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Response to Adobe AIR

A friend and co-worker posted an article on his blog about Adobe AIR and asked the question: “Why is Adobe pushing the desktop as the future platform for deployment of Rich Internet Applications? We just spent the last ten years forcing the Web application to a point of maturity…”

It’s a strong question and does seem like a step in the wrong direction on the surface, but the real reason (in my opinion) is hidden behind several layers of assumptions that people take for granted about the Internet. To start lets step back a few years. Macromedia spends millions in technology and marketing making the Flash player ubiquitous with anything cool and usable on the Internet. They court developers like a prom date to turn a once “Skip Intro” platform into a tool for building RIAs. It took them a lot of tries to get it right and eventually they even surrendered their IDE (from Flash Studio to Eclipse) and invented a new language MXML that developers would like. The result… Adobe Flex. Flex allowed a developer like myself to build an RIA without even thinking about time-lines and Flash Sprites (whatever they are). Honestly, I think they finally nailed it here. Everything I have seen in Flex has been cool and this is just the stuff that is free to use on the Internet. I can’t even imagine what people have built for internal use. My friend nailed it when he said “Flex solves the dumb and disconnected problem of Web applications by keeping a channel open between client and server”. It also solves some other problems like building in controls for a lot of RIA features; tabs, panels, calendar date selection, sliders, tree selection, etc. etc. Want video or audio in your application? Done via drag-and-drop. Need to sync up users with chat, work collaboration or real-time data push? Add about 10 lines of code and a LiveCycle Data Services server and you got it. Yes, it can be that simple.

Alright, so you have heard the marketing but why AIR?

Ask yourself this question? What if you had photographed a masterpiece, perhaps a beautiful sunset in the mountains, using the most expensive camera and printed it on the most expensive paper? Every time you showed it to someone they said, “Wow. That is exactly what I need in my house.” Now, would you go to Wal*Mart and buy a frame for $4.99 to wrap it in? Probably not. What if their was a company that made most of the frames in the world and it had some flaws that really made your masterpiece seem sub-par? There’s another frame company, but it really doesn’t have an owner and in the grand scheme of things, not too many people would want to hang it on their wall. Both frames seem to really box in your masterpiece anyway and what you really want is for the edges of the photograph to just end right there. Sure it needs to hang on the wall securely and have some protection around it, but that is all you really want, nothing more.

Enter, Adobe AIR. It removes the browser frame from Flex applications. See I think Adobe was tired of being framed in by the browser. Not only are there visual limitations like always living inside a square HTML box, but there are also security limitations of the browser that hindered application functions. Those are just the technical limitations. On the corporate level, Adobe was also at the mercy of Microsoft. Internet Explorer still dominating the browser market chooses to include the Flash player and chooses to make it work well. They don’t have to do that and they also have a new reason not to, Silverlight. By getting outside the browser, Adobe is trying to protect its application delivery method and also remove some of the red tape that any other application you install on your machine doesn’t have.

One point of contention is that there is now this install file that needs to be passed around. It does make you think about exe files and out of date versions of software, but Adobe hit that head on in the first version of this software by including two built-in features of all AIR applications. First, all AIR applications can either bundle the AIR runtime with them or will prompt you to install it when you try to install the application. Second, they are including auto-update features for applications to check and make sure they are the latest version. This will help your users stay up to date. Most of the software running on my Apple MacBook has auto-update built right in and so that should be an easy concept for users.

So this time I am really cheering for Adobe and think they may have a winner here. They have been trying this game for some time now (see:Macromedia Central) and this time, the price (FREE-99) is right.

This says it all…

From thehill.com…

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), a former Black Panther who now represents one of the most liberal districts in the nation, decided yesterday to support the Iraq war supplemental spending bill because he was promised help with an issue “unrelated” to the bill.

“Let bygones be bygones,” Rush said. He kept mum about what assurances he received from House leaders but reaffirmed he would vote for the bill when it comes to the House floor today.

Introducing SelectTree – the drop-down tree control!

The SelectTree control provides the perfect combination of tree-based data selection with drop-down combo-box space consumption. This component was created to fit a large tree into a very small space.

The House: First Strike (Nets 0 point)

Well our newly polluted populated House of Representatives has struck hard in the first 100 hours in their campaign to clean up the government.

They tossed their first boomerang by passing a bill to lift the ban on Federal Funding of Embryonic Stem Cell Research. So it is apparently OK to end a viable life to attempt to save the lives of many others. That is of course unless you are saving the lives of millions of Iraqis by killing a brutal dictator. They sure weren’t happy about that one…
Family Values -1

The House also passed an increase of minimum wages to $7.25 / hour and the Pay As You Go bill that requires congress to raise taxes in order to spend more money or raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Ohh well they can also cut spending in order to cut taxes or spend money, but let’s not kid ourselves. Looks like $9-11 per lunch will just have to be a thing of the past so Vinny Boporino working the drive-through can get the new iPhone complete with custom K-Fed ringtone!
Economy / Taxes -1

Finally, just because I am feeling giving today, I am going to give 2 plus points for passing the remaining 9/11 Commission Recommendations and the Ethics in Congress bill. Anything that promotes security and reduces corruption in government is worth a quick point or two so I can go to bed now. So here they are…

National Security +1
Government Ethics and Reform +1

Democrat Score Card: Day 1

As a reminder, my score card tracking the results of the Democrat’s pledge to clean-up this country starts today. The current official (and dynamic) list of topics is below. They are sorted in the priority I would like them to be addressed, but unfortunately it appears the Dems are going to attack Government Ethics and Reform first (currently last on my list). Also in the news today is that hot on their “To Do” list are adopting the remaining recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, raising the minimum wage, promoting stem cell research and renewable fuels and reducing the costs of Medicare prescription prices and student loan costs.

So with that, the bell rings in round 1 and here is the official score card.

1. Family Values = 0
2. National Security = 0
3. Economy / Taxes =
4. Iraq =
5. Border Security = 0
6. Government Ethics and Reform = 0

Review: Spam-a-lot

Quick Verdict: Hilarious and Inventive

While I would never call myself a huge Monte Python fan, I found myself laughing more at the clever way the show adapted the scenes from the movie. I also think I laughed more at the parts that were original to the musical and not in the movie. There were a few die-hard fans that laughed when they knew a particular scene was about to get played out and sometimes (annoyingly) they would even fill in the dialog. On top of the creative adaptation, the set design was amazing and inventive. I was extremely impress by the dramatic lighting (and lighting devices), the way they interlaced video projection into the set and the overall set architecture and costumes were also well done.

Truly a great laugh and worth the money!!!

cfprocparam Gotcha in CF 7.0.2 Hot Fix 1

We just moved CF 7.0.2 Hot Fix 1 into our dev environment today and quickly found a problem…

It seems that a developer who no longer works with us liked to use named parameters like this:
cfprocparam cfsqltype=”cf_sql_integer” type=”in” dbvarname=”intLinkLocation_ID” value=”#Form.linkLocation#”

The only problem was that the MS SQL 2000 server used @intLinkLocation_ID for the parameter. CF seemed to forget this fact since the items were in the correct sequence. After the hot fix it throws a cryptic error on the stored procedure.

Error Executing Database Query.
[Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver][SQLServer]Line 1: Incorrect syntax near ‘=’.

The fix is easy, just add the @. Unfortunately, we found over 1000 instances where the @ is missing. Even if we add them all we now have the fun of testing all the apps to make sure we get the names right.

So watch out!!!

Component Hierarchy Tree Control Files

For all of you waiting on my CF Component Hierarchy Tree Control files, I have posted them here. Since they use CF and Flex, you will have to have your Flex project setup and pointing to CF. In addition, you will need to make the following code changes to match your environment:

1. Services.mxml – change the source attribute of the Remote Object to match your environment

2. Subject.cfc – change the alias of the component tag to match your environment

3. Subject.as – change the RemoteClass alias to match your envionment

4. SubjectHandler.cfm – change all instances of root_personal.shouse04.flexplayground.model.Subject to point to your Subject.cfc location

Sorry for the delay on posting these, but I really want to clean them up a little and I just got my Flex Builder license in late last week. So the good news is that I am back in business!!!

Component Hierarchy Files

Democrats In Power

Boy it is quiet in the media. I suppose that alone is worth the Democrats winning everywhere. No disenfranchising. No voter intimidation. No hanging chads. No corrupt Florida judges. Its so great that they were able to clean all that up so quickly (insert sarcasm here)!!!! That’s not to say that all of this didn’t happen, just that it will not make the nightly local or national news. Figure that one out.

So I am kind of glad that the Dems will get the chance to take care of all of the problems that they claim they can fix. I for one am going to hold them accountable. At least in my little place in the world on this blog. From now on when anything goes wrong in this country its the Dems fault. If there is a terrorist strike, then the Dems masterminded it. If the economy goes to poop, then we can blame them just as they blamed President Bush and the republican controlled congress for the last 6 years.

One thing I hope is that everyone who pulled the Democratic lever knows what they just purchased and didn’t do it just for “change”. I think they will find out soon enough. Nancy Pelosi has already ignored the polls where an overwhelming number of voters said that Iraq was their number one concern! She stated already that her first 100 days will be focussed on raising the minimum wage, enacting stronger ethics rules in the House, and lifting the federal ban on funding embryonic stem cell research.

Did you vote for those things or did you vote for change in the Iraq war? The real answer is both, but you will probably only get the ones you didn’t want.

Here is some more good news on the potential new Speaker.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20061102-090358-9812r.htm

So in January I will start my Democrat Score Card on the following issues:

1. Iraq
2. National Security
3. Border Security
4. Taxes
5. Family Values
6. Economy
7. Ethics
…and anything else I come up with or you add to the comments!

Hold on to your seats, it should be a bumpy ride!