OK so at the end of last year I spent some time developing an application for the BlackBerry PlayBook. I was doing this for two reasons, one was to hopefully receive a FREE PlayBook once they get released as part of their offer, the other because at the time the main application platform they were using for the PlayBook was Adobe AIR. Now I haven’t really dabbled much with AIR for any mobile devices so this was a first for me, and it is really exciting developing applications for a new platform and also for devices with more capabilities than a regular desktop computer, such as gesture / swipe events and other goodies that mobile devices have. Firstly I needed an application to build and so I decided to update my LPlayer application to work with the PlayBook. So I started by downloading the SDK from BlackBerry and the simulator to test the application I was building. All was good to start off with as I was using Flash Builder Burritto and the SDK seems to work so flawlessly with this version of Flash Builder and there are plenty of how to’s and guides on the BlackBerry developer site to get you started. To start off with I decided to just port the application over, but then soon realised that the application needed a little more to make it fit in better with the PlayBook screen size and touch screen dynamics, so a rebuild was in order. This was a great idea as it gave me more of a chance to delve deeper into the PlayBook SDK and also discover how buggy the simulator is. But considering that the SDK and the simulator are both beta versions and still in development, they work pretty damn well and the whole process of developing for the PlayBook was utter joy, so much in fact, that I have another app in development. That said, however the application submission process hasn’t been as fun. My application was submitted on the 12th December 2010, which I soon realised had a bug, which I fixed and submitted an update soon after. The date now, as you can see is 20th Jan 2011, over 38 days later than my original submission, with no apparent change in the status of the application, which, for me who just wants to know if it is approved or not, is a pretty damn long wait!
Anyway if you are a developer with a little bit of time to spare and the motivation to get an application built, and I think a free PlayBook is definitely motivation enough for most people, then dig in and get started as it looks like a great device to develop for, lets just hope the application approval process speeds up!
Developing for the BlackBerry PlayBook
2010 – Flash’s most eventful year – or will that be 2011?
This post has been prompted by the lack of attention I have been giving this blog over the last 3-4 months due to heavy workloads spilling over into my free time. The end of 2010 gives me a chance to review the previous year, for myself and what I wish to achieve for 2011, but also for the flash platform and what a crazy year it has been for it and the developers and community that are so embroiled within it.
2010 started off very promising, being a flash developer was good, not that it isn’t now of course, but the beginning of 2010 allowed us to kind of be blind to new technologies and carry on with flash as we have always done. But then came the announcement from Apple with their flashless iPad which ran on the magic juice of HTML5! This really shook things up, and to be honest I really think it has been for the good.
Flash was being used, some times needlessly, for a lot of web applications that could quite easily run with jQuery or any other javascript library. Don’t get me wrong, flash is a fantastic platform and one which I love dearly and enjoy working with most, but as developers we have to really think about what is the best solution for the client and also for the end user. If the client wishes for the application to be viewed on ALL devices then flash is not the solution to use, thankfully due to Adobe’s best efforts and and also as a selling point for other devices who compete with the iPhone or iPad, flash is available on a hugely wide range of devices and that will only continue to grow. But as they say, you cannot ‘put all your eggs in one basket’ and so developing solely with AS3 will in the end limiting what you can do. My role has changed a lot over the last year as has my view on how I develop and the tools I use.
At the beginning of this year I would of called myself solely an AS3 developer, and even though the majority of my projects do target the flash platform, I have found myself not only getting involved in creating dynamic php / javascript sites but also opting to use technologies other than flash / AS3 to build applications. I have become amazed at the amount of resource that is available within the php & javascript communities as there is in the flash community.I have been playing around with the HTML5 canvas tag and have to say that I am pretty amazed at what can be achieved, and thankfully with the release of okapi.js from Brandon Hall & Easel.js from Grant Skinner, developing for javascript and targeting HTML5 has become even more familiar for us flash devs.
So leading on from this, you will start to find more interactive development topics within this blog, as I intend to write about not only my experiences with HTML5 & Javascript but also using libraries such as jQuery and the great php framework codeigniter.
But of course that doesn’t mean I will be turning my back on flash or AS3 on this site – oh no! Flash has a great future ahead especially with the awesome molehill API that is due to be released this year and the great 3D frameworks that are being built on top of it, and I intend to continue writing about my learnings and experiences with this platform, starting with my experience of developing for the Blackberry Playbook!
Introduction to webORB Java – Flex project set up tutorial
Here is a quick screen cast I did recently of a run through of the set up for a great Integration server for a Java back end called webORB. WebORB comes in many flavours including PHP, Ruby and .NET so pretty much covers any server configuration and the feature set is easily comparable with Adobe’s Lifecycle DS and to top it all off it is an absolute synch to set up and pretty much works straight out of the box with no need for configuration and the best feature is for single server use – its FREE!
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