Adam Flater - Flex Blog

Merapi Session from BFlex

2009-10-25T13:59:00.004-06:00

Today was the Flex portion of the BFusion/BFlex here in Bloomington, IN. I presented on integration native code in Flex with Merapi here at Indiana University. The main example we worked through involved automating Excel in Flex using Merapi .NET. The code for the example is checked into our Merapi Example repository. I thought a short screen cast might be helpful as well.

This example was developed using Flex 4 and Merapi .NET in C#. You'll need the Flash Builder 4 beta to build the Flex code and Visual Studio 2008 to play with the C# code. However, if you'd like to skip that part, you can download the binary for the C# portion from here and just run it from the command line.

Additional resources:

HTML view of the Flex code
HTML view of the C# code
The Google Code repo

Thanks to Bob and everyone involved with BFlex for having me speak and putting on a great event.

New to flexlib: CSSPropertyInjector

2009-09-13T18:20:00.009-06:00

As my first contribution to flexlib I've been developing a utility class called "CSSPropertyInjector". The CSSPropertyInjector class is used to apply styles from CSS to an Object that has properties that are not stylable or on Objects that are generally not stylable. Another nice feature of CSSPropertyInjector is the ability to specify multiple styleNames. This util will also allow multiple style selectors. The basic idea is that you bind a target object to the injector and set a styleName value. Given those two properties are set, the injector will automatically set styles or properties on the target object. Granted, it is possible to do a lot of stuff with this util that are questionable in terms of best practices, but it does give the option to apply styles to objects that never had the option in the past. So, without delay, on to examples.

Flex 3 with multiple selectors:

View the Application | View the Source

This example shows how powerful CSS can be with the ability to apply multiple selectors to each component. Each style is used generically and applied to a component regardless of the component's type. So, we're able to share a "redBorder" selector between button1, innerBox, and button2 without adding unique styles about the button's text colors, padding, etc to the "redBorder" selector.

Degrafa skin with styled elements:

View the Application | View the Source

This example shows a simple Degrafa circle with it's style properties (color, angle, alpha) abstracted into CSS. From a skinning perspective the lack of styles in Degrafa has always been just a little annoying for me. On large, enterprise applications it is essential to create conventional approaches to tasks performed throughout the app. Skinning is one of these tasks. Without the support of CSS, styling a Degrafa skin is much different than styling a halo skin, but now with the CSSPropertyInjector util a similar styling approach can be taken with both skins types.

Flex Chart with styled elements:

View the Application | View the Source

Another painful set of elements to style is the Flex Charting Framework. In this example you'll see that the color and weight of stroke of the LineSeries is styled using CSS.

Flex 4 FXG with styled elements:

View the Application | View the Source

FXG is similar to Degrafa and easily styled using CSSPropertyInjector.

So, this is a start for CSSPropertyInjector. It's checked into flexlib and ready for you to play with. I look forward to your feedback on making this a complete addition to flexlib. Please feel free to leave a comment on this post, e-mail me directly, or comment in the flexlib Google Code project.

Merapi is Open!

2009-05-20T01:54:00.006-06:00

I was proud to announce with Andrew Powell today at 360 Flex | Indy, that Merapi is now officially open source.

We've released the first public beta on Google Code as well as opened a Google Group. There is also a repo for Merapi examples.

Here are the important links:

http://merapi.googlecode.com/
http://merapi-examples.googlecode.com/
http://groups.google.com/group/merapi-project

To find out more, keep an eye on our blogs. We'll be releasing more tutorials and answering questions as they appear.

Joining Roundarch / Merapi Positioning

2009-05-03T21:58:00.019-06:00

On March 9th I began a new position in the role of Technical Architect and Evangelist at Roundarch. As I stated in my previous post, this was a difficult decision to make.

Now that I've had a couple months of settling in, I'm happy to say I'm enjoying my new role and the team at Roundarch very much.

Roundarch is not just an RIA or technology shop. We are specialized in Information Architecture, Graphic Design, User Experience, Technology and SEO. Our work is in serving clients, and our process provides unique advantages to the fortune 100/500 enterprises we engage with.

Now that I've had some time to get to know many of the 175 people that make up Roundarch, I've learned to appreciate Roundarch's holistic approach towards solving problems. Although we do have experts that work within a discipline, we do not develop solutions in a vacuum. There is a belief at Roundarch that all disciplines (IA, UX, Design, Business, and Technology) should inform each other. This adds up to a group professionals who's combined background includes graduate and post graduate level training in; HCI, Computer Science, Design/Art, Business Administration, etc... all working together as a team to create solutions for our clients. That process is exciting to be a part of.

There were many incentives that influenced my decision to join Roundarch. A few highlighted reasons are:

Leadership that believes in the success and direction of the company.
Working with my friend Dave Meeker on Merapi
Working with my new friend and mentor Gary Schwartzbard in the Roundarch RIA practice.

1. The Leadership

Roundarch's history comes from years of working under the Deloitte and WPP flags. Our owners saw a distinct value in the people that became the founding members of Roundarch and purchased the practice from Deloitte. It is a testimony to the leadership that many of the founding employees are currently managers, directors, and VPs even today. This is a leadership the has a clear vision of serving it's clients and valuing it's employes.

2. Dave and Merapi

Another part of my on-boarding to Roundarch was working with my friend Dave Meeker to develop Roundarch's capability's to offer unique services leveraging Merapi. Most recently we've done this by assisting Tesla Motors in the release of their new Model S electric car. You can read more about our involvement with Tesla on the Roundarch blog and in this press release.

Shortly after the release hit the web, there was a bit of a surprise in the Merapi community about our positioning around Merapi. Pieces of the text were (validly) interpreted by some to read that Roundarch now owned / had purchased Merapi. This is not the message that Dave or I intended to publish. Roundarch has and will invest time and money in promoting and developing the Merapi technology, however, we view the open source effort as a key part in the success of Merapi.

Last week my friend Andrew Powell raised some concerns over the future of Merapi, and the position of the open source project. For those of you in the RIA community, you've probably seen Andrew give talks about Merapi over the last year. He's been instrumental in helping develop the concepts of Merapi and has helped promote the technology in a great way. Moving forward, Andrew will sit with me as co-chair of the open source project and help to ensure that a community focused version of Merapi's Flex/Java connectivity thrives.

This week Andy , Dave and I spoke about what might be the clearest, mutually beneficial way to position Merapi for the community and companies like Roundarch that want to invest in developing commercial solutions with it. Here's what we came up with...

The open source / community effort will be known as:

Merapi or The Merapi Project

The Roundarch commercial effort will be known as:

The Roundarch Merapi Platform

The open source effort will target developing a solid core for Flex/AIR and Java. Andy and I will be handling how to approve members of the community who would like to contribute on the project. We'll likely be asking for individuals or corporate entities to contribute first by submitting patches and then elevate their status to full commitor rights. This effort will begin this summer.

3. Gary and the RIA practice

At Roundarch we don't follow the typical manager / employee hierarchy. Instead, each employee has their own career counselor. I consider it a privilege to have Gary as a counselor and mentor. It's been my pleasure to get to know and work with him on a few projects already. Even in the current economy, we're in need of additional resources for this team and others. Contact me at adamflater [at] gmail [dot] com if you're interested in finding out more about Roundarch.

So.. that's a rather lengthy source-code-less post for me.

thanks for reading the update.. more to come on RIA development soon
-adam

Farewell to Universal Mind

2009-03-07T15:52:00.007-07:00

After much deliberation, earlier this week I chose to step down from my position at Universal Mind. This was a difficult decision for me as UM has a unique collection of highly talented individuals that I've thoroughly enjoyed working with. I will truly miss counting all the great people at UM as colleagues. I leave my best wishes to the success of Universal Mind and all of it's employees as individuals. I am certain that we will continue to see amazing work from the UM team in the RIA space in both development and design.

It was great to work with all of you and I hope to cross paths with each of you again soon.

-adam

Cairngorm Top 5 Tips - Number 3 - The Data Translator Pattern

2009-02-01T17:38:00.007-07:00

Number 3 on my list of Cairngorm tips is the Data Translator pattern. I'd like to preface my explanation of the pattern with a discussion about web application domains.

As Flex developers we're often inclined to use server-side technologies like Blaze DS, LiveCycle DS, ColdFusion, amfPHP, RubyAMF because of the native object transfer layers that these technologies have available. The magic in these solutions is a binary format called AMF (Action Messaging Format). AMF allows disparate languages to communicate with native objects. For example, in a Blaze DS Java server project if I define a class that has the same public properties as a class definition in ActionScript, Java and ActionScript can transport data of this type and deal with the data as a native object instance in each layer. The benefits gained from native object data transfer are: compile time type checking, speed, and elegance. However, this post is not about AMF, but about the pattern of translating other data formats (like XML, CSV, JSON) into the Flex application domain.

An important distinction when implementing a Flex application is the separation of domains. In a typical web application there are several domains to think about, but for the sake of this example let's look at two: the service layer domain and the UI domain. The distinction between these domains is important to ensure high standards of maintainability and modularity. It is essential to avoid a situation where a change in the service layer has major impacts on the implementation of the UI layer, and vice versa. The Data Translator pattern is a simple pattern, but an important concept for keeping these concerns separated.

In this example I will be using XML translated to ActionScript VOs (value objects). XML is a common format in the world of web services, and especially in Flex development, however this pattern can be used with nearly any data format that a service might expose. That's enough setup, now let's dig in to the Data Translator.

A Data Translator is a class with static methods for parsing data generated by the service domain into a format that is specific to the UI domain. Data Translators are typically invoked by Delegate classes. In my opinion, the Delegate layer is the appropriate place to handle data translation. If your Command class is dealing with data that is part of the service domain, you may need to rethink your architecture. Like nearly everything in any field of engineering, there are exceptions to this rule. If you are implementing an application that's function is to display read-only data, XML can be a great format for that application. However, if your application involves modifying data that was retrieved from a service, value objects are usually the best solution.

So, let's check out the example application:

View the Application | View the Source | View the Docs

DataTranslatorExampleApplication - Defines a button that dispatches the GetItemsEvent, a console to show Cairngorm actions, and a DataGrid to show the result of the operation.

ItemsCommand - Invokes the getItems operation on the delegate class and by standard Cairngorm convention, updates the global model with the items returned by the delegate.

DataTranslatorExampleDelegate - This delegate is responsible for calling the service that responds with a collection of items. The items are returned in an XML format and then parsed by the ExampleDataTranslator class.

ExampleDataTranslator - Translates the XML payload into a set of objects of type Item.

Item - A value object that models the data of an "Item"

This pattern is a favorite of mine for dealing with the translation of data into a format for the UI application domain.

Up next, tip #2 Aggregated Commands.

Typinator and Flex

2009-01-28T10:52:00.005-07:00

My colleague Doug McCune sent out a link last week to a product called Typinator.

Typinator is a tool for Mac OS that auto replaces character strings that are typed anywhere in Mac OS. In the videos below you will see a few ways that Typinator can be used in a Flex development environment.

Class Templates: If you're tired of formatting your classes to read a certain way, why not setup a template with Typinator?

In this example you'll see "-pc" expanded to a full class template.

Infrequently Used Syntax: If you're like me, there are a few syntactical parts of ActionScript that you use infrequently. I generally have to look these things up in past source code or LiveDocs. Typinator is a great way to create a shortcut for those items.

In this example you'll see "-ra" expanded into the remote alias meta data tag.

In this example you'll see "-emd" expanded to the event meta data syntax.

I've been using Typinator for a while now and it's become a useful development tool for me, even actions as simple as correcting functino to function (a common misspelling for me).

[UPDATE]

I shared my post with Ergonis Software and their CEO and Frounder Christoph Reichenberger replied with a very helpfult tip. Typinator allows you to specify an alternative cursor position after it has replaced the phrase you type.

If you look up at my remote alias example, you'll notice that I used the left arrow key to backup to the appropriate spot to type the classname. In the revised example below you'll see that after typing "-ra" the cursor is automatically positioned where I'd like to start typing the name of the alias.

Thanks for the tip Christoph, much appreciated.

Cairngorm Top 5 Tips - Number 4 - The EventGenerator

2009-01-27T14:42:00.012-07:00

The last tip in this series was #5. The AnnounceFaultEvent (read more).

and now for tip #4:

The EventGenerator

The EventGenerator class provides a mechanism for defining sets of Events to be dispatched either sequentially or in parallel. The EventGenerator is defined declaratively in MXML. The generator provides an aggregated result response when the last event in the set has finished. It is still possible to attach responders to your individual events, as per normal in the UM Cairngorm world. (I'll cover the Event-Responder relationship in more detail in a later post.)

There are couple of dependencies to the EventGenerator pattern. I consider these requirements good practice anyhow, but you should keep them in mind.

1. Define your event as a subclass of UMEvent not the Cairngorm Event Class
2. Define your command as a subclass of the UM Command class instead of implementing the Cairngorm ICommand interface.
3. Invoke super.execute() in your command execute method.
4. Invoke notifyCallers() in your command class when the command has finished executing.

And now for the example...

View the Application | View the Source | View the Docs

EventGeneratorExampleApplication - Defines the generators and the handlers functions for their results.

GetConfigurationEvent and DownloadSomethingEvent are basic Event classes that map to ConfigurationCommand and DownloadCommand, respectively. Both of these commands are implemented using the pattern I described in the dependency list above. Let's take a look at the ConfigurationCommand as an example.

As you can see, ConfigurationCommand overrides the execute method and invokes the super execute method. Finally, when the delegate has returned a response notifyCaller is invoked. This is the signal the EventGenerator needs to know that the command has finished executing. If the generator is triggered as a sequential dispatcher notifyCaller() signals the generator to dispatch the next event in the series. If the generator is running in a parallel mode, notifyCaller() is used to keep a count of the event / command pairs that have finished. When all the events have signaled a finish, then the generator will dispatch the aggregated result signal.

The delegate used (EventGeneratorExampleDelegate) is fairly straight forward. It uses a URLLoader to download a couple of files from the same server that the application is deployed on.

Up next, #3 Data Translators.

Cairngorm Top 5 Tips - Number 5 - The AnnounceFaultEvent

2009-01-26T14:33:00.015-07:00

Several months ago we had a Flex Frameworks roundup at our local Adobe User Group (RMAUG). I presented on the Universal Mind Extensions to Cairngorm and have since had a few requests for more info on the extensions. In this post I will explain my top 5 favorite ways to implement Cairngorm features in a Flash Application built with Flex many including elements from the UM Extensions.

So, without further delay...

5. The AnnounceFaultEvent

Error handling can often be an overlooked item when building a Flex application. The AnnounceFaultEvent class in the UM Cairngorm Extensions provides a nice way to generically handle faults. In fact, the UM implementation of Command has built-in support for the AnnounceFaultEvent. If a FaultEvent is passed to the fault method of the Command (via the IResponder interface), an AnnounceFaultEvent is automatically dispatched through the FrontController.

In a standard Cairngorm implementation a Command instantiates a Delegate and invokes a method on that Delegate to perform the action that the Command is responsible for. Typically, the Delegate will inform the Command that either a result returned form the operation or a fault returned from the operation. Because Flex is based on asynchronous communication the Command's call to the Delegate cannot be blocking (ie wait for a response). So, we need a way to signal to the Command that the operation has finished and deliver the result (or fault) of the operation. The common way to accomplish this task is using the Responder pattern. A Responder is a class of object that has both a result and a fault method. The idea is that a caller maintains a reference to the Responder instantiation, and the callee notifies the caller via this object. In the UM Extensions, the Command class will automatically fire an AnnounceFaultEvent when a Delegate passes back a FaultEvent to the Command.

Here's the example:

View the Application | View the Source | View the Docs

AnnounceFaultEventExampleApplication dispatches a AnnounceFaultEventExampleEvent

AnnounceFaultEventExampleEvent is handled by CairngormTipsFrontController

CairngormTipsFrontController instantiates AnnounceFaultEventExampleCommand

AnnounceFaultEventExampleCommand calls exampleOperation on AnnounceFaultEventExampleDelegate

AnnounceFaultEventExampleDelegate responds with a FaultEvent

The FaultEvent is handled by FaultCommand

Tip #4: The EventGenerator ~~is coming soon...~~ It's out now

Dynamic, Persistent Skins with Degrafa

2009-01-18T23:39:00.015-07:00

Degrafa is a declarative graphics framework for Flex. This means that programatic graphic instructions like:

graphics.lineStyle( 1, 0xffffff );
graphics.moveTo( 10, 10 );
graphics.lineTo( 30, 30 );
graphics.lineTo( 10, 30 );

can be expressed in simplified and elegant MXML source code.

From this post you'll take away an intro to Degrafa, how to dynamically modify your Degrafa skins, and how to persist those dynamically modified skins.

To start with, let's take a look at a simple Flex Button skinned using Degrafa:

View Application

In this example I'm using three Degrafa classes: GraphicBorderSkin, SolidFill, and RoundedRectangle to create the skin:

ButtonSkin.mxml

Then, that skin is applied to a Flex Button in:

ButtonSkinExample.mxml

GraphicBorderSkin is one of a few classes that implement the IGraphicSkin interface. These classes are the foundation for a Degrafa skin. Extensions of IGraphicSkin classes are typically written in MXML. For this example I've extended GraphicBorderSkin to add a few bindable properties for width and height. If you're interested in that implementation, take a look at the BaseGraphicBorderSkin in the source code.

SolidFill is fairly self descriptive. As you can imagine, it fills an area with a color. SolidFill may also have an alpha quality.

Finally, the shape of our skin is implemented using the class RoundedRectangle. RoundedRectangle implements the IGeometry interface, the classes used in the tag to draw the shapes of the skin. In our example there are 3 RoundedRectangles, each with increasingly more rounded corners. Each of these three shapes map to three states of the Flex Button; upSkin, overSkin, and downSkin. These shapes are filled using their respective SolidFill instances upFill, overFill, and downFill.

With just a little extra work we can make this skin dynamically configurable. The first step is to create a model to externalize the data of the skin. Our data model includes 9 properties:

This class is called ButtonDynamicSkinData. The next step is to have our skin bind to the values set in ButtonDynamicSkinData. You can view this in the ButtonDynamicSkin class:

The final step is to create a few controls to modify the values in the model. I've added these controls to the Application class ButtonSkinDynamicExample... and voila:

View Application

The final step is to persist this data and load it at a later instantiation of the skin. There are many ways to persist data in Flex. For this example I've used the simple approach of persisting the data via url encoded variables. In the final example a button labeled "Goto New URL" is added. If you modify the settings of the skin and then click the button, a new instance of the application loads with the persistent skin that was modified.

To facilitate the persistence I've added two methods to the class ButtonDynamicPersistentSkinData. The method toUrlVariables() expresses the data model as URLVariables and the setValues() method sets each property of the model based on the values of the URLVariables method parameter.

View Application

This example shows a method for implementing a fully dynamic and persistent skinned Flex application.

The source for the examples in the post can be found here.

More links:

Degrafa Samples
Degrafa Downloads
Degrafa Docs

This post is a result of recently using Degrafa to implement similar features on a project I was working on. I was very pleased with how rapid the development process was, as well as the opportunity it gave for an elegant skinning solution. Degrafa comes highly recommended by me for any Flex project.

Merapi Update

2009-01-11T22:43:00.012-07:00

It has been far too long since I've blogged about Merapi, so I thought I would share what's up with the project. First off, the next release has been coming soon for far too long. That is my responsibility and I apologize to everyone that's been waiting on the new build. However, there is good news! The new release is now live on the site. Go to www.merapiproject.net and check it out. You can sign up for an account if you aren't already.

It's really great to see the Flex community cranking out cool examples with a technology that you've created. This is most definitely the case with the recent “Cocomo ready” Air Wiibot. These guys mashed up Cocmo, Flex, and Merapi to control a Lego Mindstorm robot with a Wiimote. So what's Cocmo for? They've used Cocomo for live video conferencing as well as the ability to control the robot remotely. So, if my friend Jordan happened to have Nathan (our Lego Mindstorm robot) at her house, I could fire up this app at my house and control Nathan remotely using a Wiimote... really cool stuff. Here's the YouTube video:

MAX Recap

For those of you that missed MAX there was a lot of Merapi action, here's a quick recap.

First off, Tour De Flex.

Tour De Flex is an application created by Adobe used to explore components in the Flex community. Adobe used Merapi to connect the Eclipse plugin portion of the application to the Tour De Flex AIR application. You can get Tour De Flex at: http://flex.org/tour and read more about the Merapi integration on Holly Schinsky's blog here: Flex/AIR to Java Communication Using Merapi.

Moving right along... There were a few new demos and a couple of Merapi announcements at the sessions we gave at 360 | MAX. One of the first demos I showed was Outlook integration. Here's the YouTube video:

The next new demo was Excel integration. If you pay attention to the video on this one you will notice one of the announcements we made at MAX, Merapi is now in the browser! In this demo you will see a Flex browser application interact with Excel:

Thanks again to Universal Mind and Adobe for supporting me at MAX.

Coming up...

FlexCamp Chicago 1/23, FlexCamp OC 1/31, and 360 Flex | Indy 5/18-20 (probably)

I'll be presenting at each of these conferences (assuming Tom and John let me in again.. they have yet to announce speakers) ;)

There will be some especially interesting announcements at FlexCamp Chicago. Make sure you turn out if possible, otherwise, watch the blogosphere for the recap.

Thanks to everyone who has been using Merapi and giving us feedback on the framework. The creativity, ingenuity, support, and patience from the community has been excellent.

Enjoy the new release!

The Brightkite Wall

2009-01-05T13:47:00.011-07:00

In late 2008 Brightkite engaged Universal Mind to develop an application called The Brightkite Wall. The Wall is a Flash Application built using Flex.

For those of you unfamiliar with Brightkite, here's a quick overview:

Brightkite is a location based, micro-blogging, social networking platform. Unless you've been living in a cave for the last five years, you're probably familiar with sites like MySpace and Facebook. One of the features of these sites is something called a status. The status you set is meant to reflect something about your mood, or what you're up to, i.e.. "Adam is writing a blog post". This concept is similar to an away message on an instant messenger account. The first site to gain traction as a platform that specializes in status updates was Twitter.

Brightkite retains the idea of status updates and friending other Brightkite users, but adds the concept of a "check in". When you "check in" in Brightkite you're saying where you are, geographically speaking. So, status updates (called notes in Brightkite) are posted from a place. This means these notes often have an annotative quality about the place where the user is checked in. Brightkite users also have the option of posting photos at a Brightkite location. There are a lot more features in the Brightkite platform including: an iPhone application, a mobile site, and integration with other social networking platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Fire Eagle. To find out more about Brightkite sign up for your free account at: www.Brightkite.com.

The Brightkite Wall is a kiosk-style application that provides a feed form a place, a person, or for search terms in the Brightkite ecosystem. The application was built using Adobe's Flex 3 Framework for building Flash Rich Internet Applications.

One development challenge we faced was to implement a user interface that scaled in size regardless of the resolution of the display it was running on. Because the Wall can be launched on any machine, those machines might have a display like a small laptop screen or up to a large projection display. The Wall user interface needed to scale appropriately for each use case. This means fonts, images, and skins all need to look, relatively, the same one any given display size. Although this feature isn't extremely difficult technically, it is a bit tricky. However, Flex does offer some advantages when it comes to implementing a UI like the Wall.

Another challenge was implementing an application that would execute in a full screen mode and reliably for a long period of time. To achieve this requirement we implemented a "BoundedList" UI class that automatically disposes of unused list items, but also allows for various transition effects to be applied as new items appear in the lists.

The data source for the wall is the Brightkite RSS feed. The application is parameterized to allow for dynamic configuration (on launch), of the RSS feed, polling rate, Brightkite place, and the size of the bounded lists. The parameters are passed using Flash variables and accessed on the initialization of the application.

Although The Brightkite Wall is a fairly simple Flex application, built in just a few weeks, it is a great example of how Flex can fit into a platform. Many companies rely on Flex for their entire product line, and it is often a great choice for many products. In the case of Brightkite, they had a specific problem to solve and Flex happened to provide an excellent solution for the problem.

The Wall is still in beta and Brightkite needs your feedback on the kinds of features you'd like to see in the next version.

The Brightkite blog: http://blog.brightkite.com
Brightkite on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/brightkite

Adobe MAX 2008

2008-11-12T11:29:00.014-07:00

Monday, November 17th marks the official start to this year's Adobe MAX conference. I wanted to give a quick update on where I'll be and what I'll be up to at MAX. So, here it is.

First of all, at MAX you can follow me on Twitter or BrightKite my handle is "adamflater" on both. By the way, the BrightKite guys were cool enough to setup a placemark for MAX. The placemark is "max2008". That's a valid placemark for checking in and posting your notes and photos while at MAX.

Aside from my scheduled events you'll also find me at the Universal Mind booth throughout the conference. We'll be demoing all of the apps we've been hard at work on in the past year, including our GIS / Data Visualization product: SpatialKey, and the MAX Award Finalist NASDAQ Market Replay. Market Replay is an application that I had the pleasure of working on with the NASDAQ team. Please vote:

The partner booths will be located at: Moscone West, Level 1.

My Schedule:

Speaker Dinner
When: Sunday, November 16th

I'll be participating in several sessions at MAX and also attending the annual speaker dinner. I hope to see all the familiar faces as well as meet many of the other great folks in the Adobe community I have yet to become acquainted with.

Adobe AIR++
When: Monday, November 17th, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Where: Moscone West 2000

This is a session I'll just be attending. Andrew Trice has been doing some cool stuff with Merapi and I definitely want to check it out. I'll only be able to attend part of the session due to the Merapi session directly following this one. Andrew, we'll save you the last demo spot at 360 | MAX.

Merapi at 360 | MAX
When: Monday, November 17th, 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Where: Moscone West, Level 2

John and Tom, the men behind 360 | Conferences, have always been extremely gracious about letting me speak at their events. This year they are hosting an unconference at MAX. The unconference will feature advanced Flex and AIR topics.

At the last 360 Flex conference in San Jose my friend Jordan and I presented on Merapi. We showed an AIR application controlling a Lego Mindstorm Robot in real time. At both of our 360 | MAX sessions we're going to have a lot of people from the community present the Merapi applications they've been working on. You can count on seeing some pretty cool stuff from: Dave Meeker, Andrew Powell, Andrew Trice, Holly Schinsky, Joe Johnston, and me. We'll be demoing AIR apps that integrate with GPS, RFID, Eclipse, Oracle, Outlook, Growl, MacBook sensors, and of course Legos.

You won't want to miss these Merapi events and that's why we have three of them.

MAX Birds-of-a-Feather (BOFs)
When: Monday, November 17th, 8:30 pm -10:20 pm
Where: Moscone West, Level 2

I'll be participating in two BOFs on Monday night: AIR Gone Wild and the Intuit Quickbase Platform.

AIR Gone Wild is a BOF hosted by Greg Wilson from Adobe. We'll be showing more of our Merapi goodness at this BOF. If there's a question you don't have the chance to ask in a session this BOF is a great place to come and ask it.

Intuit has a new platform geared towards Flex. It's called Quickbase and it's an interesting take on cloud computing. I had the opportunity to work with the platform on one project and I highly recommend checking these guys out.

Merapi at 360 | MAX
When: Tuesday, November 18th, 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Where: Moscone West, Level 2

In our second Merapi session at 360 | MAX we'll cover anything we didn't have time for in the previous day as well as demo all the cool stuff from the previous sessions. Conferences tend to be a place where a lot of people crank on cool ideas they have. So, you never know, a new app might pop up between Monday and Tuesday they we'll demo during this session.

InsideRIA Outlook, 2009: What Every Developer Needs to Be Thinking About
When: Wednesday, November 19th, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Where: Moscone West, Room 2009

Rich Tretola, community manager of InsideRIA.com is hosting this session. This will be a panel format where each of the presenters brings their ideas on the future of RIAs. I'm pretty excited for this one, panel discussion are some of the most valuable aspects of any great conference.

Introduction to Flex Builder 3
When: Wednesday, November 19th, 2:00pm - 3:00 pm
Where: Moscone West, Room 2005

This will be a great session for those of you just getting starting or thinking about jumping into Flex development. I'll be covering all the basics of the Flex IDE as well as an overview of what Flex is as a whole. In my source code demos I'll be integrating a Flex app with BrightKite, the site I mentioned earlier in the post, to show you how easy it is to consume data in Flex. I'm looking forward to great questions at this session. It's always interesting to find out what people need to know about Flex.

All right, well I think that's enough. Looking forward to seeing everyone at MAX!

-adam

EclipseWorld Session Recap

2008-10-29T09:13:00.004-06:00

As promised in my session at EclipseWorld today, I'm posting a recap of the session. My session was titled "Building Flex/AIR UIs for Java Using Merapi". The session gave an overview of Flex, Flex Builder, and Merapi. I also provided some sample application demos using the Merapi framework. You'll find a link to download the slides from the session at the end of this post. My session was slated as a 100 level talk so I covered a lot of basic, high level concepts regarding Flex and Flex Builder. I'm interested to hear feedback on the talk as I'm typically presenting at Flex centric events and EclipseWorld focuses more on Java development. My hope is that the session was valuable to those seeking an introductory look at Flex and AIR.

Thanks to everyone that attended and for all of the great questions throughout the session.

Download links:

Session Slides

Merapi Examples:

Mac Book Pro Accelerometer
Lego Mindstorm Robotics
Live GPS Visualization*
Sending Growl Notifications*
RFID Enable AIR Applications*

* - Part of Andrew Powell's Blog infoaccelerator.net

360 Flex | San Jose - Merapi Session Survery Feedback

2008-09-19T11:11:00.007-06:00

To keep in the open tradition of 360 | Flex I'm posting my survey feedback once again. The Merapi session at 360 Flex | San Jose was really fun and was happy to share the stage with my friend Jordan Synder.

There was one very constructive comment about our examples. The examples that I showed were pretty basic and Jordan's example was somewhat complex. Showing some deeper examples with medium complexity is a great suggestion for improving this talk and a great take away for me in preparing for my next Merapi session.

Thanks to everyone that came to the session and provided feedback.

Without further delay...

How to make your AIR app blow up with Merapi

Merapi is a framework that enables a bridge between Flex on AIR and Java at the desktop layer. If you need to access a Java api in Flex or a Flex API in Java, this is the right tool for you. This session will cover the basics of using Merapi to build a Java enabled AIR application. Please bring your questions and comments about the framework as well as any applications you want to show off. This will be an interactive session, you'll be able to code along with the session and try out some Merapi samples.

Respondants: 33

What the user Expected? 90.91 %
Slides Useful: 84.85 %
Average Rating: 4.3030
Session Informative? 100.00 %

Was the speaker authoritive?

Answered questions very well and had in-depth knowledge of the subject material

Both speakers spoke well.

Oh man, they knew like everything about this stuff. EVERYTHING.

Seemed very knowledgable, and was confident in what they were presenting.

Adam was very knowledgable about the topic, seeing as he wrote the framework. He was confident in his presentation, and had very interesting content.

he is involved with the beta framework and created working apps

Both Adam and Jordan did a great job with their presentation. Jordan's usage of Bluetooth via AIR to control the LEGO MindStorm was way cool.

adam and jordan are badass

Both speakers were extremely knowledgable. Jordan; however was somewhat soft spoken and monotone, as if she was not really interested in presenting.

Adam and Jordan really know their framework, and they didn't have trouble fielding question from the audience. Unfortunately, Merapi is still in its infancey, so a lot of their answers were, "That's something we're planning on doing."

Adam and Jordan really know their framework, and they didn't have trouble fielding question from the audience. Unfortunately, Merapi is still in its infancey, so a lot of their answers were, "That's something we're planning on doing."

I did not previously know anything about Merapi

Yes

I love how you have the authors of the various projects presenting on their stuff.

he was one of the leads on the project and seemed to have a good grasp of what he wanted to present and the way to do it

He knew what he was doing, explained it well

Both speakers seemed very authoritive with the toolsets.

Was a fun preso. Jordan's robot rocks!

Loved Ms. Snyder's application!

Was the Session Informative?

I had never heard of Merapi before

Good demos

It was interesting to see what Merapi was capable of and how it worked.

I learned a whole whole lot of things.

Good examples of what can be done with the project, and a good quick intro on how to get started.

I have a sense of what merapi is and is not

The session was example-heavy, which really helps when showing off a framework.

The session was example-heavy, which really helps when showing off a framework.

very much so

Basic introduction to Merapi, though it is in private beta.

he started with just 4 slides and then jumped into code

yes, but I basically knew all that Adam said, but the lady was all new, that was great

Were the Slides Useful?

There were a few slides to give background info then many examples which really helped

Primarily code.

They were pretty good, but it was really all about teh codez.

There weren't any slides, just sample code. Which is much better than slides.

There were only a few of them before he jumped in to code examples, which was great. The examples were simple enough to easily understand everything that was happening, but still interesting enough that they kept the audience's attention.

Not that they weren't useful, just pretty much non-existant. Not a bad thing, hands on demos rock.

There weren't many slides, but lots of talk about what the code did, so that was great.

simple and sweet

Yes code snippets were concise and easy to understand

There weren't many slides because the session was driven by examples, but for what they were, the slides did provide the necessary information: what Merapi is, where to get it, and contact info for the speakers

There weren't many slides because the session was driven by examples, but for what they were, the slides did provide the necessary information: what Merapi is, where to get it, and contact info for the speakers

good overall

Yes

but it didn't matter. the code was the best way to describe merapi

cant remember the slides - i do remember the robot

Additional Comments:

The focus on hardware integration was interesting although unexpected. A demo of complex data manipulation using Java would have been a nice addition. There was some delay switching presenters' computers.

Adam is such a badass that now I'm following him on Twitter. Also, I really liked the guest appearance by Jordan. She has a neat robot and I want to be like her (knowledgeable about robots; not female).

I had never heard of merapi. I walked in thinking it yet another cairngorm clone but walked away with an appreciation of it's real domain. nice presentation. concise. And thank you for finishing when you were done rather than pull out a load of filler.

Good speakers. Great demos. Bring them back.

Very good. Would like to see solutions to deplyoyment and runtime intigration with java and air

There were no Air Apps that blew up.

Great demo from both presenters on using Merapi to bridge AIR/Java

Adam had several examples that were somewhat low-level, getting no more complicated then pushing random numbers generated in Java to Flex, and Jordan's examples were much heavier. I would like to have seen something in the middle: perhaps how to leverage Merapi to do something on the OS that you cannot do in AIR. The LEGO Mindstorm demo was fantastic. It really drove the power of the framework home.

Adam had several examples that were somewhat low-level, getting no more complicated then pushing random numbers generated in Java to Flex, and Jordan's examples were much heavier. I would like to have seen something in the middle: perhaps how to leverage Merapi to do something on the OS that you cannot do in AIR. The LEGO Mindstorm demo was fantastic. It really drove the power of the framework home.

speakers were very knowledgable

The Lego Mindstorm NXT demo was very clever.

Great example of hardware / air integration.

AIR controlled cars woot!

Dude, the Mindstorm stuff was HOT, HOT, HOT!

it would have been nice if the developers of merapi had more of the projects future planned and deployment issues decided upon but overall it was a good introduction to what merapi is and where it fits in a developer's toolkit

exciting stuff

Great examples!

as a java developer this is a solid tool to work with AIR

New Universal Mind Web Site is Live!

2008-08-31T13:07:00.009-06:00

We launched our new Universal Mind web site today. You can find the site at: www.universalmind.com.

As far as I know, we are the first major Flex centric services company to release a site using Flex technology.

This site was built to be search engine optimized even before the Flex search bots that Adobe developed for Google and Microsoft. This is achieved in two ways: one, by using a dynamic back-end that expands the same content in an HTML view for browsers that do not support the Flash Player... and.. two, the site SWFAddress for deep linking into content areas. Case in point, load the site on your iPhone or Blackberry and you'll see the same content and look-and-feel.

The site also features extensive use of Flex Modules. The use of modules allows deferred loading of many areas of the site that users would not want to otherwise wait to load.

[Update : Thanks to Andy Powell our UM Blog blog.universalmind.com has a new look-and-feel to match the new site.]

Flex Authority is Live

2008-08-24T20:47:00.004-06:00

The first issue of Flex Authority is out! I was lucky enough to attend 360 Flex in San Jose last week and grabbed a pre-release copy there. In addition, Dave Meeker and I were lucky enough to be interviewed by Leif Wells. Leif was really great about coordinating this interview on Merapi. Thanks for your patience Leif.

So, pick up your copy or subscription at Flex-Authority.com and find out more about the Merapi Project direct from Dave and me via Leif.

Recap from 360 Flex | San Jose

2008-08-19T17:21:00.005-06:00

Coming at you from sunny San Jose, California at the eBay campus...

Yesterday at 360 Flex I presented a session on Merapi and moderated a panel discussion on open source technology. At the Merapi session we discussed the focus of the project and show a lot of sample applications. Including a few demos that showed the ease of use when developing with Merapi.

Here's some sample code that shows how to do a simple echo of a string from a Flex UI to Java and back again:

Flex Source:

Java Source:

This simple application is an example of how easy it is to communicate from AIR to Java (and vice-versa) at the desktop.

I also walked through a bit of the source involved with creating the gyroscope demo shown in the video below:

Enter one Jordan Snyder.

Jordan is a friend of mine that has a keen interest in messing with hardware, amoung other things. So, we were hanging out one night at my place and she saw that I had a Lego Mindstorm robotics kit. I proceeded to tell her bout my plans to integrate Merapi with some of the Legos APIs... long story short, she took the Mindstorm home with her and did all the work. Here's a video of the robot that Jordan presented in the same talk:

So, what's up here? The AIR application is controlling the Robot in real time using Merapi via Bluetooth. Why is that cool? This a proof of concept, but it's not smoke and mirrors by any means. This means that Merapi has a huge potential to soon be a a cross platform solution for building device enabled Flex/AIR applications.

I submitted this talk for the Adobe MAX conference when they were asking for proposals, but unfortunately it was not selected. I will be at MAX though and would be happy to talk with anyone who is interested in Merapi at the Universal Mind booth. If there's enough interested in having a birds-of-a-feather-session on Merapi, I'd be happy to accommodate that as well.

The feedback from the folks here at 360 Flex and those of you digging into Merapi has been great. Keep the comments coming and we'll keep on adding features and stability to the framework.

[ Update: More view of "Nathan" the 360 Flex Robot ]

LFFS - 12: Flex Builder Part 2 - Getting Acquainted With The Workbench

2008-06-24T14:23:00.005-06:00

The second post in our sub-series on Flex Builder is out!

Read here: LFFS - 12: Flex Builder Part 2 - Getting Acquainted With The Workbench

Also, we've registered www.learningflexfromscratch.com as a shortcut to our content on Inside RIA.

thanks for reading
-adam

Tornado Hits my Hometown

2008-05-27T07:02:00.023-06:00

I've been in touch with a lot of you about the recent storm that swept through my home town, but I wanted to take a moment to give a full update now that I finally have a minute to pause.

At about 5pm on Sunday, May 25th a devastating tornado hit my hometown of Parkersburg, IA. I was visiting some friends nearby in La Crosse, WI where I received a call from my parents that no one had heard from my 91 year old grandmother. We also heard news that a woman that lived 4 houses down from her had been a victim of the storm. After an hour or so, some of our good friends that help care for her gave us word that she was pulled from the the wreckage of her house completely unharmed and that she was safely resting in a Red Cross triage facility. She had the good sense and guidance to take shelter in the shower stall of her basement bathroom during the storm. This room ended up being the most undamaged room in the house and was the safest place she could have possibly been.

A lot of friends have been asking me if there's anything they can do to help. If you have the means, I'd suggest donating to one or both of these organizations:

1. The Red Cross.

This organization is awesome. I had always heard about the great stuff they do, in the last few days I was able to see it first hand. They cared for my grandma until we could get to her, tracked down a print out of her medications, contacted a local pharmacist to get her a 3 day supply of medication on the night of the storm, and when we rolled into town the next day they were on the scene handing out water and assisting with the cleanup efforts.

2. Lutheran Disaster Response (LDR)

This may not be a well known organization to you, but if you check out their site you'll quickly find out that when disaster strikes LDR is quickly there. We're told they'll be setting up in town tomorrow to aid in the restoration process. I volunteered to help with Katrina relief work in February this year and the LDR presence is felt strongly by the people displaced by that storm. One person I met there said, "if it wasn't for the volunteers like y'all that keep coming down here, this area would never have been rebuilt."

Both my grandma's and uncle's houses were destroyed by the Tornado. Also, my uncles vehicles and place of work were taken. Driving through town yesterday felt like witnessing the aftermath of a bomb. They are saying that 1/3 of the town has been completely destroyed, including the town's; grocery store, gas station, lumber yard, high school, and several hundred residences.

The response from friends in the town who's houses weren't damaged has been really amazing. They dug in immediately to help us sift through the rubble and recover precious items like photographs and family heirlooms. The governor was in town surveying the damage yesterday and asked the president for federal assistance. Anything you can do to encourage your representatives to support the federal efforts to help the town rebuild would also be appreciated. One phone call might not do much, but (especially in an election year) a few hundred or thousand calls might see some action.

Thanks to everyone who has been supportive to my family and me in the last few days. I'll be heading back to help cleanup as soon as I pick up my sister from the airport.

-adam

New Rocky Mountain Adobe Users Group Site

2008-05-24T10:18:00.004-06:00

The Adobe Users Group in the Denver area has a pretty sweet new site www.rmaug.com. The site and user group are maintained by the crew at RealEyes. My favorite feature so far is the blog aggregator for the local Adobe / RIA bloggers. It's cool to see how much is going on in the Denver/Boulder area in terms of new technology. Stop by and give the site a look, and if you're an RIA coder looking for a new home, I'd consider checking out Denver. Also, if you're a local technology blogger submit your feed url to rmaug and get it aggregated. (They may want you to be a user group participant though.. which would seem fair to me.)

Merapi + Physics

2008-05-21T19:28:00.006-06:00

Today at Web Maniacs I gave a fairly brief, short notice talk on Merapi. I had a few slides and presented a couple examples. The coolest example by far is something that Doug McCune helped me throw together. This example involves using a physics engine for Flex called Foam and Merapi to invoke the Java/C call SMS/Unimotion to read the Mac Book Pro's accelerometer. Rob Rusher (also a speaker at Web Manics) was nice enough to shoot a video of this example:

and here's a screen shot:

The source code needed in the Flex app is this tag:

  <gyroscope:merapigyroscope id="gyro">

The MerapiGyroscope class has a few properties (smsX, smsY, smsZ) that are bindable and automatically updated by the Java side of Merapi.

This is sneak peak of much more cool stuff to come from the framework and I can guarantee that these libraries will be available for you to play with soon.

Sean The Flex Guy and UM

2008-05-21T08:31:00.003-06:00

Another great developer started working with Universal Mind recently. I met Sean Moore via twitter and blogs and have been really impressed with his skills and background. You can check out Sean's post about it on his blog.

Glad your on a UM project Sean.. Hopefully we'll work together directly soon, then it'll really "watch out now" time.

InsideRIA Post - More on Static Code

2008-05-16T09:57:00.004-06:00

I have a new post up on InsideRIA called : More on Static Code. This is in response to the high demand that I saw in my blog analytics for a post I did sometime back on this blog called Static Code Blocks!.

I hope you find it helpful.

-adam

Web Maniacs 2008

2008-05-15T23:25:00.014-06:00

When I originally submitted two topics for Web Maniacs a few months ago I figured I might end up presenting one of them. Now I’m doing four.

In order of appearance:

9a, Wed: Advanced Skinning and Component Development

This session will actually be more about skinning and less about component development. After presenting this topic at 360 Flex | Atlanta I learned that the CS3 design extensions and general Flex skinning techniques are more than enough info to fill a session. I’ll be happy to answer any questions on component development, but the focus of the talk will be all the different ways to create skins. There are various pros and cons associated with each skinning method and we’ll talk a bit about those as well.

2p, Wed: The Merapi Project - A Framework for Bridging Java and AIR

I’ll be presenting some samples applications in this session and answering questions regarding the project. We’ll be entering a private alpha cycle during Web Maniacs, so this is an exciting time for Merapi. If you have an interest in how to push the boundaries of AIR to extend into Java at the desktop, come check out this session.

9a, Thu: Design Patterns and Architecture Frameworks

In this session I’ll be presenting several of the design patterns found in the classic Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides text “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software,” with a Flex twist. Some of these patterns appear the the Flex framework, some appear in Flex application frameworks, and some are just common patterns used in the everyday life of an OO developer. This talk is focused towards the intermediate to expert level object oriented programmer.

11a, Thu: Flex Open Source Panel Discussion

This panel discussion will include founders and contributors from various open source projects in the Flex community. I’ll introduce the panel and each project that’s represented. Then, we’ll pose some general questions about open source technology and the implications on using OS projects in your Flex applications. As we wrap up, we’ll take general questions on OS as well as specific questions for the panel regarding the projects they work on. If you're interested in being on the panel, please contact me at adamflater at gmail dot com.

Whew... I think that’s about it. See you all in D.C. and watch my blog for assets from these talks.

thanks for reading

-adam