AIR
Introducing Aerial CMS
Apr 11th
Well, I finally let my irritation get to me… I’ve been developing Flash, Flex & AIR applications for two years now – most of them pulling data through AMFPHP from a PHP-based back-end. In those two years, I’ve tried nearly all the suggested solutions for managing content on the back-end and pulling it through to the front-end; Drupal, MODx, WordPress, Symfony. They are all fantastic PHP-based frameworks and systems, but they don’t allow me to develop applications the way I want to. So, as a consequence of this combination of irritation, frustration, egotism and flat-out boredom with writing the same code, over and over, for each project, I’ve decided to build a CMS – Aerial CMS.
What is Aerial CMS?
Aerial CMS (named Aerial because it was the first word i could think of with “RIA” in it) is a simple content management framework. I decided to rethink the concept of a content management system, because – the way I see it – CMSs these days are about content management AND content presentation. I think that these two massive areas of development & design need to stay very far away from each other. They are like brother and sister to us now, but sometimes – when stuck in a room together for so long – they breed and the results are disastrous (on top of being scandalous!).
Design Philosophy
Look at how the MVC (Model View Controller) pattern came about: software engineers found that separating application logic from presentation from data has serious design benefits. Now, i’m not attempting to bad-mouth all the incredible efforts of the CMS developers… I’m saying that for Rich Internet Application development, it really becomes a chore to use systems like Drupal or Symfony because they were not meant to be used in that way. They do what they do superbly well, but for RIAs they fail to impress me.
Aerial CMS has been built from the first line of code for optimized Rich Internet Application development. It focuses only on content management and development tooling, and wants nothing to do with how you present the data. It’s certainly a change from the standard model, and i’m convinced about how I want to develop my RIAs, but that’s why i’ve put out this early release – to see if you all agree with me. This CMS still has a very, very long way to go; it works well for most situations but the tools haven’t been developed yet.
Technology
Aerial has been built on two very well established and loved open-source frameworks, namely AMFPHP 1.9 and Doctrine 1.2.1. The Aerial framework is built for compatibility with PHP 5 only. Aerial enforces no rules upon you when you get down to developing your back-end code, but it does stick to Doctrine’s method of generating database tables and models. In essence, once you’ve set up your database schema, you can do whatever you like 
you can plug into Doctrine’s API or you can write your own code; it really gives you the freedom to code the way you’re comfortable with.
Tutorials and Videos
I’ve made a Getting Started video to get you familiar with the framework and i’ll be writing a series of tutorials in the Wiki section of the Google Code page for Aerial CMS. I’ve also got plans for a couple more video tutorials, so keep checking the site for updates or follow me on Twitter (@dannykopping).
Comments, Suggestions, et al
I’d love to hear what you have to say (as long as it’s in English – being monolingual sucks)! I’m very open to suggestions, any offers to help contribute would be welcomed and all constructive criticism is encouraged!
Balsamiq Mockups – An essential tool for developers and designers
Mar 3rd
At the risk of sounding like a shameless peddler of commercial software, I would seriously recommend Balsamiq Mockups. Now, let my intentions be clear… I made an agreement with Valerie from Balsamiq that I would write a review of this software on my blog in exchange for a testing license. Look, what can I say… I was born Jewish.
Now, just because I received a free license to review the software it does not mean that will not point out the egregious problems that I find with the software, nor will I ramble on about how fantastic it is. All I will say is this: If you deal with clients often that have not got any creative done for a prospective project and are looking for Interface Design advice, this is the tool for you!
Onto the review…
Overview
Balsamiq Mockups is an AIR application built to help you mock up application interface designs in the timeframe of a (non-metric) “jiffy”. Since i’ve started using the application, i’ve put together numerous mockups for clients and always received good feedback. What Balsamiq lacks in extensibility it makes up for in sheer speed of use.
The application is well thought out and concise. No instruction manual or cerebral documentation necessary! As far as AIR applications go, this is one of the more advanced ones I’ve seen, and it certainly is a pleasure to work with. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it justifies a $79 price-tag, but it is well worth the loot.
Tooling and Extensibility
As far as tools go, the Balsamiq developers certainly went out of their way. Included in the application are over 75 user-interface components from Buttons to Charts to iPhones, as well as loads of icons that will provide the finishing touches on any rough cut. The components are all customizable, scalable and z-axis-orderable, and the keyboard shortcuts help you get the job done quite quickly once you’re comfortable with the application.
The application fails abysmally when it comes to extensibility; I would imagine that with an application like this, the developers should facilitate the downloading of custom component/icon packs, or even user-submitted ones. This could as quite an interesting angle to the application i feel. Another thing I wish it included was some sort of color palette to slightly adjust the components. I’m assuming that it wouldn’t be too much trouble to include a little color-transform slider to add a bit more dimension to the components for added visual cues.
Good thing i downloaded the latest version (1.6.67 released on 24th Feb 2010) before i started ranting about the absence of the spacebar-invoked panning functionality… Good job guys! Works great
Search, Export and Memory Usage
The search functionality of Balsamiq is intuitive and responsive; scanning through different UI elements is a breeze and makes the whole experience that much more impressive. Balsamiq offers exporting your mockups to both PNG (why not JPG?) and PDF (go Thibault!) and it usually exports the mockups without problems. I’ve noticed that when my mockups become quite intense, the application does begin to lag a little though, but i’m confident that the developers are looking into that for future releases.
Conclusion
All in all, this is an indispensable tool for the discerning web developer & designer. If you need to give your clients an idea of what you’re going to produce and you have limited time, give this application a shot. Thanks to the Balsamiq team for the great addition to my development ammunition!
Using a Custom Cursor in Flex with CSS
Dec 16th
If you want to use a custom busyCursor animation in your Flex applications, you don’t need to do anything fancy… All you have to do is define one, solitary property in your CSS file:
CursorManager { /* You can use PNGs, SWFs or JPEGs */ busyCursor: Embed(source="path/to/your/resource"); }
To invoke the busy cursor, use the following line:
CursorManager.setBusyCursor();
…or you could set the showBusyCursor to true in your HTTPService or RemoteObject instances.
AMFPHP Genie v0.2
Dec 13th
AMFPHP Genie (0.2) is a simple tool to help you get shit done using Flex and AMFPHP.
Check out http://dannykopping.co.za/amfphp-genie/ for more information!
QuickTip: asSQL Connection Problem with non-localhost hostname
Dec 12th
asSQL is just great. It’s an ActionScript 3.0 library for connecting AIR applications to MySQL databases and it works brilliantly – when it works! Recently i gave it a shot again after an utter failure the last time i tried it… The library seems to be a port of the Java implementation of connecting to MySQL (Connections, Statements, Fields, etc). It takes a little getting used to but it’s an excellent library and i highly recommend it.
Background
My development environment is Windows-based (against my wishes… not enough loot or motivation for a Mac, lack of Adobe software on Linux) but i make up for this by running a virtual Linux installation in my Windows environment and networking the two together. It actually works really well, and the process for setting this up can be found here. To cut a very long and boring story short, essentially i cannot use localhost as your server when using this architecture since i have my LAMPP stack running on my Linux environment, so my “local server” can only be accessed using the IP address of the virtual system.
This complicates things a bit when trying to use asSQL to connect to my MySQL installation, because MySQL gets all paranoid and won’t accept connections from a foreign IP address (the IP of my Windows machine on which my AIR app is running)… To get around this, all you have to do is create a new user in MySQL (i used phpMyAdmin), set the user’s hostname to the IP address of your remote system (i’ve explained how to do this below) and you’re ready to rock and roll!
Solution
The first thing you need to do is get the IP address of the remote system…
Windows: Open the command line, type ipconfig
Linux & Mac: Open the terminal, type ifconfig
In this example, my IP address is 192.168.56.1
I’ll be using phpMyAdmin to fix the problem.
- Open phpMyAdmin and click on the Privileges tab.
- Click Add a new User
- Enter any username you like, paste the IP address obtained in the Host field and put in a password
- Under the Database for user panel, leave it at None
- Under the Global privileges, you can Check All
That should sort it out… Remember, this is HIGHLY insecure and should only be used on development environments and NOT production environments.
AIR 2.0
Nov 2nd
An exhaustive list of the new features of Adobe AIR 2.0 has been released 
http://blogs.adobe.com/cantrell/archives/2009/10/everything_new_in_air_2.html
AIR 2.0 – The Answer to Our Prayers (mostly)
Oct 11th
Wow.
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2009-develop/whats-coming-in-adobe-air-2-/
Great job Adobe Team!
The Whirlwind that is Adobe in 2009
Oct 9th
Wow.
It’s been quite a fascinating year thus far; Adobe has really started getting serious about Flash, Flex and the developers involved. This year, we have seen two amazing additions to Adobe’s web-dominating arsenal – Adobe Flash Catalyst (now in beta 2) and Adobe Flash Builder 4 (now in beta 2). After some preliminary buggering around in both of these, I came to the conclusion that working with a beta version of any software to create enterprise applications is putting yourself on the edge of the cliff, and working on a version 1.0 beta is hiring somebody to push you over the edge.
This raises an interesting catch-22:
When a massive piece of software is released, the community has the onus to test it and give feedback on any bugs, requested features and expedience tips – however, if your beta software tends to be very buggy (and how could it not be? The SDK is huge) then how are you going to get developers to test your software on real, enterprise projects?
In any case, Adobe has really been playing the part this year. This year we have seen the release of the Flex 4 SDK, major advancements in the Open Screen Project, Flash Player 10′s penetration rate to 93.5%, AIR surpassing 100 million installations and the introduction of Flash Player 10.1 most recently. Other great things i’ve seen are WorkflowLab, BrowserLab, Project Squiggly, Slider previews, Flash CS5 sneak previews and Community Help.
For all of those unlucky and miserable enough to miss Adobe Max this year (myself included), there’s an entire channel dedicated to Max 2009 Developer talks… Go check them out!
Oh, and if you have any luck getting these videos to play in Adobe Media Player, let me know. That app is more full of bugs than a salad in Nigeria.
Flex 3.2, AIR 1.5, Flash Player 10
Nov 18th
Yesterday, Flex 3.2 was released, along with AIR 1.5 and numerous bug fixes to Flex Builder IDE and the data visualisation component architecture.
Click here to see Matt Chotin’s article which contains all the links for these goodies
Adobe AIR 1.5 Released!
Nov 17th
The latest incremental release of the Adobe Integrated Runtime has been released! This is very exciting news… There have been numerous bug-fixes, the integration of SquirrelFish for a ridiculously fast WebKit HTML/JS engine. Go here to see the other changes.