FLEXing My Muscle

Bye Bye Blogspot

2007-03-27T13:02:00.000-07:00

I'm moving 2 of my blogs (my personal one and my tech one) to wordpress... Bye Bye Blogspot

But my musical blog and my crazy one will still remain here...
The new ones are at...

My personal blog - http://walkoflife.wordpress.com/
My Tech blog - http://raghuonflex.wordpress.com/

Another great news... I've registered my own domain... You can get to all my sites now at

http://www.raghunathrao.com/

Flex In India

2007-03-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

I have added a "Flex In India" tab on my blog sidebar... All you Indian FLEX developers out there, drop me a mail @ rrao at adobe dot com, and i'll add your blog here...

Thanks

Innofest Web2.0 Workshop

2007-03-25T06:30:00.000-07:00

I have been taking "Web2.0 & RIA" course at International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (or IIITB for short) for sometime now, with Ram and Praveen among others. Its been a quite wonderful experience for me to actually impress upon an audience what FLEX is all about.

Recently,they approached us to do a Web2.0 workshop for their techfest called Innofest07 (by the way, their website is made in Flex, quite a commendable work). So me and Ram went there this Friday to do the workshop whose theme was Web2.0, FLEX & Mashups.

Ram started off with the intro about what Web2.0 is and about the basics of Flex. Then it was my turn. I was a bit sceptical to begin with, as almost all the people who attended the workshop had never used FLEX or even heard about it. But we set sail... I did a live code mashup of a FLEX App pulling photos from Yahoo Photos! using their REST service.

To my delight, the audience not only enjoyed it, but also took part in a small code jam afterward, where they extended the application to include Yahoo Travel Search! It was amazing that they could actually build a Mashup using two web services (they probably hadn't heard about) and using a technology that they had never used, in a span of just 2 hours... really, FLEX rocks! And what's more the guys with the best app went home with a free FlexBuilder licence

I have uploaded the files from the workshop, you can see them at the links below.

Yahoo Photo Search using REST in XML format (what I did at the workshop)
Yahoo Photo Search using REST in JSON format ( JSON has caught my fancy these days)
The source (you can right click and do a view source on the above apps too)
Some extras - the CSS, the JSON parser library & assets (in the above link itself)

Some acknowledgements to be made here...

Thanks to the IIITB guys for the great opportunity
Thanks to Adobe Consulting for the Mac OSX theme
Thanks the JSON community for the JSON-AS3 parser library

An afternoon with John & fellow Bangalore Flex Developers

2007-03-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

John Koch is the Developer Relations Manager for India for Adobe products like FLEX, ColdFusion, Flash Mobile ...etc. Thanks to Abdul (for making this day possible) and Mrinal (for booking the place and getting people together).

I was surprised to see that there are so many people already doing FLEX development in Bangalore. There's Adobe (obviously), SAP, Mogulus, SunGard and bunch of free lancers and flash guys who recently picked up FLEX.

We had a nice chat about what can be done for the FLEX community in India and also some of their pain points with FLEX too...

As Mrinal puts it, "Thus the seeds for the Bangalore Flex community has been sown". We need to nurture this to make it a success. Keep watching flex-india.org for updates.

From L-R : Mrinal, John Koch, Abdul,
The Mogulus guys (Mark & Phil) and Me

Also read Abdul's and Mrinal's blog posts about the same...

For some reason, this post was in my drafts, just saw it today...
Says a lot about my "active blogging". I should be more careful...

JSON - A lightweight way of passing Data

2007-03-10T04:44:00.000-08:00

I was at the Web2.0 Conference held by the Computer Society of India Bangalore Chapter (CSIBC) at Royal Orchid in Bangalore. There was Philip from Yahoo Bangalore talking on JSON.

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write. The advantage of JSON is that its very light-weight and has none of the markup problems associated with the XML Interchange. Its fast evolving as a preferred data-interchange format, majorly being pushed by Yahoo. Its really worth taking a look at. Yahoo is giving a lot of its Services which were traditionally XML based now in JSON & serialized PHP as well. Here are some links that will let you deep-dive in JSON.

I was really excited with JSON and started some primary explorations with it. It turned up an AS3 Core Lib, which includes a JSON parser for AS3 (i.e FLEX). I will put up a Yahoo Photo Search soon with JSON and using the AS3-JSON Parser

Calling all Flex Enthusiasts in Bangalore

2007-03-10T01:29:00.000-08:00

Calling all Flex Enthusiasts in Bangalore.

John Koch (Adobe Developer Relation Manager, Asia) is going to be in Bangalore on Sunday (March 11, 2007) from 11.30 to 1.30 at the Casa Del Sol, Devata Plaza, Residency Road, Bangalore. Click here to view the whole details...

Be there if you want to be in the exciting space of FLEX Bangalore.

ThreeStateCheckBox... Bundled

2007-03-09T05:04:00.000-08:00

I have bundled the 3 state checkbox now as a SWC (Shockwave Component). Also have done some changes to the component.You can download the SWC here and also view the source here

Changed the cross property to crossed
As per an anonymous' comment, you cannot now set both crossed & selected properties on the component.

I have made a example to illustrate the above.

One thing to remember while using the SWC... You need to have the following namespace in the Application tag.

xmlns="http://www.raghunathrao.com"

You can view the source of the example here

The ominipresent Flickr Viewer

2007-03-09T00:59:00.000-08:00

This is one of the most ominipresent FLEX apps of all, the Flickr Viewer, the grandDad of all Flex Mashups. Here's one on the Adobe Showcase. There are so many of them that people are sick of it (read this).

I did my own version of Flickr Viewer when i was doing a FLEX Workshop at Manipal in MIT. This was as a part of my alma mater's technical fest TechTatva '06. I thought I'll put it up.

My Flickr Viewer
Everyone seems to be having one :)

This app uses Juan's MAC OSX Theme. There are some known issues (I'll try to sort them out as i get time)

It only gives you the first page of results
There's a bug in the drag and drop functionality into the image when run remotely. Funny enough it works fine on the local system.

My version of 3 State CheckBox

2007-03-08T10:17:00.001-08:00

I was just looking at the compoenets on Mrinal's FlexBox when I came across the 3 state checkbox by Alessandro Crugnola. It seemed a useful thing but what struck me was a bit different. This can be extended to a checkbox that can be used for a "Yes/No/Dont Know" Scenario, rather than having the initial state blank. So i edited Alessandro's code and chnaged it to have 3 states. The 3 states are decided on the status of 2 flags - selected & cross

State 1- Undecided State (default) - selected & cross = false
State 2 - Crossed State - selected=false, cross=true - Shows the "NO" state
State 3 - Checked State - selected=true - Shows "YES" State

I know it could have been made better, but i just spent some 3 hrs on the component + the application below. Use the below Application to vote for my component. You can use the "View Source" to view and download the source of the application and the component.

Let me know what you think

I have observed that the View Source on the blogger page does not work. So go to the application and see the source

Juan's collection of awesome Themes

2007-03-07T01:53:00.000-08:00

All of you looking to make cool Flex apps, especially those eyeing the "Adobe Developer Olympiad" in India, take a look at the cool themes on Juan Sanchez's Blog. My favourites are as follows

Download them here...

flexcursion - calling all FLEX enthusiasts

2007-03-07T01:41:00.000-08:00

I just joined flexcursion.ning.com. It is a social network created by Juan Sanchez. Its motto is...

Meet fellow Flex 2 developers, check out some screen shots of other Flex 2 apps, get feedback on your Flex 2 projects and much more.
Be sure to tell other Flex enthusiasts.

I saw some big names in the FLEX Arena here, including Abdul Qabiz, Tariq Ahmed and Ted Patrick. Check it out...

Me on MXNA's "Most Popular Posts in the Last Month" list

2007-03-06T22:22:00.000-08:00

A couple of years back, if someone told me I would be working for Macromedia, I would have had a good laugh. Now 2 years down the line... I'm not only in Macromedia (now Adobe) but also working on this awesome technology called FLEX.

MXNA is Adobe's (MXNA was started by Macromedia) news aggregator on its technologies. I was really surprised to see a post of mine, 5th on the most popular list of last month's Flex Blog posts.

I felt like i was floating...

Click on the image to see a bigger image or go here

Error on adding FullScreenListener in creationComplete handler

2007-03-06T01:18:00.000-08:00

This is an issue i hit upon while i was doing the Full Screen App (you can see it here). I wanted to add a listener to listen for the FullScreenEvent (package flash.events.FullScreenEvent) in my Application. So i put that onto my creationComplete handler on the Application, i.e.

mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" width="100%" height="100%" creationComplete="initStuff()"

and

private function initStuff():void{
stage.addEventListener(FullScreenEvent.FULL_SCREEN, handleFullScreen);
}

But, this threw a real time error (RTE) saying...

TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at JustFullScreen/::initStuff()
at JustFullScreen/_Application1_creationComplete()

The above error means that the "stage" object is null when it is trying to set the listener. What perplexes me is that if i put this addListener code in a later part of the application, it works. Which means that the stage is getting intitialized between the Application's creationComplete and the place in the code where i'm calling it. Is this a bug or does the stage get initialized later, dispatching a different event? I'm still digging.

Addendum (half hour later): I observed now that including the SystemManager class (mx.managers.SystemManager) and then using the following code in the creationComplete handler works.

import mx.managers.SystemManager;

private function initStuff():void{
systemManager.stage.addEventListener(
FullScreenEvent.FULL_SCREEN, handleFullScreen);
}

So why is the systemManager object required if it is in the creationComplete handler and not if it is in a later part of the code... I'm confused now!!! Gotta tread back to the Flex Gurus :)
The code is here...

Addendum again (the next day) - Thanks Joan for the info. Thanks to her, i found the solution for the above problem...

It seems that the stage is available only after the updateComplete or applicationComplete Events. Read the post that demystified things for me...

My Full Screen Video App - Ver 1.0

2007-03-05T23:11:00.000-08:00

I wrote about full screen support in flash, a long time back in Nov '06 (see that post here). I have been planning to write one myself. So finally i got myself down to write it. Before i put you through the app, some details on the API.

To make your application have a fullscreen support you need to do the following things.

1) Have the latest Flash Player (get it here)

2) Use the new Full Screen API
import flash.display.StageDisplayState into your Application and set the displayState of the stage. I have the following function toggling the FullScreen feature. "fsChk" is a CheckBox, based on which I'm toggling the functionality

private function toggleFullScreen():void{

stage.addEventListener(FullScreenEvent.FULL_SCREEN, handleFullScreen);

if(fsChk.selected) {
stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN}

else {
stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.NORMAL}
}

3) Update the html-template in which you have the flash App
In the object & embed parts of the html code of the page in which the flash app is inserted, you need to add a new parameter allowFullScreen to true. You can refer the source of the app and view the html for details.

If you want to know more about this feature, refer the Adobe DevCenter article on the same or view the PDF that i have created, collating all that information.

Now the Application. This is just a small video player which can go full screen by checking a Flex CheckBox. This is written in Flex2.0 and you can find all the source files here...

Click here to view the Application
(confirm that you have the latest Flash player)

P.S - I have muted the video to start with, un-mute it if it pleases you :)

Nice use of Flex Charts :)

2007-02-08T21:57:00.000-08:00

I never thought that FLEX Charts would be used for advertisement purposes. But dashboardcompany.com has done a nice bit of innovation and to prove their point to people, they have an advertisement on their homepage using FLEX Charts, that reads. Check out their ad here...

Experience Your Data in a Whole New Light.

Nice work guys :)

ProgrammableWeb.com

2007-02-06T01:11:00.000-08:00

I stumbled on this site called ProgrammableWeb.com today. The site keeps you up to date with the latest Mashups & APIs in Web2.0. It has special coverage of :

I'm still exploring it... looks like fun !

Abrupt YouTube security policy change

2007-01-16T03:03:00.000-08:00

Due to abrupt youTube security policy change, my youTube App doesnt work anymore :(

Possibly due to an exploit, youTube abruptly changed their crossdomain.xml file to only allow access from the youtube.com domain. As a result, YouTube developer API calls no longer work if the SWF exists in a non-youtube.com domain. You can read more on this on Joe's Blog here.

Woe is me... I think i'll try to port my app to the new BrightCove API that i came across today. Lets wait and watch :)

It seems Flickr did it too... seems like Death of open crossdomain.xmls. Read the post by Renaun Erickson

Card Layout - Draft 1

2007-01-15T05:36:00.001-08:00

This is just a draft and its a simple application (with just over 100 lines of code). I finally intent to wrap it into a FLEX Container. So here's my Card Layout

The Card Layout in Java is similar to the View Stack implementation in FLEX. But when i first heard about this layout in awt package, I always expected it to be a container where views animate like flipping cards. It was quite a disappointment. So i decided to write one in FLEX & decided to call it Card Layout.

You can get the code... here

FLEX - i - FRAME

2006-12-07T04:44:00.000-08:00

One of the biggeset pain points of FLEX/Flash (as i see it) is its inability to render HTML in its totality. FLEX supports a few HTML Tags, but not all. Another question that people pose to me is... "When are you guys gonna include PDF rendering in Flash ?".

I hope the answer to that is soon (since its the logical way to go), but here's a (partial) answer to people's woes. I call it "FLEX - i - FRAME". Its an old wine in new bottle, considering the fact that Flash Designers/Developers have been using it since time immemorial.

Thanks to Cristophe, who ported the idea to FLEX1.5 in AS2 (read the post here) and then Brian who gracefully ported the same to AS3 with FLEX 2.0 (read that post here). It has an awesome way of resizing the iFrame when the Flex Application is sized. The great part is, it can make it look like you are rendering HTML and even PDF content inside a Flash/Flex Application.

I took Brian's iFrame MXML component and made a quick application (in about half hour) to show its capabilities. This application will be a one-stop-shop for all resources pertaining to Adobe India's "Adobe Developer Olympiad" RIA Challenge. You can choose from a choice of sites/resources and PDFs from inside this application. So here it is

FLEX - i - FRAME

(To view source, right click on the movie once
you click the above link OR click here)

You can download the whole source code, complete with all dependent files (javascripts, assets.. etc) and use it to playaround with iFrame yourself :)

The trick is very simple. Its just a clever use of the External API interface that lets the Actionscript inside a Flash movie, talk to the Javascript inside the html (in which it is embedded). In this case, the approach is to let the javascript position an IFrame on top of a specific area of your Flex application to provide a container for the HTML content which will then appear embedded in the application.

The IFrame component extends Canvas and is used like any other Flex container. Behind the scenes, it acts as a proxy for the actual HTML IFrame. For example, when the IFrame component is resized or moved it automatically asks the HTML document to resize/move the actual IFrame. You can easily find the ExternalInterface calls in IFrame.mxml and the corresponding JavaScript functions in iFrameDemo.html (renamed to iFrameDemohtml.mxml for reading purposes).

But what kind of surprised me was the amazing perfomance of the History Managemet API. While still within the FLEX Application, you can use the browser back button to navigate to earlier pages... really NEAT !!!

People participating in the ADO RIA Challenge, go ahead and use this innovatively in your application. For more details on ActionScript - JavaScript interaction through External APIs, refer the following links.

Adobe Developer Olympiad (Win Rs. 50,000)

2006-11-26T04:39:00.001-08:00

Adobe India on Friday, announced the Adobe Developer Olympiad. Adobe made its grand entry onto the programming world, with the acqusition of Macromedia... Adding Flash & ColdFusion to its kitty. Now with FLEX2.0 out in the open, Adobe has enough push to reach out to developers and its doing exactly that.

First came the Adobe Developer Derby, which saw some awesome applications being churned out. Check the results and the winning applications here. Then there was an Aussy equivalent of the Derby, which went well too.

So now we have decided to focus on one of the (probably THE) largest developer bases in the world. INDIA !! Our philosophy to start from the grass root level has spun this idea of Adobe Developer Olympiad for Students. The key highlights for the same

Any student pursuing a degree in any stream as a full time student of a recognized university in India is eligible to participate in the contest.
Submissions can be in 3 categories: Engineering (components), Applications, and ColdFusion integration.
Each category has a prize of Rs. 50,000
You can participate individually or as a team of upto 5 members

Check out these following links to start off....

Adobe Developer Olympiad Page
Adobe India Students Group
Flex.org: Your one-stop Flex portal
Flex Quick Starts: Lessons to get you up and running quickly
Flex Developer Center: Whitepapers, lessons, examples, and more
Flex Component Explorer: Lots of Flex examples for you to try

More updates will follow... Any queries, mail to the Developer Olympiad Mailing list (ado@adobe .com)

try.flex.org

2006-11-26T04:39:00.000-08:00

This looks awesome... A Flex Online Compiler where you can type your code and compile it online and see the results along with it.. Ideal for beginners to start off with Flex. Check it out

http://try.flex.org/

The Flex Online Compiler is powered by Flex, ColdFusion, and Spry

youTube Search, powered by Flex

2006-07-08T04:36:00.000-07:00

Jan 2007: Due to abrupt youTube.com security policy change, my youTube App doesnt work anymore. Possibly due to an exploit, youTube abruptly changed their crossdomain.xml file to only allow access from the youtube.com domain. As a result, YouTube developer API calls no longer work if the SWF exists in a non-youtube.com domain

So here it is, I have finally done it... a day of hard work, coupled with a couple of days of research :). I have the youTube search Tool, ready to go! You might have to de-activate the popUp blocker on your browser to see this application. I have made an alternate version for those who do not know how to do that. This application requires you to have FlashPlayer9. Download FlashPlayer 9 here and then Click on the links below.

Click here for youTube Search
(Click here for the alternate version)

This is the first public application that I am posting, so I'm really excited about it. It was an awsome experience building this application. The initial time was spent in the layout, look & feel of the app (which i think is still "too plain"). Then came the REST calls and parsing the incoming XML to suit my needs.

Then came a heart-breaker for me, which made me almost ditch my application. Due to some chaps ripping flvs (Flash Videos) off youTube (read it here), youTube had reworked their site inorder not to expose the flvs. So now i couldn't play them in my app... Directly.

But a programmer always finds workarounds to problems. Those who frequent youtube know that youtube provides a html code snippet, allowing you to embed it into your blog. In the code, there is a text like "tLuLE3jm1VU" is the only thing that varies across videos (and its called the video id). I had the video id of the videos i wanted, thanks to the youTube API. So i wrote a small PHP script to take the id as input and then generate the html page for my video.

I would then popUp this window as an html page (of a specified size) through JavaScript which was called inturn from my application using the Flash External Interface API. And hola... it worked... But my woes wouldnt end there. This workaround came at the cost of perfomance in my app and some of the thumbnails were not loading properly after the external interface call.

Then our very own Manish came to the rescue... Manish had written a youTube Featured video player back in March and had now reworked it to extract the flv out of the id again... Then things were all on a platter for me... I could now use Manish's code snippets, extract the flv file and play it in my own Video Display inside FLEX.

A bit of exceptional handling and try-catching :) and the application was ready to rock. So presenting to you....

If you find any bugs or issues, mail it to me at raghunath.rao at gmail dot com
Anyone wants to look at the code, you can find it here...

I'm Addicted to You Tube & its API

2006-07-08T04:35:00.000-07:00

You Tube is a fantastic site... It has captivated my imagination for sometime now, that I was glued to it. A novel idea of uploading videos and then making it freely "searchable" or blog-appendable for anyone. You can see a whole lot of You Tube videos in my Media Blog... But one thing about youtube I did not like was its searchability and the ease of use to find a video that you are looking for (by user, by tag...etc).

So, I have been wanting to write a search tool for youTube for a long time now. And then i chanced on the youTube API. Its a set of very simple REST (click here to know about REST) calls that would return me useful search info like search by tags, username... etc in a simple, ready to use XML Format!!

I could now use this data in my Flex Application & write a search tool... So I was well on my way to write a youTube Search tool... That in the next post..

Before i sign off, here's a video I found on youTube that defines my state of affairs with youTube in the past few days.

I'm addicted To youTube

All about FLEX... to get you started !

2006-06-28T04:35:00.001-07:00

Thanks all for the immense response to my last blog entry... A lot of people have asked me what is FLEX and how they can tap into it... so here are some resources to get you started.

Adobe® Flex™ 2 is the most complete, powerful application development solution for creating and delivering cross-platform rich Internet applications (RIAs) within the enterprise and across the web. It lets enterprises create personalized, multimedia-rich, Ajax-style applications that can reach virtually anyone on any platform. Enterprises can use Flex to quickly build and deploy applications that improve the user experience, boost the bottom line, and analyze data to enable better business decisions.

Flex.org is a starting point for developers working with Adobe Flex Builder 2, Flex Data Services 2, and the Flex 2 SDK. Here you will find links to technical and support resources from both Adobe and the developer community. Click here to visit Flex.org

You can find all the resources to start off with FLEX2 on this site...

Once you are started, you can register to FlexCoders. It is an International Registry of FlexCoders and will get you in touch with fellow Flex Developers and Community. Click here to visit FlexCoders

You can also checkout the Adobe FLEX Page and Adobe Labs Page

For people who want more out of FLEX, checkout AJAX-FLEX Bridge, FLEX-ColdF usion Connector.

Check out these Flex Examples to get a taste of what you can do...

Flex Store application & details
Restaurant Finder application & details
Photo Viewer application & details

Enjoy the Joy of FLEX, as Sam says... EXPERIENCE MATTERS!

HELL YEAH! WE SHIPPED THIS THING :)

2006-06-28T04:35:00.000-07:00

I have been impatiently waiting for this day… And it has finally arrived...

"We, the FLEX TEAM, hereby declare that the FLEX2 Product line is finally out and ready for anyone who wants to provide an awesome experience on the web"

HURRAY!!! It feels so awesome just to say that.

I remember when I was small (I mean, I was in 8th or 9th grade), I used to stare at the splash screen of Adobe Photoshop and look in awe at the credits of those who participated in the product design (I was specially thrilled to find some Indian names there). Then it became a practice that I used to look at the credits of most products I used (especially Flash 5 and Winamp) and dream of the day when I would be on the credits of some product... But I never believed I would.

Now just 1 year into my foray to the software world, my wildest dream has come true. I'm on the credits page of the FLEX Product Line, and man it feels awesome. I was itching to put it up since it came in the internal build, but had to forcefully stop myself till the product shipped...

Incredible... Isn't it!

It has been a very rewarding and exciting journey for me in the last 10 months with FLEX2. A very alien technology for me when I joined has become a part of my life now. I’m so thrilled that I do not have words to express my excitement… So here’s to FLEX and to all the hard work and toil we went through to make it possible… CHEERS!!!

Flash Player 9 - Your window to richer experiences

2006-06-27T04:34:00.000-07:00

Adobe has rolled out Flash Player 9 for the public. Get it today, so that you do not fall behind in the search for richer experiences on the net.

For technical guys, Flash Player 9 has a whole new architecture with ActionScript3.0 (AS3 for short) forming the core of it. AS3 is more tightly bound OOP language than AS2, adhering to the ECMAScript standards (which is followed by JavaScript too).

For now, only FLEX2 will come out with AS3 content, though all legacy files would run fine on Player 9. Designers will have to wait a while (until next Creative Suite release i guess) to get an Authoring equivalent in AS3 (in conjunction with the Flash Authoring 9 release)

So get it today and dont fall behind... Here's the link

P.S. I will be uploading some cool stuff i did with AS3 & FLEX, so i suggest you get it :)

Enriched with Flash MP3 Player

2006-06-20T04:32:00.000-07:00

I was visiting Hemanth's Blog when I saw that he had a site of his own now, dedicated to his musical musings (you can check it out here). I was mighty impressed by the custom Flash Player which was used to play the playlist of his songs... I longed to make a similar one, but knew my flash skills was not as good (I can make one in Flex easily, but Flash player 9 that Flex2 uses is not yet fully public)

But then, something in the right click menu caught my eye.. it said "FLASH MP3 PLAYER 2.0 by JEROENWIJERING". I went to Jeroen's site and downloaded the latest version of his player there...

The best part about it is that it is under the "Creative Commons Deed" so I can edit it and use it for my non-commercial purposes, by giving due credit to the creator. So here's to Jeroen, for creating a simple but wonderfully useful application. Cheers!!

Now you can listen to all my songs in the sidebar to the right of the blog, rather than having to navigate to each post for the songs. Flash Rocks, so does Macromedia (now Adobe), who created it.... Yeee ha

ScrapBlog... Yet another FLEX Sucess Story

2006-04-05T04:22:00.000-07:00

Yet another Flex sucess story (after Yahoo Maps among others). Eariler today, I got a mail from Matt Chotin about this site called ScrapBlog.com where one can have a photoblog with loads of interactivity, all for free.. Whats more, it was made in Flex1.5. If someone can do such a great job with Flex1.5, wonder what people will do with FLex2.0.

It has a nice UI (though a bit too flashy for my taste), some cool custom components and good amalgam of technologies like Java, Flex and Applets... Loved it. I created mine, just to get a feel of it. Feels good to see your product being used so productively

Here's my scrap blog http://raghunathrao.scrapblog.com/

Try it out today... I'm sure you will love it.

FLEX quote of the week...

2006-03-14T04:22:00.000-08:00

Richard Monson-Haefel is a key influencer in the Java and IT markets. He is the award winning author of books on Java Web Services, EJBs, and JMS. He is also the founder of several Apache projects and a former member of the JCP Executive Committee (a small, elected and elite group). Now, he is an analyst with the Burton Group. In early January he wrote a 30 page report on AJAX that mentioned us, but in a niche and undervalued way. He really didn't get what we were doing and was (with some caveats) very supportive of AJAX.

Richard has been trying out FLEX and his blog posting today is a thing of beauty and recognition of our efforts. Check it out. Here is a excerpt from his Blog...

"In America you can't say peanut-butter,
without thinking about Jelly.
In the IT industry you shouldn't think of Ajax,
without thinking of Flash."

Cheers...

I love FLEX

2006-03-05T04:21:00.000-08:00

I'm so proud of working in Adobe (formerly Macromedia) and especially in this great technology called FLEX. Still in beta (you can get it here), FLEX is generating a lot of buzz in the developer community, people are picking it and playing with it and applauding it (though there are a few things that will be sorted out before the release)

I was pleasently surprised to see a lot of people at the Adobe Conference fiddling around with Flex Builder (which is a IDE that we have released which is build on the almost ubiquitous Eclipse IDE). To see so much enthusiasm inside the company itself was awsome. FLEX swept the show in the conference with the maximum people wanting to port their applications to FLEX, and wanting to know what they could do with it.. It was awsome.

But what really made me proud was something i saw today... It was a podcast interview of Bruce Eckel, (author of the books "Thinking in C++" and "Thinking in Java" ), he talks about his positive experience with experimenting with Flex 2.

Bruce is a Java Guru, who likes to sample and play around with new technologies. He has tried Perl, PHP, Python, all kinds of Java related stuff, Ruby... etc. The very fact that he chose FLEX to beat others like Applets and AJAX for user-experiences for Rich Internet Clients is a big recognition for us. I really loved it and I'm proud to be a part of it..

Here is the part about flex that is from his interview.

You can hear the whole interview here on the Java Posse podcast, episode #37 , "Interview with Bruce Eckel, Part 2"

FLEXing my Muscle

2006-03-01T04:14:00.000-08:00

The whole point of this blog is to write about my passion for programming, for Flash, Action script & Flex. So here we go...