2008 In Review - Flash Platform Shortcomings

01/06/2009 04:46 am by Visualrinse | Design and Development by Chad Udell in AIR

As mentioned in my previous post, I’m making a list. Or in this case, two. The first list was a celebration of things that happened in 2008 that were perceived by me as being advancements in the Flash world. Well, in the interest of being a true pundit/critic, I have a list of the things [...]

Lee Brimelow Introduces Flasher Magazine

12/30/2008 03:42 pm by Ben Forta's Blog in AIR

Fellow Adobe Platform Evangelist, Lee Brimelow, has launched his new project, Flasher Magazine. Issue 1 is online now.

iPhone App Reviews - AIR application

12/25/2008 07:38 pm by Peter Elst in AIR

Happy holidays everyone! I thought I’d release a little tool today that I think will be useful to those of you doing iPhone application development. As you might know reviews for your applications in the iTunes App Store are specific to each country and at the moment Apple provides no way for application authors to [...]

The Deccan Herald Names AIR One Of Top In 2008

12/24/2008 03:12 am by Ben Forta's Blog in AIR

The Deccan Herald is the largest English-language daily newspaper in the Indian state of Karnataka (home to Adobe's Bangalore office). The Deccan Herald is running a story entitled Top 10 Web platforms of 2008, and Adobe AIR is #3 on the list. eWeek in the U.S., The Deccan Herald in India, ... where next?

Check Out Peldi's Balsamiq

12/23/2008 03:13 am by Ben Forta's Blog in AIR

Many of you probably remember Peldi (aka Giacomo Guilizzoni) from his appearances at MAX events. Peldi spent 6 years at Adobe where he worked on Connect and more. I bumped into him at MAX in Milan, and we chatted briefly about his new company and product, and he gave me his card. Over the weekend I had the chance to tinker with his latest creation, Balsamiq Mockups, a utility used to create screen mockups. This is a fun little app. The UI is very slick, the included controls are extensive and highly configurable, and the app is available as a desktop application (courtesy of AIR) and as a plug-in for poplar web apps. He's posted online demos that explain the app better than I could in a few words here, so check it out.

AIR Makes eWeek Top 10 Of 2008

12/21/2008 04:51 am by Ben Forta's Blog in AIR

eWeek has published it's list of The Top 10 Products of the Year, and the very first listed is Adobe AIR, concluding: "The product that comes closest right now to the true vision of this next-generation Web application is Adobe AIR. Descended from Flash, AIR makes it possible to build powerful and interactive applications that have all of the benefits of both Web and desktop apps (such as offline capabilities, in the latter case)."

Creating AIR submenus for a native menu with Flash CS4 - Part 2 (The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development Highlight)

12/19/2008 01:13 pm by Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web in AIR Adobe Integrated Runtime

The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development book is oriented to Flash developers interested in building desktop applications via Adobe AIR. You can preorder The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development on Amazon or buy it on local bookstore starting from 22nd December. To create a submenu item, you use the NativeMenuItem class . Begin by opening the Ch06p01.as class and add the createFirstSubMenu() method , which creates an item of the NativeMenuItem class and adds two elements. This item will be used as a first submenu of the native menu you’re creating.

Speaking At Flex Camp Chicago

12/18/2008 03:04 pm by Ben Forta's Blog in AIR

Flex Camps are small highly focused events, usually one or two days in length, concentrating on Flex, AIR, and related technologies. Chicago is hosting Flex Camp Chicago on January 22-23, 2009. This event boasts a pretty compelling speaker lineup, including fellow Adobe evangelists James Ward and Kevin Hoyt, as well as well known names in this space, including Michael Labriola, Jeff Tapper, and Mike Nimer. I plan on attending and presenting an opening session. Registration is required.

AIR 1.5 Available For Linux

12/18/2008 02:59 pm by Ben Forta's Blog in AIR

The AIR team has announced the immediate availability of AIR 1.5 for Linux.

Possible fix for ? image bug in Snackr: try v0.38

12/16/2008 12:59 am in AIR

I’ve been getting a number of reports of people not seeing images in item popups after upgrading to AIR 1.5. It seems possible that this is only an issue with the original “official” build of Snackr (0.33). If you’re seeing this problem, and you’re running 0.33, please try upgrading to the 0.38 build. If you [...]

Creating AIR native menu with Flash CS4 - Part 1 (The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development Highlight)

12/15/2008 04:50 pm by Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web in AIR Adobe Integrated Runtime

The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development book is oriented to Flash developers interested in building desktop applications via Adobe AIR. You can preorder The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development on Amazon or buy it on local bookstore starting from 22nd December. Menus are an integral part of your life as a software user. You find them on the Web, in desktop applications, on your own operating system, and even on mobile devices like cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) . You often don’t realize how important menus are when you use them. It’s so obvious to have them that you only realize how important they are when they aren’t available. On the Web, you normally have menus regarding the browser, which allow you to access the content of the site you are using. You rarely have menus that give you access to the specific commands and functions of the website. However, things are changing slowly with the advent of Web 2.0 applications, and menus—not only browsing menus but those specifically related to the web application—are becoming more and more frequent

Adobe TV Video Podcasts On iTunes

12/12/2008 05:25 pm by Ben Forta's Blog in AIR

We've started posting Adobe TV content as video podcasts on iTunes. To kick things off we've we re-encoded 12 Adobe TV segments, and in the future we plan to deploy content on a regular basis. You can access the videos via the Adobe Developer Connection channel on iTunes.

Moderator AIR application

12/12/2008 12:48 am by Peter Elst in AIR

I recently found out about a very useful AIR application called “Moderator” created by Danny Dura, Platform Evangelist at Adobe. What the application does is give you access to your comment moderation queue if you’re running a WordPress blog. Installation is very easy, you first install a WordPress plugin and activate it, then download and install [...]

FlexCamp 2008 Belgium

12/11/2008 08:02 pm by Peter Elst in AIR

Today the Adobe User Group Belgium organized a FlexCamp in Antwerp with some fantastic speakers lined up including no less than three Adobe employees (Matt Chotin, James Ward and Chet Haase) which must be a new record for us. I presented a slightly updated version of my “Introduction to SQLite in Adobe AIR” talk, covering the [...]

LinkedIn Flex Developers Group Reopened For New Members

12/11/2008 07:11 pm by Ben Forta's Blog in AIR

The LinkedIn Flex Developers Group is now accepting new members. LinkedIn can increase group size on request in 1000 member increments, so we're OK until we hit 4000. All pending requests have been approved. And in case you want to sign up, here are the links to all three LinkedIn groups:

ColdFusion Developers Group

Flex Developers Group

Adobe AIR Developers

InfoWorld: Now Is The Time To Be Working With AIR

12/11/2008 04:50 pm by Ben Forta's Blog in AIR

InfoWorld just reviewed AIR 1.5, and was more than impressed, giving it a 9.3 (out of 10) and full marks for ease of development. The review concludes with "For developers who want to bridge the gaps between Windows, Mac, and Linux -- and between the desktop and the Web -- now is the time to be working with AIR".

Order The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development at Amazon.com and and save 37%

12/11/2008 12:59 pm by Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web in AIR Adobe Integrated Runtime

Today I've received a newsletter from Amazon with the following body : Dear Amazon.com Customer, As someone who has purchased books by Marco Casario, you might like to know that The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development will be released on December 22, 2008. You can pre-order yours at a savings of $18.50 by following the link below.

Video: Creating Custom Chrome in AIR using Flex

12/10/2008 07:28 pm by Daniel Dura in AIR

In this video tutorial, I share a technique that I use for creating custom chrome for your windows in AIR when using Flex. There is also another tutorial for doing something similar in Flash presented by Lee Brimelow on Adobe TV.

Snackr crash found: incompatible with CoolIris for Safari

12/10/2008 04:01 am in AIR

I found one possible reason for Snackr crashing on the Mac: it seems that if CoolIris for Safari is installed, it interferes with Snackr/AIR (specifically, the input manager it installs seems to cause the problem). Try uninstalling the plugin (in Safari, do View > Remove CoolIris) and see if that fixes the problem with Snackr. Not [...]

Video: Encrypting Data in Adobe AIR Applications

12/09/2008 05:06 pm by Daniel Dura in AIR

I recently recorded a few video tutorials which I will be posting here on my blog. These videos can also be found on Adobe TV

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