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Experiences Across Multiple Screens at Adobe MAX

Andrew Spaulding — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:43:42 +0000

This year at Adobe MAX I’m presenting on “Experiences Across Multiple Screens”. But just what is that exactly?

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:

Mixing it up in the Pixel Bender WebDU presentation

Andrew Spaulding — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:39:44 +0000

Slides / Demos / Special effects whiz-bangery / Where to learn more

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!

Building desktop applications with HTML and JavaScript

Andrew Spaulding — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:10:12 +0000

This session at Adobe AIR Camp introduced traditional HTML and JavaScript developers to the AIR SDK and how to use the the various binaries (ADL and ADT) to develop, test, and package desktop applications. The session included a basic introduction to the AIRAliases.js file and it’s importance when coding against the AIR runtime with JS.

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

<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

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

Download the source code for this application.

Build your first AIR application with Adobe Flex

Andrew Spaulding — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:53:15 +0000

Adobe Flex really is the development tool and platform of choice for developing desktop experiences on Adobe AIR. This slide deck was presented as part of a series of topics covered at Adobe AIR Camps throughout Australia and New Zealand. Take a look, download it, and share it! If anyone is interested in the demo files the Flex Builder project archive can be downloaded here.

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.

AIR Camp keynote slides

Andrew Spaulding — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:05:07 +0000

Below are the keynote slides from the recent Adobe AIR Camps throughout Australia and New Zealand. Thanks to everyone who attended, and a special thanks to both Mark Blair and Matt Voerman who presented at the events as well, and to Mike Downey for presenting the keynote in Sydney while on his visit to WebDU 2008.

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

webDU 2008 presentations now available

Andrew Spaulding — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:17:23 +0000

It’s take some time, but finally here it is! I’ve made my presentations available via Share on Acrobat.com for everyone to view or download for their own use.

Flex in Acrobat 9… It’s PDF meets Web 2.0
This session covered the latest integration between Flash and PDF given that with both Acrobat 9 and Reader 9 the Flash Player runtime is now embedded within both environments. What does this mean?! Well you can now render Flash content directly within a PDF, but also add interactions between the PDF and the Flash objects themselves. I’ll post a separate follow up on this with some examples files. This really does open the door for some cool integration.

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.

Begun, the code wars have

Andrew Spaulding — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:58:41 +0000

The inaugural Australia / New Zealand Code War is set to begin at WebDU Day 0 on June 11 2008. I’ve been invited by Mark Mandel and Toby Tremayne to join their team the “KILLER CODING NINJA MONKEYS OF DOOM!” Be afraid, be very afraid, as you dare to face the team from Melbourne as we take on 7 other team in a series of sudden death head-to-head coding competitions developing solutions in either Flex, Flash, ColdFusion, Director or anything else we deem fit for purpose.

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!

CFCAMP Australia is more than just ColdFusion

Andrew Spaulding — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 12:17:24 +0000

In the coming weeks get set for a FREE mini-conference for ColdFusion developers by ColdFusion developers. And better yet we’ll have renowned ColdFusion expert Ben Forta joining us along side long time CF’ers Mark Blair, Nick Watson (UK) and the many community experts here in Oz.

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)!

Adobe Refresh Australia, learn about MAX 2007

Andrew Spaulding — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:24:35 +0000

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.

Over the course of an afternoon, you will hear from the local Adobe team as they present on whatâ€™s new and whatâ€™s happening in AIR, Flash Professional, Flex, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and ColdFusion.

Thereâ€™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!

RIA Comic – Barely Out Of Beta # 3

Andrew Spaulding — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:08:43 +0000

Well the third strip in this series is here with “Barely Out Of Beta #3“. Great work team Nectarine!

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!