27. May 2011

Collajader Mobile 0.4

Yesterday I made port of Collajader 3D tester to Android. Port was quite simple. The only problem was how to replace mx:Canvas in Spark architecture. It’s quite easy, use s:SpriteVisualElement.

You can test performance of Alternativa 3D on Android platform. UI is clumsy. Primary goal of this release was just to test behavior of Alternativa 3D 7 on Android. It seems that it works ;-)

Download APK: Collajader Mobile v0.4 for Android, grab source code from GitHub.

Install Collajader Mobile 0.4 for Android via QR code:

You can find some further details at Collajader project page

26. May 2011

Slides – AUG Slovakia – 3D world – Flash and HTML5

Slides from AUG Slovakia – 26.5.2011 – Bratislava

25. May 2011

Collajader 0.4 is now open source

Collajader is simple tool for testing Collada format and rendering performance of 3D engine.

Version 0.4 supports Aleternativa 3D 7 engine.

You can test application on the web or you can grab a source code from GitHub.

Feel free to send me a feedback :)

25. May 2011

ColorPicker and DateField in Flex 4.5

ColorPicker is not available in Flex 4.5 with Spark architecture. I found this problem while I was migrating desktop project to mobile AIR for Android.

Fortunately there is solution. Alex Harui wrote simple Spark based components that replace ColorPicker and DataField functionality.

Update: Unfortunetely swatch DropDown component does not work in mobile world. You could not select color from swatch. This problem is bounded to DropDown/ComboBox problem in mobile world. I recieved recommendation from Adobe developers to move DropDown part to new view state and avoid using s:DropDown.

Please drop a comment to this post if you have working mobile colorpicker component.

17. May 2011

Smooth workflow for mobile development

World of mobile devices is quite complex. Increasing number of operating systems and platforms is spliting market and making it harder to implement app that works across different devices.

Thankfully there are some good solutions. Flex development team made a huge step forward and  they prepared tools for whole workflow.

If you’re interested in mobile development take a look at this video from Edge newsletter.

I’ll show part of this workflow also this week in Prague at Android Dev Camp. So feel free to stop by. We can discuss many topics related to mobile and Flex/AIR. ;-)

17. May 2011

IntelliJ IDEA 10.5 with improved Flex/AIR support is here

Hooray! :-)

New features in IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate for Flex developers:

  • Move inner ActionScipt class to Package refactoring.
  • Introduce variable/field refactorings improvements.
  • Full cycle of Mobile AIR applications development support.

 

17. May 2011

Quality in Flex/ActionScript development

Sergei Sokolov wrote article about Using automated tools across the lifecycle to develop higher quality Flex applications.

He explained some tools and approaches how to build better Flex based software.

I’d like to add some of my notes to this topic:

1. The key factor for reaching good quality of Flex products is learning. Flex is platform and it is evolving. Therefore it is imperative to learn new approaches to solve some problems.

2. Automation is very important. Flash Builder is bundled with support for Ant. That is not enough. Continuous integration should be implemented via tools like Maven using FlexMojos. Without this point everything is useless, because you’ll end up with mixing different versions of Flex SDK with your framework. Thanks to Jenkins and FlexMojos you reach stability in SW production. We already launched Jenkins CI for open source ActionScript projects – you can find some details at corlan.org.

Here is small example how to use FlexMojos.

3. Teach developers how to use FlexUnit. Companies tend to buy cheaper version of Flash Builder which has no support for FlexUnit. Investing few more bucks could give them very handy tool. See lynda.com or tv.adobe.com for lecture about FlexUnit. There are also other helpful tools like FlexMonkey, etc.

4. Different tools. Flash Builder is great, but real development power comes with combination of Flash Builder with IntelliJ Idea Ultimate. Those two tools together could speed up development and improve code quality. Also test automation has good implementation in IntelliJ Idea.

5. Flex PMD. This could help team which deals with new developers. Often it is hard to guess level of skill of new developer in the team. Using Flex PMD could help with measuring and detecting anomalies in his code style

6. Get rid of Not Invented Here Syndrome. There are many small useful frameworks which could help to improve Flex productivity, like Swiz, RobotLegs. Knowing those frameworks could save hundreds of development hours. So give a space to developers to learn new approaches.

I prefer small frameworks with less singletons inside. Some Flex frameworks are overflowing with singletons. Do not use sw with too much singletons, it will bite you and maintainability of your Flex product will drop to zero. Just a friendly warning at the end :-)

In my opinion this is the core of producing real good and stable Flex software.

23. April 2011

Lupo tools for AIR/ActionScript translation – direct link

David Deraedt released Lupo tools for translating AIR/ActionScript apps quite long time ago. Unfortunately something is broken on his web site. Instead of AIR installer badge there is only warning that you should upgrade Flash Player.

AIR packages are still available, you can download them via direct link:

http://www.dehats.com/products/lupotrans/LupoTranslator.air

http://www.dehats.com/products/lupomgr/LupoMgr.air

You can find more information about translating Flex/AIR applications in article written by Holly Schinsky – Flex 4 Localization Quick Start.

 

11. April 2011

Cool news for mobile, PHP, Flex and web professionals – CS 5.5

Adobe announced upcoming version of CS 5.5. In my opinion they should change the name to CS 6, because new features are very powerful.

jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap in Dreamweaver. If you’re short on thime, just check 5th minute of video. Greg Rewis is showing how to run jQuery Mobile app on Android.

There are great news for PHP developers. Adobe announced FlashBuilder 4.5 for PHP. Simpler workflow and better integration of Flash/Flex apps with PHP code base.

FlashBuilder 4.5 has also great support for mobile development. Check out this article.

FlashCatalyst has new features. See the video:

Absolutely great job Adobe!

2. April 2011

Debugging Flex apps in Firefox 4

When you want to debug Flex app just start debugger in Flash Builder. It will launch browser, e.g. Firefox 4.

The problem is that when you stop at break point for too long, Firefox 4 will terminate Flash plugin. Default limit is 45 seconds.

This is useful behavior for normal web, but it’s not good for debugging.

Solution is quite easy.

Type URL: about:config

Enter filter: dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs

Change value to -1

I found this solution at: support.mozilla.com

Happy debugging. :-)

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