Category: Flex

  • Speech Recognition ANE – Source

    As a follow on for the Speech Recognition ANE I put up for download a while back, here is the a post to give out the source files.

    The source can be downloaded from my BitBucket repository.

    If you are looking for the compiled ANE instead, click here

    The contents of the zip archive are,

    • Android Native Project
    • Actionscript Library Project
    • Files required for compilation

    (more…)

  • New ActionScript Native Extension – Speech Recognition

    Here is a Speech Native Extension that takes advantage of the Android’s speech recognition APIs.

    Here is what the ANE does,

    • Provide an API to check if the feature is supported.
    • Provide an API to launch the default speech recognition UI and capture voice input.
    • Trigger events based on the success or failure of the above call.
    • In case of success, the appropriate event has information of the best match !
    • In case of failure, the appropriate event is fired.

    (more…)

  • Native Extensions – Flash Builder Webinar

    I did a webinar last Wednesday on using Native Extensions with Flash Builder. The agenda covered an introduction to Native Extensions – Rather Actionscript Native Extensions, the workflow involved in using native extensions, followed by a live demo.

    For those of you who haven’t had the chance to attend,

    Here is the link to the Recording,
    View Recording

    Here are the Slides,
    (more…)

  • P2P Apps for Mobile Devices

    This post is a follow up to my session at Adobe Flash Platform Summit 2011, Bangalore on the 28th of July. I spoke on Peer to Peer for Mobile Devices with the Flash Platform. Peer to Peer has been around for a long time now, but its not often you see apps making use of this immensely capable technology. My talk covered the possibilities that could come to life with P2P on Mobile, along with some demo’s. Here is the Slide Deck,

    As part of my demo at AFPS, I wrote the RealTime Locator, a simple app that shares its location with every peer in a group over the RTMFP protocol. (more…)

  • Toast on AIR for Android

    Here’s a component which behaves as a ‘Toast’ for AIR applications running on Android. The component can essentially be used across any Flex application, since it is an ActionScript class.

    For those of you who don’t know, Toast is the small transparent alert that pop’s up (and doesn’t block your UI) when u set an alarm on Android phones !

    Toast on AIR for Android

    In the pic above, the text ‘Enter Required Fields’ appears in a ‘Toast’

    (more…)

  • Mime types for a Flex Server

    Here are a couple of mime-types for a server housing flex apps,
    Most of these maybe already defined by your hosting provider !

    AIR
    Mime-Type : application/vnd.adobe.air-application-installer-package+zip
    Extension : .air

    FXP
    Mime-Type : application/x-zip
    Extension : .fxp
    (more…)

  • Hello World for a Flex Starter

    Here is a Flex Tutorial I’m writing for a couple of my friends. While the Videos on ‘Learn Flex in a week’ and “Test drive Flex in 1 hour” serve as good tutorials, here is an application I have attempted to build, which serves as an example for a developer trying out flex for the first time.

    Get yourself a Flash Builder to start off. A 60-day trial is available here

    The application demonstrates essential implementations like connecting to a WebService, SQLite Database and UI practices, a developer needs to be aware of prior to building a Flex application. This is brought about with 4 components, demonstrating the implementations below,

    1) Displaying Hello World.
    2) Displaying Hello World with a better UI (PopUp) from a XML file.
    3) Displaying Hello World from a Webservice (REST).
    4) Displaying Hello World from a Webservice that pushes data into a SQLite Database.

    (more…)

  • Installing the AIR SDK on Flash Builder

    Here is a set of steps you need to follow to configure a new SDK on Flash Builder 4.

    Download the AIR SDK
    1) The latest SDK can be downloaded from here : http://www.adobe.com/products/air/sdk/
    2) Navigate to /Flash_Builder_Installed_Folder/sdks
    3) Find the folder named ‘4.0.0’ (Our Flex 4 SDK) and make a copy of it in the same location, and name it, ‘4.0.0 AIR’
    4) Extract the contents of the downloaded archive, and paste it inside the ‘4.0.0 AIR’ directory.

    Configuring the new AIR SDK
    1) Right Click on the Project Name in Flash Builder, and select Properties
    2) Select ‘Flex Compiler’
    3) Select ‘Configure Flex SDKs’
    4) In the popup window that opens, Select ‘ADD’ and point to the new SDK you just created, namely ‘4.0.0 AIR’.
    5) Click ‘Ok’
    6) Select ‘Use Specific SDK’, and point to your new SDK.
    7) Click ‘Ok’

    The application should now get complied with the new SDK.

  • Flex – Validate Email Address against the Mail Server

    Here is a small piece of code I wrote to demonstrate Interacting with a Command, through an Event while using a Cairngorm Framework.

    The application connects to a WSDL webservice via Flash Builder 4 Data/Services to validate an Email address against the Email Server. Doesn’t work well with domains with a ‘Catch-All’ email address though !
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  • Flex Cairngorm – Interacting with a Command, through an Event

    Cairngorm is a lightweight micro-architecture framework for Rich Internet Applications built in Flex or AIR, defining best-practices for a RIA. Read More

    When a Cairngorm command requires parameters to call the required delegate, a common (bad) practice is to fetch parameters from View Components / Calculate or Query from inside the Cairngorm Command, and end up writing complicated / un-understandable code inside Command files, when a Cairngorm event is being dispatched from > 1 AS files.

    But isn’t all this going against the very purpose of using the Cairngorm architecture?
    Why not have parameters passed to a Cairngorm Event every time its dispatched, and stay away from mixing C with M and V in a MVC Framework?

    This post explains how you pass parameters to a Cairngorm command at runtime, via a Cairngorm Event.
    (more…)