Adobe AIR is a great technology to provide platform-independent desktop RIA applications. Gone are the days when Windows operating system used to be ubiquitous in desktop market. That's the reason why Adobe AIR is considered as the future of desktop applications. Desktop applications are here to stay as they come with the power of providing rich features in efficient/optimal way compared to browser mode.

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Filed under Architecture, Flex | No Comments »

It was a few years back when I last worked with Javascript. Things have changed significantly in between and one of the things which we people always like is the introduction of popup-blockers in browser world. I hope you remember those old days when it was a nuisance to close all those uninvited windows. Now we are living in a relatively peaceful world. But sometimes we also want to open new windows for legitimate reasons. So when I had a task to open a new browser window on button-click, I discovered the problems posed by popup-blockers. The interesting part is - window.open() behavior can be different for different browsers and popup-blockers.

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Filed under Flex | 1 Comment »

This second part on Spicefactory will delve into the details of writing a Grails plug-in for this framework. Be prepared to read a lot of code!

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Tags: AS3 EntityManager, grails-flex-webtier plug-in, grails-spicefactory plug-in, JPA EntityManager, pimento, spicefactory
Filed under Flex, Grails, Hibernate | No Comments »

In my article on InfoQ I've looked into how Grails and Flex can be combined to create a rapid application development platform. I think this is one of the most promising combinations for RIA development at the moment. The Flex space is very happening and there are many initiatives going on. A few days ago I encountered this one on the web: http://www.spicefactory.org/. Apart from the funny name, I think it is a very interesting initiative, because it brings some new concepts to the Flex remoting mix.

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Tags: cinnamon, EntityManager, Flex, flex integration, flex remoting, Grails, Hibernate, JPA, parsley, pimento, spicefactory
Filed under Flex, Grails | 5 Comments »

At Xebia India we were having training on Flex, and this gave me an opportunity to look deeper and around this new eye catching technology. During this learning period I came across a free online tool provided by Adobe Flex to create CSS for your flex application. It is not a full fledged application covering all the components present in flex, but with the minimal stuff on board it gives you enough knowledge to extend the CSS for all other components. Some of the impressive parts of this tool are
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My recent assignment at Albumprinter gave an opportunity to play with flex testing tools available out there. Coming back to serious flex development after more than a year was a pleasant surprise. The state of flex when I last did something on it was for sure not “mature”. There weren’t many frameworks around.

But things have changed a great deal since then. Not only do we have frameworks implementing MVC (Cairngorm) but also some standard extensions (UM extensions) to those frameworks, we also have spring like IOC frameworks (Prana) for Flex.
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Tags: Flex, Testing, Tools
Filed under Flex, General, TDD, Testing, Tools | 4 Comments »

As I got introduced to Flex world some times back, I started using Flex Builder as an IDE, a product from Adobe on top of Eclipse platform. I assumed that it'll provide all the basic features available in Eclipse for Java, but I was wrong. Flex Builder is in nascent phase from tooling point of view. Just to refresh your memories, Flex Builder lacks some of the following Eclipse features.

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Filed under Eclipse, Flex | 6 Comments »

Flex provides means to create RIA applications in declarative fashion using MXML. Unlike Swing where you need to do the entire coding in Java, Flex hides a lot of complexity behind MXML tags like JSTL/taglibs do for JSPs. In JSP world, view level scripting is done in JavaScript and presentation layer server side code is written in Java which kind of provides a separation between client side code and server side code. If you really want to do some dynamic stuff on JSPs, either you write some Java code inside JSP (not recommended though) or you use/create taglibs to achieve the same effect. In Flex world, it's all about ActionScript (AS). Irrespective of whether you are writing some scripting or server side code, it's all AS code which kind of creates a confusing situation in front of a developer. It becomes very difficult to separate the scripting code from server side code. That's one of the reasons people complain about Flex as it looks like it doesn't provide a clear separation between scripting code and server side code.

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Tags: cairngorm, fluint, prana
Filed under Architecture, Flex, Frameworks | 5 Comments »

Today InfoQ has posted my article Writing JEE applications with Grails and Flex.

The article describes how the combination of Flex and Grails leads to a highly productive platform for writing JEE applications. It discusses the problems one faces when integrating Flex as client technology and Grails as server technology and details solutions for each of these problems.

The article can be used as a tutorial for writing simple client-server applications with Grails and Flex.

Filed under Articles, Flex, Grails | No Comments »

I was trying to learn Adobe AIR and was looking for some good set of learning resources. I found the book "Adobe AIR for Javascript Developers" from Oreilly by and started reading it online. A cool book, the authors have done great job on presenting the topics as an easilit readable pocket guide. Soon after reading this book, i felt i got the right resource i want for now.
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Filed under Ajax, CSS, Flex, Javascript, XML | No Comments »