Flex sessions at RailsConf Europe

 @ Although the RailsConf in Portland, USA seemed to concentrate on AIR sessions (then named Apollo), it looks like RailsConf Europe in Berlin, Germany (17-19 September 2007) is concentrating on Flex with not a mention of AIR in the program.There will be a general session on Flex entitled “Building Rich Internet Applications with Flex and Ruby on Rails” by Simeon Bateman, as well as an additional tutorial session “Using Adobe Flex with Rails” by Aslak Hellesøy which will most likely be a bit more in depth.If you’re interested in seeing what else is on offer at RailsConf Europe, I suggest you check out the conference sessions.

Apollo sessions at RailsConf 2007

Adobe will be presenting a couple of Apollo sessions at RailsConf 2007, the Ruby on Rails conference. Adobe is also a gold sponsor of the event.
The two session are entitled “Engaging with Web 2.0 outside the browser” and “How We Used Apollo and Rails to Build an Agile Project Management Application.”

Both the sessions will be presented by Christopher Haupt and Chris Bailey and are to be held on Friday May 18th.

I can’t make it out to Portland myself, so I’m hoping (glad) we’ll see a repeat of the RailsConf Europe event held in September of last year, although I haven’t heard any news on that quite yet; the site is still displaying the 2006 event. Edit: Thanks to Don for pointing the new site out.
You can find the RailsConf 2007 schedule here or just browse the RailsConf 2007 main site.

Digg Flash/Apollo Contest

Digg, the social news network, has released a new Flash API and launched a contest to go with it.

Digg are looking for “the most creative and dynamic Flash visualizations and applications that utilize the Digg API.” Your creation can be either an Apollo or a Flash application. The contest deadline is on the 16th of May.

Find more info over on the contest page, or check out the Digg API.

NOTE: Unfortunately the contest is only open to US residents.

Apollo giving Flex 2 new traction

(a pic of my inbox this afternoon)

A couple of guys at the office have started getting into Apollo, and what’s the first thing they want to do? Thats right, they want to start using Flex 2.

My inbox had a bunch of new messages from colleagues this afternoon, all expressing interest in Flex 2 training after one of them sent off a studio wide email. (We have a mail account that forwards mail to our studio members)

Now I think I did a pretty good job of championing Flex and Apollo where I work, but I have to say this amount of interest still surprised me, especially as we dont really produce too many RIA’s.

I can also say, without a doubt, that Apollo is behind this new drive of interest in Flex 2 and, so it seems, Adobe’s Apollo strategy is already starting to work.

Apollo lifts off

The Apollo SDK is now available for download on Adobe labs.
I’ve had a quick look at some of the example Apollo applications (they’re tucked away a bit) and amazingly, I’ve already been able to use one at work this morning: the Pixel Perfect example.

I’ve also been on the lookout for a nice RSS reader as I haven’t been able to find a suitable Windows alternative for Vienna, my RSS reader of choice on Mac. I’ll be giving the Fresh RSS reader a go over the next couple of days.

Flex Builder 2 now for Mac

I was initially going to write a post on how I was expecting some cool things to start appearing on Adobe labs over the next couple of days, coinciding with the Adobe MAX event in Las Vegas; but it looks like I’m already a little slow out of the starting gates.

Not only does the Adobe Labs section on Adobe.com sport a new logo, there are also two cool new things to try out, the best of the two being, of course, Flex Builder 2 Beta for Mac. We’ve been waiting a little while for this one you see.

Next up is a digital e-book reader named Adobe Digital Editions, this allows you to view and read e-books. At first I thought it was an Apollo application, but the FAQ states “not yet.”

No special right-click for Apollo

Apollo, the Adobe desktop runtime environment currently still in development, will most likely not have a special form of right-click context menu functionality.Apollo applications are, in essence, a collection of your traditional web technologies bundled into an installable application. Examples of exisiting technologies you will be able to leverage are HTML, Flash, CSS and PDF. On top of that, you have Apollo specific functionalities that will allow you for example to access the file system or automatically search for updates.When a user right-clicks inside an Apollo application, they will see the context menu of the type of technology they are currently interacting with. If, for example, the application is built in Flash (and it seems most early Apollo examples are) they will see the Flash context menu. Right-click on an html link and you will see the context menu of the Apollo html rendering engine, a choice Adobe have yet to publicly announce. UPDATE: This functionality has since been added to AIR and allows completely customisable context menus. It’s a pity Apollo won’t have an across-the-board right-click context menu, even if it may be difficult to achieve. I think it will confuse some users and diminish the application-ness of the Apollo experience. Things are looking bright though. Apollo will usher in completely different types of applications and programs.

Apollo, right click?

I always thought it was a pretty smart of Macromedia to reserve certain keywords and phrases in the right click context menu of Flash movies such as save, load, copy and paste. It now dawns on me that might see these reserved words put to good use in Apollo.

Maybe I’m wrong as Apollo seems to be a complete runtime in which the Flash Player may be running independently of the core Apollo engine. However, Adobe could really have an opportuniy here by making the transition between xhtml, Flash and Apollo content less abrupt and seamless in the experience of the user.
On the other hand Adobe may specifically opt to let users know that are interacting with an Apollo app, and provide some sort of feedback to the user as to what type of environment they find themselves in. With Flash that could be achieved by right-clicking the content to reveal the context menu.

If we do finally get access to the reserved words, lets just hope we get a standard way in which to implement them, as leaving that to developers could be risky business and confusing for users.

The Shape of Flash

Flash is changing and unless you’ve been stuck in a cave for the past year or so, you can see a fundamental shift in the way Flash is employed as an interactive development tool.

Flash is going after the enterprise.

Today I decided to introduce Flash 8, Flex 2, AS 3 and Apollo at work. I made a short presentation that tried to introduce these technologies. The audience was quite mixed with developers, designers, marketing consultants and management all learning a bit more about how Flash is maturing as a technology.
The reactions were mixed, and a lot of questions emerged. Most notably about Flash DDA compliancy and accessibility as well as player penetration statistics, there was a lot of confusion surrounding the version we should be publishing to.
As always, there was no definitive answer; the target group of each website differs greatly.

I noticed that Flex 2 is being received well by those used to the more traditional syntaxes who could relate easily to the MXML format. A lot of people familiair with HTML and XML were quite excited that they could start creating Flash content in an environment they were already comfortable with.