Chris Charlton's blog

"Now AIR applications can drive the Creative Suite!"

Adobe has provided AIR developers with the power to control, interface, and expand Adobe's Creative Suite(s). Here's the info...

With the Adobe technology code named SwitchBoard, AIR applications can communicate with applications in the Adobe Creative Suite®. Adobe AIR developers can create applications that participate as first class citizens in creative workflows. Each SwitchBoard solution consists of an AIR application written for SwitchBoard, JavaScripts, and the SwitchBoard service that delivers the scripts to the Creative Suite applications. AIR developers only need to include a Flex library called SwitchBoard.swc in their projects in order to send and receive scripts to and from Creative Suite applications.

SwitchBoard brings together the power of the automation in the Creative Suite applications with the potential for third parties to extend the creative process with new applications produced using AIR. The result is an extensible, powerful, cross-platform environment that can quickly adapt to today's rapidly changing creative workflows.

More info available at http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/SwitchBoard.

The AIR runtime now supports multiple languages (Brazilian, Portuguese, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish), as well as support for building internationalized applications (including keyboard input for double-byte languages). Get AIR 1.1 over at http://get.adobe.com/air/.

Adobe Labs recently saw a release of Adobe AIR Update Framework. This beta release of the update framework provides APIs to help developers offer good update capabilities in their AIR applications.

Flex Camp in Irvine, California. Info and registration available at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/112677020 .

Adobe announced the establishment of Open Screen Project, which is dedicated at driving rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics.

Google's API updates now allows Flash/Flex developers to use a new simple RESTful interface (API). Meaning, no funky JavaScript or anything else needed to call and receive data from their APIs. They support the GET method and the response format is a JSON encoded result set with embedded status codes.

Read more at http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/google-search-rest-api.html .

Adobe released Adobe AIR for Linux available for download at http://www.adobe.com/go/airlinux .

Also an update to the alpha version of Adobe Flex(r) Builder(tm) 3 for Linux software is also available on Adobe Labs at http://www.adobe.com/go/flexbuilder_linux .

This whole week Adobe has been hosting 3-4 daily online Connect sessions covering Flex, Flash, AIR, BlazeDS, Coldfusion, Spry, and a few other topics we'd all be interested in at least reviewing. Don't worry if you think you missed out because the Adobe AIR online seminars have been recorded.

I'm presenting on the last day (Friday). I'm doing the AIR Native Drag & Drop seminar at 1pm (PST), which was recorded here, and here's the source code

Flex 4 (codenamed "Gumbo") has started development. There is a small public display of Adobe's Flex 4 release (tentative) dates - Beta 1 is slated for late 2008 and 4.0 Final will be sometime in 2009.

Read more at http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+4

Download builds of Flex 4

Adobe just released Photoshop Express - a free online photo hosting service and editor. It looks really promising; this app really impressed me. It has tons of little features but all presented very well and simple, in my opinion. The application was done in Flex and offers these features that anyone can use for free.

- Photo hosting (2GB)
- Load/Browse photos from Facebook, PhotoBucket, and Picasa (Google)
- Edit photos
- Preview edits in live mode and with scenario example previews
- Make 2D/3D slideshows (that rock!) and even share them (perfect for portfolios and photographers)
- Full-screen mode (awesome!)
- Share photos/galleries
- Rate photos

UPDATE!: XTND.US is getting ready to release a has released their Drupal 6 Theme Starter application running on the AIR runtime. It's freeware and the latest alpha beta is stable, running on Mac OS X and Windows desktops. This is neat software for for anyone who makes Drupal 6 themes; this application generates the .info file for your custom themes or sub-themes.

"Why not make a Drupal theme .info file in seconds - not minutes!?" There's a sample video showing how to the application is used and you can download the application over at http://xtnd.us .