jun :: realeyes media

Earlier I posted on a Degrafa presentation that will be given at RMAUG.

http://www.iheartair.com/?p=125 

I had the dates wrong and have since corrected it.  It is actually tomorrow, Thursday 5/8.  Sorry for the inconvenience, and see you there!

-Jun

If you're curious about Degrafa, we'll be hosting Juan Sanchez's presentation at RMAUG live in Adobe Connect!  It's limited to 200 attendees, but if you're one of the lucky ones you can take part in an outstanding presentation.

The presentation will be starting at approximately 7pm Mountain Time, tomorrow May 7th. [correction] it's on Thursday, May 8th. [/correction]

Here's a link to where the meeting will be hosted:

http://realeyes.acrobat.com/rmaug/

See you there!

On May 8th Juan Sanchez is going to be speaking about Degrafa at the Rocky Mountain Adobe User's Group here in Denver, Colorado.  The talk is "Intro to Degrafa" and should be worth your while.

If you're interested, you can register here:

http://www.rmaug.com/

If you don't know what Degrafa is, it's a declarative framework for graphics in Flex apps.  In other words you can make things real pretty with it!

If you don't know Juan Sanchez, you should.  He's been very good to the Flex community.  Active with user groups, speaking at conferences, and most importantly the man behind Scalenine skins and themes for Flex/AIR, and one of the main developers on the Degrafa team. 

Here's some more links:

http://www.degrafa.com/

http://www.scalenine.com/

Hope to see you there!

We've updated the REDbug site with the latest beta build 0.57.  New in this build are:

• Support for sending log output to Firebug with the same call
• Support for custom log level coloring
• Minor UI Enhancements
• As always, no need for running in debug mode!

Also, we've created a client-side library for Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3 developers.

Finally, we've updated the usage examples sections.  There's now one for:

• AIR
• Flex 3
• Flex 2.0.1 hotfix 3
• Flash CS3
• Flash 8

Check out the latest at http://www.redbugtool.com/

Part two of my performance considerations series has been posted to InsideRIA this morning:

http://www.insideria.com/2008/04/flex-ria-performance-considera.html

If you're new to startup optimization, or looking for examples this would be a good one for you to check out.  Full sample apps with view source and all! 

If you're a veteran, you might find some interest in the seven frame Flex app experiment that I worked on.  Just scroll down to the section titled "EXPERIMENTAL: Take Advantage of the Stream". 

The seven frame Flex app in that section was an effort on fleshing out some concepts covered by Dirk Eismann:

http://www.richinternet.de/blog/index.cfm?entry=FF295F89-DAD8-CCDC-960413842BC0D478

Anyway, have fun and hope you enjoy the post!

Beatport Downloader, a download utility application for electronic music was released yesterday.  I worked on this application with my dev team at RealEyes and with Beatport...it was definitely an interesting ride building an AIR app at the same time AIR was evolving through it's beta cycles through 1.0 release.

Anyway if you're into electronic music, check out Beatport: https://www.beatport.com 

Or, if you already use Beatport, check out the Downloader http://www.beatportdownloader.com/

Brian Holmes started a new Flex User's group up there in Fort Collins. 

http://blog.smashedapples.com/2008/04/fort-collins-fl.html

If you're in Fort Collins and you develop Flex you should definitely check it out...too bad I'm over 75 miles away with a '97 Subaru complete with "Check Engine" on. ;-)  Good luck Brian and keep up the rockin blog posts!

I just got accepted to speak about the Flex Builder 3 Profiler at the upcoming 360 Flex. I've very excited about this because 360 Flex conferences are outstanding!

Here's the link to conference info:

360|Flex San Jose, CA. August 17-20 2008

Here's my session summary:

Level: 300
Title: Using the Flex Builder 3 Profiler
Detail: During the session the functionality of the Flex Builder 3 Profiler will be explored through both background lecture, and most importantly various Flex Builder projects tuned to highlight key features of the Profiler.

Now, if the above excites you as a developer, feel free to hit me up with a comment if there's anything in particular that you'd like to see.

See you in San Jose!

Last Tuesday I gave a user group presentation on AIR Windows, Menus, and System Tray. Although I got a chance to post the slides last week, it took me a little while to get a hold of a Mac and verify my sample application's functionality. Well...with a couple little code mods it's working how I wanted on the Mac.

Couple notes on the sample app:

• I enabled view source
• This app will require you to input a Yahoo Developer Network AppID before you can use it...sorry, I'm already using my 5,000 queries a day.
• If you want to see the bounce() functionality on MacOS, you need to CTRL+Click the DockIcon and select HIDE from the Dock Menu (It's running on a 2 second timer)
• I am not an artist...hence the 5th grader quality icons, graphics, and styling
• Disclaimer: This is just an example app and was slapped together. It should not be construed as a best practices effort
• Disclaimer: I'm not sure if what I'm doing to embed Napster is legit...but you know it's just an educational research endeavour.
• AFTER INSTALL: To invoke hair metal, use the Window, Application, Dock, or SystemTray menu

Anyway, you can get the app with this embedded AIR badge below, and if you still wanted to see the slides, they can be found here:

http://www.iheartair.com/?p=117

Enjoy, and rock, rock till you drop!

Thanks to everyone for showing up to the RMAUG meeting last night. Also, an extra thanks to Greg for posting a summary of last night presso. He took some good notes:

http://www.artfulmedium.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/4/9/AIR-Windows-Menus-and-the-System-Tray--RMAUG

If you're still interested, here are the slides I used last night, with a couple revisions...enjoy:
http://www.iheartair.com/samples/rmaug/2008_04/2008Apr_rmaug_Windows_Menus_SystemTray.pdf

On a side note, the issue with trying to reopen closed NativeWindows also exists on Mac, I tested it.  I know it was a question during the meeting.

Finally, in reference to the example app...I'll post it very soon...probably tomorrow...with view source enabled even. (Making a couple tweaks. Taking my Yahoo appid key out and a couple other things.)