Dave Carabetta: My Thoughts - Frameworks

Know Your Congressman Using Adobe Flex 4 and Catalyst!

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:20:00 -0400

One of the things that continually keeps me energized about my job is that Cynergy is always on the leading edge of the latest trends in the Rich Internet Application (RIA) world. As a former developer, I love the latest and greatest technologies, and in my current role on the Business Development team, it really makes my job easier. :) A few months ago, Adobe approached us to get some feedback on Flex 4 and Catalyst and how they would fit into our design and development workflow (our workflow was recently covered by Forrester, if you're interested). Rather than just providing anecdotal feedback, we built out a real application without taking any shortcuts in our approach. To that end, we have just announced the first ever Adobe Flex 4 and Catalyst application called Cynergy.Congress. This application allows you to learn about United States members of Congress, including their terms, policies, committees, recent news and even videos of their testimony on the floor of the House or Senate. I know I am aggregated by some tech-centric blog aggregators and if all I was passing along was a link to a Flex application, that wouldn't interest a lot of you. Well, as Dave Wolf announced in his blog entry, we will also be releasing the source code in the coming days so that you can download, explore, and extend the code to start getting familiar with the next version of Flex. Andy Trice, who is Cynergy's Principal Architect for Adobe AIR and Adobe Flex, was the lead developer on the project, so I can promise you that nothing but the very best practices were used during development and this isn't simply demo-ware. He has already started posting about his experience with the project and it provides some great insight into the new workflows that Adobe is introducing with the next version of the Adobe Flash platform. Have a look!

Adobe Flex 2.0.1 Hotfix 2 and LiveCycle Data Services 2.5 Available

Tue, 29 May 2007 10:10:00 -0400

Adobe released Hotfix 2 for Adobe Flex 2.0.1 and an update to the now re-named LiveCycle Data Services on Friday afternoon for immediate download. Of particular interest in this hotfix are a couple of fixes specifically for memory leaks in high-use components:

Memory leak in Accordion.
ViewStack containers are not GC'd - memory leak.

In a somewhat questionable move when you consider that this is just a hotfix, please be aware that some classes specific to the LiveCycle Data Services product (formerly Flex Data Services) have been moved out of the SDK and may break existing code, particularly for those of you who use the Cairngorm framework. Specifically, the Consumer class has been moved out of the SDK and Cairngorm makes a reference to it in the ServiceLocator class. Alistair McLeod has posted more details on the issue and expects to have an update of Cairngorm available as soon as possible. Further, Matt Chotin has posted that the main installers will not be updated with the hotfix bits due to the lack of desire to update all the documentation, so if you need to re-install Flex Builder or are trying it out for the first time, you'll need to make sure you run the Hotfix 2 installer separately. Lastly, the update is cumulative, so you will not need to install Hotfix 1 first. Also released was an update to the Flex Data Services product line. Perhaps most importantly, Flex Data Services is now named LiveCycle Data Services, though the Adobe site looks to have been not made the appropriate site updates as of this posting. Further, the links in the updater's readme file to the main product page, Release Notes, Installation Instructions, and Known Issues currently redirects to the Adobe.com home page, so there's no way of knowing what was addressed in this update. This isn't the first time that Adobe has released an update to a product without updating the supporting web site references for a noticeable period of time (i.e., days), and hopefully the disconnect is addressed in the future, as it's frustrating to not be able to get to the information we need to make important decisions about installing and/or updating a product.

Why Silverlight Is A Phenomenally Important Announcement For Adobe Flex

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:15:00 -0400

There's been a big discussion over the last few days across mailing lists and blogs about the impact of Microsoft's Silverlight announcement. The loyalists from both the Microsoft and the Adobe developer camps have come out of their respective wood works to debate Silverlight's merit vis-a-vis Flex. What's interesting to me about this debate is that, once again, with the introduction of a new, potentially disruptive technology, it always winds up being an "either/or" discussion rather than an "and" discussion. That is, the debate can usually be distilled down to why one would use technology X rather than technology Y when the discussion should really be how one can use both technology X and technology Y. As a real-world example, simply replace "technology X" with "Adobe Flex" and replace "technology Y" with "AJAX" in the previous example and do a simple internet search. I mean, I thought that we, as developers, were in the business of delivering the best product to our employer/customer/client rather than a product that uses a specific technology simply because that's their personal preference? Did I miss something? Dave Wolf, Vice President of Consulting at my employer, Cynergy Systems, wrote an excellent blog entry this morning entitled Wake up and see the Silverlight, which discusses just how phenomenally important Microsoft's Silverlight announcement is to the Rich Internet Application (RIA) industry. As he notes:

...[T]his week's news that Microsoft has officially named Sparkle - WPF/E as Silverlight and that it is clearly and finally on its way to market truly is the tipping point that establishes that RIA's are real, RIA's are the future and RIA's will shape the way we are going to be developing software for some time to come. Microsoft just justified and legitimized RIA. That is HUGE.

Dave hits the nail on the head in his entry, and I won't try and re-hash it here, as I wouldn't be able to do it justice. However, my point is that this isn't about how Silverlight is going to squash Flex, or vice versa. This is about how the RIA industry just became the focal point for future development, and that's an incredibly important validation of Adobe Flex and, by extension, Apollo. By recognizing that the equivalent of the Adobe Flash Player is the future of delivering engaging web applications, Microsoft validated the Player as that delivery platform. Hence, they built their own. Did Microsoft declare that Adobe is officially in their cross-hairs? Absolutely. Is the first release of Silverlight going to knock the snot out of Adobe Flex? Absolutely not. But let's be honest here -- for anybody that used either Flex 1.0 or Flex 1.5, those initial releases left a lot to be desired themselves, so let's not be so quick to bash Silverlight as a failure waiting to happen. It'll likely have its warts, much the same as Flex 1.x did. But, in true Microsoft form, once they get that second or third release out and their development community on board, the RIA space is going to have at least two major players from which developers will be able to deliver rich, engaging applications. I don't know about you, but I couldn't be more excited! Have a look at Dave's entry to get a more thorough analysis of the impact of the Silverlight announcement. Don't worry Adobe fans, Flex isn't going anywhere. In fact, I think it got just a whole lot stronger!

Interactively Understanding The Cairngorm Process

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 00:55:00 -0400

We've decided to use Cairngorm at work on a project that I'm on. While I had always known about Cairngorm via the blogosphere and the flexcoders mailing list, and even read the excellent six-part Cairngorm series written by Steven Webster, I was still a bit hazy as to how to actually code an application myself. To that end, I want to point you to the excellent CairngormDocs.org site that was recently set up by the Cairngorm Documentation Group. While there are links to sample apps and the API documentation, I specifically wanted to highlight the interactive Cairngorm Diagram Explorer, which shows a visual flow as well as the supporting code sample to execute that part of the diagram. It has really helped solidify the process of broadcasting, handling, and sending a response to a user gesture via Cairngorm. One tip though...do yourself a favor and save the SWF to your desktop and run it in the standalone Flash Player rather than through your browser. Doing it that way will allow you to view the diagram on the left of the page while displaying the related code snippet on the right side.

Fixing Cairngorm Code Hinting Issues In Flex Builder

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 00:30:00 -0400

Changing jobs, a week's vacation to Mexico, and spinning up with my new company has made this blog awfully bare lately. However, I hope to get back in the saddle by posting some tips and tricks that I've learned while diving head first into Flex 2 development. To that end, here's a helpful tip if you decide to use the Cairngorm framework in your project with Flex Builder. First off, it's important to make sure you have the Cairngorm SWC file properly added to your project. Since that's beyond the scope of this tip, you can check out Joe Rinehart's step-by-step instructions for doing so. After double-checking that I had the SWC properly imported, I couldn't get the Cairngorm-specific code to appear when I referenced the appropriate paths, and I certainly didn't want to have to drop the source code into my project. After a lot of digging, I was able to solve my issue by doing the following:

Right-click on the project in which you're using Ciarngorm and select the Properties option at the bottom of the context menu.
The fourth option in the dialog box that appears is the Flex Build path option. Select that to switch to that view.
Click the Library path tab to switch to the SWC in the project build path.
Highlight the Cairngorm SWC file and click the Up button at the right to move it to the top of the library path.
Click the OK button and wait for the project to re-compile.
Optional: You may need to close the project and re-open it to get the highlighting to work.

Truthfully, I don't know why I had issues getting the hinting to work. I dropped in the Cairngorm 2.1 SWC and it just didn't want to pop up any of the hints for me. If you're having this problem, hopefully the above steps with resolve your issue.

Adobe Flex 2 Case Study And The Power Flex 2 Charting

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:10:00 -0400

I was reading through last week's eWeek magazine and came across an excellent case study highlighting the power of the Adobe® Flex 2™ platform. Admittedly, I usually only skim through case studies because they're mostly positioned as "product X is the greatest" and is usually filled with enough buzzwords to fill an entire "buzzword bingo" card (and this one has a bunch). However, I did take notice of one particular aspect of this case study's implementation that I think gets glossed over in the Flex 2 vs. AJAX decision-making process: visualizing your data. (And let's be honest for a second: while I know you'll hear many who say that you can use both Flash and AJAX together, including the Adobe brass, that doesn't seem to be happening in most applications that I've seen (with perhaps a smattering of notable exceptions); most are in one camp or the other.) While developers will likely note that the cross-platform features of the Flex 2 platform are its biggest strength, I respectfully disagree. That's an incredible convenience, but it's not why I'm going to use it in my work. See, I'm of the school of thought that I need to present my users with the best experience possible based on the presented requirements. Humans are, by nature, visual beings. If presented with a table of data or a chart that presents that same data, a user is going to more quickly and efficiently draw his or her conclusion from the chart virtually every time. It's how our brains work. I think of the old cliche that "a picture is worth a thousand words." That may sound trite, but cliches become cliches because they're true. To that end, the most differentiating feature of the Flex 2 platform, to me, is the charting suite. The Flex 2 charting components allow users to visualize their data in ways that previously required third-party vendors and lots of supplemental code to interact with it. Andrew Tahvildary, vice president of development and Primavera Services (the subject of this case study) notes that, with Flex 2's charting components, "...we were able to use a combination of charts and data grids to provide multidimensional views over a large set of analytical data." I just don't know of many AJAX libraries that come out-of-the-box with this capability, and at Flex 2's price point. Have you seen the Adobe Flex 2 Component Explorer yet (Adobe Flash Player 9 required)? There are 16 default chart types, and all of them are extensible so that you can customize a chart to your needs. Want to see what a real-world implementation of the charting components might look like? Have a look at the Dashboard example (Adobe Flash Player 9 required) and watch how selecting data slices in one part of the application affects the charts in the other areas of the application without pages refreshes or xmlHTTP requests. The power to visualize data sets, whether simple or complex, is a mostly overlooked feature when building applications, and the Adobe Flex 2 charting suite provides you with the ability to make your users much more productive at minimal development cost. Have a look!

Adobe Co-Publishing Agreement With O'Reilly Excludes ColdFusion

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:15:00 -0400

Via Marco Casario's blog, I noted that Adobe has signed an agreement with O'Reilly Media "to co-publish and co-brand books and online learning resources for developers creating applications with technologies such as Adobe Flex, ActionScript, and Adobe Flash and Flash Video." -- but not ColdFusion. Sigh. As a long-time ColdFusion developer, this announcement is one more point of frustration with the fact that ColdFusion seems to miss out on the larger audience exposure that its siblings seem to be enjoying. While this announcement seems to be in the context of promoting "Web 2.0" technologies (a Tim O'Reilly-coined term that I absolutely loathe, by the way), this seems like the type of agreement where letting ColdFusion ride the coattails of the Adobe Flex 2 marketing strategy could be a win-win for both sides. Why? Well, you can't do a whole lot with Adobe Flex 2 if you don't have a server-side technology to do things like database querying, authorization/authentication, etc. It's a presentation layer technology (the "View" in the Model-View-Controller pattern for those wishing to be buzzword-compliant), and Adobe has been preaching for months now that the single easiest way to integrate Adobe Flex 2 with your back-end (the "Model") is via ColdFusion (in this case, the "Controller"). So why not add ColdFusion MX into this agreement and subsequently provide resources for showing just how smoothely integrated the two technologies are. You'd have the expertise of the Adobe ColdFusion team providing high-quality examples while the O'Reilly team provides the author/publishing/conference resources to expose this seamless integration to the masses. In return, O'Reilly gets an extremely passionate ColdFusion development community to support their efforts. You almost literally can't find a competent developer who hasn't heard of or used an O'Reilly-published book -- they're everywhere and are usually excellent resources. While I know that they decided a while back not to publish a ColdFusion MX 7 book due to sluggish sales of the 6.1 version, there could have been alternative resources published with this agreement that might have focused even a small part of the spotlight on the power and ease of developing with ColdFusion (i.e., O'Reilly-backed articles, samples, etc.). Adobe currently seems to have their marketing engine squarely focused on Adobe Flex 2 and ActionScript 3, as well they should. I just hope that the same zeal with which they're pursuing the growing rich internet application development community is equalled or surpassed with next year's ColdFusion 8, aka Scorpio, release.

What's Your Ideal Source Control Setup?

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 13:00:00 -0400

Recently, I've been wrestling with the task of migrating our current source control solution from Microsoft® Visual SourceSafe® over to Subversion. Now, I know there are many of you who are cringing at the mere mention of using VSS. However, until recently, it has been an extremely stable solution for our source control needs. And hey, at least we have a source control solution, right?! Our needs are changing though, and our team is clearly outgrowing the feature set that SourceSafe provides. From directory-level branching to better binary file compression and storage to concurrent editing, Subversion clearly fulfills our needs...and it's free to boot. I keep my personal files in a Subversion repository at home, so I'm familiar with it when working on one machine. However, now I need to set it up for a couple of our departments (we got some non-IT departments into version control!) and I'm trying to figure out the best way to do it. The requirements are fairly straightforward:

All access will be internal. In fact, no public access will be granted to anybody. However, not all users will have an account on the repository's server.
Must be able to fully migrate the existing VSS repository to Subversion.
Must be able to support roughly 15-20 users concurrently accessing the repository. There may be more user than that overall, but that's the targeted number of actual concurrent use.
Must be able to lock down certain projects such that users must authenticate themselves when trying to access the files.

OK, now that the requirements have been stated, I need your help figuring out the best approach. First and foremost, where to physically put the repository. We have a shiny new development box (running Red Hat Linux 4.0) for our team with tons and tons of free space. I was thinking about creating a partition there dedicated to housing the repository. At the same time, I'm hesitant to put the repository on the same box as where most of the development is going to be taking place (we all have our own JRun/ColdFusion instances on this box, so we're separate, but sharing the same overall resources). I just don't trust all the banging that the box will be taking to house our core file repository, even though we'll be taking proper backups on a nightly basis. Should I phsyically separate the repository from the dev box? With regard to the network protocol, from my research, it seems like the best setup is to install Apache on the server and manage the file access and user autentication using the mod_dav_svn module. However, this feels like overkill to an extent. I have the excellent book Pragmatic Version Control using Subversion 2nd Ed. by Mike Mason (and published by Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt of Pragmatic Programmer fame), so I'm aware of the pros and cons of each of the protocol options (svnsserve, svnserve+ssh, and Apache). However, I'm looking for other real-world opinions on each, based on the stated requirements. With regard to migrating the existing VSS repository, this is a biggie. The problem I have with a lot of the current presentations about using Subversion is that they all assume that you're starting with a clean slate. However, we have literally years worth of comments, tags, labels, etc., that are an absolute "must keep." To that end, I have been monitoring the open source project Vss2Svn with the hopes of using their solution for migrating our repository. However, it doesn't look quite ready for prime time just yet. Has anybody succesfully used it by chance? I also found a solution from Polarion called Subversion Pro that looks to be free for at least the migration aspects of the product. Has anybody used this one? Lastly, are there any tips on the best way to set up authorization/authentication? Anything else I'm overlooking? We're currently using the amazing FogBugz project management system from Fog Creek software (it integrates with virtually all source code management systems, which is great), so we don't need things like Trac. Thanks for any insights.

Adobe Flex 2 Receives High Praise From eWeek

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 10:10:00 -0400

I just saw over at eWeek that Labs Director Jim Rapoza has given an extremely positive review of Adobe Flex 2. It's also currently the "Top Story" on their homepage, which should give it some nice exposure for the time being. There's also a small slideshow that has some screenshots of their walkthrough. The one negative that they mentioned was that Flex Builder currently only runs on Windows. However, as Sho Kuwamoto recently showed, there is a Mac build of Flex Builder 2 running internally at Adobe right now, so that criticism will hopefully be squashed in the near future.

Array vs. ArrayCollection in Flex 2 (with a ColdFusion Slant)

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 13:05:00 -0400

I've been spending a bit of personal time digging into Flex 2 development. One thing I've noticed up front is that there's an important distinction between using an Array and an ArrayCollection when coding your applications. This is an important point for ColdFusion developers because, in CF, we only have an Array datatype while most other languages (Java, C#, etc.) have an explicit ArrayCollection class. Further, since Flex is simply a front-end development language, you're likely to be doing lots of talking to a back-end technology to return data sets and the like. So what's the difference? Well, the LiveDocs entry for the ArrayCollection class sums it up pretty well, so here it is:

The ArrayCollection class is a wrapper class that exposes an Array as a collection that can be accessed and manipulated using the methods and properties of the ICollectionView or IList interfaces. Operations on a ArrayCollection instance modify the data source; for example, if you use the removeItemAt() method on an ArrayCollection, you remove the item from the underlying Array.

The first sentence in that explanation is the key: The ArrayCollection class is simply a wrapper around the Array class. So if they're both Arrays at some level, why is this important? Well, with a standard Array, what you have available to you are the basic methods and properties that you'd expect in any language: push() (for adding an element to the end), pop() (for removing the last element), length (the number of indices), etc. However, the ArrayCollection class provides a suite of immensely convenient "extra" methods that can act on the Array. For example, say I have an array with the values in the color spectrum:


var spectrumColors:Array = ["red","orange","yellow","green","blue","indigo","violet"];

(Quick side note to ColdFusion developers: Arrays in ActionScript are zero-based. So, to directly access the element "red", you'd use spectrumColors[0] rather than spectrumColors[1] like you would in ColdFusion.) However, Stephen Hawking releases a new theory that there's no such thing as "green," and mandates that it should be removed from the color spectrum. How would you do it using the Array class? Honestly, it's not worth getting into the code because it's a waste of keystrokes. However, there's a really easy way to do this: Use the ArrayCollection class. The ArrayCollection class extends the ListCollectionView class. Without getting into the boring details, the ListCollectionView class has a bunch of extremely handy methods for manipulating its elements, namely the addItemAt(), removeItemAt(), and getItemAt() methods. Going back to our example, if the spectrumColors variable is datatyped as being an ArrayCollection, accomodating Mr. Hawking becomes immensely easier:


var spectrumColors:ArrayCollection = ["red","orange","yellow","green","blue","indigo","violet"];

spectrumColors.removeItemAt(spectrumColors.getItemIndex("green"));

All the code above does is create the spectrumColors variable of type ArrayCollection, and then removes the item from the array based on the returned index value that matches the value "green." See? Easy. No need to manually loop over the array to find an index or verbose constructs like that. OK, so I promised a ColdFusion slant in the post title. Now that you have an understanding of Array vs. ArrayCollection, let's see how this fits in to ColdFusion and Flex. Flex is all about providing a rich user interface for our users. However, the key phrase in that sentence is "user interface." Flex does not provide any native database connectivity, so you need a back-end technology to do the "heavy lifting" and return the results to Flex for display. The ColdFusion team did a phenomenal job of making Flex/ColdFusion integration as seamless as possible in the 7.0.2 release. However, there are certain nuances that we need to keep in mind when working between these two technologies. One such nuance is the fact that it's one thing to query for data and return it as-is to the calling environment (ColdFusion), but it's another to be able to use advanced concepts such as run-time sorting and filtering for display (Flex). To that end, certain Flex 2 framework components use what are known as data providers to not only display the result set, but to further allow the user to manipulate the results to their liking. To that end, the Flex engineers cleverly implemented these framework components such that you could either use the raw datatype returned or you could use a collection instead, which allows for more advanced access to the data set. Hopefully my above explanation regarding the difference between an Array and and ArrayCollection sufficiently shows the difference between a datatype and its Collection wrapper class. You could use a basic Array (the raw datatype) to display a result set, if that's all you want to do. But to provide more advanced interaction, these raw datatype classes don't provide the necessary advanced access or event broadcasts necessary. So you're going to need to convert the datatype that comes back from your back-end (i.e., ColdFusion) into the appropriate collection type so that it can then be used for display, thereby offering some of the more advanced features that the Flex framework provides. While there are many controls that use data providers, I'm going to use the DataGrid in my example because that seems to be the most common way of displaying tabular data in Flex. If I want to display a datagrid consisting of some basic company information: company name, address, etc., below is the ActionScript code needed to take the returned results into the appropriate collection datatype. Assume that a ColdFusion query is being returned.

As you can see the above code simply takes the query returned from ColdFusion ("event.result") and "coerces" it (or casts it) to an ArrayCollection using the as keyword. The framework takes care of everything else for you. Then I simply assign the companyInfo variable as the data provider for the DataGrid. If I now wanted to add more advanced functionality, such as filtering or editing, to the result set, I already have the results in the appropriate format. I just need to write a function that acts as the filter or "listens" for the updated data. The Adobe LiveDocs resource provides a great example of providing this sort of functionality. Hopefully this provides a basic understanding of the difference between datatypes and their associated Collection classes, and when each one should be used.

My Flex Ad Campaign Suggestions

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 23:15:00 -0400

So Ryan Stewart rightly flamed Adobe for a poor execution of an ad campaign they were running on some of the Federated Media sites. In one of the comments, Jeff Whatcott, Senior Director of Product Marketing for the Enterprise and Developer Business Unit at Adobe (I'm not sure his title can get any longer), not only acknowledged the execution gaffe, but further comments that the campaign has been pulled altogether. He then went on to challenge the readers as to what we think a better online advertising campaign should be:

So here's the invitation: please jump on this thread with your specific suggestions for what the Flex online advertising should say and what is should look like. What should the tone be (sophisticated, edgy, friendly, in your face, or what have you)? What should the catchy tag line be? What should the short product description be? What benefits, if any, should we mention right in the ad and what should be on the jump page? Should we bang directly on the competition (think Oracle ads) or should we focus on our own strengths? What creative concepts should we consider (code puzzles that convey a message, movies of Flex coding/results, what else)?

Here's the thing though... I'm a developer by trade, so actually designing something more than a stick figure (which is a challenge in and of itself) is pretty comical. Seriously, Photoshop/Fireworks and I just aren't friends. So I'm going to leave the "looks" part of his request to the pros. But that doesn't mean I can't put in my two cents on a couple of his questions. Specifically:

What should the catchy tag line be? What should the short product description be?

I spent a bit of time tonight just throwing down ideas. Here's what I've come up with so far... Catchy Tag Line Ideas

Adobe Flex 2: Why Wait For What's Here Already?
Adobe Flex 2: Flash Reborn
Adobe Flex 2: Rich Internet Applications Redefined
Adobe Flex 2: The Web Like You've Never Seen It
Adobe Flex 2: Free Has Never Been This Easy
Adobe Flex 2: Set Your Data Free
Adobe Flex 2: Unleash Your Data
Adobe Flex 2 and You: Perfect Together

OK, the last one's awful, but I had to give a shout out to my New Jersey roots by paying homage to its successful 1980s ad campaign: New Jersey and You, Perfect Together. Feel free to ignore that one. Anyway, I think the other ones walk the advertising balance between piquing one's interest, conveying (albeit at a very high level) what the technology does, and taking a light jab at Microsoft (yes, I had Sparkle in mind in the first bullet.) I also had one that said "Adobe Flex 2: The Power Of Your Desktop On The Web," but that's really more Apollo-esque, so I left it out. Short Product Description This one's pretty tough too because you have several audiences that will potentially see the text, and you need to cater to all of them at some level. From hard-core C++/Java/.NET developers to designers to managers, the text needs to have something that will at least make them click into a more descriptive landing page. This is what I came up with:

Adobe Flex 2 delivers on the promise of Rich Internet Applications by fusing the power of the web with the familiar feel of your desktop. And because it runs in the Adobe Flash Player, the most pervasive plugin in the history of the Internet, it runs exactly the same on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Leverage your existing Service Oriented Architecture by putting the interactivity of traditional desktop applications at your customers' fingertips. Oh, and it can be done in about 10 lines of code!

My thought process was to come up with something that describes what the product does, while promoting its competitive advantage in that it's cross-platform, runs in a familiar plugin, and doesn't require a complete rewrite of existing code. I'm still not that totally content with it, but I thought I'd throw it out there for feedback to see what others are thinking. I stayed away from a couple of other people's suggestions and some of Jeff's questions intentionally.

I didn't put any code as a complement to the overview statement. One developer pool that I know Adobe is trying to pull from is the hard core C++/Java/.NET camp. As a long-time ColdFusion developer, there's still a stigma that tag-based languages, such as ColdFusion and MXML, are inferior because their abstraction takes away the developer's power and degrades overall performance. I would submit that the landing page should have the links to the code samples along with plenty of videos that point out how quickly you really can develop some pretty advanced behaviors. Also, the code examples shouldn't rely on third-party tools, such as Flickr. It's cool that you can do that, but I don't think you're going to see people rusing out to get their own Flickr API key just to run a sample. I actually think the samples are a big strength for Adobe, and they've done a good job of getting examples for all levels of expertise online.
I don't think Adobe should go the "Oracle route" and single out competitors. First off, it gives the competitors free press. Let them pay for their own airtime. Second, I think it's class-less and evokes a feeling of fear that their own product is inferior and they're just covering those shortcomings up.

What do you think? How would you improve on the current Flex 2 online marketing campaign? How'd I do? Remember, I'm a developer, so my thoughts are really just raw brain dumps...nothing polished.

Joe Rinehart on TheServerSide.com

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 10:34:00 -0400

I was just perusing through my aggregated blogs and saw that Joe Rinehart has posted an entry on TheServerSide.com entitled IoC, AOP, and Rails-like productivity...in ColdFusion?. In the entry, he notes that "hot" areas of J2EE development such as Spring and Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) are available in ColdFusion and, coupled with established frameworks like Model-Glue, can make the lives of J2EE developers much easier. Further, he notes that since ColdFusion is just a J2EE application itself, existing infrastructure can be leveraged, effectively minimizing or outright eliminating the need to switch to alternative technologies such as Ruby on Rails. I am specifically pointing out this entry because it's great to see ColdFusion being promoted on major J2EE-developer sites (as it should be). This sort of "grassroots" marketing is far more effective than glossy magazine ads that most people will likely skip over when reading their trade magazine. Plus, with Joe's YouTube videos, current and prospective developers can see a real-world application of these concepts rather than just hearing and/or reading that concepts like Inversion of Control (IoC) and AOP are merely possible.

A MacBook Pro Review From A Windows Perspective

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:55:00 -0400

So I wrote a few posts about my dilemma regarding switching to a Mac for my personal laptop after spending (literally) my whole life on a Windows-based PC, and people were interested in hearing how it worked out, so here goes... The Ordering Experience Simple. Standard. The ordering process was very familiar if you've ever been to and/or ordered from Dell's web site. Choose your desired model, click a few radio buttons to configure your personal specs for the machine, and off you go. I will say that if Apple really wants to gain market share, they have to provide better financing options than they currently do. Essentially, you either pay by credit card or a P.O. if it's for work. That's lame. Where I believe Dell really has a leg up is that they provide a leasing option whereby you pay off the balance of a secured loan over a multi-year period at a fixed percentage rate. When I was paying off my old Dell, it was great to know that $78.56 was being deducted from my account every month and that, over the agreed-upon time period, the balance of the loan was paid off. Now I have yet another credit card to juggle. Oh yeah, and if you choose to finance through Apple rather than using an existing personal credit card, you literally have to open a new credit card account. The worst part about it is that you don't know what the interest rate is until after you've opened the account! So even if you decide that you don't want to use the account because the interest rate is too high, the account is already opened and reflected in your credit report. The above being said, I was still elated with my purchase (made on a Tuesday), and received an early birthday gift when it arrived that same week on Friday. The Machine Gorgeous. Sleek. Thin. Screaming Fast. Hot. Yeah, the common gripe is indeed true....these things get hot. Although I guess that's what happens when you take a high-powered processor and stuff it in a metal case that's only 1 inch thick. So I was definitely prepared for it. As the guys at the Apple Store told me when I was looking at the machines and comparing the 15 inch with the 17 inch model (I got the 15 inch), they're intentionally not calling them "laptops." Rather, the Apple company line has been to call them "portables" so that people don't put them on their lap and burn themselves. The Software This is probably my favorite part about the machine. A lot is made of the high cost of purchasing a Mac versus a PC. However, what I think gets lost in the debate is that Apple provides a ton of useful software out of the box. If you were to add up the cost of the individual software components, it's likely around $1,000 USD. Seriously. I'm not talking about the common PC trial-ware for AOL or EarthLink or any of the hundreds of other titles that most people uninstall as soon as they power up their new PC. I'm talking about a music recording application called GarageBand (which I now use to record my guitar songs....I'm not very good by the way), iTunes, iPhoto (a powerful photo editing and organization application), HD video editing software, multiple chat applications, iWeb (for creating web sites), and, of course, a solid web browser. Mac Eye For The Windows Guy OK, a cheesy section title, but that's the best I could do this late at night while trying to convey the fact that using a Mac is a different mindset as compared to using a PC. On a PC, you're likely have multiple partitions on your drive to separate your data from your applications in the event of a system crash (corrupt registry, etc.). Well, with a Mac, you don't have to worry about that. There's no such thing as a registry, and everything is treated as a file, so if you want to delete a program, just drag the program to the Trash and it's gone. No Start -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> Do a Dance To Make Sure All Registry Keys Are Deleted, Which Likely Won't Happen. But I'm still having trouble adjusting to the fact that closing a window does not close the application itself. You still have to separately quit out of the application itself (in most cases). I'm not sure how I feel about that. For the most part, if I'm shutting the application window, then I'm likely done with it. So close altogether please. Installing software is still tripping me up from time to time as well. Most Mac applications come as a DMG file, which is roughly equivalent to a ZIP file. When you double-click the DMG file, it doesn't actually install the application in most cases, as you would expect from double-clicking an EXE file in Windows. All it does it mount the file archive so that you can then run the installer application. This took me a few attempts to figure out. I would "install" Firefox and then re-boot my machine only to see that it disappeared! The other problem I have is that sometimes applications don't tell me where they're being installed and I can't choose the location. I installed the TiVo Desktop Software about 8 times (seriously) before I realized it was in my System Preferences folder. I was clueless. Lastly, I went ahead and plunked down the amazingly cheap $39.99 for Parallels Software's Desktop For Mac application and installed Windows into it. Even in a virtual OS, Windows now runs about twice as fast as my old Dell ever did. Not that it's the Dell machine's fault, mind you, but it's still incredibe to see the speed difference. I'm going to be using this machine to do some Flex 2 development, and it's nice to see I won't be hindered by performance. The "Intel" Problem The big thing that I'm finding out about this machine is that most people still haven't updated their applications to support the Intel-based Mac yet (Adobe, I'm looking in your direction). So a lot of programs need to run in an emulation mode using something called "Rosetta" to translate the PowerPC-based instruction set to the Intel platform. It's supposed to slow down the application, and I suppose it does, but, honestly, these machines are so fast as it is that it's barely noticeable. I will say that running ColdFusion is a royal pain in the behind. See, Macs come with the Java 5 SDK as its default Java Virtual Machine. Unfortunately, ColdFusion doesn't run on this JVM yet. So, thanks to Google and Simeon Bateman's blog, I was able to track down a shell script that allows me to set the JDK to Java 1.4.2 so that ColdFusion is happy and will start. So I have ColdFusion out of the way. Now I have to track down an Oracle installation for this machine, as this is what my company uses and it'd be good to have it set up locally. The Negative So with all the gushing and positive comments, you'd think everything is great. Well, it is and it isn't. You see, my computer technically works, but it's also what Apple considers to be DOA (Dead On Arrival). The second memory bank (where I was trying to install some more RAM because it was cheaper than getting it from Apple) is dead. So I call up the AppleCare number because that's what I just paid good money for. Within 10 seconds, the tech support guy tells me he's a "software guy" and that hardware's out of his realm. His suggestion....bring it to a Mac Genius at one of their retail stores. I was a bit annoyed, but I was willing to give it a shot. I made an appointment with a "Genius," and, sure enough, he confirmed what I already knew. So you'd think that they would replace the laptop there on the spot because it's a retail store and they carry those kinds of things. Well, not so much. It turns out that because I upgraded a couple items at the time of my purchase (from 512 MB to 1 GB RAM and frm the 5400 RPM to the 7200 RPM hard drive), that's technically considered a "custom built machine" and they'll have to have it specially built for me in China. Oh yeah, and that'll take two weeks. I mean, what the heck's the point of the retail stores if they can't replace my machine right there? So, needless to say, I'm blogging this entry right now on a soon-to-be-returned machine. However, since it does function without issue with the 1 GB RAM module that came with the machine, they're letting me keep this through the CFUNITED conference next week, which is the main reason why I bought it when I did. I do have to say that their support staff was very accomodating to my situation, and they're allowing a "grace period" for me to return the machine for a new one rather than repairing this machine. As they put it, who wants a new computer that immediately has to be repaired? A Couple Pointers In closing, since this is the longest post in my short blogging history, I wanted to pass along two great little tips I've learned in my short experience with the computer.

Empty Trash vs. Secure Empty Trash: I saw this one whie waiting on line in the Apple Store. When you empty your Trash Bin, you're not really deleting the files from your system. Sure, they don't appear in your folders, but all you've done is tell the OS that the space the deleted file once occupied is eligible to be overwritten when space is needed. If you want to erase all remnants of a file from your system and immediately free up the space, choose the Finder->Secure Empty Trash menu option. This is particularly important for personal data files.
Get the iStat Pro Dashboard Widget: The Mac Genius I spoke to pointed out the iStat Pro dashboard widget, which gives you a high-level overview of all the major system components, such as battery life, temperature, memory usage, broadband speed, and more. The temperature and fan feature isn't working on the Intel-based Macs yet, but support for it is imminent, and this free widget is certainly a useful utility.

Overall Yeah, I have to send the computer back, but overall I'm ecstatic with the purchase. I really am. There are some things I need to learn to better use the machine (shortcuts, etc.), but I hope to pick the brains of some Mac users at CFUNITED next week to get a better grasp of the OS. I'm already more productive with this machine than I have been in a long time for my personal work. If you're on the fence, do it. You still have Windows via Parallels as a safety net, and it's such a complete system that has everything I need to be productive. The product reviews I read before buying the MacBook Pro were all from previous Mac users, so I was a bit skeptical. Well, I see why Mac users are loyal. Apple's on to something with this line, and if they can sort out the aforementioned financing problems (and ship fully functioning hardware), they have a great shot at converting large numbers of Windows users.

Adobe Developer Week Breeze Presentation Links

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 10:05:00 -0400

Via Ted Patrick's blog, I saw that Adobe has released the URLs to all the recorded Breeze presentations from Adobe Developer Week. I attended several of them and will try to post up a quick review of each when I get some time to breathe (along with the 85 other topics I've been wanting to post about but haven't had time to). However, I will say right now that most of the presentations were excellent and I'm absolutely in love with Breeze as a conferencing platform. Enjoy.

Leak? June 28th Release For Adobe Flex 2

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 13:04:00 -0400

Scott Langeberg just posted on the flexcoders list that he learned in a Breeze webinar that Adobe Flex 2 is slated to be released on June 28th! Here is the contents of the post, which includes the long-awaited pricing breakdown:

According to Sydney Sloan (Marketing - Adobe) in a Breeze webinar @ 11AM (c): Official release date: June 28, 2006 Pricing as follows: Flex 2 SDK - FREE Flex Builder 2 - $499, $749 w/charting FDS - $6,000 (100 concurrent users), $20,000 (enterprise) Interestingly: FDS Express - FREE (one app per cpu). Charting components - $299

I want to stress that the above information came from one non-Adobe employee, and may not be entirely accurate, if at all. That disclaimer aside, AWESOME!!! That positions the release to be on Day 1 of the CFUNITED conference, which also means that Mystic (aka, ColdFusion 7.0.2) will be released that day as well (it was noted in a Developer Week presentation that the CF bits would be released simultaneously). The release date does seem to make sense, as Adobe will be giving the keynote address at the conference that day, which makes it the perfect platform to make a major announcement such as this (among other channels, of course). Further, it follows the "first half of 2006" official line on release dates to this point, yet maximizes the time they have to get it out the door. I have to say, the pricing is extremely aggressive, and I think is a further testament to how much Adobe has riding on this release. If you haven't been checking out the online presentations this week surrounding Flex during Adobe Developer Week, then you're missing out on a ton of great information. P.E. -- (Post Entry) I hope Sydney Sloan doesn't get in too much trouble!!