Farata Systems      

There are about 250K developers working with Flex and AIR. If you add an army of ActionScript developers, this number will grow substantially. Where do you go if you have a technical issue while developing RIA? As of today, there no one place to ask questions and get answers.  A respected forum flexcoders uses the outdated and hard to follow Yahoo! groups.  Some people try to find answers visiting blogs they trust. Some developers post their questions on Twitter.

About a year ago Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood released a well designed and easy to follow knowledge exchange stackoverflow.com, where people earn reputation by suggesting the right solutions to people’s problems. Flex/Flash/Air developers started to post their questions there among the plethora of questions on other technologies and programming languages.

Joel and Jeff went one step further and are offering the engine (stackexchange) for creation of similar knowledge exchanges for discussion any kinds of subjects. Using this engine is not free, but our company, Farata Systems continues contributing to Flex community and will pick up the cost involved with running the knowledge dedicated to RIA technologies that produce applications to be deployed with Flash Player.

We are just starting and created a an exchange Built4Flash on stackexchange engine and would like to invite Flex, Flash, AIR, and Coldfusion developers to post questions there and provide answers to others. The URL of the Web site is http://built4flash.stackexchange.com.

Your questions and answers not only will help others in solving their issues, but you’ll also have a chance to  become visible and reputable person in this lively and Flashy community.

I really hope you’ll support this initiative.

Yakov Fain

First, let me ask Java developers a question. Imagine that one day you wake up and read the following announcement, “As of today, Spring framework is the foundation for delivering of successful J2EE projects. In contrast to earlier versions, many parts apply across frameworks. So, if you are using Struts, JSF, and especially Tapestry, just forget about all these complex to pronounce names. From now on, no matter what framework you use, you are actually using Spring’.

Some of you would think, “Yakov is either out of his mind or is writing this blog sitting in one of the coffeshops in Amsterdam”. Wrong! I’m just reading an announcement about the upcoming release of the popular Adobe framework Cairngorm 3: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/cairngorm/Cairngorm+3

Based on this announcement, even if you are using PureMVC, Swiz, Mate, or whatever else will be invented in the future, you are using Caingorm. Basically, instead of addressing issues of the Cairngorm 2 framework, someone decided to reuse a well recognized brand in rather small Flex community (about 250K developers) and turn it into a set of guidelines.

The Getting Started document reads, “The original Cairngorm library remains a part of Cairngorm 3, but has not been updated for this release.” Two paragraphs down it states, “To migrate from Cairngorm 2 to 3, you should first read the Cairngorm Guidelines to understand how your existing client-side architecture might be improved. This could involve introducing an inversion-of-control container or simply refining the way you use the original Cairngorm library.”

Now I’m confused. If Cairngorm 2 was a framework and Cairngorm 3 is not, what this improvement from 2 to 3 means? Introduction of IoC simply means throwing away Cairngorm 2 in favor of Parsley, Swiz or Mate. Am I missing something?
Cairngorm 3 includes the following libraries: Observer, Popup, Task, Validation, Integration, Module, Navigation.  Several of them “are implemented as extensions of Parsley Application Framework. In order to take advantage of these libraries, you also need to use Parsley”. Wait a minute. Do I need to use both Cairngorm and Parsely on top of Flex framework? If before, you should’ve added to the project one swc of the selected framework, now you’ll need to add a bunch of them. Are we going to build a pyramid of frameworks or something?
Cairngorm tools include Flex Builder (I assume Flash Builder too), Cairngorm 2, FlexCover, FlexPMD, Flex-Mojo for Maven… What if they decide to use our open source ANT script generator Fx2Ant and include it in Cairngorm too? Is this a good thing?

Yesterday, I’ve attended an interesting presentation about disruptive thinking, where presenter kept asking, “What if you could fly?” Applying the same technique, I’m asking myself,  “What if I’m Cairngorm?”

Tried it several times. It doesn’t work so far. Sure, I’ve gained some weight, but it’s too soon to call myself a mountain. But I’ll be there! I can do it! We need a change! For now, I’ll just use this word as my middle name:

Yakov Cairngorm Fain.

Sounds good, isn’t it?

Recently, Adobe decided to stop offering enterprise support for BlazeDS. Here’s an extract from BlazeDS FAQ http://bit.ly/17uzhn:

“Does Adobe provide enterprise support for BlazeDS?
We have seen tremendous adoption growth with BlazeDS. However, feedback suggests that the support offerings did not meet the needs of our customers. Therefore, we are no longer offering subscription support for BlazeDS. Instead, customers who require maintenance and support can purchase LiveCycle Data Services ES2. Current customers under a valid support subscription of BlazeDS will have the option to trade up to LiveCycle Data Services ES2 when their maintenance and support agreement comes to an end.”

Over the last two years, Farata Systems was offering various solutions based on BlazeDS often enhancing and extending capabilities of BlazeDS. We are very familiar with the source code of BlazeDS and our Flex and Java experts can support all the needs of your organization around BlazeDS. Support options include all range of services starting from training and first level support to bug fixing and feature enhancements.

Your organization can provide the first level support for the users of the application built with BlazeDS, and Farata Systems takes care of the second level technical support.

Farata Systems can offer your organization the following services:
– a dedicated personnel – 24×7 with limited number of issues/contacts at your organization
– Prepaid blocks of time in 40-hour increments for access to out Flex networking specialists on priority basis
- Customization of the BlazeDS communication protocols if need be
- Increasing of the performance and scalability of BlazeDS-based applications, for an example,
read the following article
- Guaranteed support for 1 year based on product development, with fixed support price thereafter

For more details please fill out the Contact Us form at http://www.faratasystems.com.

At this point I’m working on a couple of new presentations for a bunch of upcoming conferences and  seminars and  that will take place in Flex community world wide.While in the past, I was trying to create cool presentations, now I wantbe even cooler and… deliver a booring one.

This upcoming Monday, I’ll be speaking at the Flash Camp Wall Street in New York City. It has great speakers and the best part is that there’s only has one track so attendees will have nowhere to hide from my talk described below:

A boring presentation on Flex libraries and modules

Everyone have heard of RSLs and “Merged into code” link options. But do you really see the connection between the library linkage and your enterprise application performance? Do you know what and when goes over the wire to your users? Do you really understand the difference between the RSL and External linking of Flex libraries? Do you know when to use libraries and when to use modules? Do you know the difference between modules and sub-applications? Do you know how to arrange for a smarter RSL downloads? If you answered “Yes” to most of these questions, don’t waste your time attending this presentation cause it’ll be so boooring for you.

In two weeks my colleague Victor and I will be teaching our advanced Flex 2-day workshop that becomes more and more popular. Moscow, Russia becomes our next destination after New York, Boston, Toronto and London.  If you can read Russian, here’s the link for you. In the first quarter of 2010 we are planning to run it in Warsaw, Poland and Kiev, Ukraine.
One person told me that it’s stupid to go to freezing Moscow in December. No biggies. We like cold vodka.

In March, I’ll be presenting at 360 Flex in San Jose . I love this conference for developers and by developers. If  I’d be sentenced to spend the rest of my life in a desert island and was allowed to take only one Flex conference with me, I’d take 360 Flex.  During this event I’ll show a cool little Flex application that lives inside the PDF and is played by Acrobat Reader.

Flash and the City is the new kid on the block.  Check it out: http://www.flashandthecity.com/#page=AllSpeakers .  Excellent faculty and aggressive pricing will bring several hundreds of Flex and Flash developers to New York City.  If everything goes as planned, I’ll be able to demo something that’s slowly brewing at Farata Systems under the working title “Fluid PDF Forms”. Duane Nickull’s band 22nd Century will be on stage helping attendees to forget everything they’ve learned in the classrooms.

I’ve mentioned just the conferences where I’m involved as a speaker. But there will be plenty of other gatherings of Flex developers during the same period of time. Be there.

Yakov Fain