Aral on Flash, SWX, Flex, ActionScript, and life.
Our friends at Mozilla are trying to set a world record today for the most software downloaded in 24 hours to mark the launch of Firefox 3.
To support the effort, we're running a pro bono ad for Firefox Download Day on Pistach.io.
Pistach.io supports open source projects and charity organizations with pro-bono ads. If you would like your organization or project considered, please contact me at aral {at} pistach(.)io.
Go pledge your support for Firefox Download Day 2008 and download Firefox 3.
Today I'm releasing The GAE SWF Project, a resource of Flash and Flex-related knowledge specifically aimed at getting you up and running quickly with Google App Engine. If you want to skip all the details and start playing with it, skip to the Getting Started section.
Everyone else, read on!
When Google announced Google App Engine last week, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was as if someone had said, "Hey, Aral, tell us what your perfect development environment is and we'll build it for you."
In recent weeks, I had started playing with Python and Django and experimenting to see whether I could use it to build the web application for the Singularity web conference that I'm organizing at the end of October. Turns out that I could not have picked a better time to invest in learning Django and brushing up my Python as Google App Engine is heavily influenced by (and supports) Django and is written in Python.
Singularity is shaping up to be a really great conference. I'm honored to have a constantly-expanding stellar line-up of speakers and yet the sessions are just one very important aspect of the conference. I find that you get as much out of your social interactions with speakers and other attendees at conferences as you do from the sessions. And Singularity is no exception.
The Singularity conference application is not something you will login to on October 24th and never visit again beyond October 26th. On the contrary, I plan to launching the application as early as possible and add features as we go so that we can start building the community around the conference. This is essential for the organization of the local conference hubs, for building friendships months in advance of the conference, and so that you can influence what the conference ultimately becomes (you do not have to attend the conference to join the online community.)
When I initially announced the Singularity conference two months ago, I stated in the About page that Singularity would have a "focus on open source, the community, and on giving back."
Today, I'm taking the first step towards delivering on that promise by releasing the initial underpinnings of a framework that will eventually power the Singularity conference web application. I present to you The GAE SWF Project.
The GAE SWF Project (hey, Google chose the name, I only provide the juvenile attempts at humor) is a resource of Flash and Flex-related knowledge specifically aimed at getting you up and running quickly with Google App Engine. The initial release contains a proof-of-concept Flash 9 client showcasing a pre-alpha version of The GAE SWF Framework. The framework is a very light-weight combination of Python and ActionScript 3 that uses some of the best open source components available today on the Flash Platform and Python ecosystem. It is inspired at its core by best practices and a pragmatic approach to application development.
The proof of concept (and, indeed, the whole project) specifically targets Google App Engine. This is by design. The framework is not a generic one (although, by all means, feel free to get inspired and port it if you wish). The dedicated focus is part of the appeal. It means that we can make things simpler.
There will be no abstraction for the sake of abstraction and no premature abstraction; the framework will evolve by encountering real-world problems and solving them.
Finally, keep in mind that you are viewing the fruits of three days of work at the moment (this, in itself, should be testament enough to how easy -- and fun -- Google App Engine makes development). It is early days but I feel that we've made a good start. I hope to hear your thoughts and feedback in the comments.
The proof of concept is built on Google App Engine using Google's webapp framework.
It showcases several fundamental architectural considerations, the most important of which I've outlined for you below.
You use handlers in app.yaml to host a mix of Flash and HTML content, including the Flash Remoting gateway, in a single Google App Engine app.
SWFObject is the way to embed Flash and Flex applications in your HTML. Use it. 'Nuff said.
You implement deep linking using a combination of server-side Python and SWFAddress so that both SWFAddress-style and regular URLs are supported. Regular URLs are translated to SWFAddress-style hash/anchor URLs on the server.
Thus, both of the following URLs are valid ways to reach your profile page on the proof of concept Flash 9 client:
http://gaeswf.appspot.com/examples/initial/profile
http://gaeswf.appspot.com/examples/initial/#/profile
Users with poor eyesight or in environments with reduced-visibility (such as bright sunshine outdoors) may want to increase the size of the text displayed in the browser. By default, Flash and Flex content does not react to these text-size changes. However, it is possible to make Flash content obey browser text-size changes and the proof of concept implements one such method that does not involve any alterations to the Flash app.
(You can read more about similar issues -- and see some juicy Flash myths debunked -- in my review of the talk I gave at Highland Fling this month titled Bare-naked Flash: Dispelling myths and building bridges.)
PyAMF is a Flash Remoting implementation for Python. It has a dedicated and responsive group of passionate developers working on it, led by Thijs Triemstra, Nick Joyce, and Arnar Birgisson. On Tuesday, the team released PyAMF 0.3 with support for Google App Engine.
The GAE SWF Framework uses PyAMF as a core component to communicate with the server and the various Google App Engine APIs. It is currently running PyAMF 0.3.
The PyAMF gateway is setup as a regular mapping, and mapped to /gateway in app.yaml.
You use the Google App Engine Users API to login and out of the Flash application. The current Flash 9 proof of concept implements one of three possible ways of handling logins (see the note in my earlier blog post about the other two ways.)
When you hit a deep link in the application without logging in, you are automatically forwarded to the link after you login. This is a behavior that you are accustomed to seeing (and expect) in HTML-based applications but I have rarely seen it implemented in Flash and Flex applications.
The Google App Engine DataStore is a massively scalable database based on Google's Bigtable (the same distributed database that powers their search and services like Google Earth).
The proof of concept has a profile section where you can fill in your name and a URL (the Users API currently does not provide your GAE app with the user's name, just their email address). This data is saved via PyAMF and the DataStore API.
(All server-side services are in the /services package.)
The Profile Screen shows you how to implement two different types of validation: simple client-side validation and server-side validation.
The Name field performs simple client-side validation that stops the user from submitting the form without entering a name.
The URL field, on the other hand, actually hits the server and asks the DataStore to verify that the URL is valid. When you think about it, it makes sense to use server-side validation code to validate more complex data types using the exact same code that the DataStore API uses.
The user experience is managed via visual cues that are carefully scripted using the excellent KitchenSync AS3 sequencing library by Mims Wright. (Mims just added me as a project member so I can contribute a small update I blogged about earlier.)
(I'm still working on tweaking the timing of the type wait duration for firing the server-side validation code to make it as seamless as possible.)
As the framework develops, I know that the KitchenSync library is going to be an essential, core element, and I look forward to contributing back as much as I can to the project.
The proof of concept also makes use of the Google App Engine Mail API to send email confirmations to your Google Accounts email address after you update your profile.
When initially working with this, I was searching for a simple way to monitor the mail that was being sent from the app. Although the Development Web Server allows you to specify an SMTP server when you start it, I couldn't get it to work with either GMail or my web host's mail server. And setting up sendmail or postfix was a pile of worms I didn't want to sample.
Instead, I found a simple, open source SMTP server written in Python that's perfect when developing locally with the Development Web Server. It's in The GAE SWF Project app that you can download. To start it, simply change to your The GAE SWF Project folder and type:
./monitor_mail
You will see all email sent from your application in the Terminal window. (Note: I run on a Mac and all the commands in this article are meant to be run in Terminal on OS X. You may need to tweak them slightly for your operating system of choice.)
I may introduce myself as a Flash Developer but that doesn't mean that I don't care about the rest of the web. With good friends like Andy Budd, Richard Rutter, Paul Annette, and Jeremy Keith living almost a baseball-bat-wave away from me, I'd be scared silly implementing a new site with anything less than pristine markup. So that's what I've strived for here and I hope I've at least come close. (I did use one <br/> tag, for which I feel very dirty indeed!)
Nearly all of the credit for the CSS goes to the excellent YUI Grids CSS library that Rob Knight clued me into via Twitter last week when I was battling with altering the K2 theme on Singularity to make it into a cross-browser three-column fluid layout.
(The scale9-esque fluid download cell is courtesy of the even more rounded corners with CSS technique.)
The HTML content is structured using several Django templates, which are supported by Google's webapp framework.
Finally, the Flash client uses the TabBar component from the open source Yahoo Astra Flash components and Uza's AS3 Global Object to implement several global convenience properties (like the current SWF's URL).
Getting started with The GAE SWF Project couldn't be easier.
First off, download the Google App Engine SDK (includes the local Development Web Server and webapp framework.)
Next, download the latest release of the The GAE SWF Project and unzip it.
(Or, you can check out the unstable, bleeding-edge version from The GAE SWF Project Subversion repository's trunk on OSFlash.)
Open up Terminal and navigate to the folder you unzipped The GAE SWF Project to. To start the Development Web Server type:
./start
This is a convenience script that I made that starts the Development Web Server and sets the mail server as localhost:5000. You can change these in the script of just use dev_appserver.py . to start it up without mail support.
If you want to monitor the email that gets sent, open up a separate Terminal window and, in The GAE SWF Project folder, type:
./monitor_mail
Now that the app is running, view it in the browser by hitting http://localhost:8080.
You can now open up the source folder and start exploring!
Wow, did I just paraphrase Lionel Richie?
Anyway, I find it useful to tail the Flash trace log (especially to see trace results in the browser and online). Here's how you do it:
Before you start, you need to enable logging by creating a file called mm.cfg in /Library/Application Support/Macromedia.
In it, enter:
ErrorReportingEnable=1 TraceOutputFileEnable=1
You only need to do this once. After that, whenever you want to tail the log, open up a new Terminal window and type the following, replacing USER with your home folder:
tail -f /Users/USER/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player/Logs/flashlog.txt
As I state on The GAE SWF Project site, I hope that this open source effort will help you to get started quickly with building Flash and Flex application on Google App Engine. In the past few days, I have had more fun developing this than I can remember in a long while. I love Python, I love Django, I love Google App Engine, and I love Flash and Flex. To have them all together... well, that's a dream toolset, right there!
And, there's something to be said about writing your app and then letting Google handle the rest. Personally, I can live with that.
(Oh yes, and I do desperately need to talk to someone at Google about hosting the Singularity conference web application on Google App Engine with regards to the quotas -- if you know whom I should contact, please either let me know directly at aral {at} aralbalkan(.)com or leave a comment below -- thanks!)
The GAE SWF Project is currently a proof-of-concept; it's a three-day old baby that I hope will blossom into a useful resource.
I hope you you enjoy it and I hope that it makes your life a little easier or at least gives you food for thought.
Play with it and let me know what you think in the comments.
As I mentioned previously, I gave a new talk titled Bare-naked Flash: Dispelling myths and building bridges at Highland Fling this week. What follows is a comprehensive live-blog style commentary of the session with slide highlights.
Continue reading 'Bare-naked Flash: Dispelling myths and building bridges'
I love this city; the architecture, the vibe. It's my second time in Edinburgh and I wish Stephanie and I could stay a few more days but Singularity beckons.
Alan White, Highland Fling creator and Very Cool Person™, has been taking wonderful care of us and a lovely time was had by all at the conference today. Paul Boag did an admirable job as master of ceremonies and the conference format worked wonderfully (each session was followed by a 10-15 minute relaxed interview and Q&A).
We're flying back to Brighton tomorrow evening and then it's back to work on Singularity for me. I have quite a few Singularity-related announcements to make this month and things are really kicking off!
The top three winners at BarcampBrighton2 won tickets to Singularity. And they were Nathan Murphy (35 cards), Lincoln Smith (20 cards), and Ryan Alexander (12 cards), seen below wearing prize mullets. Congrats guys! 
Oh yeah, Nathan, I need your email address... drop me an email at aral {at} aralbalkan(.)com.
We reprised the game at last night's Brighton Girl Geek Dinner and I'm waiting for the final tally to determine the winner there. The top contender at the moment is Gillian Pearce with 24 Mullet Power cards that she won fair and square (no begging, borrowing, or foraging!). Unless we have any challengers come forward by Monday, I will be proclaiming Gillian the winner!
I leave you with this lovely photo of Lincoln and Ryan in the heat of battle. What? Of course it wasn't staged! Ye have little faith.
Muchas dankes go to Madhava for the pics of Lincoln and Nathan, Molly Holzschlag for the pic of Ryan, and Serena for lending me her camera to shoot Lincoln and Ryan. More danke yous to Rosie and Devi for organizing the lovely Girl Geek Dinner and to the BarcampBrighton2 gang for an awesome Barcamp.
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a conference in Geneva called LIFT. When I think about how close I was to not attending, I shudder.
On a whim and a tweet
On Monday, I saw Robin Wauters (who is organizing the Plugg conference in Belgium on March 19th) twitter a link to LIFT, saying that he was going to attend. Looking around the site, I was instantly hooked. As it happened, Josh was at The Werks at the time and mentioned that Andy might have a ticket. I called Andy who led me to Thomas, who did have a ticket that he wasn't using so, on a whim, I bought it off of him, booked a flight and hotel and I was off to Geneva the next day!
Day 1
The first day was workshop day and I was very pleasantly surprised to find a workshop on Conference Hubs organized by Nicolas Durand from the International AIDS Conference. The workshop was very interesting and I got to meet several wonderful people, including Vittorio Mischi who is trying to realize a very cool project to have people from around the world send in a minute of video using their mobile phones during the Olympic games.
During lunch, I got to meet Robin Hunicke, a game designer from Electronic Arts who has worked on titles like My Sims for the Wii. Robin was humorous, animated, and very passionate about her work. After speaking with her for a few moments, I couldn't help thinking that she would make a wonderful speaker for Singularity. She went on to present a lovely session on the last day of the conference on gaming as social software and proved me right about my initial suspicions (you can watch all the sessions and other videos from the conference on Nouvo.) It's going to be great to have her present at Singularity.
The second workshop I attended was the teenagers/generation Y and technology session organized by David Brown in which a group of well-to-do teenagers from a local private school answered questions from the audience on their use of technology and their perceptions of the Internet. I thoroughly enjoyed the panel but it was obvious that a panel of demographically monotonous students was not going to give us generic insight into Gen Y's technology habits. It was fascinating, however, to hear about their specific subculture's (socially-conscious, entrepreneurial, upper-class private school students from Switzerland) approach to technology.
On the first night, I met Robert Scoble and Kevin Marks at the Venture Night social. I was especially interested in talking to Kevin about Open Social as Social Network Portability is a very important topic for me for Singularity. That's why I'm really psyched that Kevin agreed to do a talk about it at Singularity when I asked him the next day (expect official announcements of new speakers on the Singularity web site soon!)
After the social, I ran into Colin Schlueter and ended up meeting the rest of the Headshift gang at dinner. And what a lovely bunch they are too: Tim, Lee, Tom, Jessica, and Serena. For the rest of the conference, the Headshifters adopted me as one of their own I had a most wonderful time at the conference in no small part because of it:)
Day 2
Day 2 was the first day of sessions. Bruce Sterling kicked things off with a review of 2008. I can only assume that it was meant to be humorous but I zoned out as his entire talk was read from printouts that he held in-hand. Instead of being apologetic that he hadn't prepared better, he came across as rather smug. All I remember from the talk was copious and drawling mention of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni. Needless to say, I couldn't relate.
This was followed by a session presented by Pierre Bellanger of Skyrock which did nothing to capture my interest. I couldn't help feeling that he had the material and insight to present a really interesting session but that it was lost in translation.
Thankfully, Jonathan Cabiria was there to wake me up in the third session.
The real gems of the morning, however, were Stephanie Booth and Ewan McIntosh who presented two very short Open Stage sessions. Stephanie and Ewan had both been voted to present by LIFT attendees. They were both passionate, highly articulate, informative, and animated.
Stephanie presented about freelancing and hooked me into her session from the get-go. This year, she's organizing a one-day conference for freelancers called Going Solo. And she's a natural presenter. Ditto for Ewan McIntosh who gave an impassioned talk on social media and open education.
In my experience you need only a handful of qualities to be a good speaker: Passion for your subject, the ability to tell a story and speak from the heart, and a sense of humor. The ability to laugh at yourself comes in handy should something go wrong. Stage or screen experience never hurts (so go on, take that theater class). Not every speaker has all those qualities and not every presentation style is the same, of course. I prefer a relaxed, conversational style, for example, whereas the oratorical genius Lawrence Lessig has a meticulously rehearsed and scripted, hyper-articulated style all his own.
I enjoyed the sessions after the morning break presented by Younghee Jung and Genevieve Bell, two anthropologists working at Nokia and Intel, respectively. They gave concrete examples of how anthropological techniques and research were being used to better understand different types of users and how this translated into the design of future products. It looks like Anthropology is Alive and Well and Living in Large Corporations. Having read the blurb in the program, I was looking forward to Paul Dourish's talk on how "such results from anthropological studies are often translated into 'implications for design', missing relevant insights from the anthropologist’s works" but I again found myself zoning out.
In the afternoon, Rafi Haladjian from Violet had my full attention and kept it throughout his presentation on the Nabaztag bunnies. I've been a proud parent of a lovely little Nabaztag/tag called Furlong since I was kindly given it during the Hack Day in London. It spent last year following me around on my conference tour and sharing the stage with me during my talks. I love Rafi's approach -- it's fun; it has attitude. He is at once a dreamer and a pragmatist who is not afraid to go against the grain; the best of Jobs without the worst of Jobs. If you get a moment, read his entertaining and insightful How Powerpoint, Excel, and Word can make you Handsome, Rich, and Smart (PDF).
Following Rafi was Eric Favre, the co-inventor of Nespresso. Eric gave his talk in French and it was simultaneously translated into English. (The conference hall, funded by the UN, was the best venue I've experienced with individual power sockets, microphones for asking questions, and headsets at each seat.) I loved his session and learned more about Espresso than I thought possible. He told us the story of their search for the secret of the perfect cup of espresso in Italy with his wife. A search that eventually resulted in his discovering that air was an essential component in creating the aroma and taste of the coffee. A secret he discovered thanks to a popular coffee bar run by a man with an old coffee machine. It was an inspiring session that underscored how important passion and attention to detail are in spurring human innovation. This is a man who lives, breathes, and dreams coffee (and, I can only assume, drinks it too!) Do you feel this way about what you're doing? I know I do with Singularity. If not, find that thing which makes you feel alive and grasp it, no matter how ridiculous or crazy it is, because life is too short not to.
In the late afternoon, a group of speakers including Tom Taylor from Headshift, who kindly lent me his scarf when I underestimated the chill in the air, gave a series of interesting talks on sustainable development, starting with a lively introduction by Bill Thompson and Philippa Martin-King of WattWatt. Tom's talk highlighted the use of peer pressure and social networking to encourage sustainable activities and he showcased Green Thing, a project that they are involved in creating.
The day came to a close with fondue. And boy was there lots of it! Enough, in fact, so that every attendee got half a kilogram of it. Yum!
During the fondue night, I met two lovely scientists from CERN, François Grey and Ben Segal. François, who is the head of IT Communications at CERN, is very passionate about grid computing for science and he presented an insightful session on the last day of the conference on that very subject. He also very kindly organized a trip for us to CERN.
Meeting Ben and hearing his stories about the birth of the Web was a huge honor. Ben, who is currently helping out with the LHC@home effort, is one of those people whom I could just listen to for hours without getting bored. Having him in our group during the tour of CERN added so much to the event. And, I was greatly humbled when he agreed to speak at Singularity so that we can all hear the story of the birth of the web first-hand from him (Ben was Tim Berners-Lee's mentor at CERN.)
I also met Kushtrim Xhakli, who is involved in providing free IT training in Kosovo, as part of IPKO Institute, and Genc Kastrati from The Global Fund.
Day 3
The long days and late nights must have been catching up with me because I couldn't really concentrate on the sessions on the last day. That said, the Gaming track and the Two Kevins had my undivided attention. The first Kevin was Kevin Warwick, the human cyborg, who had a microchip implanted in his body for scientific research. It was fascinating to hear his story. At one point his wife had one implanted also and when she moved her hand, he could feel his own hand moving. The other Kevin was Kevin Marks who gave an insightful talk on Open Social. Social Network Portability is a topic that I've been thinking about a lot recently in the context of Singularity and I'm attending a day of workshops at the WebCamp on Social Network Portability in Cork on March 2nd.
At night, we had a lovely dinner at a Senegalese restaurant (best lamb chops I've ever had) and dropped in to the official wrap up party for a few moments before grabbing a drink elsewhere and heading back.
Somewhere along the three days, I met Pedro Custodio, who is a wonderful guy and organizes the SHIFT conference in Portugal. He was presenting a workshop at LIFT on Online Communities. And, I'm very happy that he is going to be presenting a session on Community Design Patterns at Singularity.
Day 4 and CERN
With the conference officially over, Serena and I took a cab to CERN in the morning to join others from the conference in a tour of the Large Hadron Collider. It was fascinating and an honor to be among the last people to actually see the LHC before it starts operating this summer. Following our tour of the LHC, Ben took us through the CERN Museum where we saw Tim Berners-Lee's first web server (a NeXTcube).
Robert Scoble has a post on the CERN tour and some great pictures on his blog, including the one below.
Unfortunately, I couldn't stay for the full museum tour and had to leave directly for the airport from CERN (and good a thing too as I only just made my plane!)
In conclusion
LIFT was so much more than the sessions; it was about the wonderful people I met and talked to between them. It was the stands outside where you could record a song on the LIFT theme tune (my ad-hoc composition got into the top three and I took away a t-shirt for my efforts), scan your handwriting so you could blog using your own font, have a picture taken that would be included in the morphing projection on the wall and printed on the large format printer, etc. All these activities were imaginatively organized and expertly executed by Cristiana Bolli Freitas of Bread and Butter and, along with the community-oriented web site, they gave the conference a wonderful read/write aspect. (I only wish I had heard about the conference earlier so I could have taken part in the various community activities from the start; a mistake a won't be making next year!)
Here's a big thank-you to Laurent Haug and his stellar array of co-organizers and volunteers, as well as to the wonderful attendees who gave the conference so much atmosphere and life.
LIFT is a conference that you absolutely should not miss if you can help it.
Links:
You may be wondering why I'm speaking at a ColdFusion conference.
Three reasons:
Firstly, it's in Scotland -- Edinburgh to be precise -- and I'm loathe to pass up any chance to visit that lovely land.
Secondly, Scotch on the Rocks is branching out this year to embrace Flash and Flex.
And finally, they asked me very nicely during MAX Europe: "we know you're not the biggest fan of Coldfusion but we'd love to have you speak anyway!" How can you say no to that, really?
(And the reason I'm not the biggest fan of ColdFusion has nothing to do with the technology itself; it's because I personally don't see a widespread future for closed-source application servers in general when there are so many excellent open source alternatives available as to make them into commodities. That said, ColdFusion does have a lot going for it, especially in the enterprise market and for building internal systems. It was revolutionary when it was first released and I've dabbled in it myself in the past. It is very easy to learn and use. It just doesn't excite me like some other technologies do.)
As I mentioned earlier, Scotch on the Rocks is expanding this year and you can see this in the speaker line-up which includes (among others) Kai Koenig, Sean Corfield, Ben Forta from the CF side of things and Peter Elst and Neil Webb from the Flash world.
If you're into ColdFusion and live in Europe, don't miss this. Especially if you're also interested in RIAs, Flex, and the Flash Platform in general.
Tickets are currently available for £199 (early bird discount) until 29th February.
Rosie Sherry has a very useful site called Project Brighton for keeping track of all things geeky in Brighton.
If you're a geek living in Brighton or the surrounding area (like that little place you might have heard of called London, for example), you should really check it out.
And for general geeky news and happening around Sussex, don't forget to check out Sussex Digital by Dave and Josh.
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