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I was away from the flex community for long time. I had came to know about Pune FUG meet from local news paper. I realize that, event will be good opportunity to linkup with the community again. I met all my old friends Anand, Sagar and Himanshu and many more at the Meet. I made few new friends as well like Harish and Priyank.

I enjoyed the Serge’s session . It always a pleasure for us to realize such expert live.

Thanks: Priyank, Anand and FUG for arranging wonder full event. I would say FUG meet is the best place to align your self with the technology. Looking forward to have such events in future.

Thank you all. See you in next FUG

Recently Flex 4.0 SDK is released. In this release Fx improve developer designer workflow. Not just import flash, Photoshop or AI files into flex builder but true Developer Designer workflow. It means thermo integration, new skin file (FXG) type included , and new name space “2009” will be in place to support new graphic rendering. I guess now every Fx component will have separate skin file which will describe look and feel and function behavior of the component.

When you think of list component in Fx 3.0 or older, what come to your mind?

Ammmm ….. list items can be display in a box with right hand scrollbar, Item can be rendering with itemrenderer and scrollbar can be skinup with .png or flash. Now take look this video and change your mind for list component. In Fx 4.0, every component will be reassemble easily with very less efforts. So, therefor it’s truly amazing Developer Designer workflow in FX 4.0.

Really gr8 going Gumbo

For developer it’s always pain to decide position, layout, navigation and containers. here i found very interesting web site which has numbers of layout design ideas. go and explore the site http://www.layoutcookbook.com/

Few days back FlashPlayer 10 (Code name Astro) released, as usual again with new milestones. This version include lots of new feature like native 3D support (Yes it means myMovie.x, myMovie.y and now myMovie.z available), new text rendering engine, custom filters and effects, improved  new drawing methods. All above this feature, I like the most is access of local files within your browser.

http://www.gotoandlearn.com/player.php?id=76

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/demos/

Great going Astro !!!

Well, formally conference title was initRIA so, please might be expecting more talk on RIA and around technology. But most of the people talk on flash platform except Rakshith who talk on ajax. Session started with Raghu’s presentation and ended with “Birds of a feather” under dim light.

Mrinal had organized my session earlier but I reach venue very late [my mistake ] so, he had rescheduled all sessions and put me on second half. People enjoy first half with Raghu, Rakshith and Yash’s session very well.

In lunch break we had dominos pizza with coke . Once again people grab there seat and show started with InstaColl’s presentation. All the session was amazing and well organizes but I really delighted with InstaColl’s presentation. They demonstrated their upcoming online office suite. take a look this, this, and this. It was so good that every one clapping in during presentation.

It was really nice time. I personally appreciate Mrinal and all other head involve in this success of initRIA.

Thanks adbul for caught initRIA on camera.

Finally it come up !!!

I have seen often people are asking for flex training center in india. When I met priyank at Mumbai flex user group meeting, he told that NIIT is working on this curriculum. Since our talk with him nothing had came.

Three to four (6^th Dec 2007) days back I was reading “Times of India” at home. Suddenly I got excited by seeing one advertisement of NIIT institute about new courses for “rich internet application”. They will cover Flash CS3.0, Flex, Dreamwewer and coldfusion during this cource. I really don’t know insight of this course. Click on below image for more information.

I think this initiative help fresher to pickup flex and flash technology very fast. Even this will help to blow RIA technology.

For more information mail edgeineers@niit.com and rush NIIT telephone lines (1800 180 8448).

Robert X. Cringely write very good article on FLASH and PDF today’s stand.

Some of the very good statements he has write.

• Being the owner of two invisible technologies [PDF and Flash] makes Adobe more powerful than most of us can even imagine.
• Adobe absolutely dominates nearly every market for graphical software and is a strong competitor in video, too.
• Adobe is moving into developer tools in a big way to support its grab for mindshare in the interactive/rich web application space where much of the excitement lately seems to be.
• My money is on Adobe simply because of those two invisible weapons, PDF and Flash.
• But invisibility offers no advantage to those who can’t follow through. That’s not Adobe, by which I mean that’s not Flash, which has grown to be so much more than it was ever intended to be.
• By itself, Flash has had an amazing evolution.
• Java applets were fantastic with major shortcomings (huge Java runtime, poor performance, clunky and ugly interface, etc). Flash fixed all or most of those.
• Expect Flash in everything and perhaps even Flash in a chip. Deploying software in hardware is the ultimate DRM.
• And Flash does cross-platform so much better than Java ever did.
• Flash potentially solves all those problems AND creates new opportunities.

Read complete article here.

When flex 2.0 lunched, it was questions what will be the roll of flash in RIA? Flex will replace Flash? Adobe limited Flash to just creative people?

Adobe given all the answers by lunching great Flash CS3 and flex Integration tools. Adobe has finally brought Flash again in to RIA game.

Last week so many blog had bloging about flex/flash integrations. It is really very good come back of flash in RIA.
Something cools features of flash/flex integration

• Frame label of flash behave as a state property in flex
• Flex component resize according to flash components
• Ability to make flex containers in flash

I try to integrate flash flex components in last couple days and made very small example.

check it in action. You can download this example from here

Related links

• http://blog.halcyonsolutions.net/2007/06/30/flex_flash_integration_resources/
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videos/flex_3_beta/
• http://anandvardhan.com/2007/06/29/flex-component-kit-for-flash-cs3continued/
• http://anandvardhan.com/2007/06/29/flex-component-kit-for-flash-cs3/

Any RIA [Rich Internet Application] developer should respect the word “Rich”. A RIA should have richness which can increase an application’s business values. In context of RIA, richness menses greater UI design, innovative navigation, user friendly inputs, optimized downloading, and quality feedback to user. All these elements impart great richness to the application and results into a joyous experience for both, the client and the user.

The paragraph, above, says nothing new. All of us know these facts and that’s why we are in RIA domain. But the thing is, do we really follow this kind of an attitude while developing an application?

Here, let me try to figure out few aspects which can really bring smile on a user’s face.

Spend special time to understand navigational flow

This is very important aspect for RIA – “navigational flow”. Which control shall we use to provide better navigation – Accordion, Tab Bar, Toggle button bar, Link bar or Menu bar. This depends on your application and the layout you have created.
In some cases, you have to think beyond these components. Let’s say you have to create checkout functionality of the shopping cart. This checkout form has seven steps to follow.

Now, which component will you use?
Accordion? Nope that will takes much of UI space.
TabBar ? hmmmmm……………. No that will not give the feel of sequential steps.
ToggleButtonBar ? it has the same problem as TabBar.
Which navigation control should you use. . …………….

Simple answer you have to create your own stepper component which may look like the image below.

The moral of the story is, think beyond the flex frame work to provide innovative navigation. Believe me that makes so much difference in a client’s satisfaction

Respect your UI designers and creative people

Generally the very first step of any application development is a mockup design. At that time you will find your “UI designer” busy with an image editing tool like Photoshop or Fireworks. Once through, he will approach you with some kind of designs, which you think are not feasible to develop using the flex frame work. For example the UI designer may come up with something like following component for providing help, warning or instruction.

At first look, you may simply refuse this idea by saying like, “we can just put tooltip over here. So please design accordingly.”

Rather then saying No to creative idea, you should say, “Hmmm. Let’s do it.”

Keep the targeted user, in mind

One day I was creating a small e-learning application for children of the age group of 10 years. I had created very cute navigation with collapse functionality. I had just put “<<” and “>> ” kind of icons on collapse button with width and height of 10 X 10 pixels. Suddenly our CEO passed from my desk and reviewed that navigation part.

He gave me suggestion to create 30X100 pixel buttons and write “CLOSE” and “OPEN” on the buttons. I said why? It was easy to understand by the means of the icons. He told me, as an IT person I knew this is “collapse menu button”, but a 10 to 15 years child would never know why this button was and what it meant

Signs convey a lot of things, in a very salient mode

Use icons where ever your application requires.

Icons sites

• http://www.yellowicon.com/
• http://iconbase.com/
• http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/icons/dock/?order=9&alltime=yes
• http://www.famfamfam.com
• http://www.stockicons.com
• http://www.glyphlab.com

Get inspired from other applications

Before create any application we should spend time to see other, applications, UI designs, how they done this.
Below is the links from where you can get inspired

• http://browse.deviantart.com/designs/interfaces/?order=9&alltime=yes
• http://browse.deviantart.com/designs/web/?order=9&startts=1182844800&endts=1182931200
• http://www.thefwa.com

More on UI design and usablity
Read “Creating Effective RIA Interfaces” article of gSkinner.