Developsigner

Recently I was charged with the task to delve into Adobe Flash Collaboration Service or AFCS for short. Ever since I started hearing the buzz about Cocomo ( AFCS’s previous code name ) I have been itching to give it a try. I have worked on a few collaborative applications in the past and was curious to see how they solved some of the age old problems that inevitably come up. Before I go any farther though I want to be clear that AFCS is still in BETA ( hence the labs url ) so I nor you should by any means be expecting it to be perfect. Adobe and the AFCS team have given us the treat of getting to play with some cutting edge technology, so in a lot of respects we are able to help out by giving feedback before things get set in stone. OK Enough throat clearing, let me get to it.

First impressions:

The Good

Honestly my first reaction was amazement. I was able to create a very sophisticated application which combined audio, video, chat, and a shared whiteboard in a matter of minutes.

I recently had a design comp that required the icon of the Accordion header to be positioned a few pixels from the right.

The edits were pretty simple in order to get this working as a proof of concept. What follows is a bunch of geeky code stuff so if you have an aversion to code then go to my other blog and look at pretty pictures

Solution after the jump

Man for so long now I’ve been trying to figure out what keys the symbols in my Textmate bundle correspond to, elevator? Finally I found this post by Don Rodney that explains it all (thank you, thank you, thank you). NOTE use the function key to use enter (above return). For those of us that have keyboards without number pads.

I have worked on my share of large projects and I have seen businesses make many heinous mistakes in judgement but the one that I am getting the most tired of is the uninformed deciding to build a large application without using Flex. I know what you’re thinking because I have heard all the arguments and I mean every single one of them.

No you can’t write a smaller framework that has layout, styling, accessibility and language support

The answers are:

• No you can’t write a smaller framework that has layout, styling, accessibility and language support
• Yes you can have just as much control over look and feel
• You might not know Flex but if you know Flash you can pick it up FAST
• It is a framework for building applications in Flash, what was it you were building again
• Well you should learn how to use Flex Builder then, you will never go back, it is worth it

My Delicious bookmarks as art

I have been wanting an excuse to build a custom component ever since 360 | Flex last month. I decided to create a drop down palette using standard Flex controls instead of coding one from scratch in Flash. It was much easier than I expected it to be. I was able to take a ComboBox control and pass it a TileList as it’s dropdown list.

Demo Link

*sexy Black & Blue icons courtesy of icondrawer

Recently I had a meeting with my CTO about a cool component I was working on and of course when he went to view it he got the default Flex app light blue screen and no component. “Hey this is great!” he said mockingly, then right clicked on the blue void to show me the movie not loaded message in the top of the flash player context window. The best part was that I had just sent the link to a client. Needless to say I was a little concerned. Most of us developers upgrade Flex Builder as soon as a new patch or update comes out and since we are in the thick of it all day long we never witness what the average user were to see. I recently just upgraded to Flex Builder Version: 3.0.205647 which also installs Flash Player 9.0.124. What I didn’t realize ( and feel a little dumb about ) is that it also updates the HTML template file to specify a new minor version required.

What I didn’t realize ( and feel a little dumb about ) is that it also updates the HTML template file to specify a new minor version required.

So now any average human viewing your app will see the light blue screen of Flex-dom without any content duhn, duhn, duh.

I hate Blogging. I think it’s despicable that you Get famous in the Flash world by blabbing into space. It’s hilarious how may Industry Leaders have a hard time giving you the time of day until they’ve read your blog. I’ve been seeing these guys at conferences, user groups, and on jobs for over a decade now but it seams as though I could go my entire career in the background just because I don’t rant on a page about how the Flex team is retarded for not fixing a bug I voted on (Sorry Doug).

Blogging, the gratuitous masturbatory guitar solo of the internet

But then again, how do you give back to this amazing community without sharing your late night discoveries and breakthroughs. How do you grow the community without offering up examples that help lead people to the place where they Get It. How do you help keep your brethren inspired without sharing the sparks that keep you up all night long coding. So many of us take so much that we do everyday for granted. As if once it becomes second nature to ourselves then it becomes obsolete and useless to anyone else. Then as soon as you find yourself stumped the first thing you do is google your way to someone’s, you guessed, it blog. Blogging, the gratuitous masturbatory guitar solo of the internet, the obsessive recording of seemingly useless information, the glimpse into the strange habits of nerds in their spare time, and the best way to give a bit of yourself back to the cloud that makes this livelihood possible. I hate / love / need to blog.