Drupal with Flex Using Flex / Ajax Bridge

Mike Potter has created a Flex UI for one of the Drupal elements. Cool work. I can’t wait to see everything replaced with Flex. Check it out to see how he did it.

Adobe has added an updater for the Flash authoring tool to allow you to publish HTML files with the code to work around the IE ActiveX update. It’s a little quick and dirty solution, much like the HTML code was in the first place.

And here’s another solution that works pretty well.

You browse over to Dell.com just to see what a $5,000 laptop looks like. Even though you own a $2,500 Dell laptop that is just one year old.

Personally, I’m waiting for a laptop that will support two external monitors plus the laptop monitor all at the same time. Lets see, 1920×1200 across three monitors is . . . carry the 3 . . . 6,912,000 pixels! Yeah, that’ll work. :-)

Sometimes it’s not good enough to just move forward on a timeline. Sometimes you just have to move backwards. And when you do, this code is all you need.

I’ve been using this to create a Flash versions of Powerpoint slides. I created this code because I wanted to enable the functionality of moving forwards and backwards on the timeline. It also needed to be easily enabled by other people in the office who aren’t Actionscript savy. All they need is this code on the main timeline and then place a “freeze();” on any keyframe where you need to stop the animation.

SWF example (note: you have to click on the SWF to give it focus for the keyboard input.)

Download FLA (zip)

Code:

You know what surprises me, besides the fact that people actually watch baseball? It’s that very few people see Adobe a threat to Microsoft. I’ll bet “the guys” at MS see it coming.

Remember back in the mid 90s when Java was tauted is a Windows killer? What ever happened to that? We’ll, for one thing, Java was supposed to be a ‘write once, run everywhere’ tool. But, that never really came to fruition.

Flash is a write once, run everywhere tool. Of course there is that dreaded plugin drawback. You know, that piece of software that is only on 95%+ of all the PCs on the planet. That piece of software that can update itself without user interaction. That’s the part that really sucks about Flash. There are just a few people in the world that don’t have it.

Hey, I have a great idea for a TV series. There would be two main characters. One is a really bright guy who is kind of dorky in a hyper intelligent sort of way. He’s sort of “out there” if you know what I mean. He just makes leaps of intellectual faith but always seems to be right. The other character should be a good looking, but not great looking, woman. She’s the scientist, the skeptic. These two have been teamed up to search the world for users who don’t have the Flash plugin. Maybe there could be an overarching story based on an evil software company that is involved in a worldwide conspiracy to kill the Flash plugin. I’m sure it would be a big hit.

Here’s how the landscape appears right now: Microsoft is coming out with Explorer 7 and their Atlas framework for developing AJAX apps. It is supposed to be cross browser friendly, but which browsers? There is also the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), formerly code name “Avalon” that we’ll see in Vista. Reportedly “Avalon” will be an optional download for XP users but at what cost to performance?

There is no doubt that WPF will be a rich development environment. At the same time it will be new to every developer out there. As a developer you have to learn a new technology to write apps that will only run on Vista. With the launch of Vista slipping to early 2007 it will miss the ‘06 holidays. That coupled with the prediction that PC sales will slip later in the decade mean that Vista isn’t going to have a good adoption rate.

So, are you the developer going to spend countless hours learning a new development tool for a small and slowly growing audience? Well, you’ll probably have to, right? If you’re into writing desktop apps then this is obviously the future. Or is it?

Adobe is coming out with their Apollo program. (If you haven’t read much about it then just search “adobe apollo” at Google news and you’ll get lots of hits.) You can think of Apollo as Flash for the desktop. Interestingly enough Apollo will go public around the same time that Vista ships. You want to bet on adoption rates? There is no way Vista will keep up with Apollo.

Here’s the kicker: I mentioned at the start that back in the mid 90s Java was tauted as the Windows killer. Well, that might just happen if Flash/Apollo become all they can be because the Flash player 9 is written in Java.

Flash versus Windows by Michael Mace is, in my opinion, a must read blog posting. He writes in depth about the upcoming clash that MS and Adobe are going to have in the hand held market and on the desktop.

Aside from being very knowledgeable and well written Michael maintains a tone of impartiality throughout the long post. He presents his thoughts on where these two companies are likely to clash, what’s at stake for each, the advantages and disadvantages each company possesses, etc.

First off, you may ask why am I writing this? Because I love what I do and I figure that if I can do it anyone can do it.

You may also wonder, “Who am I to tell you how to become a Flash Pro?” Good question.

To answer that I’ll give a brief work background.

I don’t have a degree in CS. In fact, I’ve never had a computer class of any sort. What I’ve learned I’ve done on my own. I have degrees in Philosophy and History and a fairly extensive background in Mathematics, most of which I’ve forgotten.

I started out learning HTML back in the mid 90s. As the technology grew I grew with it. CSS, Javascript, Flash, ASP, so forth.

Now I’m working with the Xbox team prototyping things that you’ll be hearing about in the coming months or years. Way cool stuff and I have a hand in shaping it.

Believe me when I say it, “If I can do it you can do it.” . . . Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve done a few things that, to my knowledge, no one else has come up with. So, “most of what I can do you can do.” :-)

Seriously, I truly believe that if you have the computer knowledge to make a web page, even something as simple as “Hi there” - then you can learn to be a Flash Master. It just takes desire and persistence.

I can’t stand books and tutorials that try to cover a huge project. I usually end up spending most of my time debugging because they weren’t clear about something or another. (Or perhaps because I’m stupid and can’t follow directions, but enough about me.)

What I like are books and tutorials that cover one simple thing, like: here’s how you load XML into Flash. It shouldn’t take more than a few lines of code to do that. What I don’t need is something like, “here’s how you load XML into Flash and make an MP3 player that can randomly select songs, and display album art, blah, blah, blah”.

With that in mind one of the best resources for learning Flash are the built in help files. They give you the essentials of a method/property and a very short example of how to use it. And it’s always something that you can copy/paste the code into an empty FLA and it will work.

One of the most useful features in the Actionscript editor is the ability to right-click on a keyword and select “view help” at the bottom of the menu. It will take you straight to the Flash documentation on that keyword. Invaluable. It’s something I do many times a day.

I try to follow that advice myself here on my blog. My primary interest in putting up Flash code here on my blog is for my own personal use. You have no idea how many times I’ve been writing code and realized, “hey, I wrote some code last year that does just what I’m trying to do now. Humm, where the frak is it.” Now I’m starting to load this stuff up on my blog so that I’ll have a reference to my own code to use. If it helps others then so much the better.

It’s also good to think about large projects as lots of little projects. I know that for myself I’ve gotten projects handed to me and thought, “Whaahhhh? Man, that’s going to be hard.” But once I sit down and start thinking about the little pieces it becomes much less daunting.

My best friend is looking to expand his skill set as a designer and get into the Flash business. Along the way I’ve given him some advise that I thought I would share. Here goes:

First things first are the books to read. I would start with the Flash 8 Bible by Robert Reinhardt and Snow Dowd. If you’re a designer then it’s likely that you’ve read the Photoshop Bible so you know what you’re in for. These books cover just about everything without getting you in over your head. These are sort of the “wading up to your waist” approach to learning a new app. What’s great is that you can come back to these books later as a reference.

I wouldn’t suggest trying to read the entire book right off the bat. I don’t have the book in front of me so I can’t say specifically what chapters to focus on. In general you want to thoroughly read the first half to two-thirds of the book that introduces you to the essentials of timelines, MovieClips, text fields, Actionscript and so on. You probably don’t need to bother with things like how Flash handles audio/video unless you need that for a specific project you’re going to work on.

However, I would certainly suggest that you at least scan everything in the book even if it doesn’t make sense to you. Later, when you’re working on a project and trying to figure out how to tackle an unknown you’ll be much better prepared if you have a basic understanding of all of the capabilities the Flash player has.

When you’re ready to move on to the next book you have a choice to make. With most of the Flash 8 Bible under your belt you’re ready to read the following books in either order.

A. Actionscript for Flash MX - The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

B. Flash 8 Actionscript Bible

I would lean towards the Actionscript for Flash MX book first because it’s very concise. (note: Flash MX is really Flash 7.) The second half of the book is a reference guide which isn’t meant to be read beginning to end. The first half of the book is the best review of Actionscript around.

You might be wondering why I didn’t suggest the “Actionscript for Flash 8″ book. That’s because sadly there isn’t one. However, it really doesn’t matter that much because both MX and 8 use Actionscript 2.0. That’s the important thing. All that has changed between MX and 8 is that the Flash player has added a few more capabilities but the essentials are still exactly the same.

The Flash 8 Actionscript Bible will cover all the new capabilities of the new Flash player that you missed in the AS Flash MX book. By now you might be feeling that you’re reading the same thing over and over again. That’s good. Redundancy is a great way to learn.

These three books are really all you need if all you’ll be doing is timeline based Flash projects. But if you want to experience the full power of Flash then you’ll want to step into the world of Object Oriented Programming (OOP). These last two books gave you an introduction to OOP but there is no question that Essential Actionscript 2.0 is the book to read to get the full measure out of Flash Actionscript.

Once you have a grasp of about 75% of the material in these books then I’d say that you are technically ready to do just about anything. Because by this time if you don’t know how to do something you know where to go to get that knowledge.

How well you deal with organizing your time and your timeline while working on Flash is a totally different subject. First aim for technical understanding. Organization will come with practice, a.k.a. trial and error. I’ll write more on that later.

I’m a fairly bright guy. I pick things up quick and enjoy solving difficult problems. I’m moderately athletic. Played football in high school. Enjoy pretty much anything competitive. That sort of thing.

So you know what I’m thinking when I see a movie like MI3? I’m thinking that they made this movie for guys just like me. Guys who really go to see such movies because in the back of our heads we’re thinking, “If I trained all day, every day to do shit like this I think I could be just as good at it as anyone else could.”

So I like movies where the protagonist gets to use cool pieces of shinny metal with red blinky lights. You know, those things that do whatever needs to be done so that the writer can put the actor in a few impossible situations and seemingly have them saying to themselves, “Boy, I’m sure glad that I have a M13-a laser thingy in my pocket or I’d really be screwed right now.” And of course there has to be a few MacGyver moments here and there. Those are all cool things to have early in the movie but they always get used up by the time the hero meets the villain. And usually the bullets are all used up to. So now the writer can have the actors say really cool things to each other before they go bare-knuckled against each other. You know, the things we wish we could say to your boss on the last day of work. (Just kidding, I like my boss. But I’m not so sure about the company sometimes.)

So that may look like Ethan Hunt/Bourne/Bond who ever. But that’s really me if I had done whatever these guys did after high school instead of goofing off in college for a few years studying mathematics and then diverting to Space Camp and then, blah, blah, blah.