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it’s easy once you know how.

Viewing Flash / Flex / AIR documentation offline with “Doc?”

Posted by James - 04/03/09 at 09:03:17 am

I’ve been meaning to post about this for ages now, but I suppose it’s better late than never…

Doc? is an AIR application that centralizes all of the help documentation in Flash and Flex (and indeed other documentation, if you want) into a single application. It’s darned useful if you want to refer to the documentation without going to the online LiveDocs, or you want to check the documentation without opening Flash/Flex builder (like, if you’re using FlashDevelop). On top of all that, the search is faster and often more accurate than the standard search facility, and the application also looks pretty damn sweet.

There’s even plugins for Doc?, which add the the application search to the Flash IDE and Eclipse. – Which you can see how to install and configure from the plugins page. My only gripe with Doc? is that it has a bit of a user-interaction flaw – after you install the application, it’s useless until you install the documentation. You can learn all about how to configure it from the Doc? FAQ page, and once you’ve done that it works – but for all the cleverness of the application, it gives you no guidance about how to get started, and you have to find it out yourself.

You can download Doc? from the http://airdoc.be/, the dedicated website.

Link: Adobe AIR 1.5.1 released!

Posted by James - 25/02/09 at 10:02:31 am

http://blogs.adobe.com/air/2009/02/adobe_air_151_released.html

Apart from bugfixes, they’ve introduced a new event – InvokeEvent.reason – you can see why your application was started (user interaction, or automatic startup on login), so you can behave accordingly.

Link: The Art of System Tray and Dock Icons

Posted by Dan - 19/02/09 at 12:02:15 pm

http://www.insideria.com/2009/02/art-of-system-tray-and-dock-ic.html

Best Practice for AIR applications (1 of 7)

Posted by James - 16/02/09 at 12:02:08 am

One thing that could severely affect peoples’ general opinion of a technology is how it’s used, how it’s implimented. AIR in itself isn’t a technology that is really any better or worse than its competitors – it’s the usage that makes the difference – and customers make assumptions about a technology from how they see it used, not what it can do on paper. It’s important then, for AIR applications to be made with the quality as other applications, and with this in mind I thought I’d have a go at establishing some guidelines.

Guidelines, or Best Practice, should be pretty familiar to Flash/Flex developers – a lot of what we do is made for the web, and the web has guidelines (in the form of the W3C). AIR is a newish development platform, so a lot of the elements here represent a lot of work initally, but I’m trying to ignore the development it represents and imagine where things should be in a year or so. I have seven rough ‘categories’ with about 20 points total – too much to write in one night, so here’s the first of several posts on the subject.

Any suggestions, leave a comment.
Continue reading Best Practice for AIR applications (1 of 7)…

ImageSizer is now available from the Adobe AIR Marketplace!

Posted by James - 13/02/09 at 09:02:27 am

A couple of days ago Adobe relaunched the AIR Marketplace – the official repository of AIR applications available for download – and with it made things a lot more accessible for ‘Publishers’ to add their applications to the Marketplace.  I’m not really sure how you got your applications on the previous version of the marketplace, but now you just have to submit yourself as a publisher, get approved, and then submit your AIR application to the Marketplace (which also has to be approved).

So I’m pleased to announce that ImageSizer is now available from the Adobe AIR Marketplace, and we even fixed a few bugs in the process.

Continue reading ImageSizer is now available from the Adobe AIR Marketplace!…

Can AIR revolutionise E-Readers?

Posted by James - 09/02/09 at 10:02:29 am

Here’s an article from Time magazine that’s been doing the rounds because it mentions AIR.  It only mentions it once, but that’s good enough to get it on the radar(!).  Stick with it until page 2 and you’ll see the mention.  Ignoring the AIR connection, there are a few interesting points in there about the growth and likely technological direction of e-readers – interesting to me not least because MMT Digital works with closely with Hodder publishing, who are understandably interested in e-reader technology.

Read the article at: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1877161-1,00.html

Building a project tracker in Flex & AIR

Posted by James - 29/01/09 at 10:01:10 am

Ok, this isn’t going to be a tutorial – not yet anyways.  So many projects, so little time to write about them.

As part of my attempts to improve the way I work, I’ve been on the look out for a private hosting solution for Subversion, that comes with project management tools like bug reporting, and – crucially – an API that I can work with in Actionscript.  My rather uninspired image above is the first draft of my bug tracking tool.

Continue reading Building a project tracker in Flex & AIR…