Brian Swartzfager's Blog - AIR

New AIR Application: focusTimer

Wed, 06 May 2009 07:31:00 -0400

A few weeks ago, Peter Bell wrote a blog post about the Pomodoro Technique, a time management technique that advocates setting aside a set amount of time to turn off all distractions (e-mail, IM, Twitter) and focusing on a single task. I had just recently starting adopting the practice of shutting down my e-mail client once in awhile so as not to be distracted by incoming messages, so the idea made a lot of sense to me. Not having a physical kitchen timer like the Pomodoro folks use and finding my stopwatch to be somewhat inadequate, I decided to try and write an AIR application to fit my needs. And so the focusTimer was born. It's a very simple app: set the amount of time you want to focus (the 25 minutes advocated by the Pomodoro folks is the default), and click the "Start" button. I didn't want to get caught up in checking to see how much time was left, so I added a button so I could toggle between seeing the time left and just a status message. I wanted to keep the window small so that it could be moved out of the way, but I also wanted a strong visual cue for when the time was up, so the color of the window changes to green when you start the countdown, switches to yellow for the "2-minute warning", and ends in red when the timer runs out. In the two days I've been using it at work, I've found that I can move the window to the far end of my secondary monitor and still catch the color change out of the corner of my eye. Finally, even though the idea is to block out all distractions, there are some interruptions that cannot be ignored, so the "Start" button toggles between a "Pause" button and a "Resume" button once the countdown has started. If your focus session goes completely off the rails, you can use the "Cancel" button to break out of it and start all over again. Even though I wrote this AIR app primarily for myself, I figured other folks might find it useful, so it's now available for download up on RIAforge: http://focustimer.riaforge.org

Initial Impressions of Adobe Durango

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:43:00 -0400

In an earlier entry, I mentioned the announcement at MAX of Durango, a framework for allowing end-users to build AIR applications out of shared components. I took some time last night to check it out, and here's what I learned... First off, the components that make Durango work are Flex-based, so if you like to create AIR applications using HTML/CSS/JavaScript, it doesn't look like you can make use of Durango. Durango allows a developer to make the Flex components they build (whether visual or non-visual/service-based in nature) reusable in other AIR applications. The 10-page long PDF file on the Durango page on Adobe Labs explains how to add Durango functionality to components. It also explains how to configure your AIR application such that it can either donate Durango-enabled components, receive Durango-enabled components, or do both. The installation package available on Adobe Labs lets you experience Durango in action. Once the install is complete, you are then able to create a blank AIR application (one set to receive Durango-enabled components) simply by choosing the "New AIR Application" option now enabled in your OS (on Windows, you can simply right-click on the desktop to get to that option). Then you can open one of 4 sample AIR apps included in the install (all of which are set to donate their Durango-enabled components) and put it in "reuse" mode. Once the sample app is in reuse mode, the Durango-enabled components can be clicked and dragged onto the window of the blank AIR app you created, and now that component also exists in your AIR app, and you can save the changes to the AIR app. Certain properties of the component can be coded in such a way that the user can change them in the new AIR app, allowing for some customization of the borrowed component. All in all, it seems like a fairly straightforward idea for making components reusable. The big question is whether or not end-users will utilize this feature. Folks who use a lot of separate AIR applications may see some value in taking bits and pieces from multiple apps and combining them. And it remains to be seen how AIR developers will feel about allowing the components they worked so hard to build to be taken and repurposed by other developers.

Sneak Announcements at MAX: Server-side ActionScript and Durango

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:37:00 -0400

I was a little surprised this morning to find little or no mention of the announcements made at the Sneak Peek session at MAX last evening on any of the ColdFusion blogs aggregated by Adobe Feeds. Either I'm missing something or everyone had too much fun at the after-session party last night. :) I don't really have any of the details about the announcements, since I was only half-paying attention to the live blogging from the event and the Twitter stream, but two items stood out for me. One was the announcement that server-side ActionScript is in the works. For those who don't know, ActionScript is the language of Flex, which is a client-side technology. Someone on Twitter said that the announcement meant that you could run ActionScript on the ColdFusion server, so that you could code certain things in ActionScript rather than CFML, but I don't know if that's really the case or not (I'm sure that will be clarified within the next few days). The second announcement that caught my attention was about Durango. To quote the Durango web page on Adobe Labs (it's already available for download): "Durango is a framework that allows developers to build Adobe AIR applications that can be customized by end-users." Basically, it sounds like a means of allowing user-created mashups in an AIR application. Giving end-users the ability to make their own mashups seems to be a trend in the industry lately. It remains to be seen whether users will make use of that kind of power and flexibility. Anyway, I expect folks who are actually at MAX will blog about these items and provide some more details, but I figured I put these items out there so people know what to look out for in upcoming posts from the community.

If You Build the App, Someone Just Might Use It: You Never Know

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:18:00 -0400

I was rather surprised to see my colorPicker AIR application included in a list of 10 AIR apps for web designers on the Six Revisions blog this past week. Then Gary Gilbert gave it more exposure by blogging about the Six Revisions post. After seeing the Six Revisions post, I decided to check colorPicker's download numbers on RIAForge and got another surprise: the download count was just shy of 800. As of today, four days after the blog exposure, the download count stands at 1119. I built the colorPicker mainly for myself (and I still use it). I put it up on RIAForge because I thought a FEW people might prefer something a bit simpler than Kuler (Adobe's color palette tool). But given the number of slick color designer AIR apps that are out now, I would never have expected that many people to have given colorPicker even a glance. It just goes to show that you never know what apps or code other people might find worthwhile.

If You Don't Follow RIA News, You Must Be a TWiT

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:33:00 -0400

I just finished listening to the latest "This Week in Tech" (TWiT) podcast on my way home from work tonight. I'm a regular listener of TWiT. Even though I'm aware of most of their news items prior to hearing it from them, I like some of the personalities on the show and their discussions are generally interesting. But I have one big problem with TWiT: they never talk about RIA (Rich Internet Application) technology. Oh, they might say the word "Flash" or "Flex" in regard to some specific product or service, and maybe say a sentence or two about AJAX, but that's as far as it ever goes. Maybe they think their audience is mostly end-users who don't care, but that doesn't stop them from talking about stuff that only geeks would truly care about, so I don't think it's a valid excuse. I thought this week might be different. With all of the press coverage over the release of AIR this week, and with all the subsequent articles hyping the RIA struggle between Microsoft and Adobe, Silverlight vs. AIR (even though it's not an accurate comparision)...surely the TWiT panel couldn't ignore the topic this week. Sure they could. What got me even more frustrated was the way it WASN'T mentioned. Just over 4 minutes into what was an 87-minute podcast, host Leo Laporte notes they have a large roundtable group and "absolutely nothing to talk about." Not usually a good sign for the rest of the podcast. After discussing about two news stories and a discussion about having another option for listening to podcasts besides via iTunes, the discussion turned to a comparison between the Twitter and Pownce messaging systems. I got hopeful again: Pownce provides an AIR-powered desktop application, so maybe the discussion would cause the AIR release to come up. One panelist mentioned that the Pownce API had been updated last week, and I thought "Maybe they were waiting on the release of AIR to release that new API" (I have no idea if the events were related). So I shouted (I kid you not) at my iPod, while driving in my car, at the pre-recorded voice of someone who could not possibly hear me: "Say maybe it was because of AIR! Mention AIR! SAY ITS NAME!" Yeah, well, that didn't work. I'm not a fanboy of AIR, or Flex, or any of the other RIA technologies (though I do use AJAX reasonably often). I like whatever gets the job done in the most reasonable way. I wouldn't be upset if they made fun of any of those technologies, or questioned their usefulness, or whatever: I listen to them for their opinions, whether I agree with them or not. But to not say anything: that's pathetic. RIAs are out there and gaining a presence, whether good or bad. I can't see how you can ignore them by mistake. Near the end of the podcast, regular panelist John Dvorak mocked the use of Twitter because at the end of the day, it didn't put $5 in his pocket, and a few minutes later someone on Twitter apparently offered to send him $5. Hey, John, I'll send you $5 if you can get the TWiT panel to discuss RIA technology. It would be worth it at 10x the price.

Updated My colorPicker AIR Application to Run In AIR 1.0

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:27:00 -0400

It took me a bit longer than I expected, but I released an AIR 1.0-compatible version of my colorPicker AIR application this afternoon. The problems I ran into were mostly my own fault. I originally developed colorPicker under AIR Beta 2. When AIR Beta 3 came out, I downloaded and installed Beta 3, reinstalled colorPicker, and it worked fine, so I assumed that the changes in Beta 3 were to aspects of AIR that my app didn't use. I didn't realize that they had changed the syntax of the AIR descriptor file, so I was surprised when colorPicker wouldn't even compile under AIR 1.0. Once I updated my descriptor file, I was able to compile and run colorPicker, but oddly enough I had to tweak some CSS styles regarding padding, so that took a little more time. But anyway, it's done. According to the stats on RIAForge, it's been downloaded about 160 times, so hopefully that means some folks are getting some use out of it.

AIR Apps Showcased at Adobe Engage Event

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:20:00 -0400

A number of AIR applications were showcased at the Adobe Engage 2008 event yesterday. I found a blog that has summaries and pictures of some of the presentations given: http://galbraiths.org/blog/category/engage08/ Some of the featured apps I'd heard of before (like the eBay AIR application), but some were new to me.

AIR 1.0 and Flex 3.0 Are Out!

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:27:00 -0400

Check out the pages on the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/ http://www.adobe.com/products/air/ ...I'm a little disappointed that AIR still isn't quite ready for Linux, because it's not truly cross-platform until it is, but I know they're beta-testing it with Linux users so hopefully it won't be much longer.

AIR Recognized as a Top-10 Emerging Technology by MIT Technology Review

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:05:00 -0400

AIR made the Technology Review's top-10 list of emerging technologies: TR10: Offline Web Applications Nice to see AIR get some recognition as an emerging trend. Now give us AIR 1.0 already! :)

Neat Video Demo of the Allurent Desktop Connection AIR App At Work

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:45:00 -0400

I was reading Dan Wilson's report of the Flex 3/AIR Tour event down in North Carolina yesterday on his RIA Zone blog (one of the new DZone sites I mentioned in my previous blog entry), and he mentioned that Ben Forta demonstrated an AIR application made by Allurent that impressed everyone there. He included a link to a video demo of the product: http://www.allurent.com/page.php?id=70 I'm equally impressed. The application uses AIR in ways I hadn't considered, like allowing color matching of products based on the color in an image on the user's hard drive, and pushing news and content down to the application on a scheduled basis rather than waiting for the user to pull data down. Definitely worth checking out.

My First AIR Application: colorPicker

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:20:00 -0400

In my most recent web application project, my clients asked for the ability to change the color of certain HTML elements without having to actually write or change any HTML code. So I used ColdFusion and the jQuery JavaScript library to create a color grid similar to the one that pops up in Adobe Dreamweaver when you type a color-related HTML or CSS attribute, allowing them to choose a color simply by clicking on it. After I finished the grid, it occurred to me how I could use a similar tool for my coding work: CFEclipse doesn't have a selectable color grid (most likely a limitation of Eclipse itself), and it's a pain to open up Dreamweaver or Fireworks just to get a color. So I decided to try and make my color grid into an AIR application. The result is colorPicker, a widget-like AIR application that lets you either select a color from a grid of "web-safe" colors or design a color using sliders to change the red, green, and blue values of the color. Once you have the color you want, you can click on the corresponding "Save to Clipboard" button to copy the hex color code to the clipboard and then paste it into your HTML code in your IDE of choice. It also saves all of the colors you've copied to the clipboard during your session so you can repeat a color. It actually uses very little of the AIR API: just the clipboard copy function and the description file needed to run it. Everything else is done with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. You can view screenshots of colorPicker and download it from RIAforge.org at: http://colorpicker.riaforge.org

How to Copy To and From the Clipboard using JavaScript in AIR Beta 2

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:52:00 -0400

In case there's another poor soul out there who just needs to know how to work with the clipboard using JavaScript in AIR Beta 2, I'm posting this very simple example of how to get text from the clipboard, clear the clipboard, and send text to the clipboard. Getting text from the clipboard:

 
var ctext= air.Clipboard.generalClipboard.getData("air:text","cloneOnly");
alert("ctext is: " + ctext);

Clearing the clipboard:


air.Clipboard.generalClipboard.clear();

Sending text to the clipboard:


var myText= "Some text";
var clip= air.Clipboard.generalClipboard;
clip.setData("air:text",myText,false);

The functions involved are all covered in the JavaScript Language Reference for Adobe AIR, but I found the documentation less than clear, and all the examples I found in blog posts and in the Adobe forums were from earlier versions of AIR/Apollo. Even the PDF documentation that came with the AIR download was out-of-date (note to Adobe: that's not good). This example only covers text, but it should provide enough of a guide so that, along with the language reference, you can work with other data types. Update: the clipboard functions listed above also seem to work unchanged in AIR Beta 3

Wharton School at UPenn on the Merging of Web and Desktop Technologies

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:53:00 -0400

Saw this on Digg today: it's an article by several members of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania that talks about the emergence of technologies geared towards merging the Web and the desktop. They give an overview of the recent developments: Adobe AIR, Google Gears, Silverlight, Prism, etc. If you're not familiar with this latest trend, the article is definitely a good read: Software's Future: Melding the Web and the Desktop