I'm new to adobe air applications. In WPF and Silverlight I had a tool that would allow me to see components of a view at runtime similar to developer tools in a browser html site. Is anyone aware of something similar for an adobe air application using mxml for views?
Not exactly sure if this is what you're looking for, but look into Monster Debugger
It'll give you a list of all DisplayObjects in your AIR application, as well as traces and other stuff. you can also change values on the fly.
Related
I am trying to develop a custom self-hosted embedable player (Just YT embeds for now, but option for adding media later) with social media buttons, clickable overlays, post-roll options, etc that can be shared in FB timeline cross-browser, etc. I have narrowed down frameworks to:
Mediaelement.js
Kaltura Community Edition
Webshim's mediaelement
I'm new to javascript, so ease of use, user base, and documentation are all important. Any reason why one of these might be a dead-end for my purposes, or why one might be easier to develop for?
Just trying to get perspective at the moment before drilling down on the development details. I am experimenting with mediaelement.js in the meantime.
Well, I think it won't be easy.
You also must have a server side for in order to create your own player.
I know that Kaltura are working on a solution.
But I don't see any better choices.
What are the differences between these two programming choices
I know that the following features are supported by only HTML/Javascript
1. Flyout control
2. Header Menu
3. Rating Control
Do they have any other difference in terms of controls, integrations, connections, deployment?
html/javascript
html5 and js are open web standards. That's why they work (and act) in nearly every browser the same way. That is the reason why you can develop html5 applications for Mac OS and port it without many extra coding to Windows.
Microsoft however wants to have as many Apps inside the market as possible, that's why they made confession to the web developer and implemented a native looking support to html and Javascript. But there are a lot of Javascript functions, that are only supported by IE10 (in fact, nearly every function you can find in the WinJS-File). If you want to port Win 8 Application to any other Operation System, you have to review your code.
A good example for this is the click-eventhandler in WinJS, which has a event.pointerId to identify multitouch. This is a good easy way but not standard.
XAML/C# or VB
XAML is .NET and so it is fixed to this Framework. You cannot easily port a XAML Application to a mac os. Therefor XAML and C# is very good implemented into Visual Studio (Intellisense,Blend and Design-Views) and has some nice features like LINQ and DataBinding. Also the MVVM pattern allows to split up designers and programmers. In my opinion the documentation on msdn is better for XAML and C# than for Html5 and JS. For games there is also a DirectX implementation which is a better choice because of higher performance.
What to choose?
The decision which way to program is really hard. The following Questions should help:
Which programming language are you more familiar with?
IF OOP -> C# and XAML
IF web and prototype based languages -> HTML and JS
Which type of application will you code?
If it's fixed to Win 8 -> XAML and C#
If it should run on more than one platform -> HTML and JS
Do you like Visual Studio?
If yes -> use XAML and C#
If no -> use HTML and JS, you can than
first develop the app with your common IDE and later import it into
visual studio to create the application.
Is there any guidance available on developing Metro styled silverlight applications? How does one go about designing the UI to match the metro look and feel of WP7. Going by the way windows 8's UI & UX is, I assume the future of how we develop applications for the future versions of the win OS might be changing to look more or less 'metro'.
So what I am asking is, if anyone knows of any resource or has any ideas on how to use the currently available silverlight controls to achieve that look and feel. Is there anything planned to change the controls to match that UX out of the box and more natively?
As you know Metro is not tied to any technology. You can reference WP7 UI guidelines to get some hints; a new version of the guideline is available from Microsoft web site.
For Silverlight 4, you can download themes from Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e9da0eb8-f31b-4490-85b8-92c2f807df9e
The Cosmopolitan theme when applied to a Silverlight4 application will give you Metro UI.
You can either apply the theme as-is or have a look in the xaml resource files to see how the theme is designed (brushes, fonts, styles etc)
For good UI (including Metro concepts and Blend) reference, I recommend visiting http://www.riagenic.com/
I hope this helps.
Have you missed this session?
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/TOOL-790C
It shows step-by-step how a WP7 (~Silverlight) application can be be turned into a Metro-style application. Although it doesn't go into design principles.
Edit: haha, missed to see that this question was asked months ago, sorry.
Infragistics have published a free metro theme for Silverlight.
I need to write a desktop application that can run on Mac (Windows and Linux soon) that can get data from MySQL and allow users to transfer files from their desktop to the server.
I know I can write a desktop app in AIR, how would Fireworks play into this?
Can AIR connect to MySQL?
Can one FTP files with AIR?
On a second note, can one write such applications as a ring-tone maker, a disk repair/partitioning utility in AIR? I know AIR uses web technology, but what other thigns are possible?
-Jason
Do you mean Adobe Fireworks? I would use Fireworks for the interface design. It also has some customizable assets.
Here is the product page where they have a lot more info on what it's capable of.
http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/features/?view=topnew
An AIR application is a desktop version of a Flash Application. So anything you can do in a Flash Application you can do in an AIR application. Flash Apps work with MySQL so you should be able to get an AIR app to work with MySQL.
AIR apps can also access the local file system. For instance you can write an AIR file loader application.
Fireworks is my design tool of preference. If you are working with digital graphics there is little need to look beyond FW to things like Photoshop and Illustrator. All of the CS5 software intro screens were designed in Fireworks. It has the best 32 bit PNG output I have seen and the colors are dead on without that issue from PS changing its output from the authoring environment.
From experience, I would not recommend spending time with AIR. Web apps are the way to go and the investment in a desktop or even mobile specific device app is going to be tough to justify because of programming maintenance costs, version releases and the speed new technology is released.
You could use Fireworks for the creation of images for the UI ( User Interface ) for most parts its okay enough, if you need advanced shadowing and color options you can look into photoshop, but fireworks is just great for the basic graphical stuff.
Im not sure if you question was maybe related to the UI since fireworks itself should have nothing to do with building the Air application.
You can use different solutions to build your air application, maybe off topic but if you have not decided how to build the AIR app I would look into Adobe Flash Builder 4,5, flex and the AIR development library's. Flex is also great to easily change the user interface (CSS) where you could create the images with fireworks :)
I may want to create a RIA but am wondering, whether Adobe AIR or Titanium is the way to go.
Do you think the open source version will last longer? Will it be better in anyway?
Just in case anyone comes back to this post, I'll add my 2 cents.
Titanium has come along way in the last few months. It now has support for Ruby and Python. You can code your own modules in C++ (eg, IRC) and compile Titanium to have support for that module (Or you can code modules in Py/Ru/JS).
You can use flex, flash and silverlight all within Titanium. All have been tested and work without a hitch :)
Although AIR isn't open source yet, the technology stack it's on (Flex, Webkit, etc) is open source. Titanium definitely looks promising but has no where near the momentum and support AIR has yet. Until it's been actually released and has several production apps running on it I wouldn't bet too much on it.If you're looking to get involved in an open source project and actually work and help develop it that's something else...
Just to clarify, AIR lets you use HTML/js to build your apps as well.
Neither, as both technologies are for creating desktop applications not RIAs.
Now if you were to ask how should you build your RIA... so that when, if, it comes to a point of you making a desktop version, which technology should you use, Flex or Javascript/HTML?
The answer becomes obvious once you decide between Flex or Javascript/HTML. If you do Flex then your desktop application will be in AIR; If you do Javascript/HTML your Descktop app will be in Titanium.
My suggestion, go with Flex - Air. Both are environments where State is made easy. Flex are written much like client (desktop) applications anyway as they have state.