Ed On The Web

New Year, New Blog entry; HTML 5 & Video ; Additional Blog Sites

2010-01-11T11:16:00.000-08:00

Honestly, I think I post more on facebook than I do on my own blog. True to form, I practice more than I preach, so writing on a blogger site is not too frequent for me.

On the immediate front, we've had some internal debate amongst the consultants at New Toronto Group about the merits and challenges of HTML 5 . For me as a developer and instructor showing people how to employ video on the Internet, HTML 5 and video has a number of hurdles to overcome:

The video is still progressively downloaded. This means that the user has to wait for the content to be almost completely be downloaded before the video can be played back. This is not the case when you involve streaming servers like Adobe's Flash Media Server where only the content that needs to be immediately displayed is sent to the user's web browser.

Because of the progressive download limitation, this means that the current implementation of HTML 5 and video also has a restricted seeking capability. For example, you cannot seek to content that has not been downloaded, right? In a true streaming scenario, when you seek to a specific timeframe of video, you would immediately see that point in the video.

As well, if the content needs to be downloaded to the user's cache, this obviously becomes an intellectual copyright issue, as I could then take the content and do what I want with it. All those media people concerned with protecting their assets would be up in arms over that.

So I will wait and see for now. HTML 5 is worth looking into, if you don't have any HTML experience at all...early adoption won't do you any favours in my opinion.

...on another note, it looks like New Toronto Group's blog site is now online. I might post an article or there too... look at this link - http://www.newyyz.com/NtgSite/blog/index.php

A small tribute / mention to Macromedia Homesite. RIP.

2009-08-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

boo hoo. Homesite is dead.

http://www.adobe.com/products/homesite/

I chose Homesite over tools like Hot Dog Professional (woo hoo) and Incontext WebSpider (I think) well over a decade and a bit ago. I still have a fully-licensed version of Homesite 4.0 upgraded to 5.5 . With its sister product, ColdFusion Studio, it got me on the path to effective HTML, CSS, JavaScript and ColdFusion development.

[pause]

Ok. back to my current dev tools like Eclipse, Dreamweaver, MS Visual Studio et al.

Microsoft Webinar: Creating 3D in Silverlight

2009-05-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

I'll be doing a one hour discussion and demo on implementing 3D in a Microsoft Silverlight application. If you are interested in registering for the live webinar, it takes place this Wednesday, May 11th. More information can be found by clicking here or using the full link - http://tinyurl.com/ntgsilverlight3d .

Interesting article on the "the needs of the haters"

2009-04-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

While I work on another blog entry...

John Dowdell works at Adobe and wrote an interesting article "The needs of the haters" discussing how people have dissed Flash without an underlying valid reason - the abuse primarily comes from users who have only seen Flash in the form of banner ads or small animations.

Read more here at http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2009/04/the_needs_of_the_haters.html#comments

Microsoft Webinar Presentation: Intro to Silverlight Workflow

2009-02-18T11:08:00.000-08:00

So for many years, I have been into Flash (and more recently, Flex) development, having used the tools since well, 1995 (that's pretty old school). Although I do more instruction now-a-days vs. development, I do investigate as part of my profession other Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies.

Recently I did a live webinar presentation on the workflow for Microsoft Silverlight development using Expression Blend 2.0 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 with the Silverlight 2 Toolkit installed. It was well received, and if you want to watch the recording of the webinar, you can take a look at it by clicking here, or visiting the full link - http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032404580&Culture=en-CA

Where have I been...Adobe RoboHelp Stuff

2009-01-20T21:54:00.000-08:00

Its 2009. Again, I am a little slow with my own blog entries, but you'll have to forgive me because 2008 was a watershed year for my personal life. But that's another story for another day :)

Since the last blog entry, I installed Adobe CS4, then uninstalled it (and waiting for a number of improvements to its somewhat bloated interface) and returned to CS3. I have worked with Silverlight 2 stuff, helped work out some exercises for Adobe's Flash Media Server Course, and taught a large number of Flex and Cairngorm classes. Teaching's been keeping me busy.

On the technical side of things, I recently created a course for RoboHelp Server & RoboSource Control, two products that work with Adobe RoboHelp HTML.

RoboHelp Server allows you to manage Help Systems with a centralized searching system and metrics capabilities that allow you to measure statistics concerning published help systems, such as what is the most frequently searched help topic. RoboSource Control is a version-control system, similar to Microsoft SourceSafe. And if you have not heard of RoboHelp, well it creates Help Systems. If you have ever had to look up a help system in any program, chances are it was created with a tool such as RoboHelp. In my world, RoboHelp is just a Dreamweaver editor that is basically geared towards producing help systems that feature functions such as indexes and glossaries.

The challenge was to get RoboHelp Server up and running for a client, as well as getting the RoboSource Server and client components working, and then demonstrate how to finally get them all up and running together with RoboHelp 7 HTML for help authoring. Suffice it to say a large amount of work involved configuring MS SQL Server 2005 to work nicely with both RoboHelp Server and RoboSource Control. After numerous re-installs on other PCs and permission setting changes, I got everything to work quite nicely, and with few changes, it worked well on the client's machines as well.

Alright enough for now. Getting back to work.

Flash CS3 9.0.2 update with FLVPlayback that uses H.264 Video

2007-12-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

Released this week, the new Flash CS3 Professional Update (to version 9.0.2) includes updates to the FLVPlayback component to support H.264 video, and provides support for Flash Lite 3 Update inFlash CS3 Professional, and all Debug and Release versions of this new Adobe Flash Player.

So here is my little tutorial on using the new FLVPlayback Component with H.264 video. This assumes that you downloaded the updates mentioned above (available at http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/downloads.html if your Adobe Updater does not notify you automatically)

1. Launch Flash CS3 Professional. Choose New Flash AS3 document from the Start Page.

2. Create two new layers in the Timeline Panel. Call the top layer actions and call the bottom layer flvPlayBack.

3. Open the Components Panel (Window > Components). Drag and drop an instance of the new FLVPlayback Component.

4. Name your FLVPlayback Component in the Properties Panel/Inspector. I called it myFLVPlayback for simplicity. Set the height and width of the component to an appropriate percentage size based on your video. For example, 1080P means (roughly) 1080 wide by 1920 high. I used a percentage value (75) of the original size to fit reasonably on the screen.

5. Grab a sample video that is H.264 encoded. I used a sample from the movie Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest that supports 1080p.

The file was a whopping 126,807 KB (just to say I can do it).

Flash CS3 might pop up an error dialog box indicating that it cannot import the file, but you can ignore it (unless there is an encoding issue with the video, of course).

6. Select Frame 1 of the actions layer, and launch the Actions Panel (Window > Actions).

7. Save your Flash authoring file with a straight-forward filename, like FLVPlayback_H264_test.fla.

8. To test your movie, simply preview it in Flash CS3 (ctrl-enter for windows, cmd-enter for Macs).

9. Voila! Publish Preview your movie (File > Publish Preview > Default (HTML) )

Bonus...Play around with the fullScreenSkin.swf as well to test full screen capability!

And more in-between posts...Blaze DS shows up, an open-source Flex Data Service!

2007-12-17T11:58:00.000-08:00

As an instructor of Flex, I have often taught students who work at organizations who use Flex, but not Flex Data Services (recently rebranded as Flex Live Cycle Data Services -really, they should have a shorter name for it). The reason they do not use Flex Data Services is usually a) price and b) the proprietary nature of the server.

Well it seems both points have now been addressed.

Just over the weekend, Adobe released BlazeDS, and according to the website, the description reads as follows:

"BlazeDS is the server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology that enables developers to easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real-time to Adobe® Flex™ and Adobe AIR™ applications for more responsive rich Internet application (RIA) experiences."

Furthermore, it appears to now have open source and licensing origins...

"Adobe is announcing its plans to contribute the proven BlazeDS technologies to the community under the LGPL v3. BlazeDS gives the rapidly growing Adobe developer community free access to the powerful remoting and messaging technologies developed by Adobe.

Concurrent with this prerelease of BlazeDS, Adobe is publishing the AMF binary data protocol specification, on which the BlazeDS remoting implementation is based, and is committed to partnering with the community to make this protocol available for every major server platform. The source code will be available for download early 2008. Please read the FAQ for further details on BlazeDS and Adobe’s open source plans."

Check it out at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/blazeds/ .

So... in between Posts, BRIO shows up.

2007-12-11T10:02:00.000-08:00

When I started working with New Toronto Group I did a lot of exploration into Macromedia Breeze. Since then, it has been rebranded and updated as Adobe Connect, and now a new version of Connect Professional is coming out, code-named "Brio" (I recall it under a different name, but perhaps a fuzzy italian soda pop is more of an exciting code word). Anyway, it looks like the interface is a lot simpler than it used to be, and it appears to be very Flex / Flash 9 supported (reports of AS 3 - type errors have been showing up). Alas, Brio still has firewall negotiation issues that I would like to see resolved (see above image). Check out in any case - I'll have my meeting room launched after 8:00 pm EST for those interested in seeing me play around with the Adobe Connect API.

You can check out Brio at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/brio/

Installing and Configuring Flex Live Cycle Data Services, Tomcat 6.x, and ColdFusion 8 : Background

2007-10-26T03:47:00.000-07:00

I have not written for over a month, as I had been busy travelling back and forth delivering Flex and Flash training between Boston and Toronto. During my "off-off-off" time (when a developer does not do work, research, or watch a couple of hours worth of Lost Season 2 lol), I took a moment to explore configuring Live Cycle Data Services (LCDS, formerly Flex Data Services 2.x or FDS2) with Apache's Tomcat Server.

There were a number of reasons I began to explore configuring LCDS/FDS2 with other J2EE servers.

One reason was that I could not get a stand-alone version of JRun with Updater 6 to run on Windows Vista. To note, I could install JRun 4.x with the SP1 update onto Vista, but I could not install the SP6 updater. The installation of Updater 6 would halt mid-way through, and updater 6 is required to run LCDS/FDS2.

I suppose I could have tried to install LCDS/FDS2 with the integrated JRun option on Windows Vista, but this leads me to my second reason to try and configure LCDS/FDS2; not all business clients run integrated JRun services. The clientele I work with (and the students I teach Flex to) may be using an in-house J2EE server such as Tomcat, JBoss, WebSphere, or Sun Microsystem's new GlassFish Server (In particular, I will be writing about GlassFish Server in a later blog entry). I am not knocking JRun, its a good J2EE Server, but you need to keep your clients happy!

A third reason is that clients, consultants, and developers using LCDS/FDS2 with their applications may need not only to know how to get LCDS/FDS2 configured with their J2EE servers, they may need to tweak settings appropriately. I know that on the Adobe Web site there is a "Flex Test-Drive Server" available, and it is a pre-configured Tomcat Server running FDS2, but the information provided focuses more on developing applications with Flex and Java then the actual configuration itself. I do recommend that you do explore the article itself anyway as it will give some details on the requirements to set up LCDS/FDS2 with Tomcat - see http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/java_testdrive.html, and credits should go to Christophe Coenraets, whose blog entries I also used as a point of reference (visit his site - http://coenraets.org/) .

Therefore in my upcoming blog entries I am going to attempt to do the following:

Install and configure Tomcat for LCDS/FDS2
Install LCDS (or FDS2, it will be the same process) on Tomcat.
Set up web services and messaging services on Tomcat (this was required for my courses , and good for local development for testing Flex code that access web services, uses messaging or data synchronization)
Set up ColdFusion 8 on Tomcat (also required for my courses that I teach as a potential back-end).

Alright, I am done for now. BRB with the next entry.

Searching for the disappearing "run as" and "debug as" buttons on Flex 2 plug-in install.

2007-09-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

I was beginning to record some of my exercises that I use to teach Flex (to save some time in previewing it live, as well as it being handy when I do online teaches of Flex). I keep on forgetting the fact that on my installation of the plug-in version of Flex Builder 2 on Eclipse 3.1.2 standard has its "run as" and "debug as" buttons missing!

So where are the buttons, or more precisely, how to enable them?

Answer:

Switch between Development Perspective and Debug Perspective. The Run As and Debug As Buttons show up!
Make a copy of the debug perspective, call it Development2.
Remove unneccessary views (debug, variables, breakpoints, expressions) from the Development2 perspective.
Delete the Development perspective (optional)
Rename the Development2 perspective back to Development (if you deleted the missing buttons version)

and voila! buttons are back.

On Another Note, "MovieStar" Flash Player Announced

2007-08-21T04:43:00.000-07:00

On another note, I do things other than Flex - My original line of work involved Flash and Flash Media Server (FMS) as well.

So...I can talk a little bit now about the press release from Adobe regarding an upgraded Flash Player. Its going to support H.264 natively (nice) in addition to recent improvements to support native hardware acceleration and the now famous full-screen update.

These are technologies that are equivalent found in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. So Adobe is entering the hi-def arena.

The beta should be available in Adobe Labs.

Enjoy!

Installing Flex 3 Beta on Eclipse Europa J2EE, Part 2

2007-08-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

In my previous blog entry, I discussed installing Flex 3 Beta on Eclipse Europa J2EE Edition, 3.3.x. I encountered an error at the end of the installation (see my blog entry below or click here to go directly.)

To determine the nature of the problem, I decided to launch Eclipse Europa J2EE with the new Flex 3 beta installed. As it turned out, I did not see the Flex Perspective that I would have expected. In fact, I looked around the menus and around the Eclipse Workspace, but the Flex Workspace or icons were not present anywhere!

Not here, in the menus...

And it was not available in the list of perspectives.

So. I suspected that Flex "core" was not installed at all (combining what I observed with the error message in the log file).

Upon further research via Google, I found a following bug entry that describes the scenario I encountered. The link is at http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-8206

It reads as follows:

Steps to reproduce:

1. Clean install of the Eclipse Europa J2EE version of Eclipse v3.3 directly from http://eclipse.org/

Eclipse was started, but not updated from any of the build sites. A default workspace is established and the various perspectives checked for function.

2. Un-installation of the Flash CS3 Flash player 9 was executed at this point.

3. Install of the Flex 3 Plugin was executed from filename: "flexbuilder3_b1_win_plugin_061107.exe" This action was repeated with uninstalling the plugin and the eclipse install to confirm it.

Actual Results: The Eclipse installation log is as follows:

!SESSION 2007-07-10 06:16:12.562 ----------------------------------------------- eclipse.buildId=I20070625-1500 java.version=1.5.0_11 java.vendor=Sun Microsystems Inc. BootLoader constants: OS=win32, ARCH=x86, WS=gtk, NL=en_US Framework arguments: -application org.eclipse.update.core.standaloneUpdate -command install -from file:\D:\eclipse33\Flex Builder 3 Plug-in\com.adobe.flexbuilder.update.site/ -featureId com.adobe.flexbuilder.feature.core -version 3.0.172437 Command-line arguments: -application org.eclipse.update.core.standaloneUpdate -command install -from file:\D:\eclipse33\Flex Builder 3 Plug-in\com.adobe.flexbuilder.update.site/ -featureId com.adobe.flexbuilder.feature.core -version 3.0.172437 !ENTRY org.eclipse.update.core 4 0 2007-07-10 06:16:29.203 !MESSAGE Featurecom.adobe.flexbuilder.feature.core 3.0.172437cannot be found onfile:/D:/eclipse33/Flex Builder 3 Plug-in/com.adobe.flexbuilder.update.site/ or a newer version is already installed.

I tried to register for the site, and received a confirmation e-mail, but I was unable to login at this point in writing.

update

Looking at the Add...Remove Programs listing in my Windows Vista Control Panel revealed that the OS had at least registered that the Flex 3 Builder Plug-In had installed. Uninstalling Flex Builder 3 caused another error to be displayed...

Looking at the actual log entry revealed the following:

java.lang.Exception: There are no configured features with id com.adobe.flexbuilder.feature.core

...which basically meant that the plugin was not installed, so there was nothing to uninstall.

Additional searching showed that people had indeed installed Flex Bulder 3 beta on Eclipse Europa, just not the J2EE edition...

So I will try to install Flex Builder 3 on Eclipse Europa, classic edition, and see how that goes...

final update...

I finally got Flex Builder 3 beta to install on Eclipse Europa Classic 3.3.1 edition, and not the J2EE Edition. There were no problems during the installation, it just installed. So, I am concluding that the J2EE Edition Eclipse Europa currently will not install the Flex Builder 3 plug-in.

Next on my list, investigating the WTP (Web Tools Platform) option of Eclipse, and learn how it relates to Flex.

Installing Flex 3 Beta on Eclipse Europa J2EE Did not Install

2007-08-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

After my previous investigation on installing Flex 2 on Eclipse Europa J2EE edition (which did not work), it prompted me to set up a Flex 3 beta environment with the same Eclipse Europa J2EE edition, which is still on my system (in a different directory then my Eclipse 3.1.x / Flex 2 installation).

Suffice it to say, it appears to installation proceeded further than when I attempted to install Flex 2.0.1 on Eclipse Europa. However, I got an installation error at the end of the process:

The installation dialog box stated that the installation process was complete, in spite of the error. So I opened up the log file to explore the error further. The log file had a cryptic filename (1187285806401.log) located in my D:\Program Files\eclipse\configuration folder.

Opening the file in Notepad revealed the following text (text cleaned up for clarity) -

!SESSION 2007-08-16 13:36:46.123 -----------------------------------------------eclipse.buildId=I20070625-1500
java.version=1.5.0_11
java.vendor=Sun Microsystems Inc.
BootLoader constants: OS=win32, ARCH=x86, WS=gtk, NL=en_CA

Framework arguments: -application org.eclipse.update.core.standaloneUpdate -command install -from file:\D:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3 Plug-in\com.adobe.flexbuilder.update.site/ -featureId com.adobe.flexbuilder.feature.core -version 3.0.172437

Command-line arguments: -application org.eclipse.update.core.standaloneUpdate -command install -from file:\D:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3 Plug-in\com.adobe.flexbuilder.update.site/ -featureId com.adobe.flexbuilder.feature.core -version 3.0.172437

!ENTRY org.eclipse.update.core 4 0 2007-08-16 13:36:55.655

!MESSAGE Feature
com.adobe.flexbuilder.feature.core 3.0.172437 cannot be found on file:/D:/Program Files/Adobe/Flex Builder 3 Plug-in/com.adobe.flexbuilder.update.site/

or a newer version is already installed.

------------------------------------------

So, it could not find Featurecom.adobe.flexbuilder.feature.core 3.0.172437 ? Or a new version was installed? I will write up my investigation on this in a separate article.

Just a reminder...this is my live, informal tech blog/journal...

2007-08-16T05:55:00.000-07:00

I have a number of friends in the legal profession (we all need friends in the legal profession) who have noted to me that I should state that my informal tech blog/journal should be acknowledged as "informal" and constantly subject to change. As such, information may be deemed to be correct or incorrect at times (and I will be the first to admit when I am not correct), but that is the beauty of blog technology - you can provide feedback and tell me when I am right or wrong. So there - I have laid it all out. The disclaimer is also written in my bio.

Using What Once was "Flex 2 Data Services" from ColdFusion for Flex Applications

2007-08-15T17:34:00.001-07:00

So here I am trying to figure out where ColdFusion 8's integrated LiveCycle Data Services fits within my development environment. It used to be simple. I installed what used to be called Flex 2 Data Services on an existing J2EE Server (such as JRun) and well, that was it. But how about if you have a J2EE Server (like Tomcat), with ColdFusion 8 as a J2EE Application, and it has (somewhere) what was Flex 2 Data Services, but is now branded "LiveCycle Data Services"? So begins my next point of investigation...

I decided to install the stand-alone version of LiveCycle Data Services -and voila, it appears that it installs as a J2EE application, just like the old Flex 2 Data Services. So far, so good. But I still suspect that I now have two copies of LiveCycle Data Services.

Here is an image below of the LiveCycle Data Services Admin tool, itself a Flex application.

I then continued my investigation by launching the sample application to give myself a quick review of the new services. The sample application appears to load an XML file into a data grid, seen below. What is interesting is that there is an option to view source. I tried it. It crashed my browser. Cool.

The second time around, I did get the source code, as seen below.

Ok, so far so good. So the standalone LiveCycle Data Services appears to function like Flex 2 Data Services...now I am going to check and see where it is (if possible) in CF8.

As it turned out, all I needed to do was ask one of my colleagues from New Toronto Group, Oliver Merk, who had already done the research -The short answer is that you can use ColdFusion's own webroot to work with Flex files (silly me, I should have just placed an .mxml file in there and ran it). For more info, look at his blog - http://blog.olivermerk.ca/index.cfm/2007/8/4/Creating-a-New-Flex-Project-Using-ColdFusion-8-with-LiveCycle-Data-Services

Now not only do I have multiple Eclipse installs, multiple J2EE installs (testing CF8 against multiple J2EE Servers) now I have multiple Live Cycle Data Service installs. Just goes to show you that redundancy helps.

Flex Builder 2.0.1 does not install on Eclipse Europa (J2EE, 3.3.x edition)

2007-08-14T20:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I downloaded and installed Eclipse Europa edition (J2EE, 3.3.x edition) and proceeded to install Adobe Flex Builder 2.0.1 plug-in/SDK edition. Turns out that the Flex Builder install does not recognize Europa. The message is seen here.

So, I guess I am downloading Eclipse classic, and hopefully the install of Flex 2.x will run smoothly.

All of this is being installed on top of Windows Vista, running the J2SDK 1.6.2.

update

I also tried Eclipse "Classic" 3.3 edition (still looks like Europa, so I am supposing, not reading all the version names, that the J2EE version and the classic version are based on the same build) and again, installation of Flex did now work.

So now, I retrieved the 3.1.2 archived version of Eclipse. Let's see how that goes.

another update

Well, it appears that Flex Builder 2.0.1 works only with Eclipse 3.1.x. That's unfortunate. Now I have three installs of Eclipse. lol.

(yet) another update

I am just responding to Ryan Stewart's (from Adobe) comment about the fact he has Flex Builder installed on Eclipse Europa! I am not surprised, as I am sure that there must be a way to get it installed. But the installer does not seem to get me any farther (I tried the installation again on Europa, and got the same result).

Final Update

I got a response again from Ryan - he mentioned that in fact, he was using Flex 3 beta on Eclipse Europa (smile). So, in fact, Flex Builder 2.0.1 does not install on Eclipse Europa (at least until someone says otherwise again). So I will install Flex 3 Beta on my Europa build of Eclipse and confirm that it works - and I will also try Ryan's suggestion of implementing multiple SDKs (i.e. Flex 2.0.x and Flex 3) into the beta - that should streamline my system a little bit!

What is with "iGoogle"

2007-05-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

Recently, Google has decided to re-brand some of its products. For example, Froogle is now Google Product Search. What is strange to me is that they also decided to re-brand Google's personalized home page into "iGoogle". I believe one of the members of Apple's Board of Directors is on Google's Board of Directors (or something like that, maybe it's the other way around, I cannot recall at the moment), but "iGoogle?". It just screams Apple. When you think of "i" (fill in the Noun) what do you think of?

Second Post

2007-04-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

I am just testing the Facebook Connectivity. I am working on two Facebook apps, with some Flash/Flex/AIR integration as a good mental exercise.

1st Post

2007-04-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

I've resurrected my old blog! Started in 2000, before there was such a thing as "blogs" this "content management system" allowed me to create, post, edit and delete articles (wow, such features - very high tech).

Now everyone is talking about the "blog-o-sphere" and I suppose now is a better time as any to return to writing online.