Blogs

Earlier this year I was interviewed for an article on RIAs in ComputerWorld (sorry you need an account to log in).

Here’s an excerpt:

Developer: Nitobi Software Inc., Vancouver
Project: Nitobi Complete UI is a set of nine user interface components for rich Internet applications. They’re
designed to help RIA developers save time by plugging in whichever Nitobi modules they need rather than
recreating the functions themselves. They include, for example, a spreadsheet module called Grid, a Calendar
module, and ComboBox, for completing data-entry fields by searching a database as the user types.
How it works: All the Nitobi Complete UI components are written in HTML and JavaScript. Nitobi has offered the
components since 2004, but more recently has used Adobe AIR to give them the ability to work offline as well as
online. That means users can transfer data between their desktops and the Web more seamlessly, says Andre
Charland, Nitobi’s chief executive, and they can take data such as contact lists with them even when not connected
to the Internet.
Best practices: If you take the time to understand what AIR can do, says Charland, “it’s amazing to me how close
we can get to traditional desktop software.” The key is understanding and fully exploiting its capabilities.
For instance, he says, AIR can provide native access to Flash on the desktop, and it’s possible to call Adobe’s
ActionScript directly from JavaScript.
Because AIR is still in beta, he notes, it remains a “moving target” for developers. Nitobi tries to deal with that by
being very open with its customers about ways in which things could change.

Obviously things I said didn’t come through in the translations and AIR is 1.0 now it’s more stable. Other than that it’s a nice plug.

The first leg of the European OnAIR Tour has just wrapped up in London. It’s been a great time. I’m just putting together all my thoughts on the tour but I’d post this video of my talk in Spain.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

You can also all the presentations from Madrid on Veoh there. More notes soon.

CompleteUI Q2 Beta Released!

The big things about this Beta release are:

Safari 3 Support - all the components support Safari 3 now.

TreeGrid - a hierarchical grid component.

Themes - a bunch of new themes (XP, Vista, Tiger, Flex)

Dreamweaver Extensions - new multi-component extensions making common use-cases like master-detail grids even more easy.

Go download it now.

As Dave mentioned TreeGrid and Safari Support are almost complete for CompleteUI Q2 2008 release. But I also want to highlight the fact that we’re going have some pretty kick ass new themes include in this release, since did a whole bunch of work to make theming easier.

Check out the hot Tiger Style Grid:

And the Vista Style Fisheye:

And the Flex Style Combo:

You can check all the sneak peak styles here.

I’ll be giving a quick overview of developing with AIR Jan 30th at WDN 08. Should be a blast.

Web Directions North - Crash Course in AIR
There comes a time when web developers need to reach beyond the browser to allow users to go offline, use local files or get rid of the hideous browser chrome. The Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is an up an coming runtime technology that allows desktop applications to be developed with HTML, JavaScript, Flash or Flex. The AIR runtime and SDK are completely free so anyone can get started immediately.

Andre Charland will will give an overview or AIR, the APIs you get access to and how to build a simple Flex and HTML application with it. From there we will explore some of the tools available to make AIR development easier and faster. We’ll finish up with a few important usability guidelines and real world case studies of AIR projects.

Oh ya there’s a ski trip included in the conference so it’s probably worth dropping everything else in life to attend:)

Dietrich Kappe has posted a greatGWT Conference: Voices That Matter Summary over on Ajaxian. He has links to all his posts and notes he took at the conference which are a great GWT resource. His three main points are:

# GWT is a compiler. Let me amplify: it is a compiler, not just a Java to JavaScript converter. It inlines methods, removes dead code, optimizes loops, all those things that a compiler can and should do. And if you play by the GWT rules, you will not leak memory. Want a faster, smaller app? Wait 3 months and recompile with the newest version. Eventually, the compiler will produce better, more efficient JavaScript than you can produce by hand.
# The security concerns for GWT are the same as for all sophisticated Ajax applications: the more state and control logic you put in the client, the more you open yourself up to really nasty attacks. In a sense, the fact that GWT makes writing sophisticated client side code so easy and obscures which Java code is in the client and which in the server, it can increase the potential for making these mistakes.
# The surprise? The conference was not attended by that many GWT newbies or web developers looking to bring their Struts apps into the Ajax light. A show of hands brought home the fact that the audience consisted of mostly folks with Swing/AWT/SWT experience (though they also worked with webapps).

Emphasis is mine, because I find this quite interesting. I wonder if the Google brand has anything to do with these developers adopting GWT as they make there first steps on the web. Thoughts?

Come chat about Ajax and drink beer. I’ll be there. Please RSVP at Upcoming.org:

Tuesday, December 11, 2007 7:00 PM