Finaly i found the time to do some enhancements to my Youtube desktop tool Richtube. Still i`m not able to release this tool because of some possible legal issues which have to be sorted out – but i`m working on it.
I made a new screencast which you can check out here.
While waiting for Apollo i decided to check out what can be done with flash on the desktop today.
I`ve never been into microsoft programming but found out that it`s extremely easy to write your own wrapper for swf files in c#.
This gives you the opportunity to write your own Zinc like projector tool. As a start i implemented simple file I/O and a way to start and play cds.
The coolest thing i was able to do was to include microsofts speech recognition and make my flex application react to speech.
The app is quite simple but cool! I have a button on stage and if i say “left” it will jump to the left or if i say “green” it`s text becomes green.
I decided to write a small tutorial about how to embed an swf file into a c# project and how the communication works. Well this is my first public
tutorial so be patient. I had several dificulties:
– english is not my native language
– how to describe things and make them understandable
– how to show code in a nice way
Well i think i failed in coping with all of those challenges 🙁
Anyway if i find the time i want to extend this article to the point with the speech engine.
If you want to help me i would be very interested in suggestions and corrections.
When i saw this post by Keith Peters i had the idea to turn this into a skin for the flex components.
The problem i found was that if you use a programmatic skin the manual tells you to extend the class mx.skins.ProgrammaticSkin.
This class extends from FlexShape which extends Shape. The problem is that in one skin i need to add more than one Shape but because ProgrammaticSkin is a Shape a can not add new shapes.
I ended up extending my skin from UIComponent which definetly is not the right way. If anyone knows a better way how to create a “complex” skin please comment here.
You can see what i came up with here. (Source enabled)
While MAX is asleep i just downloaded Adobe digital Editions from the labs. The installation is extremly easy – exact the same thing as the express install feature of the flash player. Right clicking on the app shows that it`s flash. Than i downloaded an ebook and this came as a pdf! So we have the first app that combines pdf and Flash. Adobe just calls the technology a lightweight rich internet application – no word of apollo. Maybe later.
Check out Adobe digital Editions at the labs.
It`s like the days before christmas. I`m impatiently checking the labs every 20 minutes. It has to happen now! Why else should there be a session at MAX called “Getting started with apollo“?
I think the beta is just 2 (MAXimum) days away. Come on release the beast!
While waiting for Apollo check out Janus. It`s a tool similiar to zinc but on the first look much more stable and powerful. Currently it`s in beta and you can download a trial.
Adobe Flex™ and FDT™ users:
The interesting thing is that it seems that Janus first was a project in the MDM space. A while back there was a beta forum were an application was listed called Rebus. It seems that this has now become Janus and is now independent from MDM.
Anyway i have a feeling that Apollo will soon be in the labs (do i hear MAX…)
I got an official statement from youtube that my youtube app does not confirm to the youtube terms of use. So i made a camtasia record to show it here. I think this app shows well how Flex and Zinc can be combined for rapid application development and it`s a nice example of an occasionally connected client. I hope that the same type of applications will also be possible with apollo. Here a the key feautures:
– Search Youtube
– Display Videos in a Custom (not Youtube) Player.
– Save Videos Offline
– Organize downloaded Videos in categories
– Export downloaded Videos to ordinary AVI files and save them on your machine.
I hope that youtube will make their service more open soon. I think one big point at the moment is that they need to place their ads and such an app prevents this. Maybe they could open the service under the restriction that you display ads from them in your app. Those ads could be updated everytime the app goes online.
I`ve developed a little Flex/Zinc application that allows to search Youtube Videos and display them without the Youtube Player. You can than download the videos and watch and organize them offline. The app also allows you to convert those videos to other formats (e.g. simple avi`s). It even has a little download manager that allows to control multiple downloads. This has become such a handy little app that shows well the power of flex that i would like to add it here as a download. I`m unsure if i`m allowed to do this? Does anyone knows if youtube will allows this?
Yesterday i installed Microsoft MAX. It`s the first app from Microsoft that uses WPF. I really like it but the first thing i thought was: “This can all be done in Flex too!” I especially liked the way the images reorder when you scale them. So back from work i tried it in Flex. I took the hybrid store example from adobe as a starting point.
You can view the result here.
And grab the source here.
Try scaling the images with the slider on the right and use the Devider and see what happens with the images. Also try to rescale your browser window. It is really easy to do such things with flex. It took about 20 minutes to do this (can you do this in ajax in this time?). It`s really just a rough sketch and if anyone improves it please leave a comment.
What i really like about Wpf is that it will become easier to sell Flex/Flash based apps because soon (when does Vista arrives?) normal desktop apps will look like Flex/Flash apps 😉
