Category Archives: Adobe

A Couple of PlayBook-Related Videos on AdobeTV

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The PlayBook is on sale today and it really is a beautiful device, especially for Flash developers. Having been able to play with one for a while now I am incredibly impressed with the QNX operating system and the general form factor of the tablet.

I did a couple of videos on the PlayBook for AdobeTV. The first one is on using OAuth with the PlayBook. It should be a good primer for PlayBook developers who want to leverage services like Twitter or Facebook Connect. The second one was a video of one of Renaun’s tips on how to use ImageCache in a QNX list to help improve performance. Both are embedded below.

Slides and Code from 360Flex Denver

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360Flex Denver360|Flex Denver was an absolutely fantastic event. I was at the first 360 and have watched the event grow and mature over the years. It’s always been the best Flex conference out there, but there was something about those first few 360′s that had so much energy and got the community excited. This event felt like that. I’d rank it as one of the best 360′s I’ve ever been to. The attendees were enthusiastic and great to talk to, the keynotes were awesome and inspiring, and John and Nicole were at the top of their game as far as hosting went. It might have been all of the mobile stuff, it might have been the announcement on day 2 of Project Spoon, but this 360Flex was just all around great.

So of course, I made a bit of a misstep with my talk. At what was one of the greatest Flex conferences of the past 5 years, I go and give an HTML5/jQuery talk. But hopefully it was still fun. And to be honest, as I dove into HTML5 and jQuery for this talk, I learned that we have it very, very good as Flex developers. There are a lot of great things about HTML5 and especially jQuery, but if you’re building complex RIAs and applications, Flex has solved a ton of problems that the HTML5/JS world hasn’t yet. I definitely think they will, and the community around JS and jQuery is great, but as a Flex developer, you’ve got the best of both worlds and you’re going to be able to jump over to jQuery/HTML5 projects and bring some very valuable knowledge about building complex apps.

Thanks to everyone who attended the talk. My slides can be found here (and embedded below) and you can grab the demos from my GitHub repository here.

HTML5 and jQuery for Flex Developers
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The Implications of Every Flash Developer Being a Mobile Developer

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There’s an article in the Wall Street journal today about the demand and insufficient supply of mobile developers, which is becoming a huge problem for companies as mobile strategy becomes more and more critical. One of the main problems, as the WSJ draws out, is that these mobile platforms are relatively new so it’s tough to find developers with a lot of experience. Many companies are turning to good developers and retraining them as mobile developers to fill demand.

If a software engineer doesn’t have mobile experience, the company has sometimes been willing to spend several weeks training the engineer to work on mobile platforms, Mr. Rosenthal said.

Given the mismatch between supply and demand, many companies say they have no choice but to retrain software engineers in the art of mobile development. In the last year, Major League Baseball’s Internet company MLB.com nearly doubled the number of mobile engineers it has to 19, said MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman.

I thought this article was a perfect complement to the announcement this week of Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5, which are focused explicitly on helping Flex developers build applications for mobile devices like iOS, Android, and the PlayBook. There is obviously huge demand for mobile applications, and because of scarce supply and experience, existing developers are going to have to think about how they can gain mobile experience. Flex mobile does a fantastic job of making that learning curve smaller by letting Flex developers use what they already know and providing some key mobile features (like ViewNavigator for managing views, the ActionBar for managing global navigation, etc) so that they can quickly turn out Flex applications for these mobile devices.

If you’re a Flash or Flex developer, then with AIR for mobile devices and Flex 4.5, you’ve got the skills to go out and build applications for the biggest platforms. That’s a huge advantage to you as a developer and for any developer who doesn’t want to get locked into a specific platform. As the chart below shows, there are a lot of people looking for experts in iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry, but there are a lot more people who are looking for Flash experts. With this release, you get the best of both worlds.

Slides and Assets from Adobe Refresh

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Adobe Refresh 2011

Thanks to everyone who came out to Adobe Refresh. It was a fantastic time for me and I got to talk to a bunch of you who had some very good insights into what you want to see from us going forward. I also got to see some great demos, so thanks for showing off your stuff. For those who asked, I’ve posted the slides and the samples for my talk. You can grab the slides from SlideShare: Flash Builder and Flex Future – Building Multiscreen Applications. I’ve also posted the two demos I used.

  • GeonamesBrowser – A demo of the Flex “Hero” components/paradigms that uses the GPS on the phone to grab a list of area landmarks from Geonames.
  • CollaborationMobile – A demo showing off LiveCycle Collaboration Services on a mobile device.
Flash Builder and Flex Future – Multiscreen Development
View more presentations from Ryan Stewart

Adobe SXSW Roundup

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If you haven’t been to SXSW, as a geek, you need to go at least once. The badge is pretty cheap for what you get, and the experience is unreal. As I’ve gone to SXSW I find myself going to fewer and fewer panels, but there is always very good content. And the subject matter is incredibly diverse so you can geek out on everything from development to food. But the best part is connecting with people. One of the best things about SXSW is that everyone there is happy to talk to you about anything. There are always a few people who came to pitch their stuff, but even they’re fun to talk about and the enthusiasm they have is infectious. We held some Adobe events at breakfast and lunch and I got to meet some really fun people who were jazzed about what Adobe is doing.

We also had our crack video team at the event and they did a ton of video. To get a feel for what it was like at SXSW, check out the videos below. And hopefully we’ll see you there next year. Big thanks to the Edge team, and the CS marketing team for putting on some great Adobe events at SXSW this year.

There’s a cool video about the Interactive Web Awards, which we sponsor and some of the winners and how they use Adobe tools. Some of the finalists for these awards are amazingly impressive.

We also snuck some of the next-gen features in Flash Professional and Dreamweaver and did a couple of videos of feedback from the people that came to the session. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Adobe Refresh – Australia, Seoul, Hong Kong and Singapore

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I’m really excited to be joining up with the crew for Adobe Refresh, which will cover some of the latest and greatest features for the Flash Platform as well as show off Adobe’s HTML story over a couple of weeks in March. We’re hitting a total of 6 cities in Australia, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Singapore. I’ll be tagging along with Richard Galvan, Paul Burnett, and Michael Stoddart.

The sessions are going to cover Flash Pro, HTML5, Flex/Flash Builder, Digital Publishing, and a Q&A for answering any questions you might have about the Adobe stack. Plus we’ll be showing off some things that most people won’t have seen live yet, so if you come, you’ll get a first crack at seeing some very cool stuff coming up from Adobe.

Here’s the full list of cities:

I’m looking forward to being able to see all of the community members in those countries as well as getting to show off the latest and greatest with the Flash Platform. I’ll be talking about multiscreen development with Flex and Flash Builder and there is some VERY good stuff for developers on the horizon when it comes to building apps across devices. This will be a great event to see it all come together.

Some Great BlackBerry PlayBook Blog Posts

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You may have noticed that a lot of us at Adobe are spending time talking about the BlackBerry PlayBook and doing a bunch of blogging. We’ve all been heads down testing content, building apps, and creating samples so when the PlayBook launches (and even before) you guys will be able to find helpful articles to build apps. The team I’m on, Kevin Hoyt’s team, has been spending a lot of time doing blog posts and I thought I’d share some of the cool ones. No matter if you’re a Flex or an AS3 developer, there’s a lot of great content.

Open Source Media Framework Marketplace

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If you’re doing anything with video you’ve probably heard of the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF). It’s one of the cooler projects at Adobe and provides a component that can be customized and extended for whatever you want from video delivery.

OSMF includes a robust plug-in architecture that lets developers extend it and add features. The OSMF team has put together a marketplace for tutorials, white papers, and plug-ins for OSMF. It looks like it’s a great resource for all things OSMF and a bunch of the Flash media rockstars have already contributed content. The guys at Realeyes Media have put up an example plugin that lets you track analytics when using OSMF. Almer/Blank has a reference card that covers the important parts of OSMF. And Jodie O’Rourke has a getting started article for an introductory look at OSMF.

I think it’s a cool way to expose a bunch of developer-related content. If you’re knowledgeable about OSMF, definitely think about contributing some content. And if you’re just wanting to show video, take a look at some of the plug-ins and documents that make it easy. And everyone should check out the StageVideo Plugin for using StageVideo with OSMF.

Using The PlayBook AIR SDK with Flex “Hero” Mobile Projects

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When I first started doing PlayBook development with Flash Builder “Burrito” I found it kind of confusing how the PlayBook SDK installed itself. During the install process, the PlayBook AIR SDK installer prompts you for two locations; one is the location of your Flash Builder installation and the second is an existing AIR 2.5 SDK installation. If you’re using Burrito, it drops a new SDK into the sdk folder of the Burrito install (blackberry-tablet-sdk-0.9.x) and then defaults to the 4.5.0 sdk in the next screen as the AIR 2.5 SDK.

If you’re used to doing Android development then the first thing you probably did was go to create a new Flex Mobile or ActionScript Mobile Project using the PlayBook SDK. Unfortunately you’ll get this screen:

Luckily, when you selected the existing AIR 2.5 SDK (assuming you put it in the default 4.5.0 folder or any version of the “Hero” SDK with mobile components) the PlayBook installer has already linked the PlayBook SDK to that sdk. So when you create a Flex Mobile project with the Flex Hero SDK set you’ll see the required QNX .swc files already linked:

But I ran into an issue when I tried to upgrade. My colleague Mihai has a great runthrough of how to migrate from the 0.9.1 PlayBook SDK to the 0.9.2 SDK. But after I tried to upgrade all of my Flex Hero projects kept referring to the old 0.9.1 SDK. And any new Flex Hero projects I created would reference the old 0.9.1 installation. What I discovered was that something during the install process wasn’t overwriting the link in the 4.5.0 folder to the old SDK.

It seems like there is a bug that won’t overwrite the reference to the 0.9.1 correctly but the SDK is referenced in the Flash Builder preferences under Target Platforms. I just had to change it from 0.9.1 to 0.9.2 and all of my old projects as well as all of the new projects started using the new version.

Presenting Node.js and Flash at FITC Amsterdam – Early Bird Ends Friday

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FITC Amsterdam 2011If you’re on the fence for going to FITC Amsterdam you’re running out of time to lock in the early bird pricing. It ends on Friday, so register now!

I’m going to be presenting on Using Node.js and Flash together to create real-time, scalable applications using a combination of Flash and JavaScript. Node.js has been getting a lot of attention and so it should be a fun session. One of the coolest things this year about FITC is that there will be a ton of diversity in the talks. We’ve got everything from multi-screen, Flash, HTML5, 3D, gaming, so there really is something for everyone.

It’s going to be a monumental year for Flash developers with a lot of open questions and some great new technology to play with. FITC Amsterdam will give you some insight into how those technologies can be used and how to navigate the web application landscape.