Jun 12th 08
Posted by Remus Stratulat in Programming, RIA, Tools
In the first part of this article I wrote about how Flex Builder 3 can be used to create a JavaScript AIR application and how to set up the environment.
Going forward, one big part of developing an application is debugging it. The instrospector tool I am talking about does not help to debug an application in the same way the JDT debugger helps debug Java applications. Actually it works more like Firebug.
First you need to copy one file into the source folder of your project:
“c:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3\sdks\3.0.0\frameworks\libs\air\AIRIntrospector.js”
The second step is to include it into your application:
If you run the application right now, nothing will happen. The introspector is not started unless it is used. So let’s use it to see how it works. For that I will add the following piece of code just above the <body> tag.
<script>
air.Introspector.Console.log(window);
</script>
I made it a little bit interesting by logging the window object to see the power of this introspector.
You are now able to explore the entire structure of the window object to see exactly the value for each member. This console is a very powerful tool. As you can see there are more features there and we will explore those later. More about Adobe AIR Introspector can be found on the Adobe help resource center here.
Jun 9th 08
Posted by Remus Stratulat in RIA
I’ve seen a the presentations here at onAIR Tour in Prague and some of them are about how to create a JavaScript AIR application. However when it comes to data intensive applications Flex is the best solution. It has smooth integration with LCDS and BlaseDS and that is helping a lot.
Jun 4th 08
Posted by Remus Stratulat in JSEclipse, Programming, RIA, Tools
I have tried today to create an AIR application. My tool of choice was Flex Builder 3 as I knew you can create AIR applications using it.
So let’s see what I have done.
Of course, first I have created the AIR project:
From the beginning I have spotted a problem in this picture: there was no mention to HTML or JavaScript or anything. Adobe AIR has the capabilities to render HTML and one of the strongest points of this framework is that a web developer can basicaly hit the ground running and just program his way into the desktop world using HTML and JavaScript.
Going forward, I have search resources to see what is the tooling support for this and I found in Adobe’s documentation an entry about this: AIR development tools. Obviously, even if is not mentioned in that chapter of documentation, Flex Builder 3 has suppor for creating AIR applications so let’s persue this further and set up the environment.
If we run the application right now, MyAirApp window shows up as a Flex AIR application. We need to change that so MyAirApp to render html.
First let’s create index.html and set it up to be used by the AIR application. To do that the bin-degug/MyAirApp-app.xml file should be edited and change two tags: content and visible. Yes I now, is not a very elegant thing to do. Is just the first thing that helped me. I’ll try to find a less hackish way to this. If you already know one please share it with us.
Running now the application will render:
So here is my first HTML AIR application. OK, I said JavaScript AIR application into the title. This is only the first step to get there. More will come soon.
Have fun coding.
Jun 4th 08
Posted by Remus Stratulat in Travel
On June 9th I will be in Prague for the OnAIR tour and Czech beer sampling 
. So if you are arround and want to meet with us to learn about Adobe AIR please visit us.
More details about the event can be found here.
May 12th 08
Posted by Remus Stratulat in Flex, RIA
You want to get your feeds closer? Check out this new application build using Adobe AIR and Flex 3: Snackr.
Snackr is a RSS ticker that pulls random items from your feeds and scrolls them across your desktop. Thank you NJ.
May 7th 08
Posted by Remus Stratulat in Programming, RIA
The official guide to Adobe AIR, written by members of the AIR team, is out. One of the authors, Dragos Georgita is my colleague. He is the engineering manager for the Adobe AIR team here in Romania. He and his team are doing a lot of great things, especially related to AIR and JavaScript.
We are all here at the office very proud of him and we wish him many books to come. (I am still waiting for my signed copy )
You can buy the book from amazon: Adobe AIR for JavaScript Developers Pocket Guide.
Feb 25th 08
Posted by Remus Stratulat in Flex, RIA
Adobe released Flex 3, the free open source framework for building rich internet applications. It’s time now to build real cross platform web applications that work the same no matter in which browser the application was opened or which operating system the user has.
Flex 3 is open source and is free. The new site opensource.adobe.com is hosting the source code and the community resources for Flex SDK and BlazeDS. And talking about BlazeDS.. for whom is familiar with LCDS, this is the free version of server based Java remoting and web messaging technology. It enables (among other things) server push to Flex and AIR clients.
The Adobe® AIR™ runtime lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that deploy to the desktop and run across operating system.What is great about this framework is the ability to develop desktop applications using Flex, Flash and Ajax. So if you are a skillful Ajax developer and you have a powerful web application that you think will benefit from running on desktop, you are definitely interested in AIR.
