Aral on Flash, SWX, Flex, ActionScript, and life.
I made a bunch of new moo stickers and moo cards for the <head> web conference yesterday (And So Can You!)
Thanks to the magic of the moo API, you're only a click or two away from ordering your own <head> moo stickers and minicards.
Get your own <head> stickers and moo cards, stick 'em on your notebook, share them with friends, and help us spread the word.
Effectively immediately, all our sponsors have their own pages where you can learn more about them.
We've moved the micro-sponsors page off of the main navigation and into the sponsors section and, to compensate for this and to give the micro-sponsors more exposure than before, we have a new feature that randomly displays a micro-sponsor on the main page and on the sponsors side-bar. Also, the list of micro-sponsors is now randomly ordered so that all micro-sponsors can get exposure above the fold.
I want to take this opportunity to thank each of our sponsors again for their support of the conference. If you have a moment, check out our sponsors and micro-sponsors and share the love. We couldn't do this without you! 
<head> micro-sponsorships are still just $199 until the end of September and come with a ticket to attend the conference - get yours today, support the conference, and get recognized!
Update: The quotas have been reset, the site is back up, and engineers at Google are monitoring them and working closely with me until we can figure out what the issue is and fix it.
Continue reading 'We haven’t changed the name of the conference to “Over Quota”'
The cool thing about user submitted content is that you can't always predict what you're going to get. Our speakers at the Singularity Web Conference, for example, submit and update their own bios and session descriptions on the site. Yesterday, I noticed that Dr. Woohoo had put up an image of one of his awesome generative artworks in his session description.
Of course, since I hadn't considered images in session descriptions, this had the side-effect of breaking the layout of the sessions page.
(In case you're wondering, yes, this is the way I like to work. Instead of over-engineering things, I like to see how people actually use stuff and then evolve them to meet their needs.)
So tonight I wrote a bit of code to massage and tame how images in session descriptions are displayed and I thought I'd share it with you in case it helps anyone else. (Another, more complicated way to go about things would have been to grab the images using urlfetch, store them in the datastore, and resize them via the image API -- but that would have been overkill for my needs.)
# Copyright (c) 2008 Aral Balkan, Singularity Web Conference # http://www.singularity08.com # Released under the open source MIT license. from markdown import Markdown image_tag_width_re = r'(?P<img><img.*?width=")(?P<width>\d*?)"' image_tag_height_re = r'(?P<img><img.*?height=")(?P<height>\d*?)"' image_tag_re = r'(<img)(.*?)>' image_tag_src_re = r'<img.*?src="(.*?)"' image_tag_alt_re = r'<img.*?alt="(.*?)"' image_tag_width_rc = re.compile(image_tag_width_re) image_tag_height_rc = re.compile(image_tag_height_re) image_tag_rc = re.compile(image_tag_re) image_tag_src_rc = re.compile(image_tag_src_re) image_tag_alt_rc = re.compile(image_tag_alt_re) IMAGE_SAFE_WIDTH = 160.0 def massage_images(html): """Helper: Alters dimensions of any images in the passed HTML to make them safe for the site's design.""" image_tag_widths = image_tag_width_rc.findall(html) image_tag_heights = image_tag_height_rc.findall(html) image_tag_srcs = image_tag_src_rc.findall(html) image_tag_alts = image_tag_alt_rc.findall(html) for i in range(len(image_tag_widths)): # Reduce the width of any found images to 160px so as not to break the layout original_width = int(image_tag_widths[i][1]) maintain_aspect_ratio = True try: original_height = int(image_tag_heights[i][1]) except IndexError: # Mismatched width/height pairs on image tags. We won't be # able to maintain aspect ratio. maintain_aspect_ratio = False if maintain_aspect_ratio: aspect_ratio = float(original_width)/float(original_height) new_height = int(IMAGE_SAFE_WIDTH/aspect_ratio) # Substitute the new height html = image_tag_height_rc.sub(r'\g<img>'+repr(new_height)+r'"', html) logging.info(html) # Substitute the new width html = image_tag_width_rc.sub(r'\g<img>'+str(int(IMAGE_SAFE_WIDTH))+'"', html) # Add float:left and slight margin so that text flows around the image html = image_tag_rc.sub(r'\1 style="float:left; margin-right:.5em;" \2>', html) # Finally, add a link to the original image if people want to see it larger html = image_tag_rc.sub(r'<a href="'+ image_tag_srcs[i] + '" title="'+image_tag_alts[i]+r'">\1\2></a>', html) return html
There are a couple of basic but helpful regular expressions in there and you might find the snippet useful if you want to manipulate image tags generated from user submitted content.
Oh, and before I forget, Dr. Woohoo is going to be talking about Generating Artwork at the Singularity Web Conference. Check out his bio and session and the other sessions at the conference.
(You can find out more about Dr.Woohoo on his web site and take a look at his latest book, Color Visualizations: Exploring the Circle, vol 02.)
If you haven't booked your ticket for Singularity yet, hurry, as the $99 early bird discount ends at the end of this month.
I can't believe I missed this when it first came out (it was probably because I'd just started on the my crazy two-month trip to simultaneously learn Google App Engine, brush up my Python, and build the new Singularity web site):
Brooks Andrus from Techsmith, whom I always end up having a lovely conversation with whenever I'm at a geek conference, wrote about the Singularity web conference a few months back in response to a post by Seth Godin titled The new standard for meetings and conferences. (Brooks, I hope you don't mind that I stole your excellent graphic for the post.)
In his post, Seth states:
If oil is $130 a barrel and if security adds two or three hours to a trip and if people are doing more and more business with those far afield...
and if we need to bring together more people from more places when we get together...
and if the alternatives, like video conferencing or threaded online conversations continue to get better and better, then...
I think the standard for a great meeting or a terrific conference has changed.
In other words, "I flew all the way here for this?" is going to be far more common than it used to be.
I love Brooks's reply:
Seth Godin meet Aral Balkan and welcome to Singularity.
Looking at the comments for the post, I did see a common misconception voiced by several people that Singularity is an online conference. I can see how this came to be, as early on, I was calling it that too. But, as it has begun to take shape, I realize now that it's not an online conference, Singularity is a global web conference.
What's the difference? Here's a quote from the comment I left on Brooks's post:
I just have to clarify that Singularity is not an online conference, it’s a _global_ conference. The big difference here is that we have local conference hubs around the world, some being organized by venue sponsors like Yahoo! and the BBC and others — community hubs — being organized by community groups. People meet up _locally_ as part of a global event.
We definitely use the Internet but it’s our communication medium. It’s what ties all the local groups together. Sure there will be people experiencing and interacting with the conference from the comfort of their own rooms — and some speakers will even be presenting from whichever hotel room they happen to be at the moment — but we are concentrating heavily on having a good speaker and audience presence at the various local hubs. I feel this is essential to the character of the conference.
I truly feel that we are traversing some uncharted terrain here, building the first Conference 2.0, as it were. And I hope that other conferences follow suit because the type of conference we’re creating is environmentally friendly.
Thank you, Brooks, for writing up such a cool post on Singularity.
Ticket sales for the Singularity web conference started yesterday with the launch of our new site on Google App Engine. Tickets during the early bird discount are just $99 (inc. VAT). You can also micro-sponsor the conference for just $199 (inc. VAT). So what are you waiting for? Join us in making history with the world's first global web conference.
Tickets and micro-sponsorships for the Singularity Web Conference have started!
Tickets cost just $99 (inc. VAT) during the early bird discount. Micro-sponsorships cost $199 (inc. VAT) and include one ticket to attend singularity. You can purchase a micro-sponsorship as an add-on on the tickets page.
This also marks the launch of our new web site on Google App Engine, which I'll be writing more about both here and on O'Reilly InsideRIA in the coming days. I can't wait to share what I've been learning about developing on Google App Engine with you.
When I first announced Singularity, I didn't tell anyone what it was. Instead, if you put a badge on your web site before it was revealed, I promised that we would have a little "thank you" for you. About two hundred of you put the badges up. It was an overwhelming response. You guys were there from the beginning and I appreciate your support more than you can know. And I want to take extra special care of you.
Update: If you're in this group, please see this post for instructions on how to claim the thank-you present I promised you in February.
Yay! The launch of ticket sales is just the beginning. Our focus this year with Singularity is in delivering a solid experience. As such our attention is squarely on creating infrastructure and our guiding design mantra is "form follows function". I feel that the site has strong foundations and I look forward to revealing a couple of simple social features in the coming days. From here on, the site will be evolving constantly.
We are also working with Ayo Binitie and John Dalziel to create the conference application and the conference schedule. Expect updates on those fronts in the coming days also.
We have a wonderful line-up of confirmed speakers that we haven't announced yet -- expect announcements in the coming days. And don't forget to check out our excellent group of announced speakers.
I want to say a special thank-you to those of you who have already signed up for tickets and our first micro-sponsors (I announced ticket sales on Twitter and on the Singularity RSS feed an hour ago and I'm so happy that we're having such a strong response from the very beginning.) If you haven't already signed up, I hope you will join us in making history as we launch the world's first global web conference.
Check out the new Singularity web site and reserve your ticket today!
I also have an exciting announcement to make but that requires it's own post...
I'm honored and humbled every time I look through the list of stellar speakers we have confirmed to present at the Singularity web conference. As such, I want to take a moment every week to highlight a new speaker, starting this week with Tim O'Reilly.
I had the honor of meeting Tim several years ago during a talk he was giving in London on the Open Source Paradigm Shift. In his talk, Tim predicted the mainstream commoditization of the web. Four years later, we stand as witnesses to the birth of the Commodity Web with Google's release of Google App Engine. (Simon Wardley, recently chronicled this very subject with great eloquence at his keynote speech at XTech.)
Several years later, I was in an elevator at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, heading to watch the keynote. There was one other person in the lift with me and I turned to ask him if he knew where the keynote was (the Venetian is huge). He told me that he was heading over there too and that I could follow him. Looking closer, I recognized Tim (he had a beard that hadn't been there in London) and re-introduced myself. Only later did I realize that Tim's conversation with Bill Gates was to be the highlight of the keynote. I guess it made sense that he knew where the keynote was after all.
Tim O'Reilly truly doesn't need any introduction. He is, of course, the founder and CEO of O'Reilly -- the most highly-regarded computer book publisher in the world. He is a true visionary who has both predicted and helped craft the state of the art on the world wide web -- not least by coining the term Web 2.0 to describe the social web of open data and applications that the World Wide Web has evolved into. (Few memes have had such lasting mindshare on the web today as Web 2.0 has.)
Find out more about Tim and our entire line-up of stellar speakers on the web site for the Singularity web conference and read Tim's thoughts on his blog.
The Singularity web conference is everywhere October 24-26, 2008. Tickets are scheduled to go on sale this month at $99 to coincide with the launch of the new web site on Google App Engine.
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.
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