Goodbye to Sydney

It’s been more than a year I have not updated my blog. This is due to my move to Australia. I have been so busy with work and life that hardly could squeeze time to blog.

It was a great experience to live and work in the land of Sun, Sea and Sand. I remember attending Colin Moock’s workshop on Actionscript last year in Sydney where he was comparing 'Sydney' as a city which is rendered on Maya. I do agree with Colin. It’s a beautiful place to work and live life at the fullest. I used to stay just a walk able distance from the beautiful Manly beach and harbor which gave me the chance to go for fishing. I will miss all these activities Manly has to offer. I will be missing webdu this year. My ticket was already booked for this event.

Well, there is always an end of everything and we learn and grow in this process. I have been working on some exciting projects in automobile industry here. It was indeed a wonderful experience. During these days, I was instrumental in setting up the test driven development environment (TDD) and also have worked with some talented flex developers.

It’s time to go back to my country and say goodbye to OZ. So, what I am taking along with me? I am taking along with me all the beautiful memories and my experience. Now, what next on the journey? I am looking for my next challenging project on flex. If you have a challenging project/ job, do let me know.I am open to contract/full time flex development work.

Flex Trainer

Contact me if you have any flex training requirement. Having realized the scarcity of good flex trainers in India, I have decided to be available as a trainer for a short period of time . Just to give a brief introduction of me; I have got more than seven years of experience in Flash platform. I have been developing Rich Internet Application (RIA) for large enterprises for quite sometime. Being one of the early adopters of Flex, I have extensive knowledge of training, mentoring and helping Java/.Net developers to pick up Flex. Apart from flex framework, I am also comfortable in Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES, Cairngorm Microarchitecture, unit testing framework . I have also had the privilege to conduct numbers of in house flex training sessions for the organizations I have worked.

Note: I will be available for a limited period of time.

New MXNA Reader: Cairngorm 2.2

I have developed a MXNA Reader few days back. I know there are couple of readers available online which are good in their own way. My aim was just to put together some of the best practices for flex development that can help others to learn.

Some of the features:

1. Flex 2.0.1
2. Cairngorm 2.2
3. Aqua Skin by Nahuel Foronda
4. Custom Preloader
5. This reader provides internationalization (I18N) and localization (L10N) support based on gettext.
6. Unit Testing and many more

It’s not ready to upload yet. It still requires little bit of re-factoring. Here are some of the screen shots for the time being :)

New version Cairngorm 2.2.1:support for Flex 2.0.1 with Hotfix 2 and LiveCycle Data Services 2.5.x.

There is a minor change from Cairngorm 2.2 to Cairngorm 2.2.1.

They have changed ServiceLocator to reflect moving of classes to LiveCycle Data Services (fds.swc). The main aim is to align Cairngorm with the moving of SWC libraries in Flex 2.0.1 with Hotfix 2 and LiveCycle Data Services 2.5.x.

Cairngorm was developed to work on request/response communication mode. To work on Data Oriented Architecture is still a challenging task.It seems that Adobe Consulting is working on this area.We can expect some significant changes in next Cairngorm release.I am looking forward to the next big release of Cairngorm with all these changes.

Pune Flex User Meet:7th Oct, 2007

Who will talk on what?

Debabrata Acharjee
1. Flash CS3 and Flex integration
2. Flex memory profiling

Anupam Shah
1. Flex and .NET Integration
2. Benchmarking applications: DOT NET web service, JSON web service, and Flex Remoting using FLUORINE. It is an open source .NET Flash Remoting Gateway

When?
Sunday 7th Oct, 2007 11 AM

Where?
Perennial Systems campus.
32 Market Yard,
On the way to Last Bus Stop,
On the way to Ganga Dham,
Pune - 411037
Phone : 24271114

Here is the map

We would love to see you in the meet and also love to hear from you :)

Adobe Roadmap: CoCoMo + Pacifica + Thermo

Web 2.0 to work 2.0 - Adobe is going to cater for everyone. Apart from acquiring Virtual Ubiquity, they are working on number of applications, platforms which will help to retain adobe’s supremacy over the RIA market.Max 2007 was one of the most successful events of adobe in terms of visibility and marketing the future product. I could not attend MAX. Out of the hype on the blogosphere I had to notice the following interesting technologies:

CoCoMo :

Adobe® Connect™ enables peoples to share screens and have meetings. Users pay on hosted subscription basis without buying this product.It seems that adobe is going more towards this revenue model. Adobe is opening that up now as a platform for developers which will be known as CoCoMo .It will allow the developers to create applications that Adobe will be hosting. Web video, is one of the key focus of adobe. Few days back they have announced support for H.264 high-definition video in Flash.

Pacifica:

Pacifica is another interesting real-time collaboration technology which is going to add voice communications to adobe platform. Pacifica is the name of Adobe's voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP),developers will be able to establish point-to-point, player-to-player connection using Pacifica.

Thermo:

Adobe is always popular among the designers. Thermo is the visual tool that will enable more designers to create rich Internet applications. Now designers will be able to enjoy ultimate freedom while designing the rich user experience. The prime focus behind this tool will be on encashing from the existing designer base. This is why Thermo is a one of the strategic project for Adobe. It will enable designers to more efficiently build the richer experiences and shall also give developers greater control over creative assets without leaving the development model. It aimed at improving the work flow that happens when developers and designers create applications.

As a Flex Developer,I am happy that I will have lots of new tools and technologies to work with :)

Flex + Ribbit

I have blogged about Ribbit few days back. Now
they have opened their site for the developers. Go and make your next generation VOIP application using flex + ribbit.

Here is the mail I have received from them:

Dear soon-to-be Ribbit Platform Developer,

Within the last 6 weeks, you filled out a request to download the Ribbit component and join our developer community.

We are happy to let you know that as of this week, the component has gone public beta and the developer platform is now open to all developers to join.

Join Now & Download the Component:

To join, go to: http://developer.ribbitphone.com/signUp.php

You will be approved and able to code within 24 hours.
You will receive a login username and password, as well as a dedicated purpose number to develop with.

You will receive 3 simple code samples to get you up and running, building your first voice enabled Flex and AIR apps.

You will be given access to our powerful and informative developer forums.

Happy coding and we can't wait for you to join our growing and valuable developer community!

Charles Freedman

Performance comparison among JavaScript, Java Applet, Flash Player 7,8,9

A nice performance comparison among JavaScript, Java Applet, Flash Player 9
New (Actionscript Virtual Machine-AVM2) - ActionScript 3 as well as Flash Player 7 and 8 (old Actionscript Virtual Machine -AVM1 ) - ActionScript 2. It would be nice to see a comparison between Flex and Silverlight performance. If you know any good resource on this please leave a comment here.

Here is the link

Check out adobe.com/devnet!

Finding information on adobe site was never so easy. Check out the new site .It’s just wonderful! No information overloading. All the information you need is just one click away. You will experience a better navigation and find a greater consistency.

For Flex resources and tutorials. Check out this link

I also want to see half a million Indian Flex Developers in next three years!

Dear Yakov Fain,

This is regarding your post "I also want to see a million Flex developers in three years". I liked your attitude towards the technology, especially when you say ' I’m not going to fall in love with any programming language, sorry, Flex. But I promise, we’ll have steady relations for a while’. You are sounding like a real businessman here :)! I agree that everything depends on the current market trend. Flex is hot and you want to explore or exploring the opportunity around. Good luck Yakov Fain! But I don't agree on the part that India is still asleep. Have a look to this post

Flex India is going great guns

This post will prove you wrong! As an early adopter of flex and being a part of the ever increasing flex developer community of India,I can assure you about a good competition soon from these new kids on the block.

Best Regards,
Debabrata

Should Flash/Flex Developers learn Java/PHP/Ruby?

Try this search query on flexjobs list
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/flexjobs/msearch?query=java&charset=utf-8

There are around 325 job posts for Flex Developers by the time I have posted this entry. Out of these 325 jobs, I have noticed 322 jobs require Java or any other server side technologies as a skill.

In most of the job posts at flex jobs list, I have found the following key skills and attributes for Flex Developer requirements:

• CF, .NET, PHP, JAVA, or Ruby experience
• Knowledge of MS SQL and/or MySQL
• Extensive background in Java or C++.
• Java 1.3+, .NET, C#, JSP 1.2+, Javascript,
• DHTML, ActionScript, CSS, Java Beans, XML, Struts, Servlets 2.3+, ASP,
• 4+ years JAVA programming experience required,
• J2EE/EJB3 experience preferred.
• Knowledge of back-end technologies such as PHP and Ruby on Rails
• Strong object-oriented development skills (Java, C++)

If you closely notice these requirements, you will realize that most of them are for Java Developers (or any other server side technology), who can work on Flex too. That means Flex is not the primary skill but a nice to have.

Yakov Fain has a nice and interesting post under the topic
Should Java developers learn Flex - mixed feelings
I have also experienced this at my work, where Java Developers are embracing flex not because of the love for the technology but for the pressure from their employer. Big companies are adopting RIA extensively as their future technical direction and trying to make use of existing developer base. It’s all good. Learning a new technology is always fun. The success story of Flex as a technology lies mostly on this mass migration of developers. But what about the existing flash developer base? Should they also learn server-side technologies and upgrade themselves for the demanding market? The job requirements trends at flexjobs suggest us to learn and have a very good command over server-side technologies too. Being just an Actionscripter or Flex Developer is not going to fetch good fortune in today’s competitive market. Now flash platform is no more restricted to client side technologies. Gone are the days, when we used to have timelines, Movieclips to create nice and fancy looking animation and intros using flash.To become successful in flash platform, one has to have very good understanding of Eclipse IDE, Adobe LiveCycle, Servlets, JMS, J2EE architecture and the list goes on.

Real-time charting solution: Lightstreamer an alternative to Flex Messaging Service

I have been working for real-time/streaming data/charting solution in flex for last couple of months. We are using Flex Messaging Service which comes along with the Flex Data Service (Adobe LiveCycle Data Services). Few days back I checked Lightstreamer as an alternative to Flex Messaging Service. They have just released SDK for flex 2.0. I have configured and run the demo app in my system. It’s really easy to configure. I wish to code a nice app using Lightstreamer soon.

Lightstreamer Flex SDK

The new Flex SDK features a native ActionScript 3 library that handles the communication with Lightstreamer Server and offers a high-level API, used by Flex developers to exploit the publish/subscribe paradigm implemented by Lightstreamer. The Flex SDK, that is shipped as part of Lightstreamer Presto and Vivace editions, will be demonstrated at AjaxWorld 2007 West (September 23-26, 2007, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA).

About Lightstreamer

Lightstreamer is a push/streaming engine based on the AJAX and Comet paradigms that can deliver real-time text data to Web browsers (pure HTML applications, with no downloads) and to any client applications. The Lightstreamer Server can handle thousands of concurrent clients and implements advanced algorithms, as bandwidths management, congestion control, dynamic filtering. Lightstreamer (legal entity Weswit Srl) is part of Par-Tec Spa. Development began in 2000, originally by the financial system Integration activity within the group, then in 2004 Lightstreamer became an independent ISV to provide ‘push technology’ to a wider global market.

Flex Builder: An error has occurred. See error log for more details

How Many times have you encountered the problem while refreshing your flex builder or opening a mxml file?

• An error has occurred. See error log for more details.
• Unable to create this part due to an internal error. Reason for the failure: The editor class could not be instantiated.

I get this error more often. How I solve it?

Earlier I use to go to my workspace directory and delete the entire .metadata folder without knowing anything. In this way I used to lose all my settings.

Recently I have found a better way of solving this problem:

• I go to [workspace directory]/.metadata/.plugins/com.adobe.flexbuilder.codemodel/searchCache

• Backup the directories in there that end with “.index”. zip them up and keep them somewhere else
  
• Now delete the directories and keep the file “catalog.xml” file as it is there
• Run builder again and I should not get any error now
  

The problem is that the lucene index was corrupted or lost, probably during a failed Flex Builder shutdown. When flex builders starts it tries to load the lucene index but it fails to load that file and then it throws the error.

PieTimer: A timer component using Piechart

One of my colleague, asked me to develop something like a timer using Piechart. It took only 15 minutes to develop in flex. I will provide the source code of it soon. Keep checking this place.

Flex 2 Contracts:Contractor/Freelancer Rates for Adobe Flex 2 developers in UK

I came to this site which looked at the demand for Adobe Flex 2 developers in UK with a comparison to their application Development category. They have presented a study of the contractor/freelancer rates which have been offered in IT jobs that required Flex 2 skill over the last 3 month to 23 August 2007 with a comparison to the same period last year.

Do you have any idea how much a Flex contractor earns in UK?? The average rate of a UK based flex developers is as high as £306!!

Let’s convert those digits in INR :)
----------------------------------------------------
Daily:306.00 GBP = 25,130.94 INR
Monthly:3910.00 GBP = 753,901.05 INR
Yearly:46930.00 GBP = 3,853,794.93 INR
-----------------------------------------------------
United Kingdom Pounds India Rupees
1 GBP = 82.1179 INR 1 INR = 0.0121776 GBP
-----------------------------------------------------

I don’t have any idea about the Indian rates. Let’s calculate it using the simple formula: yearly Rate = Years of Experience + 1.5 lac

That means a guy having 5 years of experience in IT industry will earn 6.5 Lacs per year.

Everything about Cairngorm: Samples, Code Generation,Unit Testing

You want to develop a loosely coupled, scalable solution for your next project. One of your colleagues might tell you that Cairngorm (CG) is the way to go. But you found it really scary. Is it really scary?

Dear friend! I can assure you about the simplicity of the Cairngorm micro architecture.

Cairngorm is the collection of some design patterns borrowed from J2EE fraternity. Sounding tough? Hold on!

It’s nothing but some well-known and largely used solution for common problems developers encounter in their day to day job.

Cairngorm is very flexible. Creators of CG encourage you to modify it and use it as per your requirements. You will find yourself using everything or something of CG once you are comfortable with it. You just need to get into it and once you are into it,you will not look back. You will just love it.

Are you ready to get started?

How to and where to start?

I have listed down step by step guide to use those recourses you will find around the flex ecosystem.

Read this interesting post by Steven Webster before you try anyhing with Cairngorm

-Why I think you shouldn’t use Cairngorm

If you still interested and determined to implement Cairngorm in your next project. Have a close look to these diagrams.

Diagram
-Cairngorm Diagram
-Cairngorm Diagram Explorer

Interesting? Want more understanding on CG architecture. Read these six part articles by Steven Webster of Adobe Consulting.

-Six-part article

Now is the time to make your hand dirty with some real coding. Have a look to the below given link. It will give you step by step guideline on how to setup your Cairngorm project. You will also get to see a very basic implementation of CG which is famous by the name of Cairngorm Login Example. Keeping the legacy of Steven, he has also written 3 part articles for beginners.

-Login Example

Need to see more complex implementation. Here are some links for you:

-Cairngorm Store Example Updated to Cairngorm 2.1
-wordweb-visualization-graphs-keywords-from-digg-api
-WebService & Cairngorm 2 Example by Jesse Warden’s
-Some sample code examples on cairngorm

How about generating codes automatically ?

-Cairngen
-Cairngorm code generator

Need to do some Unit Testing?

flexunit_basics
cairngorm-iresponder-async-flexunit
Unit testing Flex with FlexUnit and Cairngorm - The IResponder interface hurdle

I have noticed some promising screenshots in thinkingdigital blog. This guy has got some cool plan on screenshots but not sure it will be ever materialized or not.

- Cairngorm Plugin

ExternalInterface:javaScript injection through ActionScript and Firefox1.5.0.12

I was playing with the powerful javaScript injection through ActionScript/mxml utility developed by Abdul.I have encountered a strange error while using it. I am using this utility for data: URI scheme to show an image inside a popup from flex. I am sending Base64Encoded data to the pop up. It works fine when I send the data to the popup through window.open();

var generator=window.open ("data:image/png;base64,"+imgData, "", "width=" + w + ",height=" + h + ",resizable=1", toolbar="0");
But, when I try to write an image tag inside the popup, it does not work.

generator.document.write("<""img src=" +imgData+ ", height=" +h+ ", width=" +w+ "/>");

It does not show any data in the pop up. It throws the following strange error in my Firefox JavaScript console.

Error:
Error: [Exception... "'Permission denied to get property XULElement.accessKey' when calling method: [nsIDOMXULLabelElement::accessKey]" nsresult: "0x8057001e (NS_ERROR_XPC_JS_THREW_STRING)" location: "JS frame

I have posted this bug(?) in flex_india Google group and yet to get the solution.I would really appreciate if any body throws some light one this.

Flex Developer's Journal:SYS-CON Media

Flex Developer's Journal, (flex.sys-con.com), has launched by SYS-CON Media.It is the first independent magazine serving Adobe Flex developers worldwide

Yakov Fain, the author of the best-selling book Adobe Flex & Java, is the founding editor and editor-in-chief of Flex Developer's Journal.

The premier issue of the FDJ contains the following articles:

Real-World Adobe Flex Tips, Tricks and Techniques
By Christophe Coenraets


SYS-CON.TV Live From Times Square: Eclipse.Org Adds SOA, AJAX, and Flex Tools
By Eclipse News Desk

Turning Your Adobe Flex/Java Application Into a RAD Project
By Yakov Fain

Job Interviews: Adobe Flex and Flash Career Guidance
By Jesse Randall Warden

Multi-Tier Application Development with Adobe Flex
By Victor Rasputnis; Yakov Fain; Anatole Tartakovsky

Video Rock 'n Roll With Flex 2
By Michael Givens

Binary Data, ColdFusion & Flex
By Andrew Trice

AJAX Version of ClearBI Web Reporter for Adobe Flex Will Be Unveiled at AJAXWorld
By Flex News Desk

Flex and ColdFusion Hybrid Application with ServiceFactory
By Michael Givens


FDJ Editor-in-Chief Yakov Fain: "The World Is Changing – RIAs Have Reached Wall Street"
By Flex News Desk


AJAX Developers Brought Web 2.0 to the Browser
By Flex News Desk

Flex India google group

I am really happy to see the revolution flex 2.0 has brought to Rich Internet Development. I can see the revolution has touched Indian developer’s community too.

Just have a look to the above graph which depicts the number of messages posted in the flex India google group over the last few months. I have noticed a dramatic increase in the number of messages and members within a short span of six months. Currently there are 375 members and the numbers is increasing.I hope by the end of the year it will be more than 1500(may be more than that).

Thanks Manish for creating this nice group and the contributors of the group to make this a helpful one.

Adobe Flex Interview Preparation

Want to fetch the top Flex job in the market?

Out of my long experience in taking and giving interview here is a list of 10 things you need to know before you go for your next Adobe Flex technical interview. If I have missed anything, you can add to the list:

1. Good understanding and working knowledge of object oriented programming
2. Good understanding of Flex SDK
3. Event handling model of Flex
4. Custom component development
5. Experience of developing loosely-coupled components
6. Interacting with remote data
7. Understanding of J2ee architecture (or any other server side technology)
8. Cairngorm micro architecture
9. Unit Testing Framework for Flex
10. Logical thinking