figure out what do they do wrong and what changes in the curriculum are required. This was not clear.

I’ve asked this question,”My son has graduated from School of Visual Arts majoring in classic animation. I am experienced software developer. Professionally, we are people from different planets even though he is my son. May be you should not turn away lots and lots of job applicants that do not have universal skills and rather hire two different talents – a creative person and a Web developer who will work together on the same project?”

The speakers kind of agreed, but I’m sure that professors from the audience will not start changing curriculums because of this presentation.

Anne Connell, Lee Byron, Carnegie Mellon University

They use Flex in their Interaction Design course. Demoed a simple messaging application created by the students that streams video with Flash Messaging Server.

The next as the demo of the prototype created in Flex in days instead of weeks.

Lee explain how they’ve created an application for people who flirt. They made an interesting research: how people flirt:

1. Direct physical approach
2. Cautious and shy approach
3. Online only

After doing some brainstorming, the students decided to deliver their messages using videos that would inspire people to explore things together. Flirtastic was born!

Nice and refreshing presentation – young programmers rule!

The day concluded with a very productive panel discussion.  

I had a chance to express my opinion (got plenty of those):

My Opinion

Adobe need to go after big guys. While someone in the audience named Nike a big company, I work for Wall Street firms that consider Nike a small enterprise. It’s great that Adobe invited us to promote their products in the educational institutions; they can also send representatives to all schools around the country asking them to start teaching their great software products…
Adobe shows very impressive results in injecting Flex into IT departments of large enterprises, but I’d add even more sales pressure there rather than addressing the creative crowd. Here’s what I mean.

IT departments in large enterprises are traditionally either Java or .Net shops. When Adobe started offering Flex as a development tool. The first reaction was “Adobe who?”. Then it started evolving into various phases of grief: denial (I can do all this in Java), Anger (I do not need no Flex). I believe that now Java developers found themselves in the bargaining phase.

If Adobe will continue promoting Flex among application developers in large enterprises, the big guys will start contacting universities demanding people with Flex and ActionScript skills. The Academia will have no choice but make adjustments in the curriculum. This will be beneficial for everyone, including creative people.

Tuesday

Anuja Dharkar, Senior Manager, Curriculum Solutions

Here’s the Web page with some resources for higher education.

Need collaboration between computer science studies and visual media studies. Two different groups (developers and designers/artists) need to work together. Adobe starts working on creation of curriculums for Computer Engineering and Design and Visual Media courses.

In the works:
Self Studies: Flex Builder overview, Visual controls, Layouts, events, integration with other technologies.
Project examples: UI and Interaction design, Managing events and data

And this is an Education Developer Center. People in the audience complained that tutorials targeted toward students are not easily searcheable online.
Lots of resources are available at Adobe Developer Connection.
There’s a partnership with O’Reilly – Academic Solutions.
Instructors can get their free review copies of the books (two per semester).
Here’s one more resource: Adobe Design and Film School Connection portal.

My two cents: use well-written Adobe certified courseware as a foundation for creating curriculum for educators. Adobe should also send certified instructors to high schools and train the faculty.
Overall, Anuja seems to be the right person for the job who can make a difference.

Break-out sessions

Video, Simon Hayhurst and Steven 

CS4:
Metadata rich. How my site will be found? Browse audio/video, find the phrase, track, etc. Metadata 
                     extraction is important. Everyone is chasing the metadata portion in the content.
Efficient Workflow
Expressiveness
Creativity for the Networked world  – hosted and networked applications

Flash:
Designer/Developer work flow – Flex and Thermo
Flash Authoring. Flash 10 (“Diesel”) will have 3D in it. Moving more and more into hardware acceleration. New text engine. XML-based file format.
Bordeaux – graphic designers can create interactivity and motion without coding. Lightweight video embedded in banners. Animation without the key frames – timeline is just for sequencing. The demo of building a banner with a couple of videos with Bordeaux  – looks very simple. The public beta is coming soon.

Goldman is a  tool for writers of all types, it’s a screenplay tool. Metadata, formatting ease…

Web, Lea Hickman, Doug Winnie

It’s not Designer/Developer work flow, it’s rather a multi-discipline skill set. A person has core skills plus aspirations. The rest of the sessions is on building teams for the projects. Same old, same old…Designers complain that developers are not available, it’s hard…Demo of the future DreamWeaver…I’m in the wrong room.

Platform, Mike Downey, Group Manager, Platform Evangelism

Flash started as an animation tool, but a prototype of a hotel reservation system TheBroadMoor pushed the envelop and lead to creation of Flex framework, which is now a core development platform for Adobe. 
 
Breaking Acrobat Connect into components – you’ll be able to use them as hosted services.
Why AIR is free?Adobe monetizes on their own technoligies by building applications.

Flash Player: 8.5M downloads a day! It’s installed on 98% of the computers in the world.
The new release of Flash Player is 9.3 (“Moviestar”). High definition video H.264 and audio, multicore support, full screen hardware scaling, use GPU to improve scaling, 50% faster bitmap downscaling, Enchrypted video streaming.

Flex 3 new features: cached Flex framework, memory and performance profiler, AIR support, improved CSS support, Flash Cs3 integration.

AIR – it’s a cross OS runtime. Developers leverage their skills to deploy the app on the desktop. No new skills are required, just learn new API.

AIR is not an application, but a desktop runtime (similar to .Net framework or JRE). You just install AIR and it supports your application (Flash Player, HTML Engine based on WebKit, XML, CSS, PDF). It bridges scripting engines together – JavaScript can call all Flash Player APIs.  AJAX developers became exited. File system API, synchronous and async file writing, network detection API so the app shifts from disconnected to connected modes, notification API, application update, drag and drop, local database.

Next year – AIR Mobile, a subset of AIR. PDF Reader is not included, but AIR detects it and sterts it inside the AIR.

Good session and Mike is a very good presenter.

A small large company called Adobe

From my point of view, Adobe/Macromedia merger was made in heaven (they remain in the list of best 50 employers according to Forbes).  Even though Adobe was larger than Macromedia, the latter gave the former a key to the golden door of the enterprise application development. Yet when I’ve attended this conference I had a feeling that Adobe still wears an old suit that it outgrown a couple of years ago. Speakers mainly talk about the needs of designers and small media agencies. Guys, you are bigger than this! Get out of the closet. Hold you head up high as a leading company that provides superb tools for both – application developers and creative people.

Innovate! 

I’m  really for competition. But after I saw the power of what Adobe is having on their plate, there is not too many firms that can compete with them – Microsoft, Apple, Google. Anyone else? I don’t think so. I’m sure we’ll see a lot of small startups that create really cool applications, but I’m talking about the platforms here.

Such a serious job can be accomplished by big guys only.  Keep creating your killer applications in the garages and basements, and if you are really good, big guys may notice your work. This will make you richer financially, and will make the overall users experience a little bit richer too. Innovate!

Yakov Fain

John and Tom produced the best 360Flex show up to date. Great location, sessions that are long enough to cover aspects ever expanding platform and great timing with Flex 3 release. Definetly the best Flex developers conference to go to.

This morning started with keynote by Adobe – obviously product announcement, but also detailed explanation of things going OS. You can not underestimate the importance of that step. It removes a lot of obstacles in wide adoption of Flex platform – both in developer and tool making communities. As a matter of fact, it makes almost impossible for anyone in toolmaking market not to provide open source version of their product now. So we will have few announcements to make about changes in pricing model ( how does FREEE sound ?) this week. 

My session had a late start – keynote was running late and projector would not connect to my MacBook Pro ( next time I will pack my trusted thinkpad along). Interesting enough, the questions asked after the session were from the slides I had not have time to go through. So I will run the same session on Wednesday, 2:30 – will go through the remaining slides, and I will also add a lot of stuff based on the questions asked. Bring or send the questions – I will make post show video with the sessions materials.

 

Oh well, time to go to another party….

File Attachment: 360flexAtlanta.ppt (1569 KB)

I always respected cliffhangers. Not because I want to become one, I just understand that it’s very difficult. Cliffhangers don’t try to make it look easy – they openly admit that it’s hard, but this is what they like.
In software development there are different lobbies. There is this guy, he’s very experienced .Net developer. When we see each other, he behaves very aggressively trying to convince me that what he can do in .Net I can’t do in Java.

Ruby on Rails people are ready to kill anyone who says anything against their baby.

But AJAX developers are different. They always openly state that AJAX is difficult, and I respect them for this. If you are thinking of using AJAX for your next enterprise project, I urge you to watch the video of the presentation by Joseph Smarr, the Chief Platform Architect at Plaxo, Inc., where he’s led the engineering of Plaxo’s address-book integration application.

Joseph is very experience AJAX developer, and if after watching this presentation you won’t get goose bumps, go ahead and start your next RIA project with AJAX. Make sure that you can afford to hire a team of developers of Joseph’s caliber.

I respect AJAX developers and will participate in the upcoming AJAXWorld conference next month in New York City.

Yakov Fain

If you had only one hour in Paris, what would you do?

I, for one, would walk around Notre-Dame, and the point I am going to make is about Flex:

If I could pass just one Flex advice that would be: Use Data Transfer Objects.

Use Data Transfer Objects and NOT the dynamic Objects, and NOT the XML to pass data between your server and Flash tiers. If you are working with a Java Server, make your Java (methods) accept/return custom classes and NOT Map objects.

With this keystone your architecture will be reliable and performing. You will save tons of time and energy. What do you do with these savings - none of my business.

Here are the details:

1. _DO_ define similar classes on Java and ActionScript. See details of Java/ActionScript type mapping in the Flex documentation.

2. _DO_ declare these classes as [Bindable] if you envision dynamic updates to the data. Further, _DO_ use collections of these Bindable instances as dataProviders for your DataGrid and let Flex do the miracle: all changes to the data will be reflected by the visual control. There are no miracles, of course: [Bindable] is a shortcut to dispatch event on a data change, the very same event that is expected by ArrayCollection. The collection in turn, dispatches a (different) event on its change. Importantly - the very same event that is expected by the DataGrid.

Let me put it another way: have you ever used collection.itemUpdated()? Well, once you start DTO’s “itemUpdated” will sound to you like the name of the undocumented event

OK, I will rub it in further: if you marshall (property) Array of Objects, the Array itself is Bindable, but none of the items are.

3. Make sure that your server-side and client-side DTOs _DO_ provide unique! set/get uuid property. Flex loves this property, do get in love with it too. Flex is using it to identify elements of data presented by the list-based controls. You will find numerous uses for it as well. For instance, instead of sorting by industry, ticker you would sort by industry, ticker and uuid. Why? Because then the hash value will be unique for each record, which would result in substantially better performance.

4. _DO NOT_ hunt for value change on the visual controls (aka View). This task belongs to the data layer (aka Model). Consider replacing [Bindable] public var with the get/set property pair and dispatching the event (PropertyChange) yourself:

private var _amount:Number;
public function get amount() : String{
return _amount;
}
public function set amount( value : Number ):void{
var oldValue:Object = this._amount;
if (oldValue !== value) {
this._amount = value;
dispatchUpdateEvent(”amount”, oldValue, value);
}
}
private function dispatchUpdateEvent(propertyName:String, oldValue:Object, value:Object):void {
dispatchEvent(
PropertyChangeEvent.createUpdateEvent(this, propertyName, oldValue, value)
); �
}

Then, to act on value change, consider customizing the set method. Better yet, consider extending your ActionScript DTO with another class: leave basic layer of DTOs untouched, do customization in the extension. One more gain right here: now you can intercept (breakpoint) whenever your data changes.

5. _DO_ use extension of DTO class (above) to introduce “computed columns”:

public function get unrealizedGain():Number {
return lastPrice - costBasis; �
}

Again, _DO NOT_ use itemEditEnd of the control for these and similar purposes.

_DO NOT_ be afraid of two [RemoteClass] pointing to the same Java DTO: Flex will resolve the reference in favor of the extension layer.

6. Over your project lifespan, you will see many additional fits for DTOs: custom serialization, custom toString() and toXML() methods.

Now, you may say that all these recommendation are way too obvious.

Then I just take off my hat and … see you around Notre-Dame, perhaps.
Otherwise, keep coding.

Victor

1. Flex 360, Atlanta, GA, Feb 25. Best practices, Anatole Tartakovsky

2. AjaxWorld, New York, NY, “Picking the Right Technology for Enterprise Rich Internet Applications” , Yakov Fain

3. RIA with Adobe Flex, New York University, from April 3, Yakov Fain

4. Flex hands-on training, Weekend with Flex experts, Philadelphia, April 12-13, Yakov Fain

5. Flex on Wall Street, New York, April 18, Yakov Fain and Victor Rasputnis

6. Great Indian Developers Summit, May 21-23, Bangalore, India, Yakov Fain

7. Flex hands-on training, Weekend with Flex experts, Boston, May 24-25, Victor Rasputnis

8. Flex hands-on training, Weekend with Flex experts, Chicago, June 21-22, Yakov Fain

Note. Flex hands-on training sessions “Weekend With Flex Experts” have limited seating. Early registration is recommended.

OK, car manufactures go Flex. Will they lose or gain customers after that?

Car manufacturers want to have fancy consumer sites. It’s a RIA world, and having interactive Web sites should bring more people to car dealerships. Bikers to want to see nice looking Web sites. Check out Harley-Davidson’s Web site: http://www.harley-davidson.com . While most of Harley’s site is done in DHTML, go to Motorcycles menu, pick a model, get some pop-corn and enjoy the show. That piece was done in Flash. Isn’t it nice?
Let’s take another site for Mini cars: http://www.miniusa.com , which was also build in Flash and is delivered by Flash Player. It’s also not bad.

You can spot a weird-looking car on the roads. It’s called Scion. Their Web site looks a lot better than the car itself, isn’t it?

A recent addition to the RIA collection is UK’s Volkswagen. This one was done in Flex and was also delivered by Flash Player: http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/ . Excellent artwork – just take a look at how you can customize the wheels or the exterior paint color. Isn’t it something? But something else did not look right… The site was a bit slow, and I was on a fast 30 mbps connection. This got me thinking – the majority of the population will be connecting to this Volkswagen’s site via a lot slower connection lines. What their experience would be?

I decided to make an experiment. I have my cell phone with me that I can also use as a modem via the USB port of my laptop. Luckily, I was in the area of slow connection - www.speedtest.net reported the download speed of only 180kbps. Now we are talking! Welcome to the real world.
I went to this Volkswagen’s Web site and started to wait. During the first minute nothing happened –a white screen with a wait cursor. To make the long story short, I had to wait two minutes and forty five seconds till I was able to use the site. Don’t you this it’s a little too much?

I’d guess that about 25% of people who visit Volkswagen are impulse buyers. They did not open the site because they were really interested in buying specifically Volkswagen. After one minute wait, they’ll abandon this site and go to Volkswagen’s competitors. Does Volkswagen is ready to lose these customers just because they were using cool Flex technology? I don’t think so.

Each RIA project has at least two groups of people involved – designers/artists, and people who know how to program.I know this first hand, because I currently work on a Flex project for yet another large car manufacturer. These applications have a lot of art. Can’t change it, they (creative people) know how to sell. Fine, but it’s good to have people who know how to efficiently program rich Internet applications.In case of Volkswagen, my hat off to creative people and my boo to their application programmers.I’m afraid that poorly programmed RIA will hurt Flex. Volkswagen, do some stress testing and optimize your web site!

Yakov Fain

This week I’m teaching Adobe Flex class to a group of Java developers of a Wall Street company.  After 9/11 many organizations moved from Manhattan across the Hudson river to Jersey City, NJ.

Jersey City is a high crime city, but now the narrow area of 2-3 blocks from the river has been rebuilt, with new office and apartment  buildings and with a simple train commute from Manhattan.

I took this photo shot right in the classroom. How do you like this view from a student’ desk? This is not a wallpaper, but a view of the downtown Manhattan.  You’d have to be a big shot to get an office with such a view.  The other option is to be a student.

Flex bug database is available at http://bugs.adobe.com/flex/</