• L2709_Presentation.ppt
• L2709_Workbook.pdf
• FlashP2PLib.fxpl
• MAX2011MobileVideoChat.fxp
• EyeChat.fxp
• EyeChatDesktop.fxp

The last two projects are completed versions that you can use for testing or to skip ahead.

I plan to follow up with posts related to the P2P logic used in this sample application. Any questions, let me know. Thanks to all who attended!!

L2709_DSMVCA.zip

Dear Steve,

After reviewing your recent comments regarding Flash and the recent amendments to the Apple Developer TOS, I decided to share with you my response to a few of your positions. First, with regards to 3.3.1, Apple should only do QA based on app quality and NOT on app origin. Are we to seriously believe that an iPhone app built with Unity, Flash, etc. pails in comparison technologically to one built via Xcode? Are we to further believe that there are ABSOLUTELY NO poorly written Obj-C apps in the app store? If so, where are the benchmarks and metrics to support these claims?

Logical decisions are typically made based on data collection in some form or fashion. In the absence of such information, those “logical” decisions are eventually revealed to be more subjective in nature vs. being purely objective. Again, if there is data to support the claims against iPhone apps developed in Flash and compiled to *.ipa, please point us to that data.

Now, as to your assertion that Flash is the #1 reason Macs crash, again, we’d like to see empirical data that supports this claim. Having used apple desktop and laptop computers for more than a decade, I’d have to respectfully disagree with you. I’ve personally experienced kernel panics resulting from locked up processes with non-Flash applications (eg, iTunes, Safari, etc). To my knowledge, iTunes makes no use of Flash but yet it has caused my system to enter into a kernel panic on several occasions. Are we still to believe that Flash is the only big bad wolf lurking in the OSX forest? I seriously hope that’s not your intention. Will your position change when Adobe produces a Flash Player version that takes full advantage of hardware acceleration? I certainly hope so because then we’ll know that you’re truly the visionary tech leader that we all hope you to be.

Does this absolve the Flash development community from doing our part to improve the situation? NO!!! Unfortunately, many Flash apps are created by would-be developers that have no clue about memory management, garbage collection and the like. It is far too easy to create Flash apps that consume all of a browser’s memory, don’t close properly and eventually obstruct a user. But, I submit that this same fact holds true regardless of the language or platform used to create said applications. In other words, sloppy coding is the problem not the technology. This is from the perspective of a developer fluent in several languages including Obj-C and ActionScript.

I understand you have your business goals and a board of directors to please, but I implore you to work with Adobe rather than against them. Work with Google, Facebook and the like to make the future of technology truly open which benefits us all. Ultimately, we MUST support a free market economy in order to achieve this technological utopia, the results of which will be exponential growth that lasts for a millennium. Yes, it truly can be that explosive. The only thing standing in the way is our present day greed for money and power.

I sincerely hope that you soften your stance and work with the other technology leaders to usher us into that state of tech bliss…

P E A C E

Hasan

First step is building the renderer. You can use either MXML or ActionScript but for this example we’ll use ActionScript.

package labs.otuome.ui.renderers
{
  import mx.controls.Button;
  import mx.controls.advancedDataGridClasses.AdvancedDataGridHeaderRenderer;
 
  /**
   * Custom header renderer for displaying 
   * a graphical image in the column header.
   * @author Hasan Otuome
   */
  public class StatusHeaderRenderer extends AdvancedDataGridHeaderRenderer
  {                                                                                          
    /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    // PRIVATE PROPERTIES                                                                    
    /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    private var _btn:Button;                                                                 
    private const LEFT_PADDING:int = 12;                                                     
    /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    // PUBLIC PROPERTIES                                                                     
    /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
 
    /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    // PUBLIC METHODS                                                                        
    /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    /**
     * Constructor 
     */		
    public function StatusHeaderRenderer()
    {
      super();
    }
 
    /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    // OVERRIDES
    /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    /**
     * Override to add the custom component. 
     */		
    override protected function createChildren():void
    {
      super.createChildren();
 
      _btn = new Button();
      _btn.width = 16;
      _btn.height = 16;
      _btn.setStyle( 'skin', StatusMarkerHeaderIconSkin );
 
      addChild( _btn );
    }
    /**
     * Override to layout the children 
     * @param unscaledWidth
     * @param unscaledHeight
     */		
    override protected function updateDisplayList( unscaledWidth:Number, 
                                                  unscaledHeight:Number ):void
    {
      _btn.x = LEFT_PADDING;
 
      super.updateDisplayList( unscaledWidth, unscaledHeight );
    }
    /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    // PRIVATE METHODS
    /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
  }
}

Here we’ve added a 16×16 button with a custom skin that will serve as our column header and we adjust the position of the custom skin so that it displays where we’d like it to.

Now, we can provide this class name to our AdvancedDataGridColumn that we wish to customize. We do this by assigning our custom class to the headerRenderer property of the AdvancedDataGridColumn. This property can be set via MXML or ActionScript. I’ll show an example in ActionScript as that approach is slightly more involved.

import mx.core.ClassFactory; 
myADGColumn.headerRenderer = new ClassFactory( StatusHeaderRenderer );

Here we’ve used ClassFactory to get an instance of our custom renderer and we’ve assigned that instance to our chosen data grid column. Now, all that’s left to do is compile our application to see the result.

“File Reference runtime access — Bring users into the experience by letting them load files into your RIA. You can work with the content at runtime and even save it back when you are done through the browse dialog box. Files can be accessed as a byteArray or text using a convenient API in ActionScript without round-tripping to the server. You no longer have to know a server language or have access to a server to load or save files at runtime.”

Don’t even wait on player version saturation to start noticing the explosion of web-based Flash apps taking advantage of this feature. You can review all of the release notes and even download the beta at Adobe Labs….:D

// Method in SomeClass
public function someMethod(...rest):void
{
    for (var i:uint=0; i < rest.length; i++)
    {
        trace(rest[i]);
    }
}

That will trace out each …rest parameter that you pass to the method call like so:

// Usage from SomeOtherClass
var sc:SomeClass = new SomeClass();
      sc.someMethod(arg1, arg2, arg3, arg4);

This allows a lot of flexibility because those arguments can be simple (String, Number, etc) or complex (Array, Object, etc). But, what if someMethod() is part of SWC library that you may or may not have access to and you want to capture those …rest arguments and pass them to SWC class?

Well, the easiest way that I’ve found is to use the built-in arguments object in your local code and then pass that to the SWC class that’s expecting the …rest array. Here’s what I mean:

// Usage from LocalClass
public function someMethod(arg1:String, arguments:Object=null):void
{
    var sc:SomeClass = new SomeClass();
          sc.someMethod(arguments);
}

This way you can expose LocalClass.someMethod(), accept the concrete parameters that it expects and pass on the dynamic parameters that SomeClass.someMethod() expects.

Case in point, I recently discovered the stock Subversion bundle and checked out the Ant, AS3 and Flex bundles and now have a viable alternative to Eclipse + Subclipse + FB plugin for those days when Eclipse feels too sluggish.

To add the extra bundles, create a path for them, switch to that new directory then do a SVN checkout:

$ cd /Library/Application\ Suppport
$ mkdir TextMate
$ cd TextMate
$ mkdir Bundles
$ cd Bundles
$ svn co http://macromates.com/svn/Bundles/trunk/Review/Bundles/#bundleName#.tmbundle

Where #bundleName# is the one you want to check out. If you don’t specify a bundle, you’ll check out the whole lot. Also, as an alternative, you can grab the Open Terminal script which lets you open a terminal from Finder after you’ve created the paths the GUI way. In that case, you just have to run the checkout command.

Happy coding!!

- Unlimited bandwidth/users
- Better performance (ie, more streams, users per box)
- RTMPE (new version of RTMP that helps secure your content event better)
- h.264 support (can you say HD video?)
- Mobile delivery to Flash Lite 3 devices
- Improved pricing structure ($995 – Video/Audio Streaming, $4500 – Video/Audio, Live, Conferencing)

and a lot more. You can download the free developer edition here.

- AS2 to AS3 Migration (Stacey Mulcahy)
- AS3 Events: The Whole Story (Jacob Bullock)
- Motion XML (Chris Charlton/Omar Gonzalez)
- Think You Know What Red5 Is? Think Again! (Chris Allen)
- Bed Rock Revisited (Sandro Corsaro)

Congratulations to those guys/gals!! This evening there’s an awesome “Get A Job Fair” going on from 530-9p that aims to connect great freelance talent with great companies. After that, Influxis is throwing a monster jammy-jam for everybody to unwind and relax.

There’s more great stuff planned for tomorrow as well. Here are my picks for Day 2:
- Flash CS3 Advergame Development (Sam Rivello)
- Reducing Complexity: The Making of Saffron (Samuel Agesilas) **
- Making Money: Pricing & Contracts (R Blank)
- WTF is Phlash 5 (Allen, Swann, Balkan, Lee-Delisle, Mills, Sims, Agesilas) **
- GMUNKICKDOWN 07 (GMUNK) **
- Adobe AIR for Interactive Designers (Lee Brimelow) **

** means those sessions will rock (guaranteed)! Got to rap with a lot of cool people today. Love all the girls from FITC!!! Erin, Naomi, Carly, you guys rock!! Chatted w/Lee Brimelow for a bit and that was cool. He told me a funny story about the fallout from his ZendCon keynote. He also had his video cam in tow so I expect to see some cool footage up real soon. I plan to have my iPhone charged so I can snap some shots on tomorrow and post them for everybody.

This is an honor and seemed like a good fit for me since I love to help and currently develop Flex apps about 85% of the time. I’m scheduled to attend PHP ZendCon in San Francisco next week as my 1st official “appearance” in this capacity where I plan to spread the word of the blessed union of Flex and PHP

My workload is becoming more manageable too. So, I’ll soon be able to blog more, as well as introduce some cool new features that will help me aggregate everything under one roof. I’ll also soon be able to re-enable the videos. I’ve got some more real estate now I just need some free time to install Red5. After that, I can start publishing some Flex/Air coolness for your viewing pleasure…