June 30th, 2008
Author: Michael Krotscheck
Category: Articles
Tags: flash, flex, javascript, ria, rna
I had an excellent discussion with my coworker Susan today about refining certain internal processes, and one of the tangents of the conversation went off on what the actual definition of a Rich Internet Application actually was. As we know, anything from a banner ad to a product configurator can be considered an RIA, and the only common element seemed to be that an RIA retains its functionality within the context of what the user is interacting with. In other words, if you click on button in an RIA, the resulting action does not significantly change the page or window the user is interacting with; Clicking to go to a new page loses context, using an animated accordion to display different content does not.
The similarities, though, end there. Implementation varies, technology varies, scope and location and functionality varies, and all in all it ends up being a pretty difficult convoluted mess to describe. At best you can group them via complexity, and after a brief exercise of that nature we realized that a new breed of networked application was emerging. Well, alright, perhaps not emerging, but instead gaining momentum and acceptance in the mainstream. Here’s the scale, see if you agree with our reasoning.
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June 22nd, 2008
Author: Michael Krotscheck
Category: Tutorials
Tags: auto launch, cruise control, osx, startup
I spent a good amount of time today trying to figure out how to turn my “old” iMac into a development environment, which included installing Cruise Control. Since I didn’t want to run the launch script manually, I tried (and failed) to find someone who’s successfully gotten cruise to autostart on boot. A bit of investigation later and I came up with a solution, drawn from an excellent blog post on adding your own osx boot launch scripts, an archive script on launching cruise on unix init, and the tacit information in the MySQLCOM Bootstrapper contained in the OSX Binary Distribution.
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June 13th, 2008
Author: Michael Krotscheck
Category: News
Tags: flex, ruby
I’ve been invited to speak at the Columbus Ruby Brigade on AIR and Ruby integration. Given the expert nature of my audience I’m not going to dwell too much on Ruby and Rails, but will focus instead on how to integrate Flex & Air into a Ruby based service layer. This will be a highly technical presentation- I will be covering the following topics:
- The internet ecosystem: Ruby, Rails, AIR, Flex, and where do they all fit
- Cost: What is it going to take?
- Installing and using RubyAMF
- Overview of MXML, Actionscript, Eclipse and the SDK
- Consuming data services with Flex & Air
- Building a simple call/response architecture
The presentation was on Monday, June 16th. The files are below:
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June 6th, 2008
Author: Michael Krotscheck
Category: Articles
Tags: design, development
An interview question I have been frequently asked in the past is: “On the spectrum of Designer < - > Developer, where would you put yourself?”
I’ve always been bothered by that question, because not only do I have a strong background in the Fine Arts, but I have 8 years of solid experience as a developer. The reason I don’t like it is that those of us who operate on the web apply both our creative and logical skills on a daily basis, and in many cases it is our creative streaks that make us so good at what we do. Problem solving skills and creative expression are absolutely inseparable: We learned this from Einstein, and Galileo, and Leonardo Da Vinci, and Thales, and Newton, and a host of other individuals who nowadays would be called the greatest minds of their time.
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May 26th, 2008
Author: Michael Krotscheck
Category: Articles, Inspiration, News
Tags: actionscript, air, code, flash, installer, pandora, practical desktop
I’ve finally gotten around to fully open source my various applications, factoring and debugging the code, commenting and applying all the necessary licenses and other miscellaneous logistical duties to get my two AIR applications up and out there.
Practical Desktop
Practical Desktop appears to be a simple timekeeping application, though in reality it’s an open source widget framework that allows pretty much anyone to build a deployable block of functionality that can start interacting with other widgets. The wrapper’s there for you, go nuts. The source is here
From a personal perspective, I use it as a beta and explorative sandbox, because there are a lot of interesting things coming out in the near future that I’d like to offer some guidance on development best practice, and to do so I will have to figure it out myself first. Rest assured that the widgets I build will be functionally complete, though perhaps limited in feature support.
Pandora
The Pandora Desktop application is really just a customized webkit browser that’s hardwired to the Pandora mini player. I’ve fixed the application so minimization works in Windows, and expanded it to include the player’s html wrapper as well. The reason I did this is because Pandora’s a free service, and I’d like to make sure that I’m not ripping them off by stripping out the ads. Optimally I’d like to help them convert their existing player to AIR, but until I have free time (or they pay me 
) that won’t happen.
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