It’s Here!  For about a year I worked with a team of smart guys (Andrew Trice, Joseph Balderson, Peter Ent, Jun Heider, Tom Sugden, David Hassoun, Joe Berkovitz) to create what we think is one of the best books out there on Adobe Flex.  It’s around 1400 pages, nearly 5 pounds, of comprehensive knowledge.  It’s available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.Com, and probably your local bookstore or wherever Wrox books are sold.

I’m proud of this book.  It was hard to write and took way more time than I thought it would.  But the end product is outstanding.  It’s one killer book that covers a lot of the internals of Flex, including the extras like Cairngorm, unit testing, AIR, Flash Media services, FXG, Flex Builder, Subclipse, custom components and the component lifecycle, skiing, Flash integration, etc…  It’s all covered.

I was responsible for writing about Adobe AIR and a lot of the server side data stuff, especially in regards to open source, Java, and .NET.  I did a lot of work to show the flexibility (no pun intended) of working with Flex and a variety of back-end technologies.  Specifically I have demos in there working with server-side data using:

• PHP and the Zend framework over a RESTful-based framework
• Java WebServies created using Grails and Groovy.
• .NET with WebServices

I have some follow ups that I want to write about.  Specifically, I want to port the Zend framework samples to use the new AMF support.  And while I’m at it, I’d like to port the Grails example to use AMF, too.  BTW, I believe GRAILS is the Holy Grail (dang, another bad pun) for Java Developers wanting some syntactical-love in their lives, yet at the same time harnessing all those enterprise APIs and existing operational infrastructure that seem to chain them down.

To get you started, Andrew Trice, one of the co-authors, has posted a nice excerpt from the book: Chapter 67: Application Performance Strategies.

While Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4 are on the horizon for being released, they both still rely on the fundamental technology presented in this book.  This book will be a great addition to your team library, especially for getting your new developers up to speed, or your existing developers to learn some advanced techniques.

Go forth, read, and build great applications.

Warning Graphical Content Ahead.  Parents be warned.  Topless male operating a computer.

In Boston, it can get quite humid in the summer time, not Washington or Florida humid, but nonetheless....  Coupled with the fact that I live in the top floor of a brick building that heats up to incredible temperatures (its 90 in here right now).

I had to move my office up to the roof deck:

In case you don't see the specific details and want it priced out:

1)   $19.95 for kiddie swimming pool at local hardware store.

2)   Smuttynose Summer Ale, $8 for 6.

3)  Blackberry, no cost counted since it's in my pocket regardless of office location.

4)  A green laptop table, $49, courtesy of Target.

5)  Sunglasses that someone left here at the last BBQ: Free.  (Sorry Frank, had to borrow them.)

Total cost, $78 + roof deck.

Ok, back to some real work.

Yesterday I came across a post over at Inside RIA (probably the best place to keep up on RIA ) about a handy new mockup Tool called Balsamiq Mockups.  In the past, I've used a lot of Viso and PowerPoint with various templates for doing mockups, so I'm always interested in tools that help me with quick and dirty screen design to communicate concepts.  I'm even more interested in tools that are built in cross-platform tool kits that can perform this.

This post isn't only about about screen mockup software (though a brief review with follow), it's about the power of Adobe AIR and the Flex platform.  Its been awhile since I've seen some exciting AIR work (I know it probably exists), so I thought I'd write some of my thoughts out...

Since AIR hasn't been around very long, there's not a very long list of applications that really shine and show it off (Twhirl, FCG, DestroyFlickr are really good ones, though).  Most, though, that I've looked at are semi-finished, with minimal polish.  But thats OK, it takes time to build a properly polished desktop application, and I'm sure a lot of the applications were built to play around with the new toolkit.  But none have really held merits on their own as just being must-have applications.  99% of every AIR application I've tried has been uninstalled because either they weren't very polished, only performed a subset of what they'll do (early betas), or there's nothing extra that they do that the versions running as Flex applications inside a browser can do, or that even a regular web application can perform.  And I always say, if it can run in the browser, don't make me install an application to my machine.

I think this is where Balsamiq Mockups really shines.  Its a tool that no matter what it was written in (it happens to be Adobe AIR) that I feel I could finally keep on my desktop, and not just to tinker with because I work with AIR and Flex.  It shows off a rich UI that is well thought-out and very user intuitive.  Flex is being shown off here, too.  The Flex graphics apis are one of my favorite parts of the toolset, and Balsamiq really shows off how nice of a layout engine can be designed (theres other Flex apps, too, that do mind mapping, etc. that I've seen, I just don't have the links handy).  When dragging components onto the canvas, the hinting for aligning with other objects is superb and so simple.   One of my favorite things about Flex and AIR is ability to build modern UIs as Balsamiq Mockups demonstrates. 

Nevermind that they already have an upgrade path to Linux for when the AIR runtime is released.   AIR has the potential to huge for Linux desktop application development.

Things that make Balsamiq Mockups a great little application:

1)  The layout engine and ability to aline things simply

2)  The little iconwidget that lets you explore their library for little icons

3)  Super simple to use

Here's a little mockup I made of Eclipse with Flex Builder in debug mode:

Its nothing fancy, but it did only take me about 15 minutes to put together, and that's including the time needed to explore all the available mockup compoents, different properties they support, etc....Notice how easy things more the most part align.  It was really quite easy.

Some features I'd like to see implemented:

1)  A library of other screen elements that you can browse online and import into the application.  Maybe even have an API so third-party devs could build these UI components and publish them to this browsable repository.  After all, Adobe AIR is about connected applications.

2)  Ability to adjust the font size of screen elements.  Some of the elements, like the Link Bar allow changing the font sizes), but I'd like to see this extended to some of the other elements, like the Tabs Bar.

3)  A tree mockup component.  UPDATE: Found it in the component finder called "Tree Pane"

4)  A vertical Button Bar.  In fact, just make a Button bar that's either horizontal or vertical, and make it really easy to add either icon buttons, text, or both!

5)  A mockup Grid component.   UPDATE: Found the DataGrid, had to type it in the component finder in the top (I didn't see it in the component bar)

6) an online Flex version with saving PNG files locally via proxying through the server.  (Hey, what can I say, I'm a bit adverse to installing software, when a simple software link could do the trick.)  I understand though, the perceptions of paying money for software and having a nice desktop download, and not having to wait for all the graphical assets to load, though...just thinking outloud.

That's about it as far as what I have to say about this usefully simply screen mockup tool.  Though the tool costs money, it's actually useful and pretty polished, so its probably worth the $80 or so.

About cross-platform development in general:

In the past I've looked at a lot of cross-platform toolkits, like QT, wxWindows (and wxPython bindings for wxWindows), and java toolkits such as Swing and QT's Jambi.  I think AIR has the potential to really help in cross-platform application development, because I have some issues with all the prior one's mentioned (I'll write about that later).  My only hope is that Adobe releases other security settings so that you can run AIR applications as full local applications with full access to the operating system and other applications (this is AIR's biggest downfall at the moment).  This is needed to get the hardcore desktop developers interested in building software that integrates with other services (Yeah, I know about the Merapi project, but if I'm going to have to maintain and ship the java JRE with my AIR application, I'd seriously have to consider not using AIR and instead settle for QT's Jambi...actually I'd probably still prefer the AIR and Flex toolkit and deal with shipping the java runtimes...).

Anyway, keep up the good work building these tools and these applications.  Get enough kickin' applications written in AIR, then it wont matter what operating system the user wants to use they'll be able to use your application.