Dave Carabetta: My Thoughts - Adobe

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!

How To Build RIAs...Successfully

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:00:00 -0400

As their home page says, Forrester Research is a technology and market research company that provides pragmatic advice to global leaders in business and technology. Anybody who works in our industry has heard of Forrester just like they would have heard of their competitors such as Gartner. They are fiercely independent in their case studies and truly have a hand in boosting -- or busting -- trends. Forrester has been trying to understand the rich Internet applications (RIAs) design and development process. While many firms like Cynergy have been doing this sort of development for so long that it seems like it's old hat, the fact of the matter is that building real applications with technologies like Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, and Microsoft WPF is still pretty new and lots of companies are trying to get their heads around how to set up a successful workflow. After a lot of research, Forrester essentially concluded that Cynergy's approach -- and what we have learned by approaching our projects this way -- is the template from which other firms should be modeling their workflows, and Dave Wolf, Cynergy's vice president has blogged a nice summary with a link to a free copy of the report (which usually goes for $750). Now, I want to be very careful with the messaging here. I still (barely) maintain a separate blog from Cynergy's blogs because I don't want to be a shill for everything we do -- at least, not on my blog. :) That said, one thing I've learned in the time I've been at Cynergy is just how hard it is to set up a repeatable workflow for designing and developing successful RIAs. And by "successful RIAs" I mean real, enterprise-level applications upon which you can build your business. Trust me, if this workflow were that easy, a lot more people would be doing it, and it's one thing to do something once but another thing entirely to continually "rinse and repeat" it successfully. I encourage you to check out the report and compare how we're building RIAs with how you're building them (or would like to). At 7 pages, it won't take more than 15-20 minutes of your time but it could provide insights into a process that will save you hundreds of hours down the line. Oh yeah, and if you'd like to see the output of having a sound process, check out CynergyTV for some examples of real apps built to solve real business needs.

CynergyTV: Flex, Silverlight And Why I've Disappeared

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:21:00 -0400

So why have I been so quiet for pretty much the last year outside of some token posts? Well, our re-launched CynergyTV experience holds the reason, and I'm glad I can finally talk about it. So Dave, you mean you've spent the last year re-building CynergyTV? Nope, not quite. That was done by an extremely talented team here at Cynergy that worked extremely hard to not only refresh the user experience but deliver the content in professional audio/video quality supported by lots of hardware and software upgrades in our data center. Incidentally, when I say team, I mean it in the truest sense of the word -- our president, Carson Hager, recognizing that we could and should present our accomplishments better and allowing guys to stop being billable in order to get this done; our Marketing group spending hours in the recording studio choreographing the audio/video; our User Experience group iterating through lots of potential look and feel options until it was nailed; our Rich Interface team implementing the user experience in Adobe Flex; and finally, our Enterprise Services and Network Support teams building out the services tier to support the streaming video content (not a trivial task as I've come to learn), notifying the appropriate people when the Let's Talk form is submitted, and then setting up the appropriate infrastructure to host it all in our data center. If that sounds like a lot of work, that's because it was -- and it was well worth the investment. So back to my opening question as to why I've been so quiet. Well, if you head over to CynergyTV (after reading this post, of course), you'll see that one of the showcases is for an application we built called Quickcomm Enterprise, a telecom expense management (TEM) tool for one of our clients, Quickcomm. It is this application that has basically been most of the last year of my life. As the Technical Lead on the project (which is a combination senior application architect and project manager here at Cynergy), I have spent over 1,600 hours working with my team here at Cynergy and the team at Quickcomm to deliver the most disruptive TEM solution on the market and I'm extraordinarily proud and privileged to have worked with both teams. Since the completion of that project a short while back, I have since made the transition for being a Technical Lead to Business Development -- yes, the dreaded "sales" guy. I was ready for a new challenge beyond coding and the growth opportunities here at Cynergy made this transition both seamless and a no-brainer. So now I get to put on my sales hat: If you're interested in speaking with us about an idea you have or have an existing application you want re-invented to provide a better user experience, drop us a line and we're happy to speak with you further. And of course, if you have any feedback at all about the re-launched CynergyTV, feel free to leave a comment and I'll make sure it reaches the right people immediately. Lastly, if you're a developer who wants to work with a phenomenally talented team that continually delivers cutting edge applications, we'd love to speak with you about career opportunities at Cynergy. It's a great time to be building RIAs and we'd love for you to be a part of it!

Adobe Announces Searchable SWF Collaboration With Google And Yahoo!

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:50:00 -0400

One reason (OK, there are many, I admit) why this blog has gone bare lately is because I try not to post announcements that every other similar blog in the world has already announced. It's a waste of my time and being one of 2,000 posts on the same exact subject doesn't tend to interest me (anymore). However, today's announcement by Adobe that they are working with Google and Yahoo! to enhance the search capabilities of SWF files (Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex applications in case you don't know what a SWF file is) is a long overdue breakthrough for the rich Internet application (RIA) trend, and is yet another validation of technologies such as Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight for delivering public-facing, web-based applications. Let's get one thing right out there though: Not all RIAs should be searchable by search engines. Many (most?) RIAs are not and should not be simple ports of HTML-based web sites over to these newer technologies. That would be a waste of time and money. RIAs really excel for true web-based application development -- think applications like Picnik, an online photo editor. There isn't any real value in Google being able to index the photo editing application itself -- that's sort of like indexing Microsoft Word. However, an Adobe Flex-based RIA that captures the latest new stories and visualizes them -- i.e., displaying the titles in little bubbles and having more popular stories have larger bubbles -- is right in the wheelhouse of the utility of this announcement. The ability for Google and Yahoo! to be able to crawl the SWF itself for the content rather than having to expose the raw RSS feed, XML file, or whatever the source is incredibly valuable. A social network RIA that allows search engines to index public profiles -- think LinkedIn -- is yet another example of where the convergence of the sticky user experience Flex provides and the search engine power of Google and Yahoo! is extremely powerful. Lastly, and this is a lesser point yet one I still wish to make, I've been to trade shows where AJAX-focused companies tout their products. Interestingly, I invariably hear them say as part of their pitch that one of the big distinctions between AJAX applications and Adobe Flex or Microsoft Silverlight applications is that AJAX apps can be searched by the major search engines. Well, the competitive advantage is leveled today. I certainly am one who is curious to see how Adobe's announcement plays out in reality (name the last technical solution you saw that worked flawlessly on the first try), but hopefully the AJAX vs. Flex/Silverlight debate can start to move back to what really matters: the user experience.

Understanding Which Channel To Use In BlazeDS And LCDS

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:15:00 -0400

Tap, Tap. Does this thing still work? :) I have been heads down on a major project for several months now and the delivery is in the next few weeks. I promise I'm still alive and rearing to get back into blogging on a more regular basis. I can't wait to be able to show off the killer app I've been working on! I just came across a phenomenal blog post outlining the different channel/endpoint options available in BlazeDS and LiveCycle Data Services along with a breakdown of the pros and cons of using each connectivity option. I'm not a fan of link dumps like this, but, honestly, anything I write will just be a regurgitation of this excellent summary, so I'm going to break my own rule and direct you to Damon Cooper's blog instead. If you're doing any work with BlazeDS or LCDS, you have to read and bookmark this post!

A Very Important Change From Flex Builder 2 To Flex Builder 3

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:27:00 -0400

This has come up several times on the flexcoders mailing list and since it's such an important change, I thought I would post it to help make sure it doesn't get missed. With the release of Flex Builder 3 Beta 2 on Adobe Labs, when you now compile your application, Flex Builder only generates a debug version of the SWF by default. However, and this is the part that is tripping people up, there is no -debug suffix on the generated SWF file, so it will be named as if it were the release version. The big difference is that the file size will be much larger. This last point has raised a red flag with some developers, who mistakenly believe that the latest beta actually increases the file size of the release version of their application. Why did Adobe do this? Well, if you've built a good size Flex application, you'll have likely noticed that the compilation time grows dramatically to the point where you can sometimes literally go and get some coffee in the time that it takes to compile your application. Seriously. This is (partly) because, prior to Flex Builder 3 Beta 2, both a release version and a debug version of the application were being generated in the output directory, so you were waiting roughly twice the amount of time for Flex Builder to do its job (OK, the delay is not quite that linear, but you get the point). Further, if you're using the Modules feature, you had to write some hack-ish runtime code to determine which SWF file to use between development and production. But when you're developing your application, you usually don't care about the release version of the SWF, right? Well, to reduce this "wait time," only the debug version of the SWF is created, and since the file name will always remain the same, your hack-ish runtime code is no longer needed. OK, so this is great while you're developing, but what happens when you're ready to release your application and really do want the release version of the SWF? Well, the latest beta introduced the Export Release Wizard. Found in the Project menu, this handy wizard will create the release version of your application in a bin-release directory by default. It is in this new output directory that you will find a clean, compressed version of your application all ready to deploy to your production environment. Mike Morearty and Tim Buntel of Adobe give excellent explanations of this change and I encourage you to take a look at their posts if you would like more information. It's a change that makes sense, but if you're a long-time Flex developer, then it's definitely going to take some time to get used to remembering it.

Flex 3 (and 2.0.1) Nightly Builds Available

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:25:00 -0400

If you're following the Adobe Flex 3 release cycle, it may seem as if there hasn't been an update since Beta 1 was released back in June. However, there are nightly builds of the Flex 3 (aka Moxie) SDK and compiler module available for download. Further, there are nightly builds available for the 2.0.1 release as well if you happen to be using that and are having issues. Each build comes with a set of release notes (which just look to be an export of the comments from the associated bug base cases). Big Disclaimer: Please be aware that nightly builds are not as rigorously tested for stability by the Flex engineering team before release, which is why you don't see them labeled with the official "Beta" tags. In fact, it is possible that some nightly builds may not work at all. Further, the nightly builds do not include further support for Adobe AIR, so you'll need to stick with the June release if using that technology. Installation is as simple as backing up the "moxie" directory in your current installation (which is located under the "sdks" directory in the installation root) and then overwriting its contents with the downloaded zip (I also clean my projects in Flex Builder via the Project -> Clean...) option to make sure there are no lingering issues. Unfortunately, there are no nightly builds of the Flex Builder 3 IDE available, but the Flex 3 Planning Guide indicates that a refresh will be available in early October (I'm guessing at MAX, even though it's technically at the end of September).

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!

A Couple Of Issues With The Latest Adobe Flash Player Release (9.0.45)

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:05:00 -0400

So Adobe quietly released an update to the Flash Player late last week on April 12th. Funny enough, I only knew about it because a co-worker of mine was prompted to upgrade his Flash Player when he went to run an application. However, I've come across a couple of issues with this release that I think are worth noting publicly in case you should run into them. Neither of them are show-stoppers, but number 2 especially is annoying.

You'll need to download the latest uninstaller (dated 11/14/2006) to get rid of the version 9.0.28 bits. You can likely just install the upgrade over an existing 9.0.x installation, but I know in the past that Macromedia-now-Adobe has recommended first uninstalling the existing Flash Player before installing the new version, so I tend to follow that to be safe. I had an uninstaller from the 9.0.16 release, and it threw a runtime error during the uninstall process for the 9.0.28 Player because a method was missing from one of the installed DLLs (sorry I can't be more helpful with the specific message because I resolved the problem before capturing a snapshot).
This problem I have yet to solve. I am using the Eclipse plugin version of Flex Builder 2.0.1 with the SDK Hotfix 1 installed and every time I go to launch one of my Flex applications, I now receive this lovely error message:

What really annoys me about this error is that it still launches the application without issue using the 9.0.45 Flash Player, but there's no way of turning it off via a "Remember this decision" error, so I now have to Click the "Yes" button every time! If I happen to come across a solution to number 2 or if Adobe happens to post a workaround, I'll post an update back here.

A Trick For Dumping the Event Object in Flex 2

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 15:51:00 -0400

I know there are third-party tools out there that some people use to debug their Flex applications, and I'm personally a huge fan of the Flash Tracer plugin for viewing trace() statements and dumping out objects without having to use the Debug mode option in Flex Builder 2. However, one issue that I run into a lot is the need to dump out an event object in a given function. My personal choice for doing this is a combination of the trace() function and the uber-handy ObjectUtil class, like so:


import mx.utils.ObjectUtil;

private function onChangeItem( event : ListEvent ) : void
{
   trace( ObjectUtil.toString(event.target) );
}

However, the problem with the above code is that it throws a not-so-clear run-time exception:

Error: Error #2099: The loading object is not sufficiently loaded to provide this information.

Yeah, that's really helpful! This error prevents you from being able to see the event object except for actually setting a breakpoint in the Flex Builder UI and re-running the application in debug mode. However, there's a workaround that you can use to get the object to dump out correctly:


import mx.utils.ObjectUtil;

private function onChangeItem( event : ListEvent ) : void
{
   trace( ObjectUtil.toString(event.target, null, ['loaderInfo']) );
}

The key to the above modification is the last argument, which is an array of options to exclude when dumping the object. In this case, since the loading object info isn't available, just get rid of it! I certainly recognize that there are several ways to inspect an object at runtime, and using ObjectUtil.toString() is just one of them. However, in the case that you use the above approach, remember to exclude the loaderInfo data from the dump, and you'll be all set.

Separating Eclipse Plugins From The IDE Installation

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 11:50:00 -0400

One things that's annoying with Eclipse by default is that you have to install your plugins in the root directory of the IDE installation. The problem with that is if you need to run multiple IDEs because of plugin compatibility issues with whatever you're developing, you have to re-install all of your plugins or go through the built-in update mechanism to re-set everything up for each installation. That's really annoying. A little over a year and a half ago, I stumbled across a posting on Javalobby that gave a step-by-step explanation as to how you can manage multiple Eclipse IDE installations. Using this approach, having to use multiple IDEs (or even just updating between, say, Eclipse 3.1 and 3.2) doesn't mean having to re-install your plugins for each one. I've been using this setup for a really long time now and have never run into issues with it. Eclipse is a killer IDE that I still can't believe is free. Now you can enjoy using many of the rich plugins available without having to worry about re-installing everything between IDE updates!

Want To See Adobe Flex At Its Best?

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:05:00 -0400

This blog is becoming awfully barren as of late, and, despite my best efforts to stay active, it has been close to impossible to post entries due to the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day. However, I'm incredibly proud to finally show off what keeps me and my co-workers at Cynergy so busy. Today we launched Cynergy TV, an interactive Flex-based channel where we will be publishing all sorts of showcases, flex tips, tricks, etc., that we hope will benefit the Adobe Flex community. As an employee at Cynergy, I'm incredibly excited to see where we take this, and I definitely plan on contributing as we move forward with the initiative. So what's this about "Adobe Flex at its best?" Well, "episode 1" showcases some of our most engaging applications. I've noticed several flexcoders and blog posts from people who don't think Adobe Flex is verstaile-enough to be taken seriously or is limiting in its design. I simply disagree, and I hope that these showcases will provide some inspiration for you to create some truly interactive solutions. Our showcases really exhibit Adobe Flex at its best. From ColdFusion to Java to .NET, we've created high-impact solutions that integrate with all sorts of back-end systems. Are you a developer who has worked with Flex or AJAX on some level and is interested in joining the industry leader in Rich Internet Applications? Shoot us an e-mail with your resume. We really want to hear from you. As it says all over our corporate web site, "Let's Talk." ;)

Getting the Flash Tracer Plugin To Work With The Latest Flash Player Release

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 22:30:00 -0400

I've mentioned previously that I'm a fan of using the awesome Flash Tracer plugin with Firefox to debug my Adobe Flex applications. However, the latest Flash Player release by Adobe, 9.0.28 as of this writing, broke the plugin. For a while, I just downgraded to the 9.0.16 version of the Flash Player that comes with the Flex Builder installer because that worked without issue. However, tonight I decided to investigate a bit further what exactly was breaking the plugin. As it turns out, it's relatively simple. To make the Flash Player compatible with Microsoft Windows Vista, Adobe changed the location of the flashlog.txt file that the debugger player writes to. It can now generally be located in this directory (on Windows machines...I don't have a Mac to test with unfortunately):

C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\Logs

Make sure a file call flashlog.txt exists in that directory (if not, just create an empty file with that name in Notepad), open up the Flash Tracer plugin, select the Options button in the lower right of the pane, and paste in the new location in the "Select output file" box, making sure that flashlog.txt is appended to the end. Now restart Firefox and you should be all set. I have had no issues with the 9.0.28 release since this change. I honestly can't say enough about the productivity increase this plugin has afforded me since coming across it. If you're having problems, using the above instructions should sort them out. Update: My co-worker, Keun Lee, passed on some helpful information to me with regard to getting the Mac version of the plugin to work and has given me permission to re-print it here:

[T]he tracer will tell you where to set the location of where your flash player debug log file is located. You'll need to be careful as the location is specified in a pretty non standard format.

Hope that helps out the Mac people!

Important Adobe Flash Player 9 Security Update Released

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 17:20:00 -0400

This Security Bulletin was just posted to the Adobe site regarding a security exploit in the Flash Player. From the bulletin:

Adobe has provided an update to resolve vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player. These vulnerabilities would allow remote attackers to modify HTTP headers of client requests and conduct HTTP Request Splitting attacks. The flexibility of the attack varies depending on the type of web browser being used.

Apparently, Flash Player 7, 8, and 9 are all affected, but there is only an update available for version 9 at the moment. I should also note that the fix has been marked as "Important," which is one step below their highest severity level of "Critical," so definitely look into upgrading if possible. For any Flash or Flex developers who rely on the Debug version of the player for development, Adobe unfortunately makes it hard to find the updated Players on their site, so here you go.