Flare vs. Axiis

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, May 28, 2009 @ 10:37 am

After a long time of searching for the right data visualization framework for Flash Platform, some time ago I've put my money on Flare which is based on a Java framework called Prefuse. I have been very happy with it and haven't looked back until a new framework of same purpose crossed my way - Axiis.

Before anything else said, Axiis is a brand new framework so I have to give it some credit if all the bells and whistles are not there. What intrigued me about it in the first place is that Axiis is heavily relying on Degrafa, a well proven declarative graphics framework that I have a lot of good experience with.

After looking at Axiis examples, here are my first impressions of how it stands against Flare.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (3)

agile ajax

Wireframes in Omnigraffle 5

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, April 2, 2009 @ 12:24 pm

Before anything else is said, I am truly convinced that any creative work should start with a sheet of paper and a pencil. By creative, I mean any work where you have to come up with something, well, new. When creating wireframes for an enterprise piece of software that idea is restricted to initial brainstorming sessions and pretty much nothing else since you have to move to a computer for the sake of efficiency. And there is so much more work to be done. And revisited. And refined. And shared. And packaged for the final deliverable. When you add Agile process to the equation (which I think is a win right there) you will revisit your wireframes a lot of times.

Just to paint an example, let's say we have about 20 wireframe screens. And let's say that in the course of creating requirements, somewhere towards the middle of the road we decide to change some element in our application header that is repeated over the 20 pages. Ouch! This can be a cumbersome task if you are not using the right software because you would need to make the same change 20 times. Now imagine you have to do it daily because refining and testing the idea is the purpose of creating wireframes in the first place. Did I mention that there might be a lot of wireframes?
Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (2)

agile ajax

Performance optimization for Flash Player

Sasha Dzeletovic, Friday, February 13, 2009 @ 7:48 am

Time and again the same scenario arises. An app is being built and it's all going fine until the very end when performance issues start to appear.

Optimizing Flash performance is certainly the most boring part of Flash Platform development but it's a cornerstone without which you, the Flex developer, can not do without.

An app is worth nothing unless you provide that effortless flow of interaction at all times.

There is not too much information on this topic as it is not the most interesting one but here are some simple guidelines that have helped me tremendously over the time, as well as a few great papers.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (0)

agile ajax

ZendAMF vs. AMFPHP

Sasha Dzeletovic, Friday, February 6, 2009 @ 8:36 pm

So far, of all the AMF frameworks I have been a proponent of AMFPHP and RailsAMF. I still don’t know RoR very well (working on it), but I’ve been using PHP for a long time and have grown to love it so AMFPHP was always my natural choice.

Now we have a new player in Flash Remoting arena - ZendAMF. Why should anybody care when AMFPHP was just fine?

A few reasons.
Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (4)

agile ajax

How much Excel can we get in Flex?

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, January 29, 2009 @ 7:28 pm

...and why would we go around doing that when there are perfectly good solutions out there for online spreadsheets? For instance Google Docs in which I still haven't found a bug or a feature I'm missing.

Spreadsheets are necessary because people use them because they know how to use them. It is a straight forward interface that can yield good in high complexity situations.

Now most people want to use them online. And luckily there are plenty to go around.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (1)

agile ajax

Flex Camp Chicago ‘09 Community Showcase Presentation Summary

Sasha Dzeletovic, Friday, January 23, 2009 @ 2:43 pm

Here is some follow up information from the Flex Camp Chicago '09 Community Showcase presentation.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (1)

agile ajax

Flare on PureMVC in Flex example

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, January 8, 2009 @ 4:13 pm

By this time, I am very happy and impressed with PureMVC. In combination with Flex Code Generator, plumbing downtime is minimal and more you work on a project, the more you see the benefits.

Out of all visualization frameworks for Flash Platform that I came in contact with, Flare is looking like the most customizable. I also like it's structure. At first I didn't, but now I love the fact that Visualizations are based on Sprites. I find that good for performance and transitions. You have to do a little extra work, but you will be happy with the result. All in all, I'm sold on it for now.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (3)

agile ajax

Using Flex Code Generator (FCG) with Flex & PureMVC

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, December 25, 2008 @ 11:43 am

Recently I've been working on a Flex prototype using the PureMVC framework. I will talk at length another time about just how much PureMVC successfully solves a lot of problems that we encounter in interface development and especially about how much this framework is important for all those complex interactions that we expect out of our RIA interfaces.

Starting out with PureMVC is not a particularly easy task. It is a good thing that there are decent documentation and examples, at least for AS3. At first when I read the documentation, it made sense only on a high level, but translating that high level understanding to code right away was out of the question. I solved this initial sticking point by looking at a couple of AS3 examples like CafeTownsend and EmployeeAdmin, where you can see how the framework works on the right size demo app, not too big and not too small.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (0)

agile ajax

Google Analytics Tracking Component for Flash Platform

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, December 11, 2008 @ 11:17 am

Although it's not too hard to set up Google Analytics tracking on Flash based web sites the traditional way by referencing JavaScript, there are still good chances for something to go wrong in the process and debugging it is notoriously hard. The good people at Google have provided the Flash Platform Developer community with a great "little" library that wraps the whole process and provides a good debugging mode.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (1)

agile ajax

Pathfinder releases version 1 of its Flash Platform microsite (codename Mica)

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, December 4, 2008 @ 1:30 pm

You can see the site here. Come often as it will be updated on a regular basis.

The goal of this site is to shed more light on what is it that we do here at Pathfinder with the Flash Platform.
We would be very grateful to hear feedback about the site from any perspective.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (0)

agile ajax

Bandwidth profiling Flex projects and more with Charles

Sasha Dzeletovic, Wednesday, November 19, 2008 @ 11:25 pm

Adobe Flash comes with a very useful feature for bandwidth profiling. It allows you to see how will your site/app act under certain network conditions.

Flex Builder unfortunately does not have that option so we have to look somewhere else for a solution for testing.

While there are many applications that simulate various network conditions, Charles stud up as the most practical for Flex developers, in my opinion.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (0)

agile ajax

Skinning Flex with Illustrator CS3

Sasha Dzeletovic, Friday, November 7, 2008 @ 10:46 am

There is many ways to skin Flex applications. To name some that I've used: Flex CSS, Programmatic AS3, Flash, Degrafa, Photoshop (JPG's, GIF's and PNG's) and Illustrator.

What usually needs to happen on a project is a combination of some or all of the above. Not having a single point of reference for skinning creates quite a bottleneck.

From different approaches, two surfaced as having the best pipeline: Illustrator CS3 and Degrafa. If we are talking speed and ease of graphic design, I would now default to Illustrator CS3. For advanced skinning and interactions Degrafa holds first place.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (2)

agile ajax

Defining RIA Interaction Patterns on time in Flex Agile Development

Sasha Dzeletovic, Friday, October 17, 2008 @ 2:19 am

Putting more attention to User Interaction Design is naturally becoming a standard practice with RIA.

With RIA technologies, classic Interaction Patterns are only building blocks, not solutions. With raised possibilities, Patterns have become more complex.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (0)

agile ajax

Flash Player on iPhone gossip

Sasha Dzeletovic, Friday, October 3, 2008 @ 7:59 am

First thing that came to my mind when I initially heard about the iPhone was the multi-touch possibilities that would start changing the way we create Flash/Flex interfaces (hopefully through SDK extension supporting multi-touch on Adobe's side triggered by iPhone release).

It looked very promising and natural to me in the beginning that this will be the route. Flash is a great part of the Internet experience and iPhone is a great mobile device for, among other things, Internet access.

Continue reading »

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (1)

agile ajax

Symphony of Ruby on Rails and Flex through RubyAMF

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, September 25, 2008 @ 12:27 pm

In a project that I am currently a part of, we inherited Ruby on Rails from our client's system and project front-end was designated to be developed in Flex. RubyAMF came naturally.

I have been working with two other AMF frameworks prior to this: AMFPHP and WebOrb. My experience with both was that they are fairly hard to set up and once you go through that minefield, everything works excellent. No need to say that I am a great advocate of AMF in general. RubyAMF brings the same good old AMF but with a stunning ease and speed of development!

My colleague working on the Ruby side, Justin Ficke, introduced me to code and architecture of Ruby on Rails and I was impressed to see with what ease, precision and speed can one develop it.

Justin and I put a little test together of this architecture and here is a screen cast of it.

All the lovely custom typed objects and speed of data transfer are there. Beauty of it, appart from obvious benefits from AMF, is that the development process couldn't have been better and faster.

• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us

Comments (2)

agile ajax