Riafox Inc. – Star, ID – Rich Internet Application Development

The Adobe Developers of Idaho and the Boise Adobe Users and Graphic Design Group have come together to start a new program called <dev>. <dev> offers non-profit companies an opportunity to work with a team comprised of user group members to develop a Rich Internet Application (RIA) for their organization.

As the head of the Adobe Developers of Idaho, RIA Fox, Inc. is excited to be sponsoring <dev>. Rich Internet Applications are our passion, and we believe this is a valuable opportunity to increase involvement in user groups while providing a free service to non-profit organizations.

User groups are an excellent way to meet and collaborate with other skilled developers who share an excitement for Adobe Flex and RIA Technology. Application development is moving towards a more team-based environment. We believe that participating developers and designers will gain valuable experience by sharing innovative ideas in collaboration with other skilled individuals.

For more information visit the Adobe Developers of Idaho website athttp://adidaho.org/devRIA.php.

When I first started writing Flex applications, I needed to get the useHandCursor property to work. Many will find that settinguseHandCursor=true doesn’t really do anything. After doing a little research, I found a couple different ways for doing getting the hand cursor to work.

The first way is creating a custom hand yourself and use the CursorManager class to set a new cursor icon. Use the mouseOver and mouseOut Events to set and remove the new cursor using these two methods.

import mx.managers.CursorManager;
[Embed(source="/images/pointer.png")]
private var handCursorSymbol:Class;
private var _numCursorID:Number;
public function createPointer(event:Event):void{
_numCursorID = CursorManager.setCursor(handCursorSymbol);
}
public function destroyPointer(event:Event):void{
CursorManager.removeAllCursors();
}

After adding my new cursor to the screen, the positioning of the pointer is off a little. When I moused over the component, I found that when the cursor changed over to my new pointer that the pointer wasn’t even on the component. There is an offset attribute you can use to position your new cursor.

_numCursorID = CursorManager.setCursor(handCursorSymbol, 2.0,-8);

For more information on the CursorManager Class go to flex language reference.

If you don’t want to have to create your own hand icon, the second way to get a hand cursor working is to use a mouseOver Event.
mouseOver="event.target.onRelease=null;event.target.useHandCursor=true;"

I found this example over at Prismix Blog. Check it out to learn more about how it works.

The third and the easiest way to use change the cursor to the hand cursor, is just change a couple of properties.

useHandCursor="true"
buttonMode="true"

If the component has children also set mouseChildren="false"

Here are a couple of different ways you can turn on useHandCursor and how to create a custom cursor.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/201/langref/flash/display/Sprite.html#useHandCursor

Hopefully this will save you some time.

Last Wednesday I went to the Boise Graphic Design Meetup and it was a great experience. The last time I went to the meetup, there were about 10-15 people there. I hadn’t been to a meeting in a few months, for various reasons. Last week, there were 30-35 people! And apparently last month there were upwards of 50!! It’s great to have such an awesome group coming together; it’s an amazing resource for local designers.

A few of us were talking towards the end about how much we miss the collaboration and sense of community we had in school. The meetup provides that sort of community, and an opportunity to meet many very talented people.

The presentation of Flash techniques given by Randy Jamison from Curious Media was very interesting and entertaining. Getting to see the work of a Flash professional was great, and I picked up a few ideas and techniques to try.

I’m looking forward to next month, and seeing everyone again. We’re looking for a bigger venue to call “home”, so if anyone has any ideas we’re open to suggestions!

With Rich Internet Applications becoming even more popular, we’re finding everyday more and more applications that we’ve been accustomed to using on our local desktop available on the world wide web.

Everything from word processing, graphic editing and even video editing applications are being developed. The advantages of being able to do these things online is exponential. Not only can you do your work from any location with any computer that has Internet access, you’re no longer as limited by the resources of your local machine. This also narrows the problem of working from multiple platforms as well.

One of the more common and most popular examples is Google’s Google Docs. Although it’s not Flex driven it’s still pretty nice and offers some great freedom (check out Buzzword for a Flex driven online word processor) with simple documents and spreadsheets. So instead of having to e-mail your friends a copy of your file and hope that they have the right software and latest version to view your precious creation, you’ll be able to collaborate the file with them. They then login to the same Rich Internet App that you used with their own account and see the file that you’ve shared with them. They then can edit or manipulate the file as they wish! Now imagine being able to do that with many other types of files. Images, video, graphs and diagrams, project management, and much more.

And those updates that you just have to get so that you can stay up with the latest software won’t be a bother anymore either. If you’re using a RIA word processor, you’ll likely be automatically updated along with every other user.

This of course also means a little leniency on your pocket book as well. With Rich Internet Apps just coming out many services are free or very inexpensive to use. Many services and products may be effected to the benefit of the consumer. Rich Internet Applications don’t just effect desktop applications, but will also further impact television, communications and e-commerce. So even though the days of the expensive software license may soon be coming to an end for many Internet users, expect to find more and more of the Rich Internet Applications to come along with monthly subscription fees.

Of course the more these applications become available the more that security also needs to be considered. Though this may hinder some, if done correctly a Rich Internet Application can be as secure as any other type of web site on the internet.

As we see Rich Internet Applications become more and more available we’re sure to see more opportunities and simplicity in how we experience the Internet.

Since we’ve turned our focus as a company to Rich Internet Applications I’ve received a lot of inquiries as to what a Rich Internet Application is and what the benefits are.

So, I’ll just start listing why you would want to consider Rich Internet Apps.

1. No page limitations. Instead of working with a restrained html layout and worrying if Internet Explorer 7 is going to toast the CSS you spent forever on getting to work with Internet Explorer 6 is no longer a problem. We’ve noticed a few variation in font display between PCs and Mac but the problems are nothing compared to getting a beautiful layout to look good and match the designers vision using HTML.
2. It’s refreshing… Or rather it’s not. Having a web site that doesn’t have to refresh a page is definitely refreshing in it’s own sense. No more white page and wondering if your internet connection just pooped out on you or if the site is still thinking on the other end, now you can still see the application and if it hangs at least you’re not just looking at a blank screen.
3. It’s easy. Ok, so the frills and animations aren’t necessary for the thing to function, but used correctly they can really help simplify the navigation and give the site a nice homely feel, making the user more comfortable and at ease with your site. I’m more relaxed just thinking about it.
4. Desktop Integration. You have to admit that being able to create a desktop application that smoothly integrates with an Internet account is pretty dang cool. Sure, you could pull this kind of thing off in the past, but not as smoothly and easily as you can now with the use of Adobe Air and Flex.
5. It’s cool. Let’s face it, all these things are just plain cool.

So in a nutshell, these are our top reasons for migrating into a Rich Internet Application company. More and more companies are seeing the value and will see the value. We want to be available to make it happen for them.

I’ve been looking for a simple to use (and inexpensive) application for some time to handle my flow charts, use cases, and UML and I happened across Gliffy. Better yet, it’s a Flex application.

Gliffy handles everything I need to do and more. I have been pleased with the simplicity and functionality of the program. You can tell that the program has been well thought through. I especially like the feature which allows collaboration of your diagrams with others. In addition you can create a URL that will display your creation.

I was hard pressed to find a negative with the program. There are a few minor glitches here and there, but nothing that couldn’t be overlooked or worked around.

Getting started with Gliffy is also nice. With a free account you can get going with practically full usability and store up to 5 diagrams at a time. This was of course ample to explore the features and really see if it was up to snuff. Needless to say I’ve signed up and have multiple diagrams and charts that we use for various projects and reasons.

Gliffy is up there on my recommendation list. Check it out.http://gliffy.com