Dashboards are an easy way to let someone get clear picture on data, as also a great tool to compare different factors. With Flex you are able to create different kind of dashboards. The following tutorials will teach how to do it: In this tutorial, the Nitobi Grid, an Ajax component, is used to build an [...]

ruminations on technology

As Adobe continues to move forward in the RIA space they’ve clearly outlined what the focuses are behind Flex 4 and Thermo. One of those focuses is on design/developer collaboration. I’ve been following the progress across blogs, interviews and conversations and I started to think, “What would a Creative Suite for RIAs look like to me?” I think some of what [...]

This tutorial explains how to make a 3d object with 3d Studio MAX , unwrap the uvw, export it to actionscript 3, import to your papervision 3d project , texture it and deploy as a flash movie. View Tutorial

This is a slideshow viewer, utilizing the robot arm from this previous post done with Papervision 3D. I created it on the occasion of a presentation I’m preparing for the Flash user group, San Flashcisco. In typical fashion, I’ve spent more time creating the slideshow program than preparing the presentation itself, or the slides for [...]

It gives me great pleasure to announce our first confirmed sponsors for the Singularity web conference. It's an impressive list that includes Influxis, lynda.com, Yahoo!, BBC, Triptyk, and AMEE. Ever since I first hatched the idea for a global web conference, I've had nothing but the most encouraging support from my family, friends, fellow speakers, and [...]

Another awesome tutorial by Patrick Hubner from madPotato.de, this time about 3D Typography Illustration in Photoshop. An high quality pdf tutorial, where you learn various things such as Creating A Bubble Brush, Creating / Employing Actions, Illustrating 3D-Typography Using Only Photoshop, Illustrating Vector Swirls and Additional Visual Effects. I have no doubt on saying that, [...]

Google claimed the web 3.0 is all about semantic web. The core of the semantic web is the semantic search. That where the niche point those new search startups are trying to beat search engine beast Google. There are very much hyped new comers such as PowerSet and TextWise that have become the most discussed/gossiped/funded [...]

No, this is not a Firefox attack, really. I love Firefox, and it truly is my preferred browser. But ... I installed Firefox 3 on Download day, and made sure that it was a clean install. The only plugins I have installed are Greasemonkey and YSlow. It's a pretty simple and clean install. And all is good initially. And then gradually my CPU utilization reaches 100% and the system grinds to a halt, and when I look at Windows Vista Task Manager I see that Firefox is using over 60% of my resources! Heck, it's more than Outlook uses! Is anyone else running into this one?

CFML has come a long way in over a decade. Over the years the language has evolved, sometimes gradually and thoughtfully, other times less so, but evolved it has. And Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe have, understandably, been the primary stewards of the language, fueling that evolution based on customer feedback, industry trends, as well as our own innovation. We've not always been successful (I have my own long list of CFML inconsistencies, gotchas, and the like, and others do too), but in general we've always tried to do the right thing, an almost impossible task. What is right for language purity is often not right for the masses, and what is right for the top tier of CFers is often not right for beginners, and what is right for our engineering teams sometimes is at odds with what is right in the expectations of our developer base. Still, all in all, I believe we've been phenomenally successful in creating a language that is easily learned and readily usable by beginners, while being powerful and flexible enough to meet the needs of the most technical experts. But times have changed. For starters, as ColdFusion has grown more all encompassing (starting in CFMX), so have the demands on the language - new features need new language elements, and thus language proliferation. In addition, there are other engines that execute CFML code, engines that perhaps do things that ColdFusion does not do or does differently, and vice-versa. And while ever vendor and player in this space should have the luxury to innovate as they see fit, the more they do so, the greater the risk of further fragmentation and inconsistencies within the language. Which is why there has been talk for several years now of transferring stewardship of the language from any single vendor to a committee or consortium. In fact, I remember being asked about just this while on a panel at CFUnited (or CFUN as it was known back then) quite a few years ago. But that never happened, for two reasons. One reason is purely one of economics. Simply put, could the ColdFusion team afford to spend precious engineering time on an effort that would take resources time away from core development, while essentially only helping competitors? And back then the answer was no, not at all. After all, which feature in CF7 or CF8 should we have sacrificed in order to do so? That's not an answer many want to hear, but it's the truth, and it's how I answered that question all those years ago. But there is another answer too, and this is the answer I did not give because, well, frankly it would have opened up a Pandora's box that I just did not want to have to deal with at the time. For different organizations to work together on a project that less directly helps their own interests while at the same time requiring a degree of cooperation that could legitimately further the interests of the others parties, one important ingredient is required. It's called trust, and without it any collaboration between competitors is doomed, despite the best of intentions. And let's be honest, there has been little trust between the various players in this space. No, I am not going to get sucked into gossip or mudslinging or a he-says-she-says, that's beyond irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is that if we are truly honest with ourselves we'll have no choice but to acknowledge that trust between the various players has been nonexistent. And no trust equals no cooperation, it's that simple. So what's changed? Why is now the right time to truly start cooperating in the bests interests of the language and community that loves it and relies on it, putting those interests above those of individual organizations and products? What's changed is that there are now players who truly do get along (as I noted in a previous post). Not that they did not get along previously, the relationships was always a very professional albeit neutral one. And that's a good thing. It's allowed for trust which has allowed for open communication which has allowed for the types of discussions that have not been possible previously. And so at CFUnited this week we announced the creation of the "CFML Language Advisory Committee", a small group who hopefully will come up with the guidelines and standards and recommendations that will ensure the long term viability and integrity of CFML. The committee is a work in progress, and the details of its objectives and mandate and workings still need to be hammered out. But it's an important first step, and one that all involved are enthusiastically committed to. In the interests of openness, and to ensure that no committee representation drowns out the voice of any other constituents, we were careful to not stack the deck in any way. The initial group of six is made up of two Adobe representatives, a Railo representative, and three community representatives. And yes, there are stakeholders who are conspicuously absent from the initial committee. And as expected, that point was made by one of the first questioners after the announcement who wanted to know how the interests of other players would be represented. I answered the question bluntly and honestly, and tried to be as professional and measured as possible in doing so. And basically what I explained was what I already said above. Right now we've included those who respect the business requirements and necessities of the other players in the space, and those who have demonstrated a clear commitment to the community, looking out for its best interests. Of course, by inference I was saying that others are not meeting those prerequisite requirements, and understandably this has upset some. But as I said before, the trust factor is critical. Here's an example. Yesterday, during the keynote, Adam Lehman demonstrated some of what we are planning around Hibernate based ORM support in ColdFusion "Centaur". And as it so happens, Gert Franz of Railo has already stated that his team is working on Hibernate integration as well. Obviously, we need to work together. There is no requirement that we solve the same problems the same way, nor is there a requirement that the solutions be compatible. At the end of the day product teams should do what they believe is correct and in the best interests of their respective products and businesses. But we do need to work together as much as possible, doing so benefits the community and hopefully both of our eventual feature implementations. And that's just the one public example, there are many others. And that's where the trust comes in. Not inviting some of the stakeholders initially is less about taking stands or punishing indiscretions or playing politics. It's about trust and the reality that where there is a history of distrust the frank and open discussion that this endeavor requires will be utterly impossible. That's not to say that things can't change. They can, and hopefully will. For example, when one of the players in this space spins off a standalone community driven open source initiative, that represents an opportunity to start over, to divorce from prior ill-feelings and built up distrust. Has that opportunity been realized? That's debatable, and many have strong feelings on this one. And who's right and who's wrong is unimportant. What is important is that the fact that this is so hotly debated, the reality is that the trust is still not there. Not yet. So, for now we have a new small and very focused "CFML Language Advisory Committee", one that will hopefully start to contribute in earnest immediately, one that will start to realize benefits for all involved, including the community. And as I explained yesterday, the committee is deliberately and intentionally not stacked or biased in any majority direction, and so the ability to invite and include other stakeholders in the future is a definite possibility. Yesterday's announcement is an important first step, and one that I hope marks the beginning of a new era for CFML and for the community that has supported it for so long.

I just got back from an amazing trip to the Galapagos islands. The islands are gorgeous, varied, and bursting with life. In places, you literally have to tiptoe through the local fauna. Snorkeling in the surrounding waters was equally enthralling, swimming within reach of sea turtles, penguins, sea lions, and an abundance of fish. Here's a few of my favourite photos.

The latest version of AIR was released a few days ago. The release focuses primarily on localization: AIR installation and runtime dialog boxes and support for AIR applications in various languages (along with keyboard input support for double-byte languages). In parallel, the Adobe AIR website is being made available in all these languages. A new release [...]

Mark Cuban sees no-model and a bleak future for video on the web, but I’m inclined to agree with one commenter at least. Call it old media, or old software, but one thing is clear — neither seems to really know who the hell their audience / customers are. You see this reflected back in passive [...]

This was a question that has been in my head for a long time: what is the difference between MouseEvent.ROLL_OVER and MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER. I have been using MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER for all my rollOvers up to now without really thinking about it, but I think it would be interesting to know the difference for something so basic. If you [...]

Charlie Griefer has written an article for Packt Publishing entitled ColdFusion 8-Enhancements You May Have Missed. Lots of nice little goodies in this one.

In a previous article I explained how to use FIVe3D with Flex and because fl.motion is not included into the Flex Framework we had to find out a workaround. I commented out the lines that referenced fl.motion but Kelvin Luck found another way: “copy the classes from Flash CS3 Actionscript framework into the project”. So [...]

Our supporters FlashFilter.net made an incredible update to their awesome AS3 flash effects plugin. From now on you can integrate the Flash Filter component in animated content and video. They have made free two effects, the Blur Effect and the Radar Effect. With these effects you can easily and quickly create great flash movies. [...]

Lifehacker has put together a top 10 list of Adobe AIR applications worth installing. Their list includes: Pandora ebay Desktop snackr DiggTop Doomi Twhirl Klok DestroyFlickr ReadAIR Google Analytics Suite To see their full reviews of each of these applications, you can read the full article here.

Generally, a source code comes as a bundle which is a compressed file having an extension -- @.tar, .tar.gz, .tgz, .tar.bz@ et al. They are often known as tar balls.