Category: Adobe

Adobe MAX: day 1

Here we are, it has just started Adobe MAX 2008, I’m very excited and in this day I see a lot of cool and interesting things!

In General Session this morning we see new name of Thermo project, now we must start to call it Flash Catalyst, too long but not bad.
There are new interesting things on mobile side, Adobe is working in a new product that package Flash Lite contents in .sis or .cab file and delivery it over-the-air, maybe an important step trough a new Adobe mobile era.

Another interesting project that is in BETA now, it’s also my favorite one, is CoCoMo, I meet Nigel Pegg, amazing guy, that coordinate the project with Dr. Fang (:D).
Now CoCoMo is in Labs, you can download it and start to work with those components that allow you to implement your Flex applications with Connect Now features, so you can share your desktop, make a conference call with video, chat and so on.

There are other 2 minor project that Adobe releases today: Wave and Tour de Flex.

The first one is a social networking aggregator made with AIR that allow you to manage your social networking like twitter, flickr and so on in a all in one application.
Tour de Flex is another AIR application that is focused for developers and designers that approach Flex for the first time, I copy the purpose of the application from own site:

  • Provide non-Flex developers with a good overview of what is possible in Flex in a “look and see” environment
  • Provide Flex developers with an illustrated reference tool
  • Provide commercial and non-commercial Flex developers a place to showcase their work

You can find those projects directly from Labs too.
I meet also a lot of developers and designers that are involved in very cool projects, but I’ve also the honor to meet Simone Legno aka Tokidoki! It’s one of my favorite designers! Max respect for him.

But I must write also that there is ONLY 1 WI-FI CONNECTION here for more then 5.000 people… it’s unbelievable… 

See you tomorrow for resume of second day.

MAX 2008: Pre-event labs day

Today Max started for me and everybody had a pre-event labs.
I followed pre-event about Livecycle and Blaze DS made by Christophe Coenraets, he was amazing! In a day we had a complete overview of how to work with messanging, remoting and data service with BlazeDS and LCDS.
I must start to work with BlazeDS beacause there is a lot of things to do with it, in fact it is faster than FMS communication with client side.

But the most amazing thing is data service with LCDS, they are the best solutions when you want to synchronize AIR application data with a server side solutions.
In fact you can manage data service cache to save data locally and work with them until to computer turn online again… that’s perfect for a lot of enterprise solutions.

There is also a bad thing of this MAX, until now, we don’t receive great gadgets like others years, we have a shopping bag with MAX, Adobe and partners logo and a t-shirt… last year we received a very cool bag… I really don’t understand why they choose this solution.

Tomorrow we’ll start MAX for everyone and also we’ll see a lot of new Adobe solutions, if you want discover them, stay tuned!

Adobe MAX SF… I’m coming

Yes, also this year I’ll go to Adobe MAX, the biggest Adobe event with more 4600 attendees that are ready to see the future of Adobe softwares.

We will see Thermo (2 sessions during the event), the new Adobe IDE for interaction designers and multimedia designers that allow to simplify Flex Interface customizations.

But also, I’m sure to find a lots of old and new friends there like Mobile guys (Biskero, Scott, Mark, Dale, Bill…) and girls (Mariam…) and have lots of fun with them.

I’ll have a speech about AIR and SQLite during 360Max the event in  event that is totally free for all people that are at MAX.
During my session I’ll talk about:

  • introduction to SQLite
  • how to connect AIR to a db
  • create, modify, delete and search into records
  • transactions and prevent SQLinjections with parameters
  • AIR data encryption and others technique to encrypt data
  • SQLSchema and others utilities to work with SQLite
  • embed a db in an AIR application
  • best practices & limitations

everyday I’ll put my impressions, photos and news about this great event, so if you are interesting to follow MAX, feel free to come there and read it!

See you soon… or maybe at Adobe MAX.

Working with Tween in Flash Lite

In last months my team and I are working on Flash Lite projects so hard, in particular with Tween class we found a good way to work with them.
Also Adobe has released in last weeks a new interesting resource: Mobile and Devices cookbook, for now it’s only online, I hope soon it will be also published by O’Really!

So I’ve just post in this great online resource some suggestions to work with Tween in a Flash Lite project.
I think the most important is the third one:

3. When you move a movieclip that contains lots of textfields or clips, switch movie quality to low (fscommand2(“SetQuality”, “low”)) and, when animation is finish turn quality to high (fscommand2(“SetQuality”, “high”)).
With this trick you can have great performance for your animations

In fact I tried to use always high qualit and performance was not good, when I tried to set low quality before a Tween and switch to high when it finished, performance grown until to 50% instead of first method.

If you want try this you have got a Flash Lite 2.x device and download the sample file.
I put a comment in the code, first of all, try to comment the right code line and then try without it.
Please leave me other suggestions or comments on this post or write me directly.

Enjoy 

 

 

Flash on the Beach is started

Yesterday starts Flash on the Beach, the 4th edition, it’s more big, more interesting, more…

There are many guys from USA and other part of world and is fantastic because you can share and talk with all of them, I love it.

First amanzing news is that FOTB next year become also FOTBM… Flash on the Beach MIAMI in April, and this a big success for FOTB organizations, 4 years of great work and now they start to export own format, congratulations guys.

I followed great sessions yesterday, the most amazing were Tink one, that talking about Flex Effects, he are making a great job; Thermo and Flex 4 was very interesting, in particular when speaker talked about FXG format, I think a lots of thing about this interesting new way to define a FLEX UI.
In the evening there were 2 inspire sessions that were amazing, 2 great Actionscript artist showed us how to use Flash in different way to create great artwork.

So now I’m in a new FOTB day, at Aral Balkan session… he is a showman!

During this weekend, I’ll put some photos about FOTB in my Flickr account, don’t miss them!

360Max, an event in THE EVENT!

Today, John and Tom have revealed own partecipation during Adobe MAX in San Francisco with a particular event.

In fact they create an event in THE EVENT, so during MAX you can see 360MAX sessions also!
I’ll be speaker there and I’ll talk about SQLite API, in particular I’ll show how to save encrypted data, how to work with transactions and how to move your first steps with SQLite and AIR.
My session will be 19th November from 12.30AM to 1.30PM, you can find the schedule directly from 360MAX wiki.

See you there guys!

Next events until to the end of years

When September starts, there are so many events until to the end of years, it’s a magic period for me to find new friends, talking with developers and find “old friend”!
This year I put in my agenda a tons of them.
In the end of this week I’ll go to Brighton at Flash on the beach 08, the most inspire event for flash developers, this year I’ll find there a lots of friends like Piergiorgio, Zohar, Peter, Franto, Marco, Scott and I’m sure to find my belgium and australian friends that I met last year at FotB very cool time spent with them.

Then I’ll have SMAU, the only IT event in Italy, where we are there to show Let’s course, our traning project with Thomas and Tiziano for all event days.
There we’ll make 2 sessions per day, totally free in our stand.
We’ll show interesting tips & tricks of Photoshop, Illustrator, PHP, Flex, AIR and… a very very big argument… but I can’t say it now.

In november there is Flex Camp in Italy made by actionscript.it Italian Adobe User Group, this year there are a lots to talk about Flex and AIR and I’m sure to find very cool italian flex developers.
If you are interested to take part of this event, it’s totally free, you can register yourself at Flex Camp form.

The least but not the last… ADOBE MAX in SAN FRANCISCO…

I think that I must not talk about this event… this year in San Francisco, my first time in California, and I’m sure to find tons of developers and people that love this job like me.
I bought a pre-event session on Blaze DS and Livecycle, I’ve not worked yet with them so I think is a good opportunity to start learn them in depth. 

Probably I’ll go to Adobe MAX in Milan also, but only for a day… there are too many events in few time… but I must meet Matt and other guys that come here from all Europe!

So, you know, too many events, too many opportunity to share skills and find new friends.
If you find me in one of those events, please feel free to stop me!
See you there guys!

My last 2 posts about SQLite in AIR cookbook

In last weeks I spent a lot of time to work with SQLite in AIR for a course that I made in an italian company, so I decide to create a couple of posts in Adobe AIR cookbook about transaction with query and how to works with existing SQLite database included in an AIR application.

You can find in AIR cookbook  section in Adobe.com site.
In those posts you’ll find full HTML/Javascript and Flex/Actionscript samples.

I suggest to use this great section to share your AIR or Flex (there is also Flex cookbook section obviously)  skills and experience with all developers community.
For any kind of suggestions or comment, please contact me directly.

23 June: Colin Moock comes in Italy

Yesss! Finally Italian Flash developers could see for the first time Colin Moock!
He is the Actionscript man, he wrotes bibles about Actionscript and he is Colin Moock.

You can find him at AtaHotel Executive on 23 of June where Mr. Moock will make a FREE day talking about Actionscript 3.
To take part of this event you must register yourself at Adobe site where you can find also more information about the event.
Quickly guys, because there are few many free seats!

 

Scotch on the rocks second day

Sotr second day at Sotr is finished.
Today there were very cool and interesting sessions! In particular about Flex and AIR.
First of all was Peter which a great session about OOP and Actionscript 3, he made an overview from base concept of OOP until to Design patterns, very cool preso. You can find slides in Peter’s blog.

Second session of the day was Andrew Shorten that show the power of AIR with showcases and some technical tricks.

Then another session on Flex and print classes made by Scott Stroz that explain very well how you can manage data to bring it and put on the papers. 

Finally I finished this day with Andrew Shorten with Inspired AIR session, my favourite application that I saw is AdobeDude for European Soccer Tournement; if you have a couple of minutes to spend, take a look at the site, very cool!

So now I’m finishing stuff for my tomorrow morning session about Flash Lite, Flex and AIR, see you tomorrow guys!