The number of commentators posting about Silverlight has naturally fallen off since it's announcement. But the quality of the comments has improved a lot since the heady days of MIX. Chris Duckett posted a commentary today that has some quotes that really hit home for me:
"Even though you can view Silverlight on OS X, you will have no chance of being able to author Silverlight content without a Windows licence. This is a conscious decision. On one hand, Microsoft wants to get designers using their Expression toolset yet designers will have to come across to the Windows platform in order to do it. It may not be such a large hurdle but it is a hurdle nevertheless. Ever tried to force an OS X user onto Windows? They cry, they scream and they want their (at times) consistent GUI back."
"Therefore what is left? We have a video platform held back by a lack of distribution issues, an enforced lock-in for the tools and a lack of true cross-platformness. When it is put that way, it begins to sound an awful lot like Microsoft's previous video strategy with Windows Media."
For those interested I am still adding to the Silverlight vs Flash post list I started a while back. So if you want to catch up or review the comments so far that may be a good place to start.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
htmlText revisited
In a previous post I wrote about some of the problems I'd encountered with htmlText. In particular some oddities that occur when more than one image is included in the htmlText. Ted (who has a blogger account but no profile) suggested an answer may be found in the UITextField class. I've been keen to find time to research this further and finally found some time yesterday. It was an interesting topic. The Flash textField class is extended by the FlexTextField class. This is a very thin wrapper that overrides the toString method. FlexTextField is then extended by UITextField which adds CSS, measurement, tooltips etc. UITextField is used to provide the text component of many common Flex components (i.e Button). This all sounded very promising. Which made it very disappointing to discover all the problems I'd documented previously were still evident when the test is repeated using UITextField. I suspect that these problems may originate within flash.text.textField. But I don't have enough time to pursue this further. Seems I'll will need to keep on hacking when using htmlText.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Flex Applications
I've been asked a few times recently about who is using Flex for application development and I know there are some big names getting involved but I struggle for examples when put on the spot. It can be difficult to find examples as they are often for intranet use or developed for specific purposes within organisation. But there are some great public applications. So I am going to use this post to collect links on available Flex Applications.
Image Editing and Management
Transport
- Flickr : Flex Apps ; a group created by Ted Patrick for screenshots of Flex applictions.
Image Editing and Management
- Kodak : Easy Share Gallery
- Picnik : online image editor
- FauxTo : online image editor
- Pikeo : online photo storage and sharing
Transport
- Harley Davidson : Customizer
- Mazda : Web Tune factory
- Trenitalia : ViaggiaTreno : Italian train system online timetable?
- Fidelity Mortgage Search
- Robeco : Business Support
3D Flash
This post is in response to a discusion at last nights Victorian Adobe Users Group meeting.
For many years people have been experimenting with 3D rendering in Flash. But until recently it was really just a toy. A little while ago Papervision 3D hit the blogs to much excitement. The other day a work colleague sent me link to Outsmarts 3D Flex demo. So here are (and I will continue to add resources for 3D Flash development:
For many years people have been experimenting with 3D rendering in Flash. But until recently it was really just a toy. A little while ago Papervision 3D hit the blogs to much excitement. The other day a work colleague sent me link to Outsmarts 3D Flex demo. So here are (and I will continue to add resources for 3D Flash development:
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Getting Started with Flex
I will be doing a presentation at Victorian Adobe Users Group this Thursday. It will be an introduction to the Flex basics ; layout, components, styles, actionscript basics. Ideal for anyone who has wanted to find out more about Flex but hasn't had the time. So if you or someone you know is looking for an in on Flex and will be in Melbourne this week then it would be great to see you. The venue has a limited window of easy access so make sure you check out the access details before coming.
Resources:
Resources:
- Useful links : http://bluedot.us/users/geekglue/tag/flex/basic
- Getting Started with Flex presentation notes (pdf)
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