Apollo Browser in five lines of code

In yesterday's post about what Apollo is, a comment appeared to challenge the notion of being able to implement a simple browser in 5 lines of code. Rather than rebuke it on the comments list, I decided to make this post and place the code here to show how easy it is. This is as simple as it gets, no back buttons, SSL, bookmarks etc, but it is a browser that you can type a URL into and it will navigate to the URL and display the HTML properly formatted.

The sample Apollo MXML code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<!--line one. I am not goign to count the XML PI-->
<mx:ApolloApplication mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="vertical" cornerRadius="12">

<!-- line two -->
<mx:Text text="Enter URL and hit enter" fontFamily="Arial" fontSize="16" fontWeight="bold" />

<!-- line three-->
<mx:TextInput id="urlTxt" width="100%" enter="html.location=urlTxt.text;" text="http://www.adobe.com" />

<!--line four -->
<mx:HTML id="html" width="100%" height="100%" location="http://www.adobe.com">

<!--line five. Not really a line of code, just closing the root tag -->
</mx:HTML>

</mx:ApolloApplication>


Here is the screenshot of the Apollo browser application:

What is Apollo (Really)? Will it replace browsers?

The evangelist team at Adobe has been busy publicly discussing Apollo, the new flash and MXML based programming platform. During the time we have evangelized, there have been some mis-perceptions. Other than recognizing being an evangelist is sometimes more subtle than not, I want to discuss a few of the issues in this blog over the coming months.

For those who don’t know, Apollo is an internal code name for a stand alone application development platform that uses Flash and HTML to build interfaces. Unlike Flex Applications, Apollo applications exist as stand alone apps and are not bound to the browser. The Flash runtime is part of a native cross platform runtime environment that allows the application access to several core libraries and virtual machines. Apollo applications are cross platform and can utilize local resources to a greater degree than Flex based applications, yet less than full blown stand alone applications written in conventional languages that are targeted for single operating systems.

At a recent event, after a lengthy discussion and demonstration of Apollo’s functionality, a question came from the audience.

“Why do you want to replace the browser?”
The shocked silence that ensued made me personally realize that we have not clearly communicated the value proposition of Apollo. It is simply not true that we want Apollo want to replace the browser (even though you can build a simple browser in as few as 5 lines of code). The proposition of Apollo goes far beyond that capability. So what is Apollo? In Mike Chambers book he describes it with the following sentences:

“Apollo is a new cross-platform desktop runtime … that allows web developers to use web technologies to build and deploy Rich Internet Applications … to the desktop.”

Apollo is a middle ground, hybrid approach when a browser based application does not quite fulfill the requirements yet building a full blown, stand alone application might be too overkill, slow or complex. It is important to note that Apollo applications do have a very full featured set of libraries to build very complex applications. In no way should anyone consider an Apollo application as a feeble, halfway attempt at application development. Quite the opposite is true. Some of the early applications we have seen on the internal beta mimic the appearance and functionality of Apples’ Photobooth, standalone Text Editors with HTML capabilities, A Universal Business Language (UBL) editor, MP3 music players that can read your local iTunes library file, import it and use the ID3 metadata tags to search and retrieve photos from Flickr tagged with the same terms.

So why is this important? Why would you want to do this? Browsers are general purpose work horses and will not go away anytime soon but there are instances where browsers start to not fit the requirements. Browsers are best suited for online access to data. Sometimes, data needs to be worked with offline and later synchronized with multiple other data models. Browsers were not built to fulfill this task. Like wise, browsers are best suited to natively work with remote resources. The virtual machines for scripting languages cannot interoperate with local resources in a way native applications can without explicit permission being granted. Even then, most virtual machines have severe security limitations (* generally a good thing). Apollo transcends some of the restrictions of browsers.

Like browsers, Apollo also is not out to kill native applications, but can be used to rapidly (I meant very rapidly) prototype or build applications that can do many common tasks. Skinning the applications with Flash also allows a very rich user interface to be built that can transcend the typical opaque rectangular box approach of conventional applications.

Hello World – it’s me, Apollo!

Apollo applications can be built using certain builds of Flex Builder, but it is important to note that you can also use a plain text editor and the free compiler from Adobe labs (when available). To use Flex Builder, you benefit from first going to download and install the Apollo Extensions first (watch this space for the public beta announcement). You simply declare the root element as . The following code is an Apollo application that uses HTML code. The formatting is bad to fit the code into the columns available.



This yields a very simple application that looks like this:



Note that the cache button does not yet do anything. This was written as a prototype based on a request from Redmonk's James Governor. It is risky putting this up as it may trigger his memory and he'll leave a comment asking me to complete it soon. Duck!

Here is another example of an Apollo Application that traces a slider value and binds the data value to another component. It also changes the test on the label from “Hello Nobody” to “Hello World” when the slider value changes to be above “3”.



The Apollo Application looks like this:




Suffice to say, Apollo fills an important niche (pronounced “neesh”, not “nitch”. The latter really bugs me and most other Canadians). It’s going to be out there for you to play with soon so please take a look at it and see what you can do.

And all together, let’s say it one more time:

“Apollo is not out to kill Browsers”

Cheers!

Bush ignoring neighbours (note spelling)? Never!

I read today an article where George W. Bush denies he ignores neighbours.

In his speech, he stated:

"That may be what people say but it's certainly not what the facts bear out," Bush said. "We care about our neighborhood a lot."

Hmm. okay. I am not anti-Bush. I do think there are about 265 million Americans who could do a better job of public speaking and foreign policy than he does, but in general, he's just a guy trying to do his job. But....

He will never convince Canadians that he is not ignoring his neighbours. As reported on wikipedia:

"In a segment on the television series This Hour Has 22 Minutes during the 2000 American election, Rick Mercer convinced then-Governor of Texas George W. Bush that Canada's Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, was named Jean Poutine and that he was supporting Bush's candidacy. A few years later when Bush made his first official visit to Canada, he joked during a speech, "There's a prominent citizen who endorsed me in the 2000 election, and I wanted a chance to finally thank him for that endorsement. I was hoping to meet Jean Poutine." The remark was met with laughter and applause. ^[1]"

Of course the problem is now past now that we have a newly elected new prime minister Steven Carper.

Adobe committed to being open, web 2.0 company?

The answer has to be "yes". During the last six months we have seen PDF going to ISO, the code donation to the Tamarin project, the launch of Flex 2.0, the pre-beta Apollo program which allows developers to build really cool applications, Photoshop becoming Software as a Service (PDF has been for years) and more. In the near future Apollo is going to shake up the entire developer world (if you don't believe me, take a look at this application and imagine people can build this as a standalone application complete with live feeds to deliver ads, extra info etc). The Adobe Cycling Tour Tracker is by far the coolest web application I have ever seen in my life. I would rather watch this than TV. The amount of live information coming to the desktop is unparalleled. TV stations - take note. This is what you have to compete with in the future.

When LiveCycle ES launches, developers and architects alike will be able to see how advanced Adobe is as an enterprise software vendor. The LiveCycle ES platform is based on the core tenets of the OASIS Reference Model for SOA.

If you want to find out more, you don't want to miss MAX 2007. This year MAX will be held in three locations. North America (the main MAX) will be September 30-October 3, 2007 in Chicago, IL; MAX Europe: October 2007, Barcelona, Spain and MAX Japan: November 2007, Japan.

Things we can do better? Tell us. We're listening.

Mix2r.com collaborative music portal growing!

In November, a new site was launched that allows musicians and other electronic artists to collaborate to create mixes, music and other audio projects via the internet. Recording an album used to involve recording tracks one at a time in separate rooms and controlling the creation via a central control room. Mix2r.com just overlays that pattern on the net to allow people to contribute to your mixes and music from all around the world.





I have been using it to work on other people's music and have contributed to projects in the UK and USA. People from New Zealand have sent in tracks on my audio projects.

Even if you are not a musician, there are now hundreds of free MP3 works from various genres to legally download and use. There are desktop widgets for Mac users to get the latest audio files and RSS feeds you can use to keep up to date on the goings on. To listen to the latest music from Mix2r.com, go to this link http://mix2r.fm/recent/audio.


To be honest, we're still wondering what this might eventually become or where it will all lead. As a musician, I have been hopeful that a new model for the music industry will evolve. I want to see a really cool project start on the site to make a CD with ten songs on it, with each song having one track from one musician in every country in the world on it. That would be a really cool social project. Please help spread the word and maybe it will happen.

Oh yeah - its completely free and free of spam, spyware etc.

Massive 2007 - Free 3 hour intro to Flex and Apollo

My favorite tech show is just around the corner. Massive 2007, derived from the Techvibes Massive show, will attract well over 5000 visitors in a one day (March 28) frenzy of technology. What makes this show unique is that it caters and appeals to the non-technical members
of society as well as the hard core cutting edge techie types. It is also a show that emphasizes the social aspects of technology and has a very hip and upwardly mobile crowd.

I have been asked this year to teach a 3 hour tutorial on Flex and Apollo which will take place in the AM. Space is almost completely sold out so if you really want a seat, please register now. This is a very rare chance to get indoctrinated into the Flex and Apollo technology.

Adobe User Group Master List

I found this resource today for locating Adobe User groups on a worldwide basis:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/usergroups/

If there are user groups that are not yet listed, please list them here. This is a great resource for P2P learning.

Tide turns against Microsoft's XML Office format

There seems to be no shortage of technical complaints against Microsoft's Office XML format. Most of the list items are checklist items for standards bodies such as using existing standards where possible. There are some that are also what I would categorize as more of opinions rather than technical facts (such as the complaints against the use of confusing element names). I can understand how Microsoft word might have carried with it certain legacy functions that might even pre-date the XML specification currently under review within ECMA and ISO, but once a standard gets into the public stewardship, all is put on the table and it may be time to correct some of these items. Then again, if you fixed all of those items, why not just use the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF) as it is today in version 1.1? Why not harmonize the two standards?

New FLex-AJAX Libraries on Adobe Labs.

Two new pre-release Flex libraries are going up on labs in the next couple hours:
> Ajax Data Services library http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Ajax_Data_Services
> Flex Ajax Bridge (FABridge) update http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex-Ajax_Bridge

AJAX Data Services is a new JavaScript library that lets you access the powerful messaging and data management capabilities of Flex Data Services directly from JavaScript. With this library, you can integrate application clients built using Ajax technologies with the same back-end data services used by Flex application clients. This means that data from Flex applications can now be automatically synchronized with other Ajax applications, ensuring that both users see the most current, accurate information.

Significant updates have also been made to the Flex-Ajax Bridge (FABridge), which, as you know, allows JavaScript-enabled components to inter operate with Flex-enabled components embedded in the same web page.

Using both FABridge and the new Ajax Data Services library, you can now leverage the full benefits of both the Flex programming model and Flex Data Services, providing full interoperability with existing or new Ajax applications.

Both of these libraries are planned to be added to upcoming versions of Flex Data Services. If you use them, please let us know what you think by leaving a comment here.

PDF Specification released to AIIM/ISO

Adobe announced it will release the entire PDF specification (current version 1.7) to the International Standards Organization (ISO) via AIIM. PDF has reached a point in it’s maturity cycle where maintaining it in an open standards manner is the next logical step in evolution. Not only does this reinforce Adobe’s commitment to open standards (see also my earlier blog on the release of flash runtime code to the Tamarin open source project at Sourceforge), but it demonstrates that open standards and open source strategies are really becoming a mainstream concept in the software industry.

So what does this really mean? Most people know that PDF is already a standard so why do this now? This event is very subtle yet very significant. PDF will go from being an open standard/specification and defacto standard to a full blown du jure standard. The difference will not affect implementers much given PDF has been a published open standard for years. There are some important distinctions however. First – others will have a clearly documented process for contributing to the future of the PDF specification. That process also clearly documents the path for others to contribute their own Intellectual property for consideration in future versions of the standard. Perhaps Adobe could have set up some open standards process within the company but this would be merely duplicating the open standards process, which we felt was the proper home for PDF. Second, it helps cement the full PDF specification as the umbrella specification for all the other PDF standards under the ISO umbrella such as PDF/A, PDF/X and PDF/E. The move also helps realize the dreams of a fully open web as the web evolves (what some are calling Web 2.0), built upon truly open standards, technologies and protocols. It also makes me immensely proud to be an Adobe Evangelist.

Adobe will continue to work hard to innovate on and around the PDF standard going forward.

I personally want to acknowledge some key individuals who are external to Adobe that were instrumental in the process. Bob Sutor (IBM), James Governor (Redmonk) and Gary Edwards (Open Stack) instilled upon myself and others at Adobe that embracing a course of open standards makes good business sense and is good for the community. Gary, James, Bob – thank you! The talks we had back in May 2005 were an inspiration for me.

To find out more on this, we are also hosting a blogger chat live at 17:00 Pacific Time Monday January 29, 2007 at http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/pdfconversations. If you want to blog about this, please feel free to join in. Space is limited. Leonard Rosenthol has published the history of PDF on his blog at http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/leonardr/history-of-pdf-openness. It is very well written and contains lots of supplemental information. The official Adobe FAQ’s are linked from http://www.adobe.com/pdf/release_pdf_faq.html. Last but not least, please leave a comment here and let me know what you think. I read all comments.

Yet another person who thinks they can crack PDF Security

Here we go again. This week, Universe Software announced that they have a tool that can crack security protected PDF documents. I have stopped writing about these types of claims since I debunked all of them by issuing a $500 challenge for anyone who can crack this PDF document in this blog post.

Given this has been live for over one year and not a single person (including those who have claimed they can crack it) has been able to crack it, I would suspect once more that last week's announcement by Universe is also complete bunk. However, I sent them an email and if it is not, they can crack it, post their success here and collect $500 from me.

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.

Flash Player 9 for Linux and Open Source

The Flash Player 9 for Linux was released yesterday via the Adobe website and can be freely downloaded. I want to thank all of you who took time to write me personally about this for having faith and letting us get the job done we needed to do. The Linux community is very important to Adobe.

I also want to encourage Linux community members to also participate in the open source Flash Player scripting engine project at Mozilla. The Tamarin project will implement the final version of the ECMAScript Edition 4 standard language, which Mozilla will use within the next generation of SpiderMonkey, the core JavaScript engine embedded in Firefox®, Mozilla’s free Web browser. As of today, developers working on SpiderMonkey will have access to the Tamarin code in the Mozilla CVS repository via the project page located at www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/ . Contributions to the code will be managed by a governing body of developers from both Adobe and Mozilla.

Flex Camp (Bay area only)

My good friend and colleague Ted Patrick has asked me to extend an invitation to any Bay areas denizens who may be interested in coming to the Adobe San Francisco Office to get under the hood of Flex a bit more. This would also encompass interests in Apollo.

Evangelism is hosting a "Meet the Flex Team" in San Francisco at Adobe Thursday, Jan 25 5-8pm. The event information is provided here:

http://flexteam.eventbrite.com

If you plan to attend, register for the event.

Also please reach out to contacts in the bay area who are using Flex/Flash or in the web development market.

The Meet the Flex team session at Max2006 was a lot of fun and we expect this event to be similar. We will do some demos of Flex 201 and Apollo and will have a general QA session. The goal is to make Flex and Adobe more approachable and transparent in line with Flex25 goals. Plus it should also be a fun evening with our development community.

How truly open is Flash? Do we need "Open Flash"?

This is a post made by David Mendels that inspired me to get this message out. I too have noticed that a few people Still perceive Flash as a proprietary technology. If you are one of those, read this then ask yourself the two questions at the end. I had a completely different view of Flash before Adobe and Macromedia merged.

David writes:

(Some basic points)

1. The Flash programming language (ActionScript) is 100% ECMASCript, a standard with multiple implementations and is open. You can script using ActionScript with a plain old text editor.
   
2. The internal Flash Player VM, “Tamarin” is an open source project run by the Mozilla foundation (donated by Adobe).
3. The Flash file format, *.SWF is a published format.
4. The Adobe Flash Player (the reference implementation) is free. So are several others like the Gnash player.
5. The Flash Player is available on Mac, Windows, Linux, Playstation, Nintendo Wii, Symbion, and many other platforms.
6. An SDK for building, compiling, debugging Flash applications is available for free on Mac, Windows and Linux
7. There are over 100 third party, free, commercial, open source and closed source products that produce, edit, generate, and otherwise manipilate Flash files, Flash Video files, etc.
8. There is a very active Open Source community around the Flash runtime. For better or worse (I do work for Adobe -;) many many people take full advantage of the Flash Player without using any commercial products from Adobe (or anyone belse). See http://www.osflash.org/ to get a good view of this.
9. Flash itself makes use of several standards such as JPG, AVI, GIF and PNG's as outlined here.
   

There are numerous web based services (You Tube, BrightCove, etc) that convert to, host, deliver Flash Video without requiring the purchase or use of any commercial or proprietary technology.

Now, all that said, the Flash Player as a whole is not open source. There are a number of reasons for this, at least as of today. 2 primary reasons come to mind right now, but these are not immutable:

i. The desire to avoid bifurcation. Right now one can produce a SWF from any one of many tools/servers/services from many vendors and be 100% confident it will run across platform and across browsers. We experienced the impact of multiple slightly (or largely) incompatible implementations of HTML/JS browsers and of JVMs and both had a major impact to slow innovation and usage. One of the things our customers (developers/desginers/publishers) have told is us not to screw up the compatibility and ubiquity that have been the hallmark of Flash since day 1.
ii. There are technologies in the Flash Player for which we do not own the IP or the rights to open source it, for example, we have licensed our MP3 codec.

There is one more area where we are arguably not “open”. This relates to our licensing strategy on non-PC devices (eg Cell Phones). On these devices, we do license the Flash Player for a royalty to device manufacturers and telco operators. It is still free from an end-user and developer perspective, but there are a lot of costs associated with these integrations.

(...)

My experience is that when people say they want “open”, there are usually 3 or 4 things they really want or need:

* No lock in. They don’t want adopt a technology that they may get “blackmailed” to pay money for in the future. I think we have addressed this fairly well by making the Flash Player and SDK free.

* Integration. They want the technology stack they work with to work with the rest of their stack and tool chain. This requires appropriate use of standards (eg. we support XML over HTTP, Web Services, ECMAScript, CSS, integration with multiple IDE and Source Code management systems, etc) and well crafted and well documented APIs. I think we have this area covered too, but I’d like to hear about concerns.

* Leverage existing skills. By using standards, one does not get locked into skills that can not be found generally in the market and that will be obsolete in the near term. This is why we standardized on ECMAScript. This is why we have an Eclipse based tool. This is why we enable development with a purely ASCII text format to fit into other systems. This is why we leveraged CSS in the Flex framework, etc. I think we have this covered too, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

* Ability to fix bugs/issues without depending on a vendor. From a tool chain perspective, one can choose to work in an entirely open source toolchain for the creation of SWFs, so this is covered. From the runtime perspective, this is arguably a barrier. That said, I don’t hear a lot of folks who have actual concerns about our “stewardship” of the Flash Player in this regard. I’d love to have your perspecitve.

Questions for the public:

* What does “Open Flash” actually mean to you? Have we done a good job of balancing the interests of implementers and developers without hindering innovation?

* What specific problem(s) does “Open Flash” solve that are not addressed by our current “openness”

An open letter to the WTO and Pascal Lamy

I have worked in the United Nations to create a free and open stack of technology that will help level the playing field for the world. My employer, Adobe Systems, even spent a considerable amount of time and effort implementing some of the standards from UN/CEFACT using PDF and LiveCycle as the platform. The UN eDocs project allows people to simplify the process of creating the paperwork that must accompany goods in trade. The net results is that more people are given access to the trade infrastructure meaning they now have new chances to participate on a level playing field. Just imagine a world where anyone wanting to ship anything internationally had to pay $100,000 to buy a software program to communicate with the trade network? This should never be allowed to happen but it has in some places. One of the reasons I am excited about Apollo it the possibility it will lower more technology barriers to benefit humanity.

During this process, all of us in UN/CEFACT were aware that our work was needed because time has run out for some people who are being affected by the disparity in global trade created by technical barriers to entering the global trade network. The results are seen in the news - people starving, countries at war over resources and people denied the basic necessities of life.

Like any large committee, UN/CEFACT had hiccups and work had to be kick started a few times. As a Vice Chair, when this happened, I reminded the people involved that time was of the essence given the people who we are working for have no other options. Most ot eh time they complied and found a solution.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has had a mandate to do similar world for all aspects of trade to create a fair and equal playing field for all people to prosper under. Unfortunately, the Doha talks have stalled and there is no schedule to resume certain talks that need to happen. The WTO has got to act now. Every day they delay means another day people live in poverty. I am upset by this and have written a direct letter to the Director General, Pascal Lamy. M. Lamy is going to hold a direct chat in December and I will attend and be say what needs to be said. Here is a copy of that Letter:

************************
M. Lamy:

Thank you for making yourself available to citizens like myself. We understand you have a very busy schedule and are grateful for your time to listen to our point of views. Please consider the following question and statement as two of my top concerns. If you can fix this, I have all I want for Christmas.

Question:

I too worked in a chair position for a UN body (UN/CEFACT 2004-2006) and found that talks can often break down. I immediately got everyone back to the table to resume dialog and did not let the process stall. I did this because every day, people are subjected to unfair economic discrimination. My question to you is "what are you going to do to force the talks to resume"?

Now my statement:

Every day the stalled Doha Liberalization talks fail to happen, people die as a direct and indirect result of economic disparities. They die M. Lamy. Men, women, children. They die!! I will invite you and those who sit within the WTO to remind themselves who they really work for. They work for people who do not know they exist. They work for people who do not even understand the system they have set up. They work for those who are too weak and too underprivileged to help themselves. You work for those people who are at most risk to die as a result of your failure to conclude these important talks and implement the policies.

You have a heavy burden on your shoulders and I do not envy you. Sometimes, the bureaucratic path fails when procedures are followed to rigorously and complacency follows. After all, no one in your family or mine will die and paying a few more dollars for gas and groceries is probably acceptable for both of us. But it is not!

PLEASE! Stand up and make a difference. Take control and remind those who need to work that there are consequences of their failure to work. Remind them who they work for and that they have a chance to save lives, both metaphorically and in reality. Lead them well, facilitate the process and make a difference.

I worked for the UN to help these people too. It is a thankless job and not many understand the frank reality of the world of commerce. If you ever need help, issue a call to action and I will be there.

Duane Nickull

Screenshots: Apollo Extensions for Flex Builder

We’re one step closer!! Today I got the chance to try out some great pre-release technology from Adobe. The Apollo Extensions for Flex Builder is a small installer that adds Apollo Application capabilities directly into Flex Builder. I tested the build on the Mac.

CAVEAT: Nothing you see here may eventually make it into a GMC build. This is just a heads up. I suspect some of you might want to jump on the first Apollo Public Beta when it is available.

For those of you who do not yet know Apollo, Apollo is an internal working name for a technology that takes Flex Applications outside the browser. You can also incorporate HTML alongside your SWF’s to build standalone applications that can interact with local system resources. Apollo applications are built using MXML, the declarative programming framework and language used by Adobe Flex.

Before doing this, there were several manual steps one had to go through in the Flex Builder in order to create an Apollo Application including importing the ApplicationWindow *.swc to the Flex Builder Environment and changing the namespaces manually in order to get Flex Builder to compile the MXML into an Apollo Application.

The install of the extensions is really simple. The 20 MB download for Mac extracts into the installer. Double clicking on it opens up the install dialog. On the third screen I recommend just hitting “next” and using the default location. Note that you must have Flex Builder installed prior to installing the Apollo Extensions.



A post mortem on the directory reveals a wealth of Apollo wizardry installed during the process. Just look at all the Apollo goodies I now have!

When I launch the Flex Builder and start a new project, I have the option of creating a new Apollo Project.
When selected, the option automatically imports the required libraries and sets up the stub project with the default skeleton code. The MXML looks as follows:

Additionally, under the components browser, there is a new category called Apollo with some extra goodies in it for Apollo Developers. You can use these in addition to the stock Flex components to mix and match and build your application.

I quickly whipped up a UBL (Universal Business Language) application as a standalone app to work with UBL. No – it is not finished yet but it shows the real power of Apollo. The real magic happens when you hit the run button. Instead of the Flex Application building a SWF experience inside an HTML page, it launches a standalone application. The screen shot below show the small application I built on the Mac OSX (intel).


This technology is going to change a lot. The application above took less than 15 minutes to create the GUI for. Others have built some really cool applications like the Ascension MP3 player (screen shot below).

This application, written by Apollo guru Mike Chambers, can load a local itunes library file and songs referenced on it, has several visualizers and controls for the audio files and can also search on the web for photos from Flickr based on the metadata in the audio files. I loaded up one of my own songs from Mix2r.com and the Ascension application read my name on the ID3 tags and searched Flickr and found this photo.

This is yet only the beginning of what is possible.

Anne 2.0 joins Redmonk: today's significant event

You may think this is a funny title from a guy who is stuck in a city with 40 cm of snow and no drinking water (a temporary streak of bad luck for the otherwise "good luck city" Vancouver, BC). Nevertheless, I will explain why I think it is significant for the industry.

Redmonk is an analyst firm that "gets it". They are not just a group of suits who you can give money to in order to justify a point of view of have them endorse some bad idea like SOA 2.0. In fact, I am not sure I have ever seen any of them in suits. They are one of the few analyst firms I know that actually will tell you your idea is full of "it" if is bad. At a recent Adobe conference, I witnessed a senior Redmonk analyst sitting across the table from one of our executives deliver a very pointed stream of thought about a technology subject he felt passionate about. Some (not all) other analyst firms would have just been the typical "yes men" and caressed a square peg into a round hole. Redmonk is not like that. Redmonk tells you straight up where you are doing good and where you can do better. CAVEAT: Yes - I know James, Steven and Cote just as friends too. I think that despite a personal friendship though, my opinions are objective.

Today I was shown some rather great news that gave me the same sort of "stoke" factor as being at Whistler in 1 meter of fresh powder listening to the newest Pennywise CD (well maybe not quite that much). Anne Zelanka has joined forces with Redmonk. Anne has a great following in the technology space and to my knowledge has the distinction of being the first ever blogger (as opposed to anaylyst/press) invited by Adobe to attend the MAX conference. Nevertheless, a following is moot unless there is some substance to back it up and in Anne's blog, Anne 2.0, there is a lot of good substance.

So what does this mean for the established analyst industry? Could it just be that they have a stronger and more formidable competitor. Perhaps but to me I see Redmonk as opening a new sector, perhaps something like an open knowledge/intelligence transfer sector or community. They are a part of an evolving ecosystem that is responsible for intelligence and knowledge transfer on a mass scale to all companies and individuals (not just large enterprise clients although Redmonk has some of those). They fill a unique and valuable niche in the marketplace to be a little more cutting edge, a lot more candid, a huge amount more open and present the knowledge back in a package that is accessible to more than just large multi-national corporations. They have a lot of what the rappers call "street cred" (credibility on the street with the average IT worker or gang members in the case of rappers). Maybe Redmonk should make a rap CD on Mix2r.com?

However you package this news up, one thing is for sure - Redmonk will be on every analyst company's radar after today.

Great LiveCycle Resources

I just came across this site
http://livecycleportal.org/. As far as I know, this is not published by Adobe yet is by far one of the best resources available for LiveCycle Developers. There is also a Google Group set up for LiveCycle Developers. I would encourage anyone interested in LiveCycle to join and contribute to the conversations. The group may be reached at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/livecycle?hl=en.

I have been asked numerous times about LiveCycle 8 given the excitement about the first truly SOA platform coming from Adobe. I cannot answer this question but would encourage people to check the Adobe Enterprise Developer Site at http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/developer/

Other than that, please post questions on this blog and I'll always try to get you an answer from inside Adobe.

peace!

Webinar: Getting to know Apollo

For those who contacted me on the last entry wanting to know more about Apollo, there is a scheduled session to reveal the basics and more. It runs Nov 28 and you can register for it here.

I also got asked why this is truly revolutionary. Part of this is because it frees Flex and Flash developers from the limitations of running in a browser. The security model prevents scripts from executing in a browser that would potentially jeopardize the clients system. This means that every aspect of interaction between a Flash RIA running in a browser and a local resource has to be explicitly permissed. The Apollo Application Window replaces the browser and allows the RIA to interact with local resources as any other application would.

The distribution model is interesting and will likely be discussed during this call. The runtime environment model is similar to Java. In that model, the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) supports the runtime environment and maps the java functionality to the lower level operating system and platform, freeing developers from having to write code to target each platform. The motto of write once, run everywhere is appealing to developers.

More on Apollo later - I am going to test the M2 build today.