Mike Slinn's Weblog
Connoisseur of Technology

Jun

17

Flex, Linux and Winning the RIA War

Filed Under Flex / AIR, Linux, Software | 1 Comment

Adobe should address developers with a marketing program that is separate from their designer marketing program, and products aimed at hard-core developer interests. The goal would be to leverage the influential developer community to drive sales of products that designers and other non-programmers purchase, not to maximize ROI for developers. The desired result is RIA domination and sustainable and profitable business for Adobe, its partners, and its customers. I submit that the converse – failure to partner effectively with developers and to recognize the strategic value of the developer market as a loss leader – would result in losing the RIA war and making the rest of Adobe’s products vulnerable in a way that they are not at present.

May

8

Flex 3 Cookbook

Filed Under Flex / AIR | Leave a Comment

I got a free copy of the Flex 3 Cookbook at JavaOne yesterday. Amazon doesn’t have it in stock yet, but Adobe had stacks of them and handed them out to everyone who attended the Flex/AIR event hosted by James Ward and Chet Haase.
This book is packed with important information. It must have been [...]

Mar

24

Converting Java to ActionScript 3

Filed Under EmpathyWorks, Flex / AIR, Java | 2 Comments

I’m nearly finished porting server-side Java to client-side ActionScript. When complete, the ActionScript will be part of an Adobe AIR application that provides a graphical configuration utility to EmpathyWorks. The Java code uses generics, lots of collections, checked exceptions and extensive use of Java’s enum facility. The Java class hierarchy was largely [...]

Mar

16

Cairngorm Microarchitecture

Filed Under Flex / AIR, Software | Leave a Comment

If you’ve ever tried to build a non-trivial Adobe Flex or AIR application, you probably used custom components and discovered that the application needs to be organized somehow. I like to think of software architecture as the philosophy for how software artifacts are organized and named for a given project. The Cairngorm micro-architecture [...]

Mar

7

Flex / AIR Menu Manipulation

Filed Under Flex / AIR, Software | Leave a Comment

E4X is pretty cool, and can be used to manipulate Flex menus, such as those created by mx:MenuBar. This post shows how to selectively enable menu items.
Here is one way of defining the menu. Note that you can name the menu elements anything you like, just so long as you are consistent. The [...]

Feb

29

Using Adobe Air v1.0

Filed Under Flex / AIR, Software | Leave a Comment

I’ve been paying attention to three of the RIAs (Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight and Sun’s JavaFX.) Earlier this week, Adobe release AIR, which is essentially Flex v3.0 unchained from the need for a web browser. Flex and AIR both generate client-side Flash.
I had been working on a web page using a combination of [...]