I’m just come back from 3GSM World Congress

Here we are!
Yesterday I came back from Barcelona (what a wonderful city!), I was there for 3GSM World Congress invited from Adobe to show our latest Flash Lite contents made in collaboration with Mutado, an Italian creative and interactive company.
It was amazing for us and I’d like to thank you Adobe people to give us this opportunity, thank you guys!

Adobe stand was amazing I love it so much and also Adobe announced lots of new stuff from new Flash Lite player delivery to new challenge that allow developers to win $30.000!

Flash Lite challengers is a contest that will finish at the end of May and we’ll know winners in the middle of June.
Main prize is $30.000 for the best Flash Lite application, but there are also categories prizes from games to applications, it’s a great opportunity to show your mobile content and win!
More information about this challenge on Adobe site

Another great news is that now, we have a new way to distribute our Flash Lite contents, in fact if a device goes trough a Flash Lite content on the web browser or download a Flash Lite application, if this device doesn’t have installed Flash Lite 3.1, it will be downloaded from web and installed on the device.
More information about this new way to deliver your content on Labs site.  

Also Adobe and Nokia give us a new opportunity to invest in mobile projects with Open Screen Project fund ($10 million), in fact this fund is created to help companies and developers to join in mobile Flash world!
More information about it in open screen project site. 

Finally I put a review on mobile.actionscript.it about new Flash Lite devices like Palm Pre or Nokia N97, so feel free to comment it (and take a look about our new mobile website).

 If you want to see a quick tour about 3GSM feel free to take a look on my Flickr account.

3GSM World Congress 2009

Hi All,

it’s long time that I don’t write down a post.
In last months I changed lots of things, new fellows, new tutorials, new customers and big projects to develop with AIR and Flex.
So lots of things to do!

This year I’ll be at 3GSM World Congress for the second time, so if you will be there, please feel free to tell me, maybe you can drop me an email or add a comment under this post!
I’ll arrive at 15th and I’ll come back 20th February, so 5 amazing days in Barcelona.
If you don’t come, don’t worry I’ll post about this great event when I’ll be there and… there is a special surprise for anybody that follow this blog, so stay tuned and take a look at this blog in next few days.

Styling your text with CSS in Actionscript 3

I know, it’s a very silly stuff, but I think could be useful for anybody that would like to styling textfields with CSS in few moments.
This little sample, show you how to make it via Actionscript 3 in Flash. 

First of all we create CSS file called cssStyle.css with a custom color for the text:

 .customBold{

color:#FF00CC;

}

Ok now, in the first frame of our Flash file we create a dynamic textfield with t_txt istance name and then we create another layer called “actionscript”. In the first keyframe of Actionscript layer we copy and past this code:

stop();


var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();

var req:URLRequest = new URLRequest(“cssStyle.css”);

loader.load(req);



loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loaderCompleteHandler);


function loaderCompleteHandler(event:Event):void {

var sheet:StyleSheet = new StyleSheet();

sheet.parseCSS(loader.data);

t_txt.styleSheet = sheet;

t_txt.htmlText = “<span class=’customBold’>This is a silly text with CSS style</span> and without CSS!”;

}

So first of all we load the external CSS file with URLLoader class and when loaded complete we use StyleSheet object to parse CSS and to apply it in our textfield in the stage we only set stylesheet textfield property with StyleSheet object.
You can download sample files from this link 

I become Adobe Certified Expert on Flex 3 with AIR, I suggest how to prepare the exam

Today I become ACE on Flex 3 with AIR… I’m so happy!!!
I’d like to suggest some stuff, to prepare Flex 3 ACE exam to help other developers that would try this… experience.

First of all download ACE PDF file where you can find exam outlines on adobe.com site.

Then start you preparation reading Flex 3: Training from the source, the official Adobe press book, I know that it could be so easy for advanced developers but you can find interesting stuff that go in deep about particular arguments.

Another PERFECT resources are Adobe documentations that explain very well and very easily how to use Flex and Adobe AIR API, in particular for AIR the best official stuff is Adobe livedocs.
I suggest to take also others books about AIR because you must remember a lots of things for the exam, so take a look at amazon.com 

Work Work and Work again with Flex! Find little or big projects, it’s not important but you can work in real problem solving issue. Also it’s so important to fix many concepts about how to work with modules, components and so on.

When I was at San Francisco MAX I went to Blaze DS and LiveCycle pre-event and it was very helpful for my preparation because LCDS is a part of exam and I’ve never take in consideration before this learning session, so I think you can take a course about LCDS in your country or town.

When you finish with all those steps you are ready to take the exam and maybe to pass it!

Feel free to comment this post with any questions.

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.

How to win a lot of prizes at MAX Milan

Tomas Joos, a great friend of mine, has just released a cool Flash Lite application that allow you to win great prizes at MAX Milan.
You must only shoot, shoot and shoot again to Adobe icons softwares that fall down in the screen, you can find all informations about prizes and how to start to play at boulevart labs site.
I played with it and believe me, it’s very funny spent time with this game.

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