Experiences Across Multiple Screens
Wednesday October 7 at 09:30AM
Learn how the Adobe Flash Platform enables multiscreen delivery of applications, from the biggest screen to the smallest device. In this session, you’ll find out how to leverage the consistency of the Flash runtime and to develop reusable code and scalable interfaces that are device aware. Come and see many Flash technology enabled devices in action — the Flash runtime on smartphones, Internet-enabled media tablets, MIDs, Chumby, game consoles, and more.

Don’t forget the Adobe MAX hashtag #adobemax

And my session hashtag of #adobemax149

There’s going to be a lot of excitement this year at MAX, and if you can’t make it you don’t have to worry, all sessions will be recorded and made available online, but better yet, the keynotes will be streamed LIVE. Register now at http://max.adobe.com/online/

I’m really excited that I have the opportunity to present again at Adobe MAX, this time in Los Angeles!

For some pre-MAX reading/videos check out the following:

• Designing for the mobile lifestyle: A conversation with Punchcut
• Caught on video: Intel set top box running Adobe Flash
• What can I build with Flash Lite?
• HTC Hero: The first Android device with Flash
• Create Dynamic GUIs for Flash Player 10 using Flash Catalyst

Related posts:

1. Adobe removes all restrictions on SWF and FLV specs
2. Adobe Refresh Australia, learn about MAX 2007
3. Build your first AIR application with Adobe Flex

Pixel Bender is so hot right now (having a Zoolander moment) and was a late addition to the WebDU agenda due to demand and interest from WebDU conference delegates. Geoff aptly titled the session “Mixing it up in the Pixel Bender”, but Pixel Bender can be much more than just blending (or is it bending) pixels. Either way, you can bend, warp, create, mixup, mashup not only pixels but all purpose mathematics as well, allowing you to perform complex calculations in a separate thread within Flash.

But it extends beyond Flash!

Pixel Bender provides a common video and image processing infrastructure as found in After Effects. It is the runtime and pixel shader language that allows you to perform cool filters on your After Effects compositions. The latest revision of Pixel Bender also brings with it a plug-in to Photoshop CS4, so now your Pixel Bender kernels can blend and bend in After Effects, Photoshop as well as Flash Player! All filters/shaders are developed with the Pixel Bender Toolkit. Awesomeness!

Take a look at the slides below, as well as the many Pixel Bender demos and resources that follow. Many of these demo’s were shown throughout the session. My favorite, although not applied to pixels, is Myna (the artist formerly known as Digimix) an audio mixing tool that’s part of the Aviary.com suite. Thanks to Alan Queen for demo access.

Presentation:

Demos shown:
Flash Globe using spherize filter and throw physics
Flash Globe using spherize filter and throw physics (source code)
Real time video color keying
Make your own water color painting (uses multiple filters)
JavaScript Pixel Bender explorer
Aviary Myna (the artist formerly known as Digimix) audio mixing tool
Using Pixel Bender to do heavy lifting of calculations

Where to learn more:
Pixel Bender on Adobe Labs
Kevin Goldsmith’s blog
Pixel Bender lab materials from Adobe MAX 2008

Pixel Bender Community:
Pixel Bender Exchange
Follow Pixel Bender on Twitter

Thanks to everyone who attended my Pixel Bender session at WebDU this year. It was a fantastic conference as always, and brought together by another great effort by all the Daemonites. Big thanks to Geoff Bowers as always!

Related posts:

1. webDU 2008 presentations now available
2. Presenting at WebDU 2007
3. Experiences Across Multiple Screens at Adobe MAX

What I find really helpful is the Adobe AIR Language Reference for JavaScript developers. This is a subset of the ActionScript 3.0 Language Reference and includes all the AIR specific features that you as a JavaScript developer can access within the AIR runtime.

For the basic application seen below you can develop using your favorite text editor and the Adobe AIR SDK, download the Adobe AIR extension for Dreamweaver CS3, or even try developing with Aptana. I really like Aptana as it can be installed as a plugin for Eclipse and sit right beside my Flex development perspective.

For other AIR development tools click here.

Download the source code for the application below.

Your first desktop application with HTML and JavaScript

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<html>
 
<head>
<title>Our first HTML AIR application</title>
 
<script src="AIRAliases.js" ></script>
<script>
   function doLoad()
   {
      alert("Simple alert to show we can include regular JS scripting");
   }
 
   function writeFile()
   {
      var file = air.File.desktopDirectory.resolvePath("sample.txt");
	  var stream = new air.FileStream();
 
	  stream.open( file, air.FileMode.WRITE );
	  stream.writeMultiByte( document.getElementById('textInput').value , air.File.systemCharset );
	  stream.close();   
   }
 
</script>
 
</head>
 
<body onLoad="doLoad()">
   <h2>AIR HTML/JavaScript Sample</h2>
   <p>This sample application will take a simple text input entry and write this out to the contents of a file on the users desktop</p>
   <input type="text" id="textInput" value="www.flexdaddy.info"/>
   <input type="button" onClick="writeFile()" value="Save to desktop" />
</body>
 
</html>

And the application descriptor/manifest file

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< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/1.0">
    <id>com.flexdaddy.samples.htmlair</id>
    <version>v1</version>
    <filename>aircamp_sample</filename>
    <initialwindow>
        <content>airsample.html</content>
        <visible>true</visible>
        <width>400</width>
        <height>350</height>
    </initialwindow>
</application>

Download the source code for this application.

Related posts:

1. Building RIA’s with Flex and Cairngorm
2. AIR Camp keynote slides
3. Build your first AIR application with Adobe Flex

The presentation introduces Flex Builder, the Flex framework and the AIR runtime by creating an application with a transparent window (thanks to Matt Voerman for providing the pretzel image!) that uses custom chrome and native window commands to move and close the application.

Take a look at the sample project, and if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

Related posts:

1. Cast a loaded Flex Application to an Interface
2. Flex Application Starter Toolkit
3. Resizable, Minimizable/Maximizable TitleWindow

Over the next few days I’ll post slides and references to the rest of the content we covered at the AIR Camps.

• Building desktop applications with Adobe Flex
• Building desktop applications with HTML/JavaScript
• Deploying and updating your AIR applications
• Data intensive AIR applications

Be sure to take a look at the following links to some great applications. A real nice showcase of what’s possible!

Adobe AIR Showcase
Adobe AIR Marketplace

Related posts:

1. Slides and demos from my presentations
2. CFCAMP Australia is more than just ColdFusion
3. Build your first AIR application with Adobe Flex

A special thanks to Joel Geraci for his help on this one!

Build multi-user real time collaboration applications with Flex and AIR
This session touched on basic data integration all the way from XML with HTTPServices, Java and ColdFusion connectivity with RemoteObjects, moving on to collaboration and messaging with BlazeDS and LiveCycle Data Services. From building a chat application to enterprise data management this session should provide a basic introduction to collaborative apps.

Related posts:

1. Our Web 2.0 on-demand presentations
2. Mixing it up in the Pixel Bender WebDU presentation
3. Presenting at WebDU 2007

Don’t forget to register for WebDU and come and see my sessions on Flex/AIR, LiveCycle Data Services, BlazeDS, CoCoMo, and even using some of the new Flash widget features in Acrobat 9!

More information on the Code War can be found here webdu:Adobe User Group Code War!

Related posts:

1. Mixing it up in the Pixel Bender WebDU presentation
2. Bring layout control back to CSS
3. Representing Australia at ApolloCamp

Here you’ll see more than just ColdFusion. How about powering your Flex applications and targeting desktop applications with ColdFusion? I think it’s sounds like a winning combination! And that’s exactly what i’ll be presenting on.

Interested in learning more? You’ll want to be there – REGISTER NOW!

Event dates:

• November 20th: Sydney
• November 21st: Brisbane
• November 22nd: Melbourne
• November 27th: Perth

Check out the wiki, vote for the community driven sessions, and come along and network with other developers interested in the latest for the Web, RIAs and desktop apps with AIR.

Hope to see you there (whether that’s in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne or Perth)!

Related posts:

1. Adobe Refresh Australia, learn about MAX 2007
2. Online Flex seminars in Australia and New Zealand
3. Representing Australia at ApolloCamp

Adobe Australia are holding a “Refresh” event for the local developer communities. This is your chance to hear first hand the latest news and announcements surrounding Adobe’s developer technologies! I promise you will not be disappointed! So come and spend an afternoon with your local Adobe crew including myself, Matt Voerman, Mark Blair, Mark Szulc and many others.

Click here to register.

Details:

Join us for an opportunity to connect with the local developer community, whilst refreshing your knowledge on the latest from Adobe at Adobe Refresh 2007.

There’ll be summaries from the Keynote Presentations at Adobe Max 2007, as well as Community Expert Tables and plenty of time to socialise.

When:

Tue 30 Oct 07
Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour
13:30 – 17:00

Wed 31 Oct 07
Telstra Dome, Melbourne
13:30 – 17:00

Hope to see you there!

Related posts:

1. CFCAMP Australia is more than just ColdFusion
2. Australia and New Zealand, check out the AIR derby
3. Google Gears and Adobe Apollo on SQLite

Have you missed the previous episodes? Check them out here:

Barely Out of Beta # 1
Barely Out of Beta # 2

Also check out Barely Out Of Beta #4 – one for the game designers!

Related posts:

1. RIA Comic – Barely Out Of Beta # 2
2. Barely out of Beta – New RIA comic!
3. Download new Flex 2.0 Beta 2 – yes Beta 2 is here!