The Swiz framework uses a nice approach to inject dependencies into view components. By registering an event listener for the Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE (and the counterpart Event.REMOVED_FROM_STAGE) on the systemManager, they track the adding/removal of view elements at runtime, then introspect the class definition and look out for those magic [Inject] metadata annotations. If found, a dependency from the BeanFactory gets injected (wow, what a rush!)

In cases where you don't want to add Swiz to your application (yes, I admit it happened to me when I created a little POC) you can use the same approach to inject certain "global" dependencies (Models being a good example) into your views to avoid the Singleton anti-pattern.

Implementation is pretty straighforward. In my case I have a central Model class which holds references to certain other objects. This model gets instantiated just once in the main Flex application file. Now, in each MXML view that should access this Model object, I created a new public var model of type Model (in Swiz we would now have to put [Inject] on top of it but we don't do this here, it's just convention over configuration).

The last bit of "wiring" is to use the creationComplete Event of the main application file to an event listener for the Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE event to the systemManager. The event handler function then looks like this (ok, not pretty and it works 100% in my use case):

Disclaimer: of course, I don't want you to stop using Swiz in favour of this (probably silly) approach. I still use Swiz all the time - except for the little POC :) So, if you want to try it go ahead, if you need more, please take a look at Swiz or one of the other fine DI frameworks for AS3/Flex!

Dirk.

Important tip: if you manually install plugins to Eclipse or Eclipse-base products like Flash Builder then make sure to copy the plugin's JARs or folders to the /dropins folder instead of the /plugins folder. The /plugins is kind of deprected for manual installations.

More information about the /dropins folder is available here.

Dirk.

Yeah - I just passed the Flex 4 ACE Exam which is mandatory to keep my Adobe Certified Instructor (ACI) status for teaching the official Adobe Flex courseware.

It was the third time that I took a Flex exam (first one was about Flex 2) but still it's a moment of great suspense when I click on the final "End exam" button to end the test and get the results (it's a sort of online test which has to be taken at a test center)

This time I passed with 84% which means 50 out of the 59 questions were correct. Unfortunately they don't show you the wrong answers afterwards which would be very interesting.

If you want to certify as well make sure to take a look at the Spark architecture, Service integration (including LCDS and Model Driven Development) and general OOP topics with focus on ActionScript implementation details. And if you're a Flex veteran (like me) with a strong Flex 3 background make sure to take an extra deep look at the at the Spark architecture :)

Dirk.

I added a little but pretty helpful new feature to the Perspective Switcher Plugin: the Plugin will now automatically switch back from a Debug perspective to the previous non-Debug perspective as soon as the Debug session is terminated. This feature is enabled by default but can be explicitly switched on and off in the Preferences page

I tested it with the Java and Flash Builder Debuggers but should work with any Debugger inside the Eclipse IDE that is based on the DebugPlugin infrastructure.

If you used the previous version (0.1.0) make sure to delete the old jar file in the /plugins /dropins folder first before adding the new version (0.1.1) to it. Afterwards, it's a good idea to start Eclipse with the -clean switch.

Download the ZIP file here.

Dirk.

Update: current version is 0.1.1 - read below

In my projects, I tend to work with more than one language inside Eclipse. Sometimes it's up to four but typically at least two (e.g. Java and Flex). One thing that always annoyed me inside Eclipse is, that it does not automatically switches perspectives based on the current language (or IDE plugin). So I always end up in the wrong perspective, seeking for a certain view or getting nuts because some key bindings overlap and do something different in one perspective than in another one. Know the pain? Here's the meds :)

I'm happy to introduce Perspective Switcher, a simple plugin for Eclipse (3.4 and above) which automatically switches perspectives for you based on the rules you define. It is not specific to Flash Builder at all and should work fine with *any* perspectives inside Eclipse.

Also, as of version 0.1.1, the Plugin will now automatically switch back from a Debug perspective to the previous non-Debug perspective as soon as the Debug session is terminated (yeah!). This feature is enabled by default but can be explicitly switched on and off in the Preferences page (but you don't really want to switch it off I promise) - again, this feature should work with *any* Debuggers inside an Eclipse distro as long they are built around Eclipse's DebugPlugin API.

Essentially, in the preferences page the plugin lists all active perspectives in your distribution and allows to specify which file extensions should be associated to them:

There's no validation on the extensions and you can also assign one extension to more than one perspective but the plugin will only pick the first perspective it finds.

Also, when testing I found that changing perspectives when in a Debug perspective is probably not a good idea, so all Debug perspectives are not shown in the list.

The plugin only switches perspectives when an Editor (e.g. JDT's Java Editor or Flash Builders MXML Editor) gets activated, either by opening a file or by switching from one open editor to another (by whatever means).

To install, simply unzip the ZIP file and copy the JAR into your distributions /plugins /dropins folder. Then restart Eclipse / FB with the -clean switch. You should then see the "Perspective Switcher" entry on the Preferences dialog.

Current version is 0.1.1 - Download the ZIP file here.

Enjoy!

Dirk.

As announced in January 2009, Adobe now published the specification for the former proprietary RTMP protocol. The specs can be downloaded for free from here, for more background information check Kevin Towes blog entry

The EULA is pretty clear on prohibiting two things: you may neither create "stream ripper" software based on the specs, nor create a software that cicumvents security/DRM measures implemented by Adobe (rtmpe, rtmps). You may of course build your own security/DRM scheme on top of the open RTMP specs

So: who is the first to create a AS3 only RTMP-client that does not use NetConnection?

Dirk

Anyone else experiencing that certain features of opensource.adobe.com are not working? Most notably, all the top menu links like Projects, Source are not working or give an error page here...

UPDATE: seems that only the top level navigation is broken, the Wiki pages work, e.g. http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Get+Source+Code

Dirk.

Wow - reinventing the wheel (again)

Dirk.

My colleague Christian yesterday started the Flex User Group Hannover (FXUG Hannover). Check it out here (sorry, German language version only)

Dirk.

When working with ByteArrays in AS3 always remember that writing to the ByteArray instance increases the position property - which has impacts on the next read / write operations of course! Today, I forgot that again and had a hard time figuring out why things did not work as expected - so here's a reminder for myself (and a hint for other people).

In my case I created a SHA-256 message digest from a String value using the SHA256 class in Flex 3. The static computeDigest() method takes a ByteArray instance and returns a message digest ("hash") of that message. Then, I sent this digest over the wire to BlazeDS and on the backend side I compared it with another dynamically created digest (using Java's MessageDigest class). Simple story - however, the digests never matched!

Finally, I realized that the ByteArray's position was still on the same position that was set after writing to the ByteArray, thus the digest was not created for the fully populated String but only for the last character... oh dear! Setting the position to 0 before passing the ByteArray to the computeDigest() method did the trick and both digests matched afterwards.

Dirk.

FYI, we just updated our Adobe training offerings and replaced the Flex 2 courses with the latest Flex 3 courses. Also, we're now offering the official AIR course ("Building Desktop Applications with Flex 3 and Air") and added the new Cairngorm course to our portfolio.

Of course, if these generic courses do not fit your requirements, we're still offering custom on-site consulting and training.

Dirk.

Wow! That's a real gem! Metal Hurlant has released an early version of a true AS3 eval library - if you don't have a clue what that means: it's an AS3 compiler written in AS3! The Core bits are a port of the Tamarin project "esc" compiler.

Although it's still in an early stage it allows quite funny stuff, even dynamic class creation and instantiation is possible!

Find out more here: http://eval.hurlant.com/

Dirk.

The subject says it all: is AIR something that will be around for the next 2-4 years and not just a cool developer toy? Actually, I think so - but currently I need some real good selling points for a project that could be done with AIR but the customer is rather sceptical about the technology and the general roadmap.

The project is a strategic enterprise project so the customer really needs some kind of safety for the planned investment and especially some indications that AIR won't dropped or discontinued in the next 2 years (which is a valid point I think).

What pro-AIR arguments do you know?

Dirk.

Long time no message... again. In case you're wondering why, here's the reason for it: We're currently quite busy developing some sweet Flex 2 applications and do a lot of Flex consulting and Flex training all across Europe. We've done custom on-site trainings, official Flex courses and hosted some Adobe partner "deep dive" trainings to help Adobe partners quickly learn about Flex and where it fits in the Adobe portfolio.

What we see in general is that a broader mass of people is really starting to evaluate Flex and consider adding Flex to their IT systems. This has shifted a lot compared to e.g. a year ago (or even half a year ago).

Also, a while ago we started a German-speaking community platform called Flexforum to help and support the somewhat "invisible" German Flex community. After roughly haly a year we now have about 230 users and and 450 Threads and it's up-and-coming.

In conclusion: more work to do, less time to blog and plenty of time (and a lot of fun) to do Flex coding :) 2007 will be very exciting, with Flex 2.0.1 and Apollo just around the corner.

Dirk.

Adobe (quite silently) launched their new online color picker / color matcher tool called kuler. And it really rules :)

With kuler you can create color themes and color harmonies and store them for later reference. I'm not a designer - but this tool allows me to grab a nice set of matching colors the next time I need to build a Flex portotype that uses charting for example. Not sure if this is a Flex 2 application or not but anyway - it's kule :)

EDIT: Sean Corfield has a bit more info on the technology behind it

We're are looking for qualified and smart people who want to join our Flexperten team. A full description (German only) is available here.

Dirk.

For a good overview on everything about the now Open Sourced AS3 Engine check JD's posts here and here. Also, for a better understanding of what this means (and what not) I'd (again) like to quote Gordon Smith (Adobe):

This is a major contribution from Adobe to the open-source community, but let me try to clarify what it is and what is isn't. The code being open-sourced is for the core AS3 language, not for anything specific to Flash. The contributed engine is able to execute a program that uses core classes of the language like Array, Date, RegExp, and XML. It is not be able to execute a program that use Flash-specific classes like Sprite, TextField, SharedObject, or URLLoader. In particular it supports no Flash graphics. Mozilla will use this engine by adding browser-DOM classes such as Window, Document, Form, Anchor, etc., which are the "domain objects" that a browser manipulates, in the same way that Flash uses this engine by adding classes for its domain objects such as Sprites. Once this is done, webapp developers will be able to use AS3/ES4 as a fast, type-checked, object-oriented "JavaScript" if they want to. So this has nothing to do with putting Flash into Firefox. Firefox users will still require the Flash plugin to run SWFs. But contributing a high-performance virtual machine for a type-checked, object-oriented language is still a big deal!

Dirk

It it's not a joke, here it is: Google Moon: http://moon.google.com/

Sven.

via cflex.net: Sun has silently open-sourced Java Server Faces - see this eWeek.com article for more information. By adding some AJAX to JSF this may be Sun's effort to get a piece of the rich client cake.

Dirk.

Konfubulator has been acquired by Yahoo! and will change its name to "Yahoo! Widgets". Also, Konfabulator is now available free of charge. Seems as if Yahoo! is making the next step to get on the endusers desktop.

There's no official statement from Yahoo! yet but this summary gives a good general overview.

Dirk.

After all the Google Earth buzz: here's another nice (and open source) software which allows you to zoom, fly, rotate and pan through the world: World Wind, developed by the NASA. World Wind uses about 20 TByte of (royalty free open source) satellite data from several satellite programs (Landsat 7, Blue Marble etc.). Best of all, quite a huge community eveolved around the software and they all share so called "Hot Spots" - coordinates on the globe which are interesting, funny, mystical or disturbing - for example Bill Gates' house or the Pyramids of Giza.

Very cool tool.

Dirk.

Microsoft announces the Avalon Beta 1 RC. Very interesting about the new release: contrary to former announcements, it will be able to run Avalon applications as "Express Applications" inside a browser:

The Avalon application model now supports two distinct modes of execution: standalone executables and "Express" applications. Standalone applications can derive from NavigationApplication or Application, have access to all privileges granted to the current user context, and are installed to a user's machine. Express applications must derive from NavigationApplication, are hosted in a browser window, run in a security-constrained partial trust sandbox, and offer a zero-footprint install model.

Obviously MS still believes in the browser and browser based applications - do they feel the impact of RIAs?

Dirk.

Forrester's take on Flash's future (free registration required):

Adobe Systems' impending purchase of Macromedia has raised questions about the future of Flash. But the acquisition makes prospects for Flash-related products even brighter than before as Macromedia gets a much-needed infusion of marketing clout along with some intriguing opportunities for tool synergies.

Dirk.

We'll exhibiting at this year's CeBIT fair in Hannover, Germany. Together with the folks from eggs unimedia, msg at.NET and the team of Macromedia Germany, we'll be your host at the "Macromedia Center of Excellence" booth in Hall 3, Stand A 14.

The main focus will be on presenting the MM server technologies Flex, Breeze, and ColdFusion and custom enterprise solutions based on these products (nope, we won't show regular products like Flash or Dreamweaver).

Last year's CeBIT was quite exciting and I hope this year it will even be better. The fair takes place from March 10-16.

More info... (in German)

Dirk.

via slashdot: Google now offers a nice overview on twenty years of Usenet (which are now archived by Google Groups), e.g. "Douglas Adams' first post on alt.fan.douglas-adams", "First post from Berlin after the wall came down" and even the "First discussion of cold fusion" (the other one ;)

Dirk.

I'm gonna leave for holidays now - I hope you enjoyed this blog over the last few months. I'm looking forward to serve you with interesting information and fresh stuff during the next year and wish you a pleasant time.

Dirk.

That's funny: if you're using Windows XP and have ever used the built-in search function of the Windows Explorer then you'll most probably know this cute intrusive little yellow dog already (I saw it once and disabled it just in that very moment).

Interestingly, This dog has been around since 1995 already. It was first introduced with a product called "Bob" and was meant as a front end for Windows 3.1 for non-technical computer users.

A quotes says it all: "however, these assistants are notorious for being generally disliked by users of Microsoft products, and it is said that one of the most common questions Microsoft support is asked is how to turn them off!" :)

Edit: the dog in Bob is called "Rover", whereas the dog in XP is called "Fredo"

Dirk.

According to this article by the German IT-news provider heise.de, MS just released a "Community Technology Preview" of the Avalon presentation system for MSDN subscribers. Most interestingly (and contrary to all prior notices) Avalon is also targeted to run on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The release is still said to be in 2006.

Dirk.

Interesting: Obviously someone started a project at sourceforge for a AS 2.0 Eclipse plugin: http://sourceforge.net/projects/aseclipseplugin/

Dirk.

This product catched my eye as I walked to the supermarket's check-out yesterday. Now I wonder if the marketing person in charge for this product name was influenced by some Flash/Flex/Eclipse/whatever coding guru. Honestly, how could someone come up with such a moniker- :)

Macromedia has released two cumulative patches for JRun and ColdFusion yesterday, both are categorized as being critical. Release notes and installation instructions:

• JRun: http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/security/security_zone/mpsb04-08.html
• ColdFusion MX: http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/security/security_zone/mpsb04-09.html

Dirk.

via slashdot: some German guys have handcrafted an electro-mechanical version of Pong called Pongmechanik. This reaaly looks awesome.

The net build time was 900 hours. The device contains 52 relays and the total weight is said to be "sauschwer" - don't know how to translate this to English but it means "REALLY heavy" :-)

Dirk.

BBC Radio 4 (UK) starts the new series tonight! Unfortunately, I won't be able to listen to it directly but it seems as if the whole series will be made available as an audio stream afterwards - at least for seven days.

As mentioned previously, the voice of Douglas Adams can be heard "thanks to the wonders of digital technology".

Dirk.

The Birds of a Feather session decriptions for this year's MAX are available here - especially Tuesday is going to be a tough day :) Here's my personal agenda so far - the best will be to do some cloning.

• 6:30pm-7:30pm "The Actionscript Roadmap and You" (visions anyone?)
• 7:45pm-8:45pm "Meet the Flex Engineering Team" (looking forward to this one!)
• 9:00pm-10:00pm "Macromedia Flash and the Desktop" (Central 1.0 and beyond...)

Dirk.

Not exactly what you might expect: Cold Fusion back from the Dead :-)

Have a nice weekend!

Dirk.

via JD: last week VeriVito posted something geeky on his blog - an ActionScript version of Lewis Carrolls poem "Jabberwocky". This neat and sweet thing got slashdotted quickly and all those die-hard Assembler/C/Java guys from slashdot.org went crazy (or upset?) about the fact that this cool, useless, skip-intro tool called Flash can be used to do geeky poems.

Now, VeriVito shows teeth and provides us with a new Jabberwocky interpretation... :-)

Dirk.

PS: maybe we should start an obfuscated ActionScript contest?

If you're a coder (and a gamer when not coding) then this seems to be the ultimate input device for you: slashdot just posted that AlphaGrip is now taking pre-orders for their "3D Keyboard".

Dirk.

Apple, Macromedia, Opera and Sun go hand-in-hand for the next generation of web browser plugin technology:

"In response to demand by users, plugin vendors and web developers for web browser support for an open, secure and scriptable plugin model, the Mozilla Foundation, in collaboration with Apple, Macromedia, Opera, and Sun Microsystems are working to extend the Netscape Plugin Application Program Interface (NPAPI) in a manner that allows greater interactivity with plugins such as Flash, Shockwave, QuickTime and Java, resulting in a richer, more interactive web."

Enhanced interactivity inside the browser and inter-plugin communications opens new possibilities - let's hope they get it all nice and safe.

Further reading:

• heise.de (German)
• official press release
• Plugins project page

Dirk.

Macromedia now offers RSS feeds for 14 products. The feeds include the most recent technotes, security bulletins and other product notifications. Fo easier access I've added the Flash RSS feed to the nav menu on the right.

Dirk.

via slashdot: That's just great: the BBC is going to produce the last 3 books of the Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy as a radio broadcast. The original voice of Douglas Adams will appear as the character Agrajag, a guy that gets inadvertently killed again and again by Arthur Dent only to be reincarnated some chapters later.

Most ironic, Adams died in 2001, the Agrajag recordings were done some years before.

Dirk.

More info on this years MAX conference is available at Macromedia. At the first look: many interesting sessions, 12 of them directly or indirectly connected to Coldfusion, 18 dealing with Flex.

I was very astonished that there are only few sessions on mobile devices, although this might be the next big market thing: three sessions are in the General track, two in the Advanced track. The latter two are about FlashCast, might be interesting.

Dirk.

via slashdot: Dave Winer (RSS pusher and one of the first bloggers ever) has shut down the weblogs.com hosting service without further notice. 3000 hosted blogs are now unavailable.

Dirk.

Heute habe ich einer jungen Kollegin bei uns erklärt, dass das SSH Tool WinSCP2 so eine Art von Norton Commander über SSH ist. Als sie nicht reagierte fragte ich nach ... "Norton Commander?" ... worauf es nur ein Zucken mit den Schultern gab. Wenn man Jahrgang 1981 ist kann man natürlich schwerlich DAS TOOL der 80er Jahre kennen ...

Sven.

Hallo, hier ein interessanter Auszug aus einer Präsentation von Jeff Whatcoff, Vice President Products bei Macromedia (Quelle: Dan Shorts)

Jeff Whatcott Macromedia VP Products is starting to be more open with product timelines and information due to the fact that developers hold a stake in MM's future.

• Flash Player 7 for Linux
• Flash MX 2004 Updater 2 (focus on performance, documentation and general bugfixes)
• Central 1.5 and AIM SDK
• Brady (stated that they're in an active Beta, and you may request to be on the beta)
• Flex 1.5 (maintenance release, runtime library support, more components, performance enhancements, additional capabilities)

• ColdFusion "Blackstone"
• Flash Player 8 ("important release", but he didn't say why)
• Central 2.0
• Flex 2.0
• Additional releases of Studio, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Freehand, Director, Authorware and JRun.

1. What about FlashCom? We still love it, still under development.
2. Mac OS9 compatability in future versions? Wishy washy "most are going to OSX"
3. Flash for Palm OS? No answer, have to check with flash team.
4. Plans for 3D in Flash? Trying to expand the aesthetic, more expressive, better for artists, nothing concrete.
5. Studio for Linux? Working with a company that has DW running on Wine. "Emerging area", "doing research", etc. If you want DW on Linux, contact MM.
6. CF -> .Net? May mention during Blackstone presentation
7. Future of Homesite? customers want a code-centric environment, we hear that a lot, "deeply researching", "loud and clear". No commitments, but gave the impression they're looking at it hard.

Sven.

Unter www.richinternet.de entsteht gerade die neue Web-Präsenz unser Rich Internet Services Abteilung. Schaut doch mal rein ... wir arbeiten zwar noch teilweise am Content ... aber es wird langsam. 

Sven.

Wie heisst es doch so schön bei Sister Sledge "We are family..." ;)

Dirk.