Apache Flex

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Building Beautiful Apps for BlackBerry 10 with AIR

Comunicando 114 ¿Qué móvil prefieres? iPhone, BlackBerry o Android (Photo credit: jagelado)

Please watch the BlackBerry Jam Europe 2013 session - JAM364 on Building Beautiful Apps for BlackBerry 10 with AIR.

Friday, February 15, 2013

How to convert an existing Flex 3.0 or older application to Run on Mobile

Mobile web standards evolution (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Below are the steps for Converting an existing Flex 3.0 or an older application to Run on mobile:

Create a mobile project
Add the MX.swc to the library path of your mobile project.
Copy the code to this mobile project. Now, you would be able to use the MX Libraries in your mobile project.
Test the performance on the mobile device, if it is not acceptable or very slow.

Start replacing the MX components with Spark components until performance is acceptable in Step 4.

In case you feel, the application is not very usable in small mobile screen,

try re-designing & re-implementing your application using only mobile supported components.
You may consider reuse of some of your existing code to same effort & time. If very little reuse is possible you may consider evaluating development using other frameworks (for eg. Titanium, PhoneGap or HTML 5)

In case of any further queries or suggestions please post them as comment to this blog.

Friday, October 19, 2012

ASC 2.0 vs Falcon

ActionScript (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Falcon, the next-generation MXML and ActionScript compiler that is currently under development

Following are the key differences between Falcon and ASC 2.0
- ASC 2.0 is essentially a fork of Falcon.
- Falcon was branched off from ASC 2.0 in summer 2012 and the packages were renamed from com.adobe.flash to org.apache.flex.
- Falcon supports Flex (MXML)
- ASC 2.0 is mainly focused on gaming.

the new ActionScript Compiler (ASC 2.0) is part of the AIR 3.4/FP 11.4 SDK. The complete release notes are available here. It things like Concurrency (ActionScript Workers) support for debugging and more.

Mirror of Apache Flex SDK at Github

English: Logo of the Apache Software Foundation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mirror of Apache Flex SDK at Github

Only few committers of the project has write access to the code repository of the project, but everyone has read access.
https://github.com/apache/flex-sdk

Below is the link to the details of how can you get involved & contribute towards the open source development, documentation, training & marketing of Apache Flex® through its Community
http://flex.apache.org/community-getinvolved.html

Friday, October 5, 2012

Two Best External Debugging Tools for Flex / Flash Applicaitons, updated

Script Debugger icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Below is the list of external debugging tools for Flash / Flex

1. Monster Debugger (http://demonsterdebugger.com/)

an open source debugger for Adobe Flash, Flex and AIR for the desktop, the web and the mobile. Its made in Flex and AIR, It was donated by De Monsters as an open source debugger to Adobe Flash Community and is avaialble for free.

To take a tour of its debugging features visit: http://www.monsterdebugger.com/tour

2. Fxspy

A visual tool in Flex 3 that's able to read and modified the properties and styles of a running application (http://code.google.com/p/fxspy/ ). Visit the URL: http://www.mieuxcoder.com/data/2007/12/FlexSpy-1.2/dashboard.html for live demo of this tool.

Flash XML Graphics (FXG)

Illustrator fxg experiment (Photo credit: everyplace)

Flash XML Graphics (FXG), is a graphics interchange file format based on XML that lets you define low-level vector graphics. FXG is an XML based declarative format.

Starting Flex 4.0, FXG graphics can be declared as part of an MXML file or in a separate text file with FXG extension.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Six Best IDEs for Flex / Flash Application Development, Top Five alternates for Adobe Flash Builder

Flash Builder 4 Branding (Photo credit: Adam Tuttle)

Below is the list of IDEs for Flex with debugging support

1. Powerflasher FDT

Homepage Link: http://fdt.powerflasher.com/
Check my blog PowerFlasher FDT 5 - Yet Another IDE for Flash/Flex/Air (practicalflex.blogspot.com) for further details.

2. Amethyst

Homepage Link: http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Adobe-Flex-IDE-Amethyst-Beta-2

3. Adobe Flash Builder

Homepage Link: http://www.adobe.com/in/products/flash-builder.html

Port of Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 to Linux - http://code.google.com/p/fb4linux/ -

4. IntelliJ IDEA - Ultimate Edition

Homepage URL: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/flex_ide.html)

5. Flash Develop

Homepage URL: http://www.flashdevelop.org/

Overview - FD is free and open source. It is also being developed actively, it has got lots of good features comparable to that of FDT like the debugger and profiler. For mobile development there are lot of resources from the community, like sample project files for e.g. (How to build an app for iphone or ipad with flashdevelop - http://www.lorenzonuvoletta.com/build-an-app-for-iphone-or-ipad-with-flashdevelop/)

6. Realaxy ActionScript Editor

Website: http://realaxy.com/