What’s next after Flex?

0
Posted by Igor Costa on February 25, 2012 – 11:22 pm
Filed under Flex

After year breaking and 3 months past, I guess you’re wondering “What’s next after Adobe Flex?”. If you’re thinking on this way, you’re in troubles.

As I said before here, here and here. We still don’t have a competitive piece of framework and technology that struggles in three pillars : RAD, Ubiquity and Adoption like Flex does.

Based on those three, you can define which is the right technology to use and try. I saw great posts out here. Which explains exactly the afraid of unknown. There’s a lot of ifs which impact and make you doubt about future of Flex.

And as we live in a competitive society, companies explore this gap to introduce they products as a replacement for another technology that is still large used in corporations and still have request and apps begin doing. Those momentum may collapse in short time, because replacements are only temporary and makes clear to experience developers keep distance from it.

I like the way João Saleiro views the futures, among others comments on his post, the point is, you’re not seasonal developer that takes only the profit side of a tech, and forget the funny fact that you write great software, which no matter language is it.

As my way of view, is like normal behavior for wide developers who wrote in Flex their interface that it’s now time to move on. Anyway, theses are troubles living in your desk if you’re freelance developer or manager of development.

Where it will be the Apache Flex future?

I had take a decision, Adobe was the last software vendor that I will be dependent on, the future of software as art is in the hand of community, people, group of it, and not only in hands of stock holders like we had in Adobe path. Even with their clear Flex white paper, talking about future of Flex and their support, isn’t trust able any more. And you will agree with that.

Flex holds a lot improvements that any other tech out there can take for UI in Web, Desktop and Mobile for several platforms and devices. The only hole Flex shares is the dependent run-time where it’s runs, Flash Player and Adobe AIR.

I hope this hole fills fast in the next 9 or 10 months to come, with the Flex Falcon-JS. Cross compilation to js and HTML/CSS. For me and still will be the final notice to community, because everyone knows, writing js and css takes a lot of time, just because browser dependent. And writing in right path mxml and as3 could save time, specially if you’re in 6 or 12 people working together.

Future of Flex is on our hands, dialoguing, collaborating and sharing. But don’t forget to learn more. I’d love to hear what you think about, not only with political view or commercial view, but human view.

We need tools, not frameworks for HTML5

5
Posted by Igor Costa on January 19, 2012 – 1:34 pm
Filed under HTML5, mobile

I don’t know you, but since HTML 5 hit the internet with strong impact, many companies and small group of people are in battle to stabilize themselves as reference in this area with their competitive frameworks, toolkits and bootstraps.

But on my point of view that they’re missing is a competitive IDE, tool, UI design, to make that happen in real world scenario. I’ve always believe that no developer should write a single line of code in js/css/html,WebGL, because each browser policy and standards, but writing in their comprehensive language like Ruby, PHP, Java,Scala, etc. Those language that manipulates docs written in html/css/js.

But to get rid of this, lets keep focus on Tools, that really help developers to make things smooth and awesome.

There are right now few, very few IDE that help to make competitive apps, but those IDE are far from complete to support the dynamic way as js/css/html does.

Let’s see if any Inc. or individual reads this post, we don’t need framework, we need tools to make HTML5 even more productivity.

And you may argue; Don’t we need frameworks too? Yes, but not too many, a progressive adoption isn’t bound by only one point of growing, but several points.

Update 01/20/2012 : Suggestion to read after here, a post that Grant Skinner did http://goo.gl/NL8Ov

Midnight Coders set on fire , let’s begin 2012 with right foot.

0
Posted by Igor Costa on December 30, 2011 – 9:16 pm
Filed under Android, Flex, WebOrb

Here’s the last message from Midnight Coders guys, they have awesome news to 2012.

Here’s our New Year’s present from Midnight Coders: We just released version 4.5 of WebORB for Java and WebORB for .NET with a bunch of enterprise class features. We have worked long and hard to make it happen and it feels great to make the releases available for you right before the New Years! Here’s what we put into 4.5:

- WebSocket support for JavaScript-based messaging applications relying on publish/subscribe messaging model. We also provide a JS library for making it ultra simple to build JavaScript pub/sub apps.
- Our Data Management framework has been updates to support multi-schema databases. The data management code generator can produce server-side code in Java/C#/Vb and client-side code in JavaScript or ActionScript.
- Conditional message delivery in Publish/Subscribe messaging support by WebORB. All supported messaging clients (JavaScript with polling, JavaScript with Web Sockets, native Android, Flex/AIR, Flash, Silverlight, native Java and .NET) can create messaging Consumer with selectors expressed as SQL-92 queries. This applies to internal WebORB messaging as well as integration with MSMQ, NMS and JMS.
- We added Heroku to the list of cloud-based deployments supported by WebORB for Java. The complete list now includes Heroku, EC2 and Google App Engine.
- Data Management offline mode support for Flex/AIR clients. This applies to both desktop and mobile clients.
- Updated Flash Builder plugin to support the latest release of Adobe Flash Builder (4.5 or above).
- Bug fixes. You can see a complete list of all addressed bugs at:
WebORB for .NET: http://dev.themidnightcoders.com:8080/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=10210
WebORB for Java: http://dev.themidnightcoders.com:8080/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=10211

Download your copy and let us know what you think!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Go get it! Kudos to all Midnight coders team and Mark.

Serendipity on an era

1
Posted by Igor Costa on December 19, 2011 – 10:58 pm
Filed under Flex, Personal

This resumes right now the Flex proposal to Apache.

I’m glad to contribute to future of Flex SDK, I hope this make changes in my last post about a technology that struggles others.

Let’s make change otherwise others will do.

The end of an era

4
Posted by Igor Costa on December 13, 2011 – 11:27 am
Filed under Flex

Hello fellows.

I guess you already know about the recent news from Adobe Flex team from past 30 days, among all those announcements made by Adobe itself. I guess this is the right time to say good bye to Flex technology to Desktop/Web.

It’s sad to see a technology that is beyond it’s time of any other current technologies out there today failing in hands of few people at Adobe that doesn’t see the potential of it to keep going.

Yesterday, they’ve announced that Flash Catalyst will discontinued and Flash Builder Design Mode too, the funny fact is that i wrote about Flash Catalyst before “We say NO to Flash Catalyst until…“.

I still have a asked question that remains until now, why they didn’t put Catalyst inside Flash Builder Design mode? I guess in overall ongoing stuffs from Adobe Managers Peeps, they wanted to monetize as much as they could the SDK donated to community as possible, that didn’t work out pretty much.

They are now trying to push Flex SDK truly to community hands, but still pending on AIR runtime and Flash Player runtime which will be still proprietary in their hands due to several third-party and also monopolization platform.

Despite the fact that they said still committed to the Flex ecosystem, isn’t what is happening in real world. We have gracefully 2 only on going projects at house done in flex and had 5 others, but our clients refused any attempt to use Flex in their current projects, because the way Adobe announced the first blog post about Flex.

As Ted Patrick said,

Watching Adobe remove engines, wings, drop fuel, seats while in midair flight with customers aboard is truly fascinating. #flexsummit

This is what real world and enterprise world is seeing the actions from Adobe, even if they try to fix that, companies doesn’t believe no longer to that efforts they want to make.

The only thing left behind for all those glorious 7 years, was the dozens of friends out there inner and outer Flex team, Blog community, a lot of dudes out there. That was one of the best time I had before. I will miss you guys a lot in trench.

With all said, it’s time to say good bye to Flex development. Isn’t because about HTML5 or other stuff, it’s just because Adobe doesn’t know how to run a company even a excellent product.

If things change for positive side, I will considering using it.

The 3 secrets recipes to get a successful Mobile App

2
Posted by Igor Costa on November 6, 2011 – 7:01 pm
Filed under Android, iPhone/iPod touch, mobile

I’ve been working lately for the last 2 years on Mobile development for ios, android and now on Playbook. Most of my 19 mobile apps done are rarely download by others because most are enterprise level others are on brands control which contracts can’t blame, but some are really success because brands name.

Anyway, after those year and getting so much fun on mobile development and also by user perspective, it’s quite simple to get success with your app. You just need to follow the great samples out there, take the best characteristics of those examples and start doing yours.

Let’s make it simple, imagine 3 main categories, you will don’t need much more than that to get success.

1 – The dumbest as possible

In real world we are Simpsons, no matter how much you want to argue with me, we all are dumb, it’s kind part of human race.

Take this example of app http://t.co/uj1IGQW1 How 50k ~ 100k download a success app like that?

Plucking hair? Awesome idea, I mean as thinking as dev I’m proud of developer’s who did that and you know many people download because they want
to spend time between a flight or waiting for coffee on Starbucks.

The secret for this category is to make the dumbest app as possible, don’t re-invent the wheel, we have many dumb behavior just translate that to an App and you will get a impact on 1mi or 2 mi people. Do you have an iphone? Then you remember iFart don’t you?

2- The Funniest to all ages

If you have a device where you want to interact with it, what you human think firstly? Games! That’s it, no big deal, just that.

That’s the first thinking when you think funny. And an App in this category should be Dumb like this app or Awesome like those on video.

Or even better, genial idea with funniest as possible like this.

When doing apps on this category the secret are: Make them awesome, full of rich graphics, funny sounds, when possible interact with our daily life, that should works on parties, wedding, even playing with the cops or political figures. The funniest as possible the better it will be.

3 – Just simple as that

When you interact with your mobile Apps, how much hands do you use? Regularly 1, isn’t? That’s the point. Ordinary people are must making check-in in places, twitting, chatting, sms, typing and finally talking, those things we use with only one hand, why should your App on smartphone need to use two of ours? Isn’t odd this behavior to apply on your Mobile app? On Tablet is plausible to use it , because we read magazines, e-mail better, play more awesome games but on smartphone doesn’t make any sense to me to use both hands to interact with an app, you just need one and your attention on where you’re. Don’t even challenge me if you never tweet on driving.

If your app just want to use one hand only, make it simple, don’t add all garbage stuff we have on laptops, pc, because there has too much space for it, more processing power, more memory power and better one, more fast internet connection.

Smartphones are new market, why don’t make this market simple, elegant and functional. The future in this category is to look back in 90’s; Where we have simple functions, features on our PC. 3 Features are great one for your web start-up.

If you think to put all features you have in a web version of your app, why did you make the web version anyway? Its has to be done to be smooth integration, PC and Laptops are going to have long life 8 or 10 years. Or do you consider developing code and debuging on a phone ? Tablet? Maybe, but not now.

The secret to this category is to make functional, simple and 3 features only, that’s all we need on mobile App for smartphone, like this one.

Voice, 1 finger type and hold and that’s it, it’s functional and just work. That’s 100k and 500k download the app. Because it’s easy to interact with it.

Almost 60 years ago a crazy one told us “This simple thought made a deep impression on me” Who told that?

Ah! don’t forget all apps should be social, don’t sell expensive more than U$1.99.

Be successful my readers.

What’s new on Flex 4.6

1
Posted by Igor Costa on September 21, 2011 – 11:35 am
Filed under Android, Flex, Flex Mobile

flexmobiles
For sure you’re probably working right now on next killer Flex mobile apps to hit Apple Store, Android Market or Blackberry App world. But you may not knowing or maybe loosing some great news that Flex team is working right now on next Flex 4.6 SDK.

By far or even shorter time it’s a very sustainable build for Flex mobile development with 50% gain performance, and they’re not lie, it really fast, kind of building native sensitive app, or close to that with the very intuitive way of custom interface that only on Flash platform you can have with easy tasks.

Check out this beautiful article wrote by Jacob describing those new features that you will face and apply for a pre-release program to start testing the new SDK and also some other features that I might not be able to talk over here due to NDA.

Google Maps for Flash will be discontinued

0
Posted by Igor Costa on September 2, 2011 – 9:58 pm
Filed under Flash, Flex, Flex Mobile, Google

That’s Humble for sure, But Google decide to focus on other areas, such us Google Maps for Javascript instead of continue growing the SDK for Flash Platform.

As google said, only a fraction of usage was made for those apps that take advantages of GMaps Flash version.

Luckly Google made promises to still support critical bugs or security issues, but said NO MORE NEW FEATURES. Current SDK will be available until they decide to keep alive.

But I guess if you have the SDk keep in your hard drive, Maybe will hit out doors next year or so.

I’ve told in a post where I hacked Google Maps for Flex Mobile devices using no that SDK, but Javascript V3 with StageWebView. Check out here.

Detect Connection on Flex or AS3 Mobile Apps

1
Posted by Igor Costa on August 4, 2011 – 6:22 pm
Filed under 3.0, AIR, Actionscript, Android, Flex, Flex Mobile

This is a small screen cast where I demo how to develop and how to solve the problem of dealing with connection, if you’re game developer and want save local score or on-line score, or even if you’re enterprise developer who are whiling to save off-line data for sales apps.

Hope you enjoy, and sorry for noise sound!

Flex 4.x loop on spark Form

4
Posted by Igor Costa on July 22, 2011 – 5:35 pm
Filed under Flex, Flex 4, Open Source Stuffs

I miss this part on Flex 4.x, since in Flex 3.x you easily loop throw Form Items and their fields, which was in compensation of getChildren().

Since we have in Flex 4.x a Skin architecture diffs from Flex 3 , we no longer have getChildren(), and just leave us an option numElements.

Hard for may developers out there and makes you opt-in for statis solution, on naming it all form itens and clear them all in a function. Don’t be shame if you already did that, it’s normal when you don’t know deep in on Flex SDK.

All right, I want to share with you guys, a little Manager Class, which I called, FormManager to workaround on that situation, and get rid of that.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
//  RIACYCLE INC. LTDA BRAZIL
//  Copyright 2011 RIACycle Inc. LTDA
//  All Rights Reserved.
//
//  NOTICE: RIACycle Inc. permits you to use, modify, and distribute this file
//  in accordance with the terms of the license agreement accompanying it.
//	Code Licensed by MPL http://www.opensource.org/licenses/MPL-1.1
//
// Author: Igor Costa
// 
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
 
 
package
{
	import mx.collections.ArrayList;
	import mx.core.IVisualElementContainer;
	import mx.core.UIComponent;
 
	import spark.components.ComboBox;
	import spark.components.Form;
	import spark.skins.spark.ComboBoxSkin;
 
	public class FormManager
	{
		public function FormManager()
		{
		}
		private static var _numelements:ArrayList;
 
 
		/**
		 * @public
		 *  Static method to clear all values filled in a given Form
		 * 
		 * Usage FormManager.clearFields(myForm);
		 * @see spark.components.Form;
		 * @see mx.core.IVisualElementContainer;
		 * */
		public static function clearFields(value:Form):void
		{
			for (var i:int = 0 ;i <= value.numElements-1;i++)
			{
				var item:IVisualElementContainer = value.getElementAt(i) as IVisualElementContainer;
 
				for (var j:int = 0; j<=item.numElements-1;j++)
				{
					var input:UIComponent = item.getElementAt(j) as UIComponent;
						if(input.hasOwnProperty('text'))
							input['text'] = '';
						if(input.hasOwnProperty('textFlow'))
							input['textFlow'] = null;
						if(input.hasOwnProperty('selectedItem'))
							input['selectedItem'] = null;
						if(input is ComboBox)
							ComboBox(input).textInput.text =''; // fix the bug on default ComboBoxSkin class
						if(input.hasOwnProperty('selectedItems'))
							input['selectedItems'] = null;
						if(input.hasOwnProperty('selectedIndex'))
							input['selectedIndex'] = -1;
						if(input.hasOwnProperty('selected'))
							input['selected']= false;
 
				}
			}
		}
		/**
		 * @public
		 *  Static method to return an ArrayList of all fields in a given Form
		 * 
		 * Usage :  var elements:ArrayList = FormManager.getElements(myForm);
		 *            for each (var item:* in elements)
		 *                 {
		 *                   trace(item);
		 *                  }
		 * @see spark.components.Form;
		 * @see mx.core.IVisualElementContainer;
		 * */
		public static function getElements(value:Form):ArrayList
		{ 
			_numelements = new ArrayList();
 
			for (var i:int = 0 ;i <= value.numElements-1;i++)
			{
				var item:IVisualElementContainer = value.getElementAt(i) as IVisualElementContainer;
 
				for (var j:int = 0; j<=item.numElements-1;j++)
				{
					var input:UIComponent = item.getElementAt(j) as UIComponent;
					_numelements.addItem(input);
				}
			}
			return _numelements;
		}
	}
}