My site on ICE

Adobe InContext Editing is an online service, available at no charge during the free preview period. It is a RIA application combining both Flex and JavaScript to create a very useful and simple tool to be used by both content contributors and web designers.

Basically what you do is create an HTML page and add some ICE editable regions from Dreamweaver CS4. Then you go in your browser at the same page and hit Ctrl+E and voila.. you can edit that page (in the image above is my Java page after I have done just that). If you need a similar page (let’s say Ajax in my case) you just hit the “duplicate page” button and that is all (aside from additional editing of that page).

Indeed, more and more work and information has moved over the last 2-3 years onto the web. Words like Rich Internet Application and Software as a Service become vary popular and even more, a reality.

Ajax and Flex have enriched our web experience a lot in the recent years. Web sites that do not have a nice information flow to the customer are less and less visited. We as customers value this kind of things. I like to go to an web site and work my way through the information without being interrupted by a page refresh.

Also media on the web become a something very common. If some years ago watching a flash movie on the web was a rare event, now sites like youtube.com made this a common thing.

All of this was possible due to multiple factors but I think the main one was easier access to broadband internet connection for more and more people. The ability to move around massive amounts of date was crucial to the web development we are seeing right now. Would you try to watch a movie on youtube.com over a 3 Kb/s line? Even going on flickr.com will make you think twice, especially if you are paying by the MB.

So BTW, what are we paying by the MB right now and is slow compared to our unlimited broadband connection from home?

The next rethinking about the way we are writing web applications will be linked to the mobile business. iPhone, HTC, Eten, BlackBerry will be the new drivers in shaping up the new generation of web application. They have a small screen, slow and very expensive internet connection, however more and more people are using them to browse the web. The experience right now is far from enjoyable as most web applications are not designed for this. All of them are using different pan and zoom techniques to overcome the screen problem but this is just an workaround.

Soon, some business owner will look to his site analytics reports and figure out that more than a half of his visitors are using mobile devices. And this business owner will go to a contractor and ask him to optimize the web site to be best view on mobile devices. Web 3.0 was born.

One of the most powerful features of a web application is instant update. Your client doesn’t need to do anything when you fix some bugs in your web application. The next time he accesses the site the user will have the latest version of your application.

Update a desktop application

Creating an AIR application means creating a desktop one. It comes with all the benefits of this type of application but also with some of the drawbacks. And one of them is the challenge of updating the application to the most recent version.

Of course this is not a new subject and a lot of applications have their own method of doing updates and upgrades. Adobe AIR has now the Update Framework, a Flex library that helps you update any AIR application non intrusively, similar to any web application.

Adobe AIR Update Framework

Now, I talked at the beginning about updating a JavaScript AIR application and just above I mentioned that the update framework is a Flex component. That is true and it is very easy to use this component even without any Flex knowledge. To demonstrate this technology I will use the microlink application that I wrote recently.

First, copy the applicationupdater_ui.swf found in the update framework into your project. (You can download the update framework from here). Because I am using Flex Builder 3 to develop this application the updater component will be placed under the src folder inside my project.

Next, create the update descriptor file. This is a small XML file that contains all the information needed by the updater. This includes the version number, the application location on your server and a description where details about the improvements in the new version can be written.

<?xml version=“1.0″ encoding=“utf-8″?>
<update xmlns=“http://ns.adobe.com/air/framework/update/description/1.0″>
    <version>0.3</version>
    <url>http://localhost:8080/releases/MyAirApp.air</url>
    <description><![CDATA[
Version 0.3 of this application includes the updateing framework.
  ]]></description>
</update>

I will name this file update.xml and this will go on the web server. I placed it in the same location as my AIR application so it is reachable from http://localhost:8080/releases/update.xml.

We will want to check for updates each time the application is started. Of course we can also choose to create a menu item or a button to let the user explicitly request a check for updates. In either case, we have to write some JavaScript code to wire things together. JavaScript code in AIR applications can use classes defined in SWF files.

In the HTML file that will use the update framework (in our case index.html) we have to include a script tag that loads the framework.

<script src="ApplicationUpdater_UI.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"/>

After we include the update framework in our application we have to use it. The instantiation and configuration of this is described inside the comments in the next piece of code, from index.html

<html>
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
        <title>My first AIR application</title>
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="microlink.css" type="text/css" />
        <script type="text/javascript" src="lib/AIRIntrospector.js"></script>
        <script src="applicationupdater_UI.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"/>

        <script src="lib/jquery-1.2.6.js"></script>
        <script src="microlink.js"></script>
        <script>
        // instantiate an updater object
           var appUpdater = new runtime.air.update.ApplicationUpdaterUI();

        function load() {
            // ApplicationUpdaterUI can be configured via a configuration file 
            // delivered with the application or via JavaScript in the application.
            appUpdater.configurationFile =
                new runtime.flash.filesystem.File("app:/config/updateConfig.xml");

            // setting the event handler for INITIALIZED
            appUpdater.addEventListener(runtime.air.update.events.UpdateEvent.INITIALIZED,
                onUpdate);

            // It initializes the update framework, silently installing synchronously 
            // any pending updates. It is required to call this method during application
            // startup because it may restart the application when it is called.
            appUpdater.initialize();
        }

        function onUpdate(event) {
            //starts the update process
            appUpdater.checkNow();
        }

        </script>

    </head>
    <body onload="load()">

    <h1>this is my first AIR app.</h1>

    <a id="microlink_a" href="http://www.stratulat.com/blog/feed" class="button"
        onClick="onClickMicroLink(this); return false;">the microlink</a>

    </body>
</html>

The updateConfig.xml file can set up a lot of parameters for the application updater, most of them related to the behavior of the UI. Only one, however required for the updater to perform well and that is the URL to the update.xml on the server.

I configured updateConfig.xml so that at startup the application first asks if the user wants to check for updates. If so, because I have set up my application version as being 0.2 and inside the update.xml as 0.3, the application displays the update available UI, which shows all the information I’ve set up in the update.xml file on the server.

In this short demo on how to use the Update Framework I showed all the required steps in order to use it. There is one thing however that was not covered and that is error handling.

I have exported my project from Flex Builder 3 and you can download it from here: MyAirApp.zip.

Adobe AIR Update Framework – Flex

I was inspired in this article by the one written by Mihai Corlan on his blog: How to easily and seamlessly update an AIR application. The article discusses exactly the same topic but from the Flex perspective.

A microlink is a link that opens up content below it. It is a way to improve the ordinary link using Ajax.

In the original article I have used prototype.js and scriptaculous to implement this. Now I am using jquery because it is AIR-ready. That means it works off the shelf in AIR.

If we look into the Flex Navigator view we can see some new resources that are used in order to make the application. Let’s explain each of them one by one.

microlink.css is the stylesheet and is actually optional so I will not talk about this too much. I have used it in order to make the link more visible.

   1:  .button {

   2:     color: #003399;

   3:   }

   4:   

   5:  .button:hover {

   6:     text-decoration: none;

   7:       color: #66ffcc;

   8:       background-color: #003399;

   9:   }

  10:   

  11:  .button:active {

  12:     color: #ffffff;

  13:     background-color: #0099cc;

  14:   }

  15:   

  16:  .microdiv {

  17:      background-color: #ccccff;

  18:      border: 1px solid #9999cc;

  19:  }

microlink.js is the actual JavaScript piece of code that makes a regular link into a microlink. It contains just one function to handle the click event.

   1:  /**

   2:   * Function called when the microlink is called to update 

   3:   * the div with remote content.

   4:   * 

   5:   * @param {element} e the element that fired the event.

   6:   */

   7:  function onClickMicroLink(e)  {

   8:      var elID = e.id;

   9:      var divID = elID.substr(0, elID.length-2); // remove trailing '_a'

  10:      

  11:      $('#'+elID).after(' <div id="'+ divID +'" class="microdiv" ' +

  12:              'style="display:none"></div>');

  13:              

  14:      // Performs an AJAX request and updates a container's contents 

  15:      // based on the response text.

  16:      // @see http://docs.jquery.com/Ajax

  17:      $.ajax({

  18:          url: e.href,

  19:          dataType: 'text',

  20:          cache: false,

  21:          success: function(text){

  22:              $('#'+divID).append(text);

  23:              $('#'+divID).fadeIn("slow");

  24:          }

  25:      });

  26:  } 

Inside the index.html I have added just one more line (aside from including the jquery library):

   1:  <a id="microlink_a" 

   2:       href="http://www.stratulat.com/blog/feed" 

   3:       class="button" 

   4:       onClick="onClickMicroLink(this); return false;">the microlink</a>

Now running the application will show a link. When you click this link an Ajax call will be made to the feeds page of this site. The response is treated as text and it will be injected as the contend of the div created on line 11. Of course, the real use of this is to replace the href of this link with something that is indeed valuable for your application.

This small example covers more than just creating a microlink. It also shows how to make an Ajax call from an AIR application and how to use the response which is done in just the same way as in a browser.

A line from a cartoon show comes to my mind: “Isn’t that nice?…”

After Mozilla found a new use for their technology, the XUL platform, in the form of Prism, somebody has found this technology inspiring and developed Fluid.

That somebody is not Apple as one first thought might be, but a web enthusiast, Todd Ditchendorf.

What is this project all about? Well it can create a desktop application from basically any web application. I just moved my Gmail onto my desktop. That’s quite something.

Their next step will be to integrate Prism with Firefox (3.0?)and then the user will be able to just go into the menu and choose “Convert into application”.

Right now this is just a demo, a project, a showcase of the XUL platform, but interesting things are foreseeable in the future.

Some good thoughts about this project can be found on Mike Chambers blog.

But the possibilities does not end here. The tag cloud can display the tag associated with your blog if the blog is submitted to myFeedz. And you can transform the tags in links that perform searches on your blog using those tags.

The top articles are also interesting. You can choose to show:

• myFeedz top articles
• articles relevant for your myFeedz profile
• articles from a specific feed
• articles that you saved and thought they are very important and worth to be read.

A nice thing about the articles list is that the links does not point to myFeedz (so no tracking, no redirect, no marketing involved here) but instead directly to the source of the article.