A good find for my AJAX search

How to make Ajax work for you

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: xmlhttprequest unobtrusivejavascript)

Alchemy ! - Adobe Rocks

I was aware that Adobe was doing some research in making use of C/C++ libraries in making SWF applications. Seems like they are done with it and its open now. No idea on how its going to benefit normal Flash/Flex application developers however Flash Platform is getting stronger day by day, no one can deny. Hope all this turns well to help make a better Internet,

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Alchemy

Alchemy (formerly referred to as FLACC) is a project from Adobe that allows users to compile C/C++ code that is targeted to run on the open source ActionScript virtual machine (AVM2). The C/C++ code is compiled to AS3 as a SWF or SWC that runs on Flash Player 10 or AIR 1.5. Alchemy is primarily intended to be used with C/C++ libraries that have few OS dependencies. The generated content is within the security constraints of the AVM2, and cannot bypass Flash Player security protections.

My Ubuntu

After a few painful downloads and hash key mismatch, finally, I have managed to see my machine running Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop and the best part it is now jus running from the CD. I wanted to take the backup before I try anything since I am very new to this - really dont want to screw up anything.

I was astonished by the setup. It jus connected to the network happily as good as a Mac and things are so clean and simple. I wish everyone should support and get this kind of useful things grow well. I am volunteering from today for Open Source in a very serious way.



Ubuntu Rocks!

Yahoo UI Library

I am currently assigned to work on some AJAX UI stuff. Its quite exciting to explore through the Yahoo UI libraries. Its really must for every UI developer to see through their patterns and their implementations of the UI interface through AJAX framework. They also have an awesome documentation, with detailed examples, that enables any developer to use the libraries with ease.

Developer Yahoo UI Library
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

Yahoo UI Design Patterns
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns

You can expect a lot of AJAX from now onwards! Any suggested readings and materials would welcome.

HAPPY YAHOO!!

HD Photo

Another image format, that too from Microsoft. Nowadays, i'm little scared to see anything from Microsoft, as they do jus to show that they are also in the market. However, as i've read in many articles this image format HD Photo sounds to be good and have more potential to take over the JPEG formats. I still wonder why the HD tag when this format have nothing to do with High Definition.

Further technical details from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/wmphoto/default.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Photo (much reliable)

Google vs. Microsoft

Google is now head-to-head with Microsoft in the Office Apps market, as you may have guessed from the recent Google Apps announcement. What you get from Google is word processing, spreadsheet, calendar, chat, web page creation, and email.

There are two price points:
It's free. Just log on to Google and register. But prepare to be advertised at and you'll get less storage space (what Google gives you is still all you're ever likely to need if you archive your email every year or two). Google Apps Premier Edition costs $50 per user per year and you can use your own branding and domain name on email, etc. So will it actually take market share from Microsoft? I think the answer is "yes". Here are the five reasons why:

1. Google has the brand to make it possible. Free open source office components have been available for many years, via Open Office (and other products). They work very well. However, they never dented Microsoft's monopoly. They may have taken a small sliver of the market, but not yet a significant slice. The problem (I believe) was branding rather than product quality. If I was forced to decide, I'd personally go for Open Office rather than Google Apps, but most organisations wouldn't because "Who's behind Open Office?". This comes down to branding. Google has a powerful brand. It was sufficient to convince Proctor and Gamble and General Electric to set up trials.
   
2. Google Apps is not great software, but it is good enough. Actually, the word processor is really good for collaborating on documents because its versioning works well and it's easy to understand. The email is good too. But there's no PowerPoint equivalent yet and the spreadsheet is weak. But who cares? Microsoft Office is ridiculously over-featured and for 50 per cent of users (if not 80 per cent) Google Apps will be good enough.
   
3. Office software costs a small fortune over time. First, you have to upgrade regularly (or eventually) which never costs nothing. Second, sometimes staff need to be trained in the new versions (or just to be effective users) and third, possibly most importantly, there's administration. When you add it up, you quickly realise that if an organisation ditches Microsoft Office for just some of its users, it will probably save more than $50 per Office user per year. The Google offering is a no-brainer, wherever Google Apps fits the need.
   
4. Google isn't done yet. Think of this as release 1.0 of a server-based office applications suite and you get the picture. Google is going to build on this. As companies sign up, Google will have users to support and the users will bitch about the stuff that's inconvenient and it will all improve in time. Google will gradually move up the food chain to try to satisfy the more sophisticated users.
   
5. Now think Web 2.0. The Google Apps software has all its interfaces exposed so that other software can link to it. Not more than two days after Google announced Google Apps, Avaya leapt straight in, announcing that it was going to integrate its considerable suite of communications software with Google Apps - its eyes firmly focused on the SMB market. Salesforce.com will also integrate with Google Apps and probably most SaaS (Software as a Service) vendors will follow suit. So without even launching a channels program, Google is acquiring pretty powerful partners.

So what does it all mean? Well, the last point listed is the one that really threatens Microsoft. If Google Apps becomes the de facto integrated Office Suite, Microsoft Office is toast.

All about FlashInterface

I am working on a Flex application that uses SWF 8 contents only then I realized an issue there. A Flex application which is SWF9 i.e uses AVM2 and content for the application which is SWF8 i.e AVM1 !! Flash Player do not have a way to directly comunicate from AVM1 to AVM2 contents!! After some research I found that we can use either LocalConnection or ExternalInterface to communicate between contents of different AVMs.

Both LocalConnection and ExternalInterface have their own advantages and disadvantages. I somehow managed to write a custom solution using LocalConnection. Still I wanted to make this communication system be more flexible and easier to use. Thats when I found FlashInterface.

FlashInterface allows direct communication between AVMs with a common API for both AS 2.0 and AS 3.0. It also supports controlling Flash Player 7 and lower SFW’s through a Flash 8 wrapper.

Download, documentation, tutorials and examples.

Adobe, Mozilla - Tamarin

Tamarin is the code name for the AVM2 built for the Mozilla applications. Tamarin will be used as part of the Mozilla project in its future versions of SpiderMonkey, C-based JavaScript engine used in Firefox and other applications that are/will be built using the Mozilla 2 technology.

Basics of AVM2
Adobe's Flash player executes applications written in ActionScript, a programming language that (in its current version, ActionScript 3.0) is based on the ECMAScript language specification and is therefore a sibling to JavaScript. As part of Flash Player 9 Adobe introduced a new virtual machine (AVM2) for executing ActionScript applications; among other things, AVM2 features a Just In Time (JIT) compiler that can convert ActionScript bytecode (the form into which ActionScript is initially compiled) into native machine instructions for much faster execution of ActionScript 3.0 applications.

Tamarin
Tamarin is not an open source version of the Flash player; it is simply the virtual machine embedded within Flash Player 9, and does not include all the other components that make up Flash (including the bits that display graphics and play music and video). Adobe will continue to develop and distribute the Flash player on its own as a product separate from Firefox itself.

Links
Frank Hecker
Brendan