Month: October 2009

A real workflow with Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder

Yesterday I take part of a pre-event labs at MAX called: Creating Application for the Flash Platform where Matt Boles show how to create a real workflow with Catalyst and Flash Builder.

I was interesting in this pre-event because I had some questions in my mind that I answered during this session.

First of all, I’d like to spend a couple of words about Matt Boles; guys Matt rocks! I love so much his training skills, how he explains during the session and also how he moves around the room, bring my attention for the whole duration of the session.
I think one of the best teacher that I ever seen, thank you so much Matt!

So come back on Catalyst and Flex 4; session was interesting and there are some things that I’d like to share with you:

  1. until now and probably also in the final release, if you create your project in Catalyst, then bring it to Flash Builder and start to modify it, you CAN’T go back to Catalyst…
    This is a problem because I’m sure that during a real project there will be some changes to do, so you must do that via Flash Builder Design mode or via code.
  2. Catalyst doesn’t export Flex Modules but only custom components, I talk about that with Matt and he is agree with me, after your work in Catalyst you must create in Flash Builder a Module Container and create modules for each custom components.
    So you’ll study to organize very well your assets during design process.
  3. I think that could be miss a part of a process that is a study of GUI usability, I mean, when you create a RIA or a desktop application you must study how users interact with it so if a designer starts to work on GUI but he doesn’t know how Flex works could be a big problem and you must refactoring the code to add a new functionalities or to group some components.
    Maybe could be useful start project with a meeting where designer and developer (and project manager or producer too) define informations (GUI, functionalities and so on) to create the final application and with a software like Balsamiq, define how to manage all components and custom components.
  4. I was surprise about Flash Builder design view, totally different of Flex Builder 3 one; could be useful when you want to make some little graphic changes at your project.
  5. Very cool news is data wizard of Flash Builder where in few steps you can retrieve remote data and then create VO for your application.
    Associate data to a component is really easy, just a drag ‘n’ drop in design view to a component.

This is a little resume of a day with Flash Builder and Catalyst, in a couple of hours starts the first official day at MAX with a Keynote that I think will be very interesting and with tons of news, so start to take a look at labs. I’m sure that Flash Player 10.1 become your best friend!!!

Obviously, feel free to add comment to this post and we could start an interesting conversation on how is the best way to realize a RIA or desktop app with Flash Platform.
I’m so interesting to know what do you think about that!

See ya 😉

Flash, Flex and SEO

During the flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles I read a book that I wait for long time and finally arrive a couple of months ago but I’ve never started to read before.

The book is Search Engine Optimization for Flash by Todd Perkins, the first that talks about this argument and also about how to make your Flex RIA searchable from spiaders, so I was so exciting before start to read.

My final impression is that you don’t need to read this book if you are a developer because there aren’t new things to do…
I can resume the book in those few best practices:

  • Use SWFObject because make your SWF file more easy to read for spiders
  • Use SWFAddress or URLKit to rewrite url of your page but it’s useful only for RIA or site usability, not for SEO because HTML is the same for all pages, change only the page url.
  • Avoid to develop a full flash site if you are interested to indexing your project
  • Remember to “talk” with spiders via META tag in HTML page
  • One of most important thing is to make a relevant title of your HTML page
  • With FP 10 you don’t make anything to indexing your contents (dynamic or static text) because spider navigate trough SWF file to retrieve informations
  • Remember that you can set XMP file for your Flash project but until now, search engines don’t use those informations

I think that’s all, I hope to find more about how can create searchable content with Flash (there is a good PDF file in adobe website) but I think that there is no way.
We are only at the beginning of a big mountain and I hope that Adobe starts to make something new in next few months… maybe at MAX 2009 also, but I really don’t know.