JADBOX: Web Application Musings

Twitter Riddle

admin — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:26:10 +0000

How many tweets could a critter twitter if a critter could twitter tweets?

…these are the things I come up with when I have too much time.

No related posts.

FlashDevelop 3 RC1 released

admin — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:57:10 +0000

In case you missed the news over the holidays, a new version of FlashDevelop was released. FlashDevelop has evolved over a number of years and has proven itself as an invaluable tool to Actionscript development. There is so much polish on this application that it outperforms Flex Builder when it comes to many of the basic tasks of code writing and navigation in my opinion.

http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4041

Changes:

* Live syntax errors highlighting (AS3).
* The editor font can now be defined in the settings.
* Automatic type selection after “new” with typed vars.
* Explorer shell menu has been added to “Files” and “Project” panels.
* Smart contextual event type completion, if declared with Event() directive.
* You can double-click on a class when exploring a library SWC to see the class model.
* Completion automatically adapts to the project’s Flash Player target version (FP9, FP10, AIR).
* External SWC’s (outside of the project tree) now appear like external classpaths.
* Updated MXML completion, now with effects attributes.

+ Lots of bug fixes and other small improvements.

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CardSpace Fail?

admin — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:59:20 +0000

I remember once Microsoft CardSpace was announced and shown to a group of MSDN members that I was apart of here in Detroit. The idea seemed fantastic- finally a way to secure user’s online identity and allow the user to relay the needed information to online applications without having to fill out forms anymore! However, there was some technical obsticles I foresaw. The biggest one being the solution was “magic”. The technology used a specialized IE plugin for integration (something that Chrome and until recently Firefox wouldn’t have), and uses technology paradigms that are not used commonly in the programming community. This not only locks down the platform, but the technology is incompatible to systems that do not have a Microsoft built extension. In addition the platform requires low level access to the operating system for security precausions meaning the OS needs to have been made with a special sandbox environment specifically for the application. Novell has been working on their implementation of CardSpace, but I have doubts about the user adoption rate.

What I am trying to say is CardSpace was an amazing concept, but it has failed to appeal to both the larger developer community and end users. I see single Firefox plugins that fill in forms having much more popularity and community buzz. They require nothing of the developer of the site, easy startup for the end user, doesn’t require the OS to support certain features, requires no installation (other than the browser plugin), and the concept is very logical to follow.

The only other idea that could have a higher adoption than these generic browser plugins would be a global informtion site that your personal form information could be tethered from. However, this would require a big name behind the project as people would not trust a service with all their personal information that they didn’t already have some form of trust with beforehand. Who could it be? Google perhaps?
On a side note, an excellent Firefox plugin for filling out forms is Sxipper .

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Why Google Native Client is not a Flash competitor

admin — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:30:29 +0000

There has been a lot of buzz around the internet about Google’s new development project called Native Client. This very ambitious project attempts to being desktop applications to the web browser. This project has a very long road ahead of them as it becomes extremely difficult to regulate an application that is able to access hardware or low level software hooks at will. However, even when this project is able to find its feet, it is NOT a competitor to online interactive mediums like Flash or Silverlight. This is because desktop applications are tailored to the desktop platform. Sure, Native Client can run the game Quake through the browser, but why wait downloading 100+ megabytes to play the game inside a small browser window when you could download it in its original form and play it on the desktop? The platform is simply not web-friendly at its core. Having said that, perhaps one day once the internet speed is as fast as desktop HDs and Native Client is able to execute code without any dependency on the operating system, that would be golden. This would allow browsers (like Chrome) to literally be the operating system for the computer. However, while Native Client may be backwards compatible, Flash, Silverlight and JavaFX are working hard to bring OpenGL acceleration and near-desktop math processing support. These platforms are much more web-friendly as they are optimized to be compact and able to stream load their code during runtime (which is highly valuable when you are considering enterprise-class applications).

I’m still very annoyed by the fact that Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFX are all roughly 10 times slower in basic math operations than pure C# or any other desktop platform.

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flashMVC: New Utility ActionBinder!

admin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:39:38 +0000

I just update the SVN (svn.jadbox.com/public/) source for flashMVC with a MXML component tool I made for the cases that I was working with Flex. It’s located in com/jadbox/flashMVC/flex/ActionBinder.as, and it helps automate the view (aka MXML) portion of your application to communicate with your SuperModel. It will monitor the status of a particular action on the model, and allow the user to easily perform view updates or to run the action itself. This will help further reduce the amount of work you will have to do in Script tags (if not completely remove the need for one in the MXML).

// Example

action="{mySuperModel.LOGIN}"
id="LoginBinder"
actionComplete="{trace('Login action completed')}"
actionEnable="{trace('action enabled')}"
actionDisable="{trace('action disabled')}"
actionPerforming="{trace('working')}"
actionStoppedPerforming="{trace('stopped working')}" />
// You can also do the action from the wrapper:
myActionBinder.perform(…args);
LoginBinder.perform(username.text, password.test); // for example
// Can use this property to
// enable or disable the action as well:
myActionBinder.actionEnabled=false;

You can find a great example of this in my SVN under the path:
/flex projects/flashMVC examples/actionBinderExample/
You will just be sure to link the flashMVC framework from the Flex project settings to compile.

Asdocs have been updated with the ActionBinder’s API. For more information about nimble flashMVC framework, go the flashMVC tab at the top.

Next on my list of features for flashMVC is the application “replayability from imported xml log”. This will be really useful to utilize in Flash or Flex development!

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Programming News Week

admin — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:48:52 +0000

Here are some random tidbits of news headlines and links I found of interest this week:

PHP 5.3 will support Lambda functions/closures
Python 3.0 released - backwards incompatible but contains much more logical syntax.
Adobe Alchemy is it actionscript heresy? - good article stating that Alchemy could be little to no faster than AS3 once the compiler is optimized.

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at&t: Why Bureaucracy and Technology Don’t Mix

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:45:47 +0000

Old-school pyramid management can severely cripple an organization’s ability to adequately adopt and help their customers. Today the story I have to illustrate this problem is about at&t’s service and support departments. First off, let me state that the actual DSL service I had with at&t has been nearly flawless with 6mb downloads with 768k uploads. I am definitely a power user (online gaming, downloading, video and audio streaming, and working at home) and never hit any kind of service-capping or times that the network connection from slow. However, this story isn’t about the ‘product’ but the customer service and internal processes that occur…

I’m currently in the process of moving and called into at&t about 5 weeks before moving to get my services transferred over. I talked to the billing lady on the phone, and she set up my account to be disconnected and reconnected at my new place on the same day of moving. Well, two days later, my internet went dead. Here’s what happened next:

(45 minutes on hold) I called at&t tech support and was told they have no idea what happened and that maybe it was a Billing dpt. problem (was there no notes on the account on why it got pulled?)
(30 minutes on hold) Billing dpt said that my account was disabled… but only the ‘new’ Billing dpt would know and they would have to transfer me again. (umm… okay…. if you can’t see even notes on my account, shouldn’t the ‘old’ department be shut down or upgraded)
(40 minutes on Hold) The “New Billing dpt.” said that “someone” pulled my at&t service way earlier than they should have for me moving (why isn’t this a more automated process instead of a manual procedure that someone could make a mistake on?). She said she would put a rush order in for me and call me back later that day. (24hrs later, no call)
(20 minutes of Hold) Called the Billing dpt back and was told that Provisioning Dpt could help me expedite the new service order to re-issue internet connection.
(15 minutes of Hold) Provisioning Dpt says that in “their computes” that they have no order for a new DSL connection for me. They have to call someone in Billing to confirm…
(5-10 minutes later) Both a Provisioning and Billing manager talked on the same line, they say that the original new order was ‘invalid’ and they have to put in a new one. However, it takes 24 hours for new orders to go through so I will have to wait… then call back to have it escalated. (why can’t they just remember this conversation and get it escalated themselves when it comes through?)
(10 minutes on Hold) After 24 hours again, called Billing and was told that they can’t complete the service setup because its considered a “new” order and new orders can’t be put on an account that’s closing in the future (it’s considered ‘closing’ even though I am just changing addresses). I am now being transferred to Resolutions dpt (?) for further help.
(15 minutes on hold) After talking to the department, I currently have a lady who is trying to bypass this and continue the order, but she does not know yet if she will be successful even with management help.
(Update) After 2 weeks without internet (by a bug caused on their end), I finally have it back up. My thanks goes out to all the AT&T people that helped in the process. However, it was very disappointing that such bugs couldn’t have had a faster turn-around time with the use of technology. The very nature of this problem of how it occurred illustrates a broken and dated system in place.

It seems now that I might not even get the internet back by the time I move which is such a shame considering that this was a error on at&t’s side. If it wasn’t for the good history I have had with their internet package itself, I would never consider using them again. On the flip-side, there isn’t a mainstream ISP out there that doesn’t have horror stories and dedicated hate websites that I know of. Is servicing customers just a low priority for executive management to refine in order to make improvements and efficiencies? One of my favorite things about t-mobile is that when you call technical support, THEY will call you back instead of keeping you on hold. This saves them money from having a line open, and it saves me time plus phone bill cost.

However, this post is not about complaining, but about the opportunity for improvement. How many times can you see that they could have made these internal processes more reliable and easier to service when something in the process goes wrong? One thing, for example, is that every action taken to an account should have a “version-ed” state as well as a noted technician name appended to it. If this was done, my account could be “rolled” back to its correct state and the person who made the error in disconnecting my service found and corrected. However, it seems now that even when my issue is fixed, no one will ever know who exactly made the mistake… who could continue making the same mistakes for years to come and never know.

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Flash Player 10 confirmed for Android (with video)

admin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:28:48 +0000

Well, I predicted that Adobe would be eager to develop for the Android, and here it is: a working demo of Flash Player 10 running on the G1 being displayed today at a conference:

This is VERY exciting news! While Flash games may be slow because of the device, video streaming and Flash/Flex applications will be amazing to utilize for development. For myself, this means I can create simple Android apps to interact with the device features (like camera) and use Flash for the UI and logic since I know that language much more than Java currently.

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T-mobile G1 impression and Flash

admin — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:45:52 +0000

Well, I finally took the plunge and got my first smart phone! I’ve looked at several choices over the past year like the Blackberry Bold, Storm, Apple’s acclaimed iPhone, Diamond Touch, Envy, and the LG Dare. However, after measuring the pros and cons, I decided on Tmobile’s G1. Why, you might ask? For one, I do like the full slide-out keyboard, touch screen, and trackball features. However, the G1’s biggest asset is of course Google’s open source Android operating system that it runs on. Android will allow even intermediate Java developers to make applications easily and publish to the market for other users to use. Examples of current applications are: barcode scanner and local prise comparison, parking spot locater on a radar display, social networking integration including direct camera posting, use mp3s as a ring tone (iPhone requires a painful hack for this to even work), remember-the-milk task reminder, weather display, and much much more. Heck, if I can find enough time, I will start writing applications for it.

Also, the cost of the phone is cheaper (its $170) and the monthly contract is about $25 cheaper than the iPhone (which the savings alone is as much as my internet home service). Overall, I have had the phone for over a week and can say nothing but good things about it. I did have some issues with the T-mobile service line… but to be honest, most of the tech support reps have not even seen the device since the G1 is sold out across the US right now.

My two wishes for the phone are longer battery life (with RC30 bios and 3G disabled, I have 80% battery by noon with lite use) and for Adobe to bring Flash Player (preferably 10) to the Android Market! I assume if Flash Player 10 where to ever to hit a cellphone device- that it would be the G1 since Adobe has been a well known Java centric company internally, but FP is written in C, if I remember right, so it will need to be transported to Java OR run as a Linux app directly on the G1 outside Android.

Note: RC30 update now has a viewer for most of the Microsoft Office formats.

Update #1:
At the Adobe MAX 2008 conference, Turner indicates that an “Android port” [of Flash Player 10] is coming!

Update #2:
Flash Player 10 confirmed for Android (with video)!

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Living in the [virtual] Cloud

admin — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:12:40 +0000

I have always strive to keep things organized and in arm’s reach. People expect, with the rise of the Web 2.0 boom, that services should be fast, easy on the eyes, accessible on desktop/web/mobile systems, free/cheap, and have a reliable up time. With the tools that are available now, I have completely replaced the need to use (snail) mail and feel that now, more then ever, I can exist in a true service cloud. Below I have compiled a collection of sophisticated online services that can increase the level of simplicity and zen in most everyone’s life:

Daily organization (notes, weather, other): www.google.com/ig (must have homepage)
- Google also has an amazing calendar, notebook, and doc/presentation/spreadsheet services
Bookmarking: Delicious.com
- For those who are new to social bookmarking, it allows bookmarks to be saved directly to an online account. I would recommend getting the Firefox toolbar for faster access. Also note that you can add igoogle gadgets that sync with your delicious to display different categories of links that you have bookmarked.
Misc Data backup: https://www.getdropbox.com/ (2gb free)
Photo backup: Google’s Picasa Web (250mb cap I think…need to find a better service here!)
Documents: convert to Google Docs or store in a data backup (see above)
Music backup and streaming: lala.com (syncs music to an online locker that can streamed or downloaded)
- Honorable mention of finetune.com, mp3tunes.com, Pandora Radio, and last.fm
Videos: obviously youtube.com
General needs
- Organizing recites and manuals: mystuff.com
- Easy tax filing: turbotax.com (online)
- All traveling needs: orbiz.com or Travelocity.com or expedia.com
- Bank/Financial monitoring: mint.com
- Most utility and billing companies now have direct automatically online payment options
Fast news lookup: originalsignal.com, addictomatic.com, or of course digg.com
What others have I missed? Please comment if you have another service that has made your life that must easier!

Other great links to read on this subject: top 80 sites and best of web

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Adaptive Interfaces

admin — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:32:25 +0000

A common mistake that I read on blogs is when it comes to today’s “modern” user interfaces: fewer features we offer to the user’s interface the better… make it simple! This common misconception is happening in some of even the largest software companies. For example, the Windows Vista defragger changed dramatically from XP as it is now a single button… no options, no status, and no detailed view on defragmentation process. Hence, you click this button to start the process- only to end up waiting hours while it drills on with little options or any understanding on what is happening. What if the user just wanted a ‘fast’ defrag and doesn’t want to wait a lengthy process at the time…. maybe they want to defragment a single file. I believe fewer interface elements are better- NOT fewer features.

The future I would say is intelligent interfaces that adapt to user’s expectations. The application’s functionality should be able to tailor itself to the user’s expectations. Users want interfaces that are simple to use but powerful in functionality. However this usually translates into a UI that understands the user and knows the correct action to take at the time they are called. One of the primary reasons why the iPhone become popular was the simple interface was able to perform a hefty amount of functionality. Just as Google will customize search results based the user’s history like showing restaurant matches in your area in the order of perceived user food preference, GUI interfaces should try to adapt to their user, consolidate similar functionality, and choose the correct action in the appropriate situation.

With that, I close this Friday with Psychologist Barry Schwartz’s speech from TED talking about peoples distress from having too many options available to them at any one time. Options are good I believe… just not when they are all advertised (viewed) as equal options to choose from. Obvious solutions for individuals should have priority above others to avoid frustration… but elimination of options I believe is not the right answer here.

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Hidden Flash 10 IDE features

admin — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:30:05 +0000

While watching the live San Francisco Flash 10 Camp stream over the weekend (ideally I wanted to BE there but Detroit airports where tied up over the weekend), I listened to some points being made that I have heard little or nothing about in its advertised feature roster.

First feature is much better library management. For example when creating new Assets on the stage, you can quickly categorize the asset into a library folder. (small point but every click counts when you work in the IDE all day sometimes)

Second feature is *drumroll* native Flex compiled ActionScript SWCs support! No more nasty hacks to get those libraries working. In addition, this means you can use some of the Flex utility SWCs as long as they do not interface with the core Flex framework. This may mean you can use those utilities like mx.utils.UIDUtil that I had blogged about recently.

Finally there is a new file format coming after the product launches as a plugin (correct me if I’m wrong) that will one day replace the FLA file format. The new data format will then be a simple ZIP format that contains all the library assets seperately and hopefully (unconfirmed) in Flash 11- timeline code will be physical files within the ZIP package that can be versioned seperately allowing better collaboration. Again, this is only a rumar that seemed to be hinted at from the Adobe developers. This would be a huge boon as multiple people working on a FLA nowadays is nightmare.

I also just wanted to mention the Best in Show winner at Flash Camp: www.avenuefighter.com (requires Flash Player 10). This is a very entertaining animation that pulls in twitter posts and builds a scenerio from it that utilitizes the new IK animation system. Congrats team!

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Adobe AIR Wishes

admin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:18:28 +0000

While trying not to come off as an Adobe fan-boy, but Adobe AIR is truly a revolutionary desktop software platform and has the potential of going toe-to-toe with some of the markets that Visual Studio has dominated since the dawn of time. However, there are some key features that I believe could boost the power of AIR and swoon other desktop developers over:

Direct access to USB and serial ports… this would be a massive boon to manufacturing developers who have to interface with machines
Standalone exe option (granted there will be a higher file size since it has to contain the runtime)
Bundle non-embeded resources into .AIR packages
Native mysql (or like PHP’s mysqli interface) support
Bolster performance (maybe add multithreading) so that AIR could be a viable server platform
Optimize memory usage of the runtime (sometimes it goes mad and consumes over 300mb)
Update to the newest Webkit (much faster now)
AIR has very poor math performance for any desktop language… this should be improved. No company is going to embrace AIR for doing engineering or other mathematical simulations when its 10x slower than even Visual Basic.
Game development could really really use more GPU feature support
What else have I missed?

As it stands now, it seems like Adobe AIR does not contain any one end-user feature strength versus their competition… most of it has been developer orianted. (aside from the runtime application updating)

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