Free Android App with source code

James Ward and I collaborated and wrote a simple demo app called "Scribbler".  It demonstrates some really simple concepts such as detecting screen capture and saving to the local file system on Android.  This application is a regular Flex applications that uses standard Flex 4 components (Not the new Hero/Slider framework) hence demonstrating that in some cases you can use MXML to build mobile apps.    The application is available now on the Google Android Marketplace.  We made this lame icon with "Sp" based on an indecisive moment of what to call the damn app.  If you end up having to explain it to someone say SP stands for "Sribbler Pad".

The full source code is downloadable from here.  Have fun with it!  Please tweet this (button is below) if you think others might like it.  More to follow if we are encouraged properly!

AIR for Android Tutorial (Part 2)

In the first AIR for Android tutorial, we showed just how to get started.  This tutorial is a complete video along with the source code.  This blog post includes the necessary instructions for building your first application and then adding a transform gesture.  With many smartphones using touch screens, the desired behavior is to allow an application to scale upwards but never scale below a certain minimum size.  This tutorial and the accompanying source code or Flash Builder 4.1 project explain how to accomplish this task.

Untitled from Technoracle on Vimeo.

Source Code: (download)

AIR 2 for Android Public Beta!

They AIR team did it!! While at Google I/O this week developers are getting blasted with awesome news and new technology, Google and Adobe have worked hard on this and IMO it is a top 5 event of the week. For those of you who don't know AIR, Adobe AIR for Android enables developers to build standalone applications that run on Android devices, like the Nexus One (my all time favorite smartphone). You can use any text editor and the free SDK to build applications and easily deliver applications that work across Linux, Mac, Android, and PC. When developing for Android, you must use the AIR for Android SDK.

By joining this Public Prerelease program, you will have access to a beta version of the AIR SDK with support for Android. Before signing up for this program, there are currently limitations that you should be aware of:

• In this early stage of development, you should be comfortable with using command line tools.
• Flash Professional CS5 now has a new extension that allows developers to publish directly to Android-powered devices. The extension adds a new AIR for Android publish setting that works in the shipping and 30-trial versions of Flash Professional CS5.
• The Flex 4 framework has not yet been optimized for mobile devices; for this prerelease, we recommend building applications using ActionScript only. We're currently working on creating a highly productive, cross-platform solution for mobile development using Flash Builder and Flex, which we expect to be available in public preview by the end of this year.
• You will be able to build and test AIR applications on Android devices, but you will not be able to deploy on the Android Market or share them with end users
• You will be subject to terms of an NDA which allows you to display your application publicly, but you will not be permitted to disclose anything outside of Licensee’s own personal development experiences of a beta Android application(s) using this beta AIR SDK.

If you are interested in joining our Prerelease program, just go here:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air2/android/

I'm going there now!

Video Tutorial - 3D effects in Flex/AIR in 5 minutes

This is a very focused video tutorial to help developers understand the basics of X, Y, and Z axis rotations of graphical components while programming in Flash Builder 4 (Flex 4 framework) and using AIR.

Flex/AIR Video Tutorial - working with Audio

This tutorial will show you how to build a simple MP3 player in Flex and manipulate an audio stream by coding play, pause and stop buttons. For the source code or project, please email me at dnickull at adobe dot com.

MAX AIR Boot Camp filling up fast

The talk James Ward and I are delivering on day one of Adobe MAX 2008 is filling up fast. The talk is entitled AIR Boot Camp and will be delivered both in San Francisco and Milan. Curious about AIR? This is the place to go! If you are planning to attend, please register soon, space is limited to only 300 and it is over half gone as of today.

Also - if you are attending, we might get through the content before the time is up (it is a 3 hour mega lab session and all hands on coding). Accordingly, in true community style, James and I would like to ask you to suggest additional topics we can address. So far the outline is as follows; comments are also welcome:

Adobe AIR Boot Camp
Duane Nickull + James Ward
Teachers Aides: Andrew Spaulding (need 2 more).

Audience Assumptions
- This is a 101 Boot camp to introduce people to AIR
who have never used it before or want to go past Hello World.
- Attendees have Adobe’s AIR runtime installed
- Attendees are roughly familiar with XML syntax rules
- Attendees have Flex Builder 3 installed

Description

Join us for an introduction to working with Adobe AIR, in which we will build several projects from start to finish. Projects include "HelloWorld.air," a video player, a "full screen" application, a web service client, a simple example of how to make remote calls, a chromeless window application, writing data to and from a hard disk, working with XML (including RSS feeds), and packaging AIR applications for later distribution. Course materials include the presentation, all code for the projects, and a step-by-step written tutorial.

Topics

An overview of AIR
Architecture
Runtime Architecture
Development environment
Code, Code and more Code!

Projects:

1. Advanced Hello World (learn data binding, compiling, using [Binding], variables, using AS3 and MXML in a project, and much more
2. Chromeless applications - building applications with no system chrome
3. Video Capture and manipulation - use a stream
4. Video playbakc and full screen controls
5. Working with Audio and Events - event handling, audio playback controls
6. HTML - using HTML within an AIR app
7. Reading and writing to the local disk
8. Working with XML - all about E4X, pre-requisite to learn how to manipulate RSS and Web Services call returns.
9. Web Service Introspection and Consumption
10. Exporting, Signing, Distributing and installing AIR applications

Extra projects (we may not get to these if time goes slowly)

11. MySQLite
12. Using NativeWindowing API's

OSCON 2008 and New Flex/AIR Course for GeoWeb

James Ward and I are heading down to OSCON today to speak and hang out. OSCON is a great conference but I haven't been in a few years. Looking really forward to it.

Yesterday we delivered a new 3+ hour course on Flex and AIR map based RIA development at GeoWeb 2008 (one of the best conferences in the world!). After completing the writing of the course and giving it once, we really want to offer it up to the community. It takes attendees through 9 projects with lots of coding to demonstrate concepts related to Geo-spatial mashups/RIAs in Flex and AIR.

Directories:

~/AttendeeProjects - the starter projects with the code completed and comments where students have to add code
~/CompleteProjects – the solutions source code
~/TeachersDocument (PDF and DOCX) – the manual for anyone wanting to teach this course. It has a lot of cut and paste code in it to speed up solutions.
~/Presentation (PPT and PDF) - the presentation slides

It is fairly well documented to allow anyone to present but if you find anything missing, please feel free to contribute. If you want the course, contact me at dnickull at adobe dot com. We'll send it out for anyone to use.

UPDATE:  I have uploaded the ZIP file here.  This is not a Flex archive but contains Flex Archives.  Unzip the course first then you can import the project and use the assets.

Duane's World TV - Episode 4 is live!

In this interview, we feature great indy music from Eddy Bugnut (with download links) and talk to Robert Horne, SAP/Business Objects evangelist, about their adoption of Flex and AIR for the front-end to SAP systems on a global scale.

The code and tunes segment works with an associative array (also multidimensional array) and binding it to a Flex chart. The source code will be made available to anyone interested by emailing me at dnickull at adobe dot com.

Enjoy!

AIR 1.1 is out!

Version 1.1 of the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is now publicly available. Adobe has released a FAQ sheet to bring developers up to speed on what has changed. Here are the main topics:

1. AIR has been translated and can now be localized into ten additional languages (English only for 1.0). The new list of languages now includes Japanese, French, German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, English, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese. I presume this probably also translates into where the most AIR activity is so if you want your language supported, get active. DISCLAIMER: I am just guessing.

2. Coinciding with the above language support, the AIR APIs and file formats have been updated to enable AIR-based applications to be localized and International keyboard input is now supported. I haven't had time to play around with this yet but will try to get some code samples together in the days to follow.

There is also added support for localizing the name and description attributes in the application descriptor file. This means that the app name etc. will be available in the localized language. Also introduced is support for localizing error messages, such as SQLError.detailID and SQLError.detailArguments, in the SQLite database and the addition of a Capabilities.languages property to obtain an array of preferred UI languages as set by the operating system. Note that the <mx:html> button labels and default menus, such as context menus and the Mac menu bar, have been localized to all supported languages as well. C'est une nouveux dialog en Francais ici!



3. AIR 1.1 is GB18030 certified. GB18030 is the registered Internet name for the official character set of the People's Republic of China (PRC) superseding GB2312. This character set is formally called "Chinese National Standard GB 18030-2005: Information technology -- Chinese coded character set".

4. Security Upgrades. A new certificate migration feature is available that allows developers to migrate their applications between different digital signing certificates. Read the documentation on how this works.

Developers - If you use Flex Builder 3 to build Adobe AIR applications, you will need to manually update the SDK. Instructions on how to perform a manual update are described in the Flex Builder TechNote. You can find out more about Flex 3 and the Adobe AIR 1.1 release on the Adobe Developer Connection site.

While AIR 1.1 is a dot release, it represents a significant step forward in AIR capabilities, and its development required a significant effort from the core AIR team and from teams around the company. The Adobe AIR team deserves a huge round of applause.

Albelli Launches Photo Book Software on Adobe AIR

I am at Web 2.0 Expo today and got a really cool surprise. Joris sent me an email and announced that Albelli launched using PhotoBucket's API. This is one of the coolest AIR applications I have ever seen. The full site is here:

http://www.albelli.com/photobucket

Their application is written in Adobe AIR and can be downloaded. You can use it to build a custom photo album using your own photos and then order it to be printed and delivered to your house. This is a great mashup and has some very interesting technology behind it.

I first ran into Joris at Web 20 Expo in Berlin last year. Watch these guys and visit the site for sure.

Distributing the AIR Runtime

Today I read a great post from Mike Chambers on how third party development shops can distribute the Adobe AIR runtime. Mike's full article can be read here. Here is an excerpt:

In order to re-distribute the Adobe AIR installer, you must first apply for, and receive permission from Adobe to redistribute it (this requires accepting a license, and submitting a form). Once you do this, you can get all of the documentation for how to distribute the runtime and integrate it with your custom installer.

We have a ton of information on this on the website (including a FAQ).

In general, the license allows you to:

* distribute the runtime installer on a closed intranet
* distribute the runtime installer on fixed media, such as CD or DVD Roms.
* distribute and launch the runtime installer as part of another native installer

In general, the license does not allow you to:

* modify the installer, or files to allow AIR application to run without having the runtime installed on the user’s system.
* distribute DLL’s or other files from the runtime directly within an application

So why is this such an important issue? Simple - it is about the entire community ensuring the end users have a good experience. While there are strong technical reasons (read the FAQ) for getting Adobe permission, consider what would happen if we had rogue companies randomly distributing modified versions of the AIR runtime without some form of central methodology and management. It could be somewhat chaotic but more importantly, for the good of the overall community, we need to all work together to cater to the end users to deliver a positive experience. This latter point cannot be emphasized enough.

While most development shops will likely just use the "get AIR" badge and rely on Adobe to incur the bandwidth costs for distribution (similar to how Sun distributes the Java Runtime Environment), you may apply for the Adobe AIR Runtime Distribution License Agreement if you have a good reason to want to distribute it yourself. Both are valid options and each company must chose the option that works best for them. Anyone can apply for that license here.

Note: Installing the Adobe AIR Runtime silently, deploying via SMS or Group Policy Objects is currently not a supported option. If you require installing the runtime silently please send an email to license-air-silent@adobe.com so that we can notify you when that feature becomes available.

Flex Builder Free for Education!

Adobe recently expanded the free Flex Builder offering for Education. The information below describes the details.  If you're a student or staff at an education facility, get this offer!!

The offer:

Effective March 3, 2008 all education customers, including staff, faculty and students can now download Flex Builder 3 Professional for free. This offer is for download-only product and requires a valid serial number to activate the trial version of Flex Builder. Education customers will need to register to receive their free Flex Builder serial number at www.flexregistration.com . All applications will be processed within one week. This registration site and serial number distribution is managed by a third party vendor for Adobe.

Eligibility

All education customers are eligible for free pricing. WOOT!!

Customer Service

If you don't receive a serial within one week of  submission, contact customer service by emailing info@flexregistration.com

Adobe joins SQLite! More Open Source/Standards moves!

As reported at http://opensource.adobe.com, Adobe has joined with Mozilla and Symbian to support the work of the SQLite Consortium to help ensure free, open access and development of SQLite. Adobe uses SQLite within many of its products and recognizes the importance of providing support for technology and tools that are open source because of its value to the entire developer and software communities.

This follows on the heels of a rash of Open Source and Open Standards initiatives by the software company in the last few years. Adobe donated the PDF standard to ISO which is now ISO standard 32000. Adobe has open-sourced the core Flex SDK and Blaze Data Services under various GNU based licenses. It was less than 24 months ago when we also donated core Actionscript Virtual Machine code to the Mozilla Tamarin project. We have also pledged to contribute back to the Webkit HTMl engine project when we work on that code base.

All of this makes me proud to work for a company that understand the importance of the software community.

Flex, AIR teams at Adobe Rock!!!

I have been using the latest build for Flex Builder 3 beta 3 (available for free download here) for my latest set of speaking engagements and personal development. I want to publicly acknowledge that this is by far the greatest version of Flex Builder ever made. The Adobe team responsible for this, including such greats as Matt Chotin, Mike Potter, Luis Polanco, Robert Christensen, Adrian Ludwig, and all the developers have done an outstanding job.

Just making a great product isn't the whole story. The team I work on (Technical Evangelism) is probably the most nit-picky group for any product team to cater to. On top of that, they have around 50 beta testers who are regularly dishing out feature requests, bug reports, and a host of other demands on their minds.

There are hundreds of others who I cannot name here on my blog who have worked on Flex Builder 3. To honor their work, take the Flex Builder 3 public beta 3 for a test drive. If you want a mini-cookbook of Flex and AIR projects, with full source code, please email me (dnickull at adobe dot com) and I'll send it over. It also has a script to show you how to take full advantage of the new features in Flex Builder 3 and the latest AIR 1.0.

How to install and run Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.5.1 on Mac OS X

This post outlines step-by-step instructions to get the latest Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES (formerly Flex Data Services) running natively on a Mac. Okay – before you get excited, Adobe does not support this but I did some tinkering around with JBoss 4.2.1 GA and Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.5.1 and got it running natively on Mac OS X. Below is the screenshot in Safari.



Before you read how to do this, please understand a few things. First, Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES is not supported on Mac OS X. In fact, we do not even release it (but don’t worry, it is not hard to install). If you do not know what LiveCycle Data Services ES is, it used to be called Flex Data Services. It is now part of the LiveCycle Service platform and has lots of great features. It has a really cool server component that can do wicked messaging stuff to round trip between a J2EE environment and Adobe Flex, AIR, HTML or AJAX applications.

Why? I ported this over and posted this as a result of Adobe MAX 2007 in Barcelona. Macs were everywhere. At JavaOne and MAX, I suspect that about 50-60% of the developers are now using Macs. We used Macs in our hands-on training rooms and they got taken up first.

Here are the full instructions for getting LiveCycle Data Services ES running on a Mac. Please don’t complain if it doesn’t work. We don’t support it (currently -- but if you’re interested tell me and I’ll work on product management to see if we can get it supported) and we’re on our own for now. Here are the steps:

1. Go to JBoss.org and download the JBoss 4.2.1GA release. Unzip it somewhere (I put it on my desktop).

2. Grab a terminal and navigate to the /bin and enter “sh ./run.sh” as shown below. Note – you must run it with sufficient privileges. If you have trouble try entering “sudo sh ./run.sh” and you will be prompted for the SU password.



3. Grab Safari and go to http://localhost:8080 to verify it works. You should see a screen welcoming you to JBoss app server.

4. If it worked, stop the application server by going to the /bin and typing “sh ./shutdown.sh”, then hit enter. Or, you can simply put the cursor in the shell and hit “Control-C”. The latter is not recommended but it works.

5. Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/dataservices/ and follow the steps to download LiveCycle Data Services ES version 2.5.1. Make sure you select the AIX version. When you finish downloading it, click the file and install it. (note: it does install even though Adobe does not claim it installs). It will create a directory on the Mac at /Adobe/ as shown below.



6. Now the important part. Expand the LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.5.1/resources/security/tomcat/ directory then copy the <lcds_install_root>/resources/security/tomcat/flex-tomcat-common.jar and <lcds_install_root>/resources/security/tomcat/flex-tomcat-server.jar into the jboss_root/server/default/lib folder of your JBoss install. This will allow custom authentication to work.

7. From the same location, copy <lcds_install_root>/resources/security/tomcat/context.xml to your JBoss under the WEB-INF directory or adjust an existing context.xml to add the <valve>. You’ll have to open the context.xml files to compare them. Copying works best if you have a fresh install of JBoss.

8. Expand your <lcds_install_directory> and copy the following files:
flex-admin.war flex.war samples.war

9. Paste those samples in the <jboss_install_directory>/server/default/deploy directory.

10. Restart JBoss as described above (Step 2). Get your browser and go to http://localhost:8080/samples and you should see this:



Now try the samples. If they work you have succeeded! Congratulations.

Running it on a Mac, I noticed several advantages. First, the start up time is really fast -- it started in 28 seconds. For contrast, at MAX 2007 in Barcelona, the same software on a PC with 2 GB RAM took about 1:35 to start. I have 4 GB of RAM on an Intel Core 2 Duo machine so it gives it a small advantage.

Enjoy! Let me know if you thought this was cool.

Vancouver RIA/Flex Camp

The Vancouver RIA Camp is filling up. We have now added a code camp to the schedule. Here is a video of a similar event in San Francisco (above). The schedule is below.

Vancouver Flex, AIR and RIA training date set!

The Vancouver RIA training day is now set at August 30, 2007. You can register for it here:
www.massivetechshow.com/adobe/.

This day will be all about RIA development and feature training in Flex, Adobe AIR (formerly Apollo), AJAX and other technologies. Nitobi's Andre Charland has agreed to be one of the presenters as well as Ryan Stewart from Seattle. Ross Ladell will also be there and hopefully do some Flash stuff.

Register now - space is *very* limited.

If you can't make it to this one, also consider MAX 2007 as the place to be for 2007.

Vancouver Flash/Flex/AIR event!!

From Ross Ladell:

Thurday July 19th the Vancouver Flash User Group is hosting an evening
with Paul Ortchanian. We're flying Paul up from San Francisco to give
a 2 hour presentation on getting the most out of the powerful
BitmapData class. Paul will also be taking us through a number of the
flash experiments on his site, www.reflektions.com .

This event is FREE, but you will need to create an account on the
Flash User Group's meetup website: You can get more information on the
event here: http://flash.meetup.com/110/calendar/5982036/ .

The VFUG website is www.flashinvan.com.

Wicked stuff. Vancouver is really starting to take off. Our August 30 RIA training is still in discussion but we are doing everything we can to put a full day together.

Adobe on AIR tour 2007 Vancouver. Ted’s Porsche upgrade / Nitobi rocks da house!

Friggin Awesome! Sharks with Friggin laser beams!! A jam session in a sauna?

The 2007 Adobe on AIR Bus Tour is now on its third city stop (Portland). This tour will keep the bus driving all summer long so check it out when they come to your town. This is one show you don’t want to miss. It reminded me of my old rock and roll days touring in a metal band. Of course there are some differences.

First – the guys on the bus play Guitar Hero rather than real instruments. Kind of cool given the instant gratification but as an accomplished musician (you can download my latest music for free here), I couldn’t bring myself to try it. Besides, you need long hair to really be a guitar hero right? I seemed to have thought so back in the 1980s (yes - that is me on the left):



Second – they don’t have to lug Ampeg 8x10 cabinets, Marshall Stacks, and drum kits up three flights of stairs. Trust me – this is a good thing.

They also have bloggers and other new media rather than traditional paparazzi. The media shape of the world has changed forever. This is also a good thing.

Last night the bus stopped in Vancouver, my home town. The venue was pretty surreal. We were in a greenhouse on the third floor of a downtown bar. I am not sure what rocket scientist built this without air conditioning, but last night was very hot. Finnish sauna makers should have been there to take notes.

The crowd was awesome! Vancouver developers and architects came out in droves and stayed for the entire five hours. Even the girls at the bar got into the act. Here is one wearing a Nitobi sticker.



Before the event, fellow Porsche owner and Adobe Evangelist Ted Patrick took me up on my offer to let him drive my Porsche 911 Twin Turbo with all the Ruf accessories. As you can see by this photo, Ted now wants to upgrade his Boxster. Ahh – there is no substitute! Non-Porsche owners will not understand this.



Anyways, the crowd on hand were awesome! Here is a shot from halfway back when a ton of people still could not get in the room. Standing room only. Mike Chambers, Kevin Hoyt, and Mike Downey all gave top-notch presentations which the developer crowd loved. Being on last, I was worried that there was going to be no way this crowd would stay here five hours but they did.



Then Andre Charland got up and blew everyone away. Nitobi's two demos and code samples include a Mac style dock with magnified apps built in AIR and a SalesForce.com offline AIR application with synch capabilities. The scary thing is both of these were written in so few lines of code. Andre is a genius and has the ability to consistently come up with clever little apps with his cohorts James, Alexei and Dave.

I am actually very surprised that Nitobi still exists as a stand alone company. I personally think they are the #1 acquisition target in the tech sector today. Profitable, on the leading edge, four evangelists and probably the coolest corporate culture in the industry ('Dre claims he got in 60+ days in Whistler last season ;-). DISCLAIMER: I am on the Advisory Board of Nitobi and have a financial interest. In the interest of transparency, I am following Redmonk's lead on my blog and disclosing any conflicts of interest to help readers come to their own conclusions.

Andre then proceeded to have several beers and make funny faces in front of cameras while showing off his new iPhone.



He was immediately joined by others:



Eventually even Ross Ladell (Blast Radius) and Adobe's own Suzanne got into the fray:



I'll leave it to your imagination what happened after a few more drinks in the hot greenhouse.

Anyways, I went on last trying in vain to measure up to the others and managed to squeak out a 20 minute summary on Adobe's technology platform architecture, showing its relevance to Web 2.0, SOA etc. As promised, the slides are available here. I only presented the first 15 or so due to time, but I will be recording a session with these later in the month for public consumption.

Air Canada goes too far ($2.00 for a blanket)

Okay. I can get used to no food on flights or paying for food. I can get used to limited magazines on the flight, paying for alcohol, paying fuel surcharges, smaller seats and the other cost cutting things airlines or doing. In some cases, paying for meals actually makes sense since now it seems the food selections are better on short haul flights (I usually ride in business or first class anyways).

What I cannot understand is why Air Canada charged me two dollars for a blanket rental. Honestly, does it make that much of a difference? Can it even be rationalized given they are a public company and have to hire accountants to conduct blanket inventory and account for blanket revenues?

I am also pissed about this because the damn airplane was *really cold*. I had enough clothes on that I was NOT cold outside the airport in Vancouver, but got chilled during the flight. I initially resisted buying a blanket but gave in 3 hours into the flight. It seems however, I was too late; I seem to have picked up some sort of cold myself as a result. Feh!!!

If I get pissed off and don't use Air Canada for the next 6 months (statistically, that is about $30-40,000 worth of business from me alone), how many blankets do they have to sell to recoup that loss? I guess that is 20,000 blankets minus the costs of accounting for blankets (do they charge GST on domestic flights?). I am interested to know why and I am hereby inviting someone from Air Canada to comment on this blog and tell me why. In the meantime, I am not booking any new flights on Air Canada until I get an answer.

Add a comment if you join me in this boycott.