Tag Archives: Flex

Mission critical Flash

by Serge Jespers on 12. Mar, 2010 in Flash Platform, Flex

NATO started using a Flex application for their Mission Support System in 2007. I saw it in action once… but if I told you about it I would probably end up in a dark dungeon 20 floors below the NATO HQ in Brussels. During MAX in San Francisco in 2008 Peter Martin and Mansour Raad from Adobe Consulting and ESRI discussed the application. The presentation (available on Adobe TV) gives you an idea of how NATO is using Flex.

Today, ISS announced that under the sponsorship of the Air Force Research Laboratory and direction of Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) they developed and deployed an application to enable critical infrastructure monitoring to the White House Situation Room.

The ISS team developed an application for deployment on the SPAWAR touch table framework, leveraging touch technologies to provide insight into the current status of various elements of critical infrastructure across the United States.  The application provides users such as the President and his staff with the ability to view the status of any of thousands of pieces of critical infrastructure with a single tap on a touch surface.

According to Rob Rogers, Vice President of National Systems at ISS, “The touch table application for the White House presented many interesting challenges to the team.  The application is really a mash-up of technologies including the ISS-developed Web Enabled Temporal Analysis System framework for data access and aggregation combined with a custom touch interface developed by ISS, utilizing the Adobe Flex framework, finally sending results to Google Earth.  The President, Vice President, and the Secretary of Homeland Security have used the application and have expressed positive feedback.”

I doubt that I will ever get to see that application…

Flash on!

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Flex: The Ecosystem

by Serge Jespers on 28. Jan, 2010 in Flex

The Flex family extends far beyond the Flex Framework and the Flash Builder IDE. A lot of third party vendors have created applications, frameworks, components and tools to help you be successful in your application development. There are tools for functional, performance and security testing, third party components, AMF products, licensing and encryption tools and even plugins for Visual Studio.

To make it easier for you to find these third party tools, we’ve just posted a comprehensive list of products and projects that provide support for the Flex framework.

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The future of magazines?

by Serge Jespers on 07. Dec, 2009 in Cool stuff

I came across this video on Ubergizmo and I wish this was real today…! The video demonstrates a multi-touch tablet to read magazines in full color with video, audio and online capabilities. The video is created by The Wonder Factory and other than that, there really isn’t any more information out there. While it’s only a concept today, I really do hope we’ll see some of this in the future. Maybe we’ll even see it on an Apple tablet in the not too distant future?

UPDATE: Wow… I’ve just read that this is actually a real product. They’ve even showed a working prototype to the press last week. What’s even cooler is that it’s built with AIR & Flex!

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Video: Schematic shows multi-touch wall. Runs on Flash. Built with Flex.

by Serge Jespers on 25. Jun, 2009 in Cool stuff, Flash Platform, Video

Microsoft has (rightfully) gotten a lot of attention with their Surface multi-touch table. Schematic has now raised the bar. In Cannes at the Cannes Lions festival, they were showing a 3.5m (12ft) x 1.5m (5ft) multi-touch/multi-user intelligent wall which puts the Surface to shame.

The massive display gives attendees instant access to the complete festival program, 3D maps of the event and surrounding area, and information on local restaurants and bars. The Touchwall also helps delegates schedule meetings with each other and trade contact information via email. The presentation layer is built with the Flex 4 framework and runs on Flash Player 10.

I interviewed John Barton, Senior Solutions Architect at Schematic and asked him about the wall’s features, how it was built and where they are taking this next.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get something like this at MAX?

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Next version of Flex Builder will be named Flash Builder 4!

by Serge Jespers on 16. May, 2009 in Flash Builder, Flash Platform

fb.jpgWhen we named project “Thermo” Flash Catalyst, everyone started speculating about where we were going with this. Soon after, rumours about renaming Flex Builder started to float around in the community and today is that day… The next version of Flex Builder will be named Flash Builder 4. And I think it makes total sense. This change will provide better naming consistency for the Flash family of tools and position Flash Builder as the development tool for the Flash Platform. Not convinced? Let me try to persuade you.

When you build applications in Flex Builder, you’re building them with the open source Flex Framework and/or ActionScript. The applications then get compiled in to a SWF-file that runs in the Flash Player. When talking to customers, I regularly got asked if you needed “Flex Player” installed to run an application and that is exactly the type of confusion that we want to solve. By renaming Flex Builder to Flash Builder, there is no doubt what you are going to build using this product. You’re going to build an application that will run on the ubiquitous and trusted Flash Player.

While we are renaming the next version of Flex Builder to Flash Builder 4, it will still be the same Eclipse-based IDE with lots of exciting new features. We are not renaming the open source Flex Framework or the free Flex SDK. Also, if you’ve been calling yourself a Flex developer, there’s no need to go and print new business cards. You will still be building applications with the Flex Framework, so no change there. We will also continue to promote the use of the Flex Framework and Flex development in general.

I know all of you are really excited about the upcoming releases of Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst and while we haven’t announced any release dates yet, I can tell you that we will be releasing public beta versions of both products this summer. So if you haven’t planned your summer vacation yet, you may want to hold off on that and plan on playing with Flash Catalyst beta and Flash Builder 4 beta during the summer. That’s what I’m going to do ;-)

Also, you may want to check with your local Adobe User Group. We are doing a pre-release tour through 119 different locations in June. So if you want to find out more about what we are doing with the upcoming beta releases of Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder, this would be a great place to start.

If you have any questions or comments about this upcoming name change, feel free to leave a note below.

Update: Lee Brimelow just published an FAQ about the rebranding.

Flash on!

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Video tutorial: Use Flex for your ActionScript coding for Flash CS4

by Serge Jespers on 09. Mar, 2009 in Flash, Flex, How-to, Video, Video Tutorial

There are a couple of ways you can use Flex and Flash together. I’ve already showed you a couple of those in previous tutorials. In this video, I’ll show you how to use the SWC files created by a Flex library project in Flash CS4. That way, you can have an ActionScript developer work in Flex who can then hand off compiled SWC files to a Flash designer.

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No crisis on the web? How are you doing?

by Serge Jespers on 06. Mar, 2009 in Industry, Jobs

crisisAccording to the Union of Belgian Advertisers and researchers Profact [as published on Digimedia (dutch)], there is no crisis on the Internet. According to this report, 90% of all advertisers said the crisis does impact the way they work and over 80% reduced their budgets by 10 to 20%.

Where it gets interesting, is where they are spending their money. 55% of all advertisers said they will spend less money on tv, newspaper, magazine, movie theater, radio and street ads. However, 37% of them said they are investing more in Internet advertising.

On top of that, I also see a lot of interactive agencies looking to hire extra Flash designers and developers. This week alone, I saw at least 6 job openings across Europe on Twitter. I also received a couple of emails from agencies looking for people.

While talking to agencies at both FITC and FlashCamp UK last week, I found that this seems to be a common trend. Most of the people I talked to still had plenty of work but are expecting a cutback in marketing projects. Most of the people I talked to are planing on filling any gaps with research (looking into mobile development came up frequently) and diversifying their skill set.

Now, I may be completely wrong, but to me it sounds as if “the Internet” is doing ok at the moment. I’m sure there have been some cutbacks here and there already but the bigger agencies seem to be doing alright.

I’d love to hear your stories! How have you been doing? Has your company been hit by the crisis? If so, in what way?

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Video tutorial: Use the Flex webservice component in Flash CS4 projects

by Serge Jespers on 02. Mar, 2009 in Flash, Flex, How-to, Video, Video Tutorial

In this video, I’ll show you how you can use the webservice component from the Flex framework in your Flash CS4 projects. If you’re missing the webservice component in Flash, just use the one in the Flex framework.

UPDATE: My sincere apologies. There is an error in my code which I did not explain in the video.
Line 10 should not read myWebService.load but myWebService.loadWSDL.

I do remember we recorded this one twice and I fear that that’s where the mixup happened. Please download the working FLA below.

Download the FLA file.

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Recently laid off? Learn a new skill, upgrade your profile.

by Serge Jespers on 23. Feb, 2009 in Flex, Industry

UPDATE: This is now a more formal offering. You no longer need to send email. For more information read this post.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the economy is not in a good place right now. Since October 2008, more than 300.000 people have lost their jobs in the tech industry.

I’m not saying that being laid off is fun but you could see it as an opportunity. An opportunity to learn a new skill and while doing that, upgrade your profile. There’s still a pretty strong demand for Flash/Flex/AS3.0 skills. So, if you haven’t looked in to those technologies, why not do it now?

If you’re interested in learning Flex, send me an email (serge@adobe.com) and I may be able to hook you up with some stuff ;-)

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