Aral on Flash, SWX, Flex, ActionScript, and life.
By the way, I'm in the lobby of the Sheraton hotel, polishing up my presentation notes and reviewing my course notes for tomorrow's workshop. Feel free to drop by and say hello.
I wrote a bit about this release earlier (prematurely, as it turned out) so I won't repeat all that again here. Suffice to say that it now generates stub code for Arp (which you can save to kick-start your Arp project) and now has a very simple method of class mapping for VOs. I won't repeat all my praise for Patrick here either, because, well, we all know he's the man!
I'm going to update the Amfphp version of the Arp PizzaService app in SVN to use the latest release version once I'm done prepping for the week ahead. For the time being, the sample app will only work with the pre-release version of Amfphp 1.2 (alpha) that's in the Arp SVN tree (ie., it will work if you do a full checkout and use that) -- it *will not* work with the final release version of Amfphp 1.2 as the old method of class mapping has been removed.
Ping me if you're going to be there and maybe we can hang out.
We're going to be giving away a copy of the Adobe Video Bundle (oooh) and Emmanuel Okyere and I will be holding sessions called Testing Flash Applications (test-driven development, unit testing, etc.) and AMES for Flash Development (installing and using the AMES suite for open source Flash development.)
For more information and to sign up, see the meeting page at the London MMUG.
My good friend Cedric Muller just sent me a photograph that he took using a 30 second exposure and flashlight. It's entitled "Flash ants going for the big mushroom" (suitably surreal to be a Cedric piece.) If you look closely you can see Cedric's faint outline by the ants. I also saw some of his other work and it's very cool indeed.
Thanks, man -- how nice of you!
If you have any information you believe might help, please feel free to add it to the page.
The patent appears to be specifically about the sort of service that the -- now aged and somewhat pitiable -- Balthaser.com provides. In other words, a web-based application for building web applications.
In my reading of it, the patent appears to very specifically target a certain type of application. In the abstract alone it states that the patent pertains to: "A host computer system, containing processes for creating rich-media applications, [that] is accessed from a remote user computer system via an Internet connection. User account information and rich-media component specifications are uploaded via the established Internet connection for a specific user account. Rich-media applications are created, deleted, or modified in a user account via the established Internet connection. Rich-media components are added to, modified in, or deleted from scenes of a rich-media application based on information contained in user requests. After creation, the rich-media application is viewed or saved on the host computer system, or downloaded to the user computer system via the established Internet connection."
So not all Rich Internet Applications, because not all web applications are created via other web applications/tools like Balthaser's so-called Pro:Fx.
Nevertheless it appears that Neil Balthaser at least wants to try to use his patent to bleed RIA developers dry -- some of whom have been building RIAs for longer than he has. What a wonderful man! I wonder if he has an Amazon wishlist somewhere?..
A short-term solution might include voting with our dollars to make sure that we don't finance Balthaser's efforts by using his service (is anyone using his services currently? I'd love to hear from you -- and whether or not you'll continue using them. Please feel free to use the comments to let me know.) A longer-term goal might be to start gathering prior art. Perhaps we can start doing this on the OSFlash wiki.
I know that Branden was building RIAs prior to/during 2001 (when this patent was filed) as he was the main Flash architect behind the K12 Virtual School that we built at that time. This was a huge RIA (and my first.) The content for it alone took a whole day to offline generate at the time (remember Generator? It was built using Flash 5 and has since been updated and upgraded by my dear friend Charlie Cordova, myself and others and, although I haven't been involved with it in the longest time, I hear that it is still going strong (and they *still* haven't fixed that hairline border issue around the app -- grrr!.. I was bitching about that more than five years ago guys!)
Software patents in general are a farce and I hope with all my heart that the EU will not bow to the tremendous pressure being put on it by the US at the moment to implement them over here. Regardless of what happens, and regardless of my understanding that this patent does *not* apply to all RIAs, I still believe that we, as a community, need to stand firm against this claim.
Oh yes, and funnily enough, Neil Balthaser apparently used to work for Macromedia as a "VP of Flash Strategy".
Not cool at all.
Does anyone else think that we're witnessing Neil Balthaser pull a Ray Horn?
The Foundations of Macromedia Flash 8 course assumes little or no prior knowledge of the Flash IDE and is perfect for you if you're is just starting out, want to fill in the gaps and really learn the tool -- and the latest features in version 8 -- or to get up to speed if you're coming to Flash from other (more traditional) development environments.
It's currently Happy Hour at Hot Shots until March 24th, 2006. If you sign up before then, you get the early-bird price of £145/course (exc. VAT) and can take all six courses for just £725 (exc. VAT) That's six days of top-notch Flash and Flex training!
Dates: 6-7th April & 10-13th April, 2006
Time: 9:30am for 10am start - 6pm
Place: City University in London (nearest tube: Angel)
Price £145/course. This offer is only valid until March 24th; £199 thereafter (exc. VAT).
You can mix and match any two or more seminars for discounts. See this page for full pricing information and to reserve your place.
The courses in the Hot Shots series are:
I'm also trying something new this time: If you refer a friend, you'll get a cool £50 from me via PayPal. All you have to do is ask your friend to enter the special code IMAHOTSHOT along with your email address in to the notes during the PayPal checkout process and you will receive £50 via PayPal, to that email address, after your friend completes the course. This offer is only available for PayPal checkouts.
You can refer as many friends as you like and you'll get £50 per friend referred.
To take advantage of this offer yourself, just enter your own email address in the notes during checkout. Yes, you can use this code yourself and get £50 off the price of the course... so what are you waiting for?
You can get more information, read previous students' comments and sign up on the Ariaware Training homepage.
Kevin Langdon just released his reverse engineered version of the AMF 3 specification on OSFlash.
AMF 3 is the next version of the Flash Remoting protocol used in Flex 2/AS3.
Kevin's also announced that his invaluable ServiceCapture application for debugging remoting applications now supports AMF 3 and AMF 3 for Coldfusion.
What does this news mean? Two things:
Firstly, it means that you can now debug Flex Enterprise Services applications (Flex 2/J2EE) and Flex 2/CF applications using ServiceCapture (and this is huge, huge, huge as I cannot even imagine returning to the stone-age experience that is working on a remoting application without my trusty ServiceCapture.)
What gets me even more excited, however, is that it also means that once the genius that is Patrick Mineault reads this, he will probably whip up an AMF 3 version of Amfphp within the next couple of days (I would say hours but I don't want to rush him as he might also be busy solving a very complicated quantum equation at the moment too!) Of course, the road is now open for other open source Flash Remoting implementations -- such as OpenAMF (J2EE), Fluorine (.Net) and Flashticle (Python) -- to upgrade to AMF 3.
Very exciting news, indeed!
Most of this information here is actually from the OSFlash Wiki and I suggest you bookmark it as it is a very valuable resource indeed (I frequently refer to it as a box of free toys! Of course, Open Source means much more than that but it does communicate the general feeling I get everytime I browse the list of tasty goodies found there!)
What is OSFlash?
OSFlash is a watering hole for developers and users to meet, talk about and contribute to new and existing open source projects for the Flash Platform.
OSFlash supports the Flash community by providing open source projects with free source code hosting and project management tools as well as a web presence on the OSFlash wiki.
As such, we provide a service that is similar to other sites such as SourceForge but perhaps in a smaller, more intimate setting that is focused on open source projects for the Flash Platform.
There is a common misconception that OSFlash is a project to create an Open Source Flash IDE alternative. OSFlash is not an open-source development project itself but hosts a collection of open source projects, tools and resources created by developers who love the Flash Platform and want to expand its horizons!
OSFlash Philosophy
Open Source is good for the Flash Platform.
"Open Source" software is software that you're free to use, modify, and redistribute. More specifically, see the definition of Open Source as championed by the Open Source Initiative.
The OSFlash community is comprised of members of the Flash Community who use and develop open source on the Flash Platform and who use the OSFlash mailing list, wiki and source control repositories.
A vibrant, healthy and productive open source community is an essential barometer of the health and success of the Flash Platform. Healthy platforms require a full ecosystem of tools, both closed-source and open-source. Open Source tools and projects also bring new developers into the Flash Platform and lead to increased competition and choice for developers.
To ease the creation of open source tools, the community also documents features of the Flash Platform such as protocols and file formats. It is essential for the core protocols and file formats of the Flash Platform to be open if the platform is to see widespread adoption.
The OSFlash website, mailing lists and source control accounts are free tools and services provided for use by the Flash community. They are designed in order to enable community members to easily share knowledge and collaborate on open source Flash projects.
In conclusion
I hope this provides a clear explanation of what OSFlash is (and isn't). Personally, I find it a wonderful resource that has a great community of users and I look forward to continuing to host it and improve it as a small way of saying "thank you" to the Flash community -- by far the most amazing online community I've had the pleasure of being a part of.
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