Custom ApplicationUpdaterUI for using AIR Update Framework in Flex 4
September 9th, 2009
Flex 4 is Rock ‘n’ Roll! However, Flex 4 is still beta and it can’t be perfect right now. Today one of the most missing feature for me is using the ApplicationUpdaterUI of the Adobe AIR Update Framework in Flex 4. This bug is already documented. (BTW: Please vote here to fix this issue! )
Anyway, I can’t wait for the final release of Flex 4, so I decided to build a custom ApplicationUpdaterUI component based on the new Spark skinning architecture. The custom ApplicationUpdaterUI is built on the top of the current version of Adobes AIR Update Framework and most of the current features are available (e.g. auto check, localization etc.) The component is full skinnable using it as an external window (as before) or as an embedded view component in an application (without the need of a popup window).
Testing states of skin classes in Flex 4 using WSSkinStatesTester
September 6th, 2009
WSSkinStatesTester is a handy tool to test visually all states of any skin classes in Flex 4 (Gumbo).
Speed up JPEG encoding using Alchemy
June 21st, 2009
Few weeks ago Thibault Imbert published an optimized version of Adobes JPGEncoder. And it rocks! However, if you may have very big-size bitmaps it takes too much time to encode images. For example: A bitmap with a size of 2000px x 1500px takes 22 sec. (BTW: Adobes version 30 sec.!!)
Today I came across to a post by Manfred Weber, which points to a discussion at Adobes Alchemy forum. There you will find a great solution published by metalbot for encoding JPEGs using Alchemy. It’s based on a C library for JPEG image compression by IJG and it’s pretty fast (2,7 sec. for 2000 px x 1500px ) !!! Check out the example:
ThunderBolt AS3 version 2.2 out now!
March 8th, 2009
ThunderBolt AS3, which is a lightweight logger extension for Flex 3-4, AIR and Flash 9-10 applications, has been updated to version 2.2.
Check out the new features:
Simple RSS reader for iPhone using PureMVC Standard for Objective-C
February 8th, 2009
Few weeks ago Cliff Hall announced the release of PureMVC Objective-C Port by Brian Knorr. Brian also provided a very helpful demo called “Employee Admin“.
To dive into the Objective-C port of PureMVC as quick as possible I have built a another demo. It’s a pretty simple RSS reader for iPhone or iPod touch, which grabs a feed of a blog and shows the latest 10 entries in detail.
Free iPhone app for Flex User Group Hamburg (incl. source code)
January 27th, 2009
[UPDATE 02/11/09] flexughh app is available on iTunes store! All links has been updated. Get it for free 
It’s done! My first iPhone app is uploaded to Apple’s app store. It’s an app for the Flex UG in Hamburg / Germany, called “flexughh”. Because I’m very excited about all the enthusiastic flexughh-members I decided to offer this app for free including its full source code written in Objective-C as open source!
Today I will present the new flexughh app at our flexughh-Meeting. If you don’t have the chance to attend it, here are some screen shots.
Swiz example based on Adobe AIR and SQLite
January 7th, 2009
About two months ago Sönke Rohde, a good friend of me and a very active contributor of the Swiz framework, told me about his experiences using Swiz and he recommended highly Swiz as a framework which seems brutally simple to use. For all the people out there who are not familiar with Swiz: Swiz is an IoC framework created by Chris Scott to simplify the development of Flex based RIAs.
WSPluginSwitcher: Cocoa based tool for switching Flash plug-in on OS X
January 2nd, 2009
It’s never to late to learn a new (programming) language So I’ve been starting to learn Cocoa, Apple’s Objective-C based programming environment for Mac OS X.
My “Cocoa”-trip started with building a little application called “WSPluginSwitcher“, which is a Cocoa based tool for switching Flash plug-ins on OS X (Leopard).
UPDATE [10/26/08]: Source of the extensions and the example as well has been moved to the project called ‘mate-examples’ on Google Code
If you are using Mate for application development based on Adobe AIR you may need an extension for using SQLite, because its in Mate currently not built in. It seems that only one extension by Miran Loncaric available, which depends on Eric Feminellas SQLService. Unfortunately this Mate extension lacks for using result or fault handlers, using prepared SQLStatements, parameters etc.
ThunderBolt AS3 supports Flex 4 (Gumbo)
August 3rd, 2008
ThunderBolt AS3 version 2.0 is out now! ThunderBolt AS3 is a lightweight logger extension for logging any ActionScript 3.0 projects based on Flex 2-4, AIR or Flash 9-10 using Firebug or the new ThunderBolt AS3 Console.
After a public beta phase of two months and about 500-1.000 beta testers (1.240 downloads) the doors are open for the new release 2.0. Thanks to all the participants!
One of the new features is the support and Flex 4 (Gumbo). Check out the following example. Note: Flash Player 10 beta will be required.
