Psyked*

it’s easy once you know how.

Adobe AIR is…

Posted by James - 13/04/08 at 12:04:08 pm

Just what Adobe AIR is, is an unusual concept. But I think I’m getting the hang of it.

Adobe AIR is not…

Adobe AIR is not a direct replacement for Adobe Director, and in that respect not a competitor to products like MDM Zinc. Macromedia / Adobe has been pretty unenthusiastic about keeping Director on par with its other products in the last 4 years and oh, how we wish it weren’t so. Nevertheless, AIR is not aimed at replacing Director.

Adobe AIR is…

the best parallel is probably the .net framework that Microsoft creates and distributes. An AIR file can’t function without the AIR runtime, and neither can it be installed. The same is true of applications and services that leverage the .net framework. Luckily, for end users, the .net framework often comes with your application (or if you’re even luckier, via Automatic Updates) Lucky for AIR then, that you can do the same thing.
Continue reading Adobe AIR is……

AIR files downloading as .zips?

Posted by James - 11/04/08 at 10:04:05 pm

Well, here’s a mercifully easy to solve problem with Adobe AIR.

A couple of people pointed out that Internet Explorer was saving my .air download files as .zip format - even going so far as to change the filename extension to .zip. (Firefox is fine, and doesn’t do this.) AIR packages are based on the Zip format, so the file contents itself aren’t actually being changed - but when the end user recieves the file, this is going to change the application that handles the file on their local machine.

Continue reading AIR files downloading as .zips?…

on AIR London / Review

Posted by James - 11/04/08 at 08:04:35 am

Well, despite coming down with a killer headache 1/2 way through the event, I thoroughly enjoyed the London leg of the on AIR tour. All the guys from Adobe and [most of] the ‘guest speakers’ were really interesting. Toying around with AIR before the event helped understand things a little better, but looking up stuff on the ‘net just doesn’t compare to having it demonstrated on the tour. Like the worlds smallest video player.

I think you can tell something’s good if the event-hype subsides and you still find yourself dreaming up ideas.
Continue reading on AIR London / Review…

UTF-8 Bot - file encoding conversion with AIR

Posted by James - 08/04/08 at 01:04:09 am

Well, here it is, my first Adobe AIR application from Flash.

Continue reading UTF-8 Bot - file encoding conversion with AIR…

Playing with Air…

Posted by James - 07/04/08 at 08:04:15 am

I thought i’d do a little bit of serious work with Air - how about an application for converting text file formats? Well ok, it sounds boring, but it’s a starting point. I’m not finished yet, but my deadline is pretty harsh (Wednesday, in fact!) so I’m hoping to have another update tomorrow, once I’ve ironed out a few remaining bugs (and removed the chance that the application will corrupt your files!)
Continue reading Playing with Air……

Adobe on AIR comes to London…

Posted by James - 23/02/08 at 04:02:34 pm

Well, I know this is a bit behind the official announcement, but the Adobe on AIR tour (that went across the US a little while ago) is soon to begin it’s European leg, stopping in 12 European cities.  I’m signed up for it, and should be attending the one in London, on the 9th April.

See the official site here.

I’ve never been to something like this before, so it should be fun.

One week get to grips with Adobe AIR…

Posted by James - 01/08/07 at 09:08:30 pm

“James!” they say, “you’ve been dying to play with Flex and Air. Make us an application to accompany our E-Newsletter!” How could I refuse?

“You have until friday.”

So that’s what I’ve been doing.

 

I have unfortunately, no previous experience with Flex, Air or even ActionScript 3, so this is proving to be interesting. Marketing has settled on producing an RSS reader - stay tuned and I’ll let you know how things turn out in couple o’ days.