The Space For App Developers

Is RIA really dead? Well I guess the buzzword is, but the things that used to be called Rich Internet Applications are just called web apps these days. Client-side apps running in the browser (plug-in free or not) have become almost a commodity.

That is why I have made a decision to start a new blog at a new domain name: outof.me. As you can see, it is a buzzword-free address. Of course, I will be still be sharing deep technical content, but from time to time you can expect some unrelated stuff there as well, since I am now free to share more of what is on my mind!

I will keep riaspace.com up and running, but don’t expect any new content to show up here. Instead you can subscribe to my new RSS feed here.

I just thought I will share some of my findings around drag and drop support in WebKit, HTML5 and PhoneGap apps running on iOS and Android devices.

To make the story short drag and drop is NOT support out of the box in the current versions of WebKit that run on iOS or Android devices although you can simulate it using mousedown, mousemove and mouseup events.

When I clean the code a bit you can expect and update to this post

This time in the video below you will find a quick review of PhpStorm/WebStorm IDEs. As I mention in my recording this is one of those tools that I will stick with at least for now

It has really great debugging support (IMHO Firebug or WebInspector can’t even compete). Also because it is built on top of IntelliJ IDEA platform it has great code completion, rich set of refactoring features, and many others. Check out the video for more.

Below is the third episode of my HTML5 for App Developers series. In this episode, I cover how you can debug your JavaScript applications inside of Eclipse.

Debugging is available through a set of plugins that are available for Eclipse from the ChromeDevTools project on Google Code. So, you will need either Google Chrome or Chromium to make it all work.

Below you will find the second episode of my HTML5 for App Developers series. In this episode, I cover how you can use Eclipse, which is a free and open source IDE, to do your HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS work.

In the video, I point out a small bug that comes with Mac version of Eclipse. To download the patch you can use this link. You can find Eclipse itself here; I encourage you to download the Eclipse IDE for JavaScript Web Developers version.

Below you will find a recording with a tutorial of my as3c2dm ANE. Since I published this lib I have received tons of messages and comments with help requests so I hope this will work

BTW this is the first video tutorial I’ve recorded from my new home studio. I still need to work a bit on some light and audio presets in Premiere Pro but I think in general it’s starting to look and sound as I imagined. You can expect a short walkthrough around my studio in some of my next posts

With the holiday season just around the corner you may be wondering what and how you are going to cook (or maybe your mom or wife does ). Well here comes help: a really great looking and innovative app called Cooklet for tablets  (of course built with Adobe AIR). This app is a great addition to the Cooklet.com portal.

My favorite feature is the way you can navigate between the steps of the recipe. It is actually controlled via a front-facing camera and your hand gestures; this way your precious tab can stay clean Another great thing is that the cooking steps are actually read for you so you can keep your tab at a safe distance from your stove. Also the steps’ text is presented with a much larger font so again it can be read from further away. The Cooklet team did really amazing job on the UI and UX of the app!

So go ahead and download it from Android Market or BlackBerry App World (hopefully the iPad version will come soon). You can also check it out in action in the video below.

OK, I finally found some time to give HTML5 a try. Since Adobe (my employer) is actively participating in its development, I wanted to learn more about the actual state of the technology, understand what all the hype is about, and really not fall behind.

I have to be frank here. That the first three days were really hard for me I cursed a lot and pulled my hair out of my head. Well IMHO the learning curve is a bit steep, especially when you are coming from an OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) world like Flex/AS3, Java, or .NET. What I’m trying to say here is that things are just different and you need some patience to get used to it. But after those first few days I actually started enjoying it and I’m sure you will too if you give it a try.

So, to alleviate the pain for others that are taking their first steps with HTML5 I decided to record a series of short tutorials that should help The series will be titled “HTML5 for App Developers” and I will concentrate mostly on app development aspects – so things like tooling/IDEs, debugging, HTML layouts, JavaScript frameworks, architectural and design patterns, and much, much more.

The first video, which you can find below, is about Adobe Dreamweaver and how you can customize it to make it a more developer-centric tool/IDE. The next one will also cover tooling and it will be about Eclipse (the free and open source IDE). I think it is extremely important that when starting with a new technology to have the whole environment set up comfortably so it doesn’t get in your way. So go ahead and enjoy the video below.

To celebrate the best ever release of Flex SDK marked with 4.6 version number I decided to publish source code of my little tablet demo app called BlueChips. The video below demonstrates BlueChips in action together with an overview of new Flex 4.6 components that target tablet development. You can go ahead and download the source code from github and do whatever you want with it

If you prefer vimeo over youtube you can watch the same recording here.

This year at MAX I did a geeky session about things that people don’t usually know about AS3, Flex and Flash Builder. Below you can find recording of my session and the slides.