Monthly Archives: July 2008

Deep-linking for Flex SEO

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I’m planning on doing a Flex SEO contest update this week but I haven’t gotten around to it. Partly because so far I haven’t been happy with the results. A lot of people are putting a bunch of time into the contest (which is awesome) but Google doesn’t appear to be indexing things very well. But today I got a note from Justin-Everett Church that explained a couple of big questions I had. The first, and most important, was about deep linking.

Justin said the current way to get deep linking working is with site maps. By using site maps, you can have the search engine spider the content from where it initializes. I don’t know all that much about site maps, so I’m not sure how well this would work or where a good demo would be, but if you’re using site maps, please let me know. I’d love to hear how they affect your Flex deep-linking.

Flex-based Babble.com Raises Funding

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Babbel.com, a Flex application built to help people learn a new language, just sent me an email saying they’ve raised their first round of funding. the size of the round wasn’t mentioned, but as part of the funding they’re also announcing some new features. One, they’ve converted fully from Flex 2 to Flex 3 (they have a Rails back end). They’ve also added some new types of tutorials.

We got to talk with the crew from Babbel at the on AIR Tour event in Berlin and I was really impressed. I’m a big fan of the application and I think it does a good job of showing how RIAs can be used for distance learning. They do a nice job of incorporating video and rich media aspects with the overall experience to make learning a new language interesting. Right now they support French, English, Spanish, Italian, and German.

If you get a chance, you should check Babbel.com out. It’s a fun app. I did an interview with the founder, Thomas Holl, earlier this year.

The Desktop as a Revenue Growth Opportunity

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AOL is shutting down a bunch of properties. Frankly, AOL is probably not the kind of company you look to when you think of leading edge. But they’re a significant player on the web with a very high user base and they’ve got a lot of valuable properties including their AOL instant messenger stuff and AOL mail. So it was interesting to read the full text of an email about where they are planning to focus their energies:

- Toolbar: Accelerate the distribution and monetization of toolbars to drive revenue derived from search and recirculation.

- Desktop: Develop and launch desktop software promotion push to drive increased ROI through the acquisition of new free software users.

- Mail: Increase effective monetization of mail while pursuing distribution opportunities to grow audience and engagement. Drive growth though new ad inventory (Quigo, etc.), ad packaging and sales strategy development, affinity and cobranding partnerships and open services.

- Truveo: Monetize the over 50 million UVs Truveo receives monthly through our O&O site and APIs through a phased approach including banner advertising on the site and monetization of the APIs.

The web browser is great. But you know what? Most people – the people who REALLY spend money and click on internet ads – they’re still using a lot of desktop software. They still interact with data and content through a combination of desktop and web browser applications. They haven’t made the full switch to web apps because they know and understand the desktop model. There’s a big market out there for web developers who want to target those people and create a desktop app that appeals to them.

That’s the bridge I see AIR being. You can keep up with the digerati by building applications for the web browser but you can take that code and start creating a desktop experience for those users who are drawn to it. It’s really all about providing the experience users want at minimal cost. Regardless of AOL’s problems or vision, the desktop has played an important role in what they do and there is still a tremendous amount of money to be made on the desktop. AIR opens that market up to web developers in a cross-platform way.

PlayCrafter.com – Finally Flex has Sweet Games!

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Rob just sent me a link to PlayCrafter which is a suite of games built entirely in Flex 3. It’s a really cool, customized example of a Flex application and as you browse around the site you’ll see that there doesn’t appear to be a standard component anywhere. They’ve basically taken Flex and designed it well enough that it feels like a regular Flash application. The games are fun, the interface is nice, and the application is very impressive. Between this and SmallWorlds, I think we’re getting into a whole new world of Flex!

AMP Adds Sony Content (And you can Watch Ghostbusters)

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Heh. I always love when I find out stuff we’re doing by clicking on a Techmeme link. I must not have been paying attention, but it looks like we’re adding Sony content to Adobe Media Player. As Liz from NewTeeVee notes, it’s mostly old stuff like Jerry Maguire and Men in Black, but who doesn’t love the classics? And it’s a first (I think) that we’re getting full length movies in AMP, so that’s pretty cool.

It also sounds like we’re going to be adding some new CBS stuff and according to CNet we even get Ghostbusters. Kick ass!

Creating Transparent Native Windows with the mx:Window Class

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Holy hell. I’ve been tearing my hair out all night trying to figure out how to make a fully transparent and chrome-less native window using the mx:Window class. Luckily, thanks to Bradical from this post, I found the solution. You just need to set showFlexChrome equal to False in your mx:Window component. So quick mini-tutorial for anyone doing custom chrome/transparent native windows:

If you’re looking at a lot of AIR documentation you’ll probably see references to a NativeWindow class and think that’s what you want to use to create a new native window. If you’re doing Flex work however, you won’t be able to add any components from the Flex Framework to that NativeWindow because NativeWindow is a Flash class and doesn’t include the Flex (mx) libraries. So what you’ll want to do instead is create a custom component that extends mx:Window:

<mx:Window xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" width="200" height="75"
	styleName="chromeless" layout="absolute" verticalAlign="middle"
	horizontalAlign="center">
	<mx:Style>
		.chromeless
		{
			showFlexChrome: false;
			background-image: "";
			background-color: "";
			padding: 0px;
		}
	</mx:Style>
	<mx:Image source="@Embed('assets/notifier.png')" id="background" />
	<mx:Label id="lbl" color="#ffffff" fontSize="20"
		textAlign="center" top="25" bottom="25" right="0" left="0" />
</mx:Window>

Notice I set up a style called chromeless, knocked out the background image/color and set the padding to zero like any other custom chrome application, but I’ve also set the showFlexChrome property to false. Now you’re good to go and you can start using all of the Flex Framework in your native window. In this case I’m setting the other native window chrome properties when I actually create the window (in my main Application file):

	public function createNewWindow() : void
	{
		var win : NotificationWindow = new NotificationWindow();
		win.systemChrome = NativeWindowSystemChrome.NONE;
		win.type = NativeWindowType.LIGHTWEIGHT;
		win.transparent = true;
		win.open(true);
         }

NotificationWindow is just the name of my MXML component (NotifyWindow.mxml) and I can set the system chrome options in that file directly, or on creation like I did above. If you’re going to be using the same chrome settings for your custom native window class, it’s probably easiest just to set the system chrome options inside your component.

Hope that helps other folks, and a huge thanks to Bradical, wherever you are!

Is Flash Getting Too Complicated?

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As I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t come from the Flash world. I got hooked on the Macromedia juice via ColdFusion and Flex. I was always jealous of the Flash guys/gals because they could create some really cool stuff. So I was happy when Flex came out and we started seeing some “developer Flash” instead of all “designer Flash”. And then AS3 came along, which I loved, because programming Flex 1.5 was a headache and AS3 made a big difference to me as a developer. So I plunged headfirst into the world of AS3. But stuff didn’t look or feel as cool as all the Flash stuff out there I admired, so I started thinking heavy thoughts about the designer/developer workflow and getting more design into my development. That’s one of the reasons I am really excited about Thermo – it helps bridge the gap and allows me to add some really nice design elements to a Flex application.

But I was reading a Guardian article about 4chan that came a couple of days after reading Colin Mook’s treatise on AS3 versus AS2 and I started looking around 4chan (do so at your own risk). There’s an entire section dedicated to Flash. Right there next to Rules, the FAQ, and the Blog, they have a “Flash” tab which contains an archive of Flash stuff. They’ve also got an entire Flash section (oddly under Japanese Culture) which contains some of the most bizarre, gross, and morbid Flash content I’ve ever seen. (Warning: 4chan is basically the end of the internet and the links and content are definitely NSFW – the first 4chan Flash link is mostly okay, but the Japanese one and the rest of the site will probably offend just about anyone). Regardless of how completely messed up you can get with Flash, it’s a very, very creative medium, and people flock to that. The fact that it has an entire section on 4chan is a) disturbing, and b) indicative of how much people love using our platform to show off their….work. Better examples are sites like Orisinal or Animator vs. Animation- on the design side Flash is everything from games to big-time TV shows and it’s reason number one that Flash became so successful.

As a developer, I really want to see Flash evolve into a great application platform, and I think we’re getting there. But more and more I realize that we can’t stray too far from the design roots in the process. I think adding things like 3D effects and inverse kinematics to Flash Player 10 and Flash CS4 help with that, but I hope our core customers, our showcases, aren’t feeling ignored. One of the compelling things about Flash was that it made animation relatively easy so anyone could start expressing their creative side and we shouldn’t lose that. I know Lee thinks a lot about this, so if you have any thoughts, spend some time reading and commenting on his blog. Tell us everything from how you want to see the tools evolving, to how scripting fits into your workflow. The louder you are the better, and if we’re doing a good job, be loud about that too. Don’t be the silent majority.