Which Streaming Technology Should I Use on My Flex Project?

2010-10-25T09:41:00.006+01:00

I gave a talk last week at the Flex and the City conference in London, England about the leading streaming technologies that are on the market to do "push" at scale and at low-latency on a high concurrency Flex project. I focused on the scale of the challenge, the requirements that you need to look for in a solution and the risk mitigation strategies that should be adopted to ensure you end up

Is Catalyst CS5 ready for prime time?

2010-08-29T15:37:00.001+01:00

At Rule Financial we're still using the traditional tools and workflow to create static and dynamic wireframe mockups for customer projects (i.e. Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash Pro). Since Catalyst CS5 would appear to offer significant productivity improvements over the traditional workflow, I've been spending some time checking out whether it's ready for prime time. These are some of the

Don't buy Flash Builder - it's now included in CS5!

2010-04-12T18:57:00.000+01:00

Flex Builder has always felt a bit like like Adobe's "ugly duckling" product. I'm used to licensing Flex Builder and Creative Suite separately. Yesterday I tried to buy Flash Builder 4 but failed only 'cos Adobe's UK on-line store was down for maintenance. Wow that was lucky! Today I discover that Flash Builder 4's bundled in CS5 Web Premium now. So I can upgrade my Creative Suite license and I

Configuring a default application-wide channel set in Spring BlazeDS

2010-04-04T08:42:00.001+01:00

The Spring BlazeDS Integration project provides a very elegant framework for Flex-Java development. However the project documentation (as of 1.0.3) encourages the decoupling of the BlazeDS channel configuration in the client from the channel config in the server. While in many cases this is the right thing to do, in other cases developers may prefer to define the configuration in one place (in

Can FlexUnit4 test Parsley applications?

2010-02-18T22:13:00.002Z

One of the challenges you face when adopting a dependency injection framework for Flex development is how to test classes that use features of the DI framework. For example when you use the Parsley framework a Command class is typically implemented as follows:-

When is a Cairngorm command not a command?

2010-02-18T10:19:00.003Z

Answer: When it's a Cairngorm 3 command Cairngorm 2, notwithstanding the architectural weaknesses it inherited from EJB2, included an implementation of a pattern that's become widely used in Flex applications; the command pattern. In this patten a command object is used to represent a request to perform a unit of work. Typically in a Flex application command instances represent calls to the

Why isn't it ActionScript10?

2010-01-29T21:23:00.005Z

One of the things that's obvious when you start building applications with Flash Builder 4 is that there's a new component architecture. One of the other things that's obvious is that the ActionScript language and the Flash foundation class library have both been changed for version 10 of the Player. For example the new version of ActionScript includes a new strongly-typed Vector datatype and the

Will Flex be the engine of economic recovery?

2009-04-15T17:11:00.007+01:00

I'm looking forward to next week's SeedCamp, a regular London-based forum where some of the UK's most promising web technology start-ups are invited to demonstrate their ideas to venture capitalists. I'll be with CityOdds, a innovative Flex-based financial services betting website. What's interesting is that CityOdds is not the only company with a Flex-based product in the top 20. Check them out

Implementing the Presentation Model in Flex using daisy-chained ArrayCollections

2009-04-12T10:03:00.014+01:00

ArrayCollection is perhaps the most important data type in the Flex framework as it underpins all the data-driven components such as List and DataGrid. One of the things that I don't like about ArrayCollection is that it couples two quite separate concerns, namely data storage and data presentation (i.e. sorting an filtering). In a well architected Flex application storage should be the concern

Should the financial services industry be using Flex?

2008-12-20T13:37:00.023Z

For the last ten years software built by banks can be broadly divided into two very distinct categories. One type is software destined to be used internally by traders, sales people and the like. This software needs to be "connected", fast and is typically what I call "push-oriented". For example internal trading systems typically need to show streaming prices that a trader can "execute" (i.e not

Can a Flex application support 500,000 users?

2007-10-13T15:55:00.000+01:00

Well, at betfair.com we're going to find out pretty soon as we're pretty close to launching the next generation exchange games trading platform to over 1 million registered customers. If you're attending MAX Barcelona check out Manny Correia's presentation on Tuesday 16th October at 16:00 where you'll get a chance to see a demo of this application.If you're based in the US make sure you don't

Colin Moock's guide to Flash for Flex programmers

2007-08-20T22:10:00.000+01:00

One of the things that makes me laugh (and cry) about the Flex 2 documentation is that it implicitly assumes that the reader is familiar with Flash. Given that Flex is supposed to be a development environment targeted at traditional developers (familiar with Eclipse and source code control and the like), you'd think that it would be a fair assumption that at least a significant share of the

Flex's DateTimeAxis renders in GMT by default!

2007-08-05T14:34:00.000+01:00

I have to admit to that fact that getting used to Flash's Date class has been a struggle, especially in its new localized form. If you instantiate a Date with a single parameter, it assumes the parameter you supply is the number of milliseconds since UNIX was cool, and it also assumes you're specifying the time in GMT. All is fine. If, however, you instantiate a Date with several parameters, (

Flex jobs at betfair.com in London, England

2007-08-02T17:14:00.000+01:00

I recently joined betfair.com as the development lead for a new team responsible for reimplementing the gaming systems in Adobe Flex. We've already completed a beta and, because of the positive feedback, we now need to urgently grow the development team in London, England.We're looking for talented developers who have experience of developing service-oriented smart clients in a team environment,

Happy Brithday Flex 2

2007-06-27T13:22:00.000+01:00

By my calculation it's exactly one year ago today that Flex 2 went GA. Happy birthday! A lot's changed in a year.

Does Flex need an fconsole (like Java's jconsole)?

2007-05-31T20:01:00.000+01:00

As Flex is used for more complex applications and is more widely used in the enterprise I'm wondering how long it's going to be before people want to peer inside the black box of the Flash Player and see how it's working (how the garbage collector's working, how many event/s it's processing and how it's using the operating system's vm system).Java's addressed this with its JMX framework and the

Did Mark get the idea for Flex from his parrot?

2007-04-05T09:52:00.000+01:00

In a interview with Mark Anders in today's UK Guardian newspaper, Mark talks about ASP.NET, Flash as a development framework and his parrots!

The Flex compiler doesn't spot name conflicts

2007-03-04T10:11:00.002Z

Beware! The Flex 2.0.1 compiler appears not to notice the reuse of the same identifier if decalred as both static and non-static in (what in any other language would be) the same namespace. The equivalent throws a hard compile-time error in both .NET 3.0 and in J2SE 5. The following example compiles without error. Is this a bug or is it supposed to be like this in AS3?

Is Flex's valueCommit dispatched at the right time?

2007-03-03T09:30:00.000Z

The more I work with validators, the more concerned I am about whether TextInput's valueCommit event is raised at the right time. You could imagine a scenario where a TextInput's text property is only committed when the user is happy with the input and moves focus to another component, at which point the valueCommit event is dispatched. Unfortunately that's not how the TextInput component works.

Are you still using trace() in Flex 2.0 ?

2006-11-26T14:42:00.000Z

If you're still using flash trace() in your Flex 2.0 applications you should have a look at the new ILogger interface in Flex 2.0. I'm using ILogger for my own components and it's great. It's not hard to learn how to use it, especially if you have any experience of logging with .NET's System.Diagnostics.TraceListener (or with Java's log4j).Unfortunately, with the exception of the Flex v2.0 Data

Why don't more developers use Flex?

2006-10-16T22:34:00.000+01:00

Matt Chotin today posted a message from Flex marketing team asking for input from the Flex community on Adobe's marking strategy for the Flash Platform and Flex in particular. I've posted these ideas in this post already both here on this blog and in replies to Ryan Stewart's excellent Universal Desktop column, but I've pulled them together here into one post.The importance of a good developer

Microsoft endorses the Flash Platform

2006-07-18T20:42:00.000+01:00

Check out Microsoft's pre-release of the latest version of their Internet Messenger software brought to you using the Adobe Flash Platform.

InfoWorld announces Flex is better

2006-07-08T08:52:00.000+01:00

Flex 2 is out the door and the response from the press is positive. This article by InfoWorld says Flex 2 is better than the previous version, mainly because of the new pricing, according to InfoWorld. Unfortunately the apparent indecision at Adobe Marketing about whether to position Flex against Ajax or as a technology complimentary to Ajax shows up in the articles that are appearing in the

Microsoft's anti-Adobe podcast

2006-06-28T19:16:00.000+01:00

Anyone at Adobe who's unaware how effectively Microsoft get their anti-Adobe message across should take time to listen to last week's .NET Rocks! podcast about Virtual Server. The presenters get so emotional about the Adobe dispute that they have to bleep the transmission. Man, these guys are not happy. They're only warming up at start of the broadcast. Listen through to the end for the heavy

Flex 2 - What's in it for .NET developers?

2006-06-06T16:23:00.000+01:00

There's a lot of buzz in the market about user interfaces and improving the user experience. With Microsoft recently announcing its intention to rebrand Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) as .NET V3.0 and with Adobe's new licensing strategy for Flex, we're going to see a lot more IT budget being spent on improving the user experience in the near future and a lot of developers making technology

Flex and .NET Tutorials (1)

2006-06-06T14:24:00.000+01:00

Updated for Flex 2 Beta 3.This is the first in a series of walkthroughs for beginners in .NET that show how to integrate Adobe Flex applications with .NET servers. This first walkthrough guides you through the tasks involved in creating a simple Flex application that shows the growth rates for the US economy in a simple line chart whose data values are retrieved from a .NET servlet. Later

Microsoft offers to bundle the Flex Player in Vista

2006-06-03T09:54:00.000+01:00

According to this market watcher, in an attempt to reach agreement in the dispute with Adobe over the inclusion of a PDF-writer in Office 2007, Microsoft has offered to bundle the Flash Player in Vista. If this is true (and if there are no other hidden conditions that Microsoft is not telling us about) then Adobe would be mad not to accept this offer. It might mean the loss of revenue short-term

What does Gartner say about Flex in banking?

2006-05-31T20:46:00.000+01:00

Banks Eye Rich Internet Applications is an great article by Gartner about the business opportunity that RIA technologies represent for the finacial services industry. It clearly been written by someone who knows what they're talking about and is an excellent resource for building a business case for the adoption of Flex for hard-core applications. It's just a shame it's so well-hidden on the

Don't you love it that O'Reilly Flash books are green?

2006-05-21T17:32:00.000+01:00

We all learned uncle O'Reilly's color codes in kindergarden. Java books are purple, Microsoft books are blue, Oracle books are orange and Flash and ActionScript books are green, in the same color category as books on W3C standards such as HTML and CSS. Eh? It's as if Tim O'Reilly sees Flash and ActionScript as a W3C web standard. I'm not complaining but it's a little curious.

Has Flex given up on the enterprise?

2006-05-20T10:34:00.000+01:00

One of the many benefits of adopting a SOA in the enterprise is the increased organizational agility that enterprises gain from a new type of desktop application that orchestrates the services exposed by the enterprise's legacy systems in a more joined-up way that better matches each business process.This new type of application is called a composite application by IBM, Sun, SAP, BEA and many

Why Flex Data SERVICES but Flash Media SERVER?

2006-05-14T22:11:00.000+01:00

I can understand why Adobe wanted to find a wider market for Flex Enterprise Services and choose a new name as part of that rebranding. I don't understand however why one product is called Flash Media Server and the another product is called Flex Data Services. That seems inconsistent to me. To tell you the truth I've never been keen on the name Flex Data Services, not least because FES had a

Google Podcast on the Challenges of Ajax Development

2006-05-11T23:50:00.000+01:00

Steffen Meschkat of Google spoke at a conference in London recently about the technical challenges of developing rich web applications in Ajax. He has some humourous observations about the quirks of XMLHttpRequest, JavaScript and CSS. The audio of his talk is at http://www.carsonworkshops.com/summit/

Integrating Flex and .NET - Part 2: Using XML Attributes

2006-04-18T22:12:00.000+01:00

Part 1 explained how to create a simple Flex application that displays a chart of the US growth rate where the data for the chart is supplied by a .NET servlet. This post shows how to modify the application so that the chart also shows the growth rates for the Euro zone and Japan. To do this we'll use XML attributes in the servlet.The finished Flex application, which shows the growth rates for

Lack of Support for ISO 8601 Dates in Flex

2006-04-08T11:10:00.000+01:00

It appears that Flex2 Beta2's Date.parse() doesn't accept date strings in ISO 8601 format. For example, Date.parse('2004-03-03') doesn't work. Since all databases understand date literals in ISO 8601, dates are commonly in that format when they're serialized as strings. This is particularly problematic in Flex2 Beta2 since Date.parse() is the method that's called by default by the charting

Integrating Flex and .NET - Part 1: Writing a .NET Servlet

2006-04-05T09:46:00.000+01:00

Adobe Flex is a new application development technology for rich internet applications (RIA). RIA applications are internet because, like traditional web applications, they run in a browser but are rich because they provide a richer user experience than traditional web applications. Like Ajax applications, Flex applications don't need to do postbacks to change their state but unlike Ajax they're

Lack of an XML Editor in Flex Builder2 Beta2

2006-03-27T14:42:00.000+01:00

Given how fundamental XML is to Flex applicaitons, how annoying is it that no plug-in to edit XML files is included in Flex Builder (as of Beta 2)? If, like me, you're used to Visual Studio, the lack of an XML editor in Flex Builder is a pain. Someone recomended X-Men's Eclipse Plug-in to me but it looks pretty basic. Has anyone had experience with other XML plug-ins for Flex Builder?

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