Christophe Herreman

Yesterday we had a very cool user group meeting where Mike Chambers and Mike Downey talked about Apollo and Flash CS3. I won’t go into much detail because Koen De Weggheleire already did. You can read his extended review about Mike Chambers on Apollo and Mike Downey on Flash CS3.

Since we are creating a lot of cross-platform (e-learning) applications, I was especially interested in Apollo. All the features we were shown looked awesome. The fact that you can render HTML inside a SWF and then actually have access to the HTML’s DOM is a killer feature (Flash SCORM player anyone?). Also, the ease of distributing Apollo apps and being able to create OS specific installers is very nice.

The only thing that is still missing in my opinion is database support. Although Apollo apps are Internet enabled, it would still be great (even necessary) if you could work offline and have an offline database. To accomplish this in our current apps, we need to create a Zinc version with an MS Access database and a Director version with a V12 database. This is too much work and leads to too much errors. If Apollo would solve this problem, I would be a very happy man. Besides my own happiness, I feel like it is a necessary feature in order for Apollo to be taken serious, especially by desktop developers.

I just checked Amazon for the available books on AS3 and Flex 2 and thought I’d post a quick overview. So here it is.

Available

• ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook
• Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source
• Advanced ActionScript 3.0 with Design Patterns

Pre-order

• ActionScript 3.0 Pocket Reference: The Quick-Answer Guide for ActionScript Users
• Foundation ActionScript 3.0 Animation – Making things move
• Programming Flex 2: The Comprehensive Guide to Creating Rich Media Applications with Adobe Flex
• Professional Flex 2
• The Complete Guide to Flex 2 with ActionScript 3.0
• Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex and Java: Secrets of the Masters
• Learning ActionScript 3.0 Design: The Non-Programmer’s Guide to ActionScript 3
• Flex 2.0 User Interface Design & Development: Creating User-Friendly Rich Internet Applications
  

Video lessons

• Flex 2 Essential Training (lynda.com, CD-ROM)
  
• Flex 2 Beyond the Basics (lynda.com, CD-ROM)
  
• ActionScript 3.0 Essential Training (lynda.com, CD-ROM)

Belgian readers, check Proxis.be

• The Complete Guide to Flex 2 with ActionScript 3.0
• Adobe Flex 2: Training From The Source
• ActionScript 3.0, Handboek
• Flash 8 Certified Developer Study Guide

Feel free to add any books to the comments.

Have fun reading!

A quick post to let you know that the Flash Remoting presentation files from last thursday at the MMUG Belgium are online. I covered Flash Remoting with AMFPHP and shared some project experiences, tips and tricks and showed a bunch of examples.

You can get the files here. The zip file includes the presentation slides, all the examples, the database dumps and the AMFPHP classes.

Many thanks to MMUG Belgium (Serge and Peter) and MultimediaCollege for the venue.

Macromedia has released an updated version of the Flash Remoting components.

September 20, 2005
This version of the Flash Remoting components supports Flash Professional 8 and Flash Basic 8. It is currently available in English; French, German, and Japanese versions will be available shortly. The English version can also be installed with other language versions of Flash.

The installer available includes:

• Flash Remoting Component
• Support files for Flash 8
• NetConnection Debugger
• HTML content that can be viewed within the Help panel in Flash
• ActionScript 2.0 API class source code

Download page: here
Release notes: here

Direct Windows installer link: here

Through RocketBoots

Just in case you missed the news, ServiceCapture is a great tool for debugging Flash Remoting applications.

What is it?

ServiceCapture runs on your pc and captures all HTTP traffic sent from your browser or IDE. It is designed to help Rich Internet Application(RIA) developers in the debugging, analysis, and testing of their applications.

ServiceCapture is the only tool of its kind to deserialize and display all Flash Remoting or AMF traffic in a simple-to-use interface.

ServiceCapture also has a unique bandwidth simulation feature. This allows engineers to throttle their bandwidth to simulate dial-up, dsl, and cable connection speeds, even when your entire application is being served locally.

I’ve been using it over the last week and really enjoy it. I personally replaced it with Charles HTTP debugger. It does not have that many features (yet?) as Charles, but the Remoting support is what I needed the most so…enjoy!