James Ward - RIA Cowboy » Mobile http://www.jamesward.com Rich Internet Applications | Flex | Adobe AIR | Java | Open Source | Linux | Enterprise Software | Cloud Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:16:19 +0000 en hourly 1 Flex Performance on Mobile Devices http://www.jamesward.com/2010/02/21/flex-performance-on-mobile-devices/ http://www.jamesward.com/2010/02/21/flex-performance-on-mobile-devices/#comments Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:46:24 +0000 James Ward http://www.jamesward.com/?p=1574 This past weekend I spent an hour optimizing the Flex 4 scrolling demo that I posted last week. The original demo was intended to show how to hook up touch events to the Flex 4 List / DataGroup controls. This new version adds some optimizations for the touch event handling and adds the kinetic flick behavior. Check it out and let me know what you think:

I’ve posted the code for this second version of the touch scrolling demo. It was pretty trivial to optimize it this far. With a little more work it’ll be as smooth as silk and as fast as Apolo Ohno. :)

Over the past few days I’ve received some questions about the performance of Flex apps on mobile devices. My Census RIA Benchmark has been a great way to compare the performance of various data loading techniques and technologies. Now that I have my Android based Nexus One mobile device with an early build of Flash Player 10.1 I wanted to see how fast I could load and render large amounts of data in a Flex application. I’m really impressed with the results! 20,000 rows of data loaded from the server and rendered on my phone in about 2 seconds! Those 20,000 rows can then be sorted on the device instantaneously. Pretty amazing performance for such a little device! Check out the video:

You can run the mobile version of the Flex AMF Census Test and check out the source code. Let me know what you think.

]]> http://www.jamesward.com/2010/02/21/flex-performance-on-mobile-devices/feed/ 17 Flex 4 List Scrolling on Android with Flash Player 10.1 http://www.jamesward.com/2010/02/19/flex-4-list-scrolling-on-android-with-flash-player-10-1/ http://www.jamesward.com/2010/02/19/flex-4-list-scrolling-on-android-with-flash-player-10-1/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:53:56 +0000 James Ward http://www.jamesward.com/?p=1563 UPDATE 1: The first version of this demo was intended to show how to hook up touch events to the Flex 4 List / DataGroup controls. I’ve posted a new version that adds some optimizations for the touch event handling and adds the kinetic flick behavior.

One of the challenges of running existing web content on mobile devices is that user interactions differ between mediums. For instance, on a normal computer with a mouse, scrolling though lists is often done by clicking on scroll bars or mouse wheels. On mobile devices that lack a pointing device this is not the best interaction paradigm. On devices with touch screens the paradigm for scrolling is usually a swipe gesture.

In Flash Player 10.1 there are APIs for gestures and multitouch events. I thought it would be fun to hook up the list scrolling on a Flex 4 List to the TouchEvent on my Nexus One. Check out the video:

If you want to see how I created this simple demo, check out the source code. Let me know if you have any questions.

]]> http://www.jamesward.com/2010/02/19/flex-4-list-scrolling-on-android-with-flash-player-10-1/feed/ 22 Flex Apps on Mobile Devices http://www.jamesward.com/2010/02/17/flex-apps-on-mobile-devices/ http://www.jamesward.com/2010/02/17/flex-apps-on-mobile-devices/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:57:19 +0000 James Ward http://www.jamesward.com/?p=1556 This week at Mobile World Congress Adobe has been showing off Flash Player 10.1 on a variety of mobile devices. Last week I received Google’s Nexus One device with an early version of Flash Player 10.1 on it. Here is a video I shot today showing how Flex applications can run on mobile devices with Flash Player 10.1 and how existing applications can be tweaked for the size constraints of these devices. Let me know what you think.

BTW: The app I created for the demo is available at bit.ly/tdfmdb.

]]> http://www.jamesward.com/2010/02/17/flex-apps-on-mobile-devices/feed/ 0 Rich-Client Misconceptions & Adobe’s Open Screen Project http://www.jamesward.com/2008/05/08/rich-client-misconceptions-adobes-open-screen-project/ http://www.jamesward.com/2008/05/08/rich-client-misconceptions-adobes-open-screen-project/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 14:10:49 +0000 James Ward http://www.jamesward.org/wordpress/?p=276 Artima recently posted two interviews with me which relate to Flex. First is an interview about Adobe’s Open Screen Project. The second is called Rich-Client Misconceptions. Also Bruce Eckel recently posted a very interesting article on Artima called “Concurrency with Python, Twisted, and Flex“. Let me know what you think about those.

]]> http://www.jamesward.com/2008/05/08/rich-client-misconceptions-adobes-open-screen-project/feed/ 1 The Open Web: Now Sexier and Smaller http://www.jamesward.com/2008/04/30/the-open-web-now-sexier-and-smaller/ http://www.jamesward.com/2008/04/30/the-open-web-now-sexier-and-smaller/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 04:05:35 +0000 James Ward http://www.jamesward.org/wordpress/?p=271 In the past Open Web proponents have criticized Flash and Flex because the SWF specification – while being published and publicly available – limited what readers could do with the specification. More specifically the agreement to view the specification required that readers not build programs that would run SWF files. The intentions behind this were good – Adobe does not want Flash to have inconsistent and incompatible implementations.

Today Adobe Systems has announced that they are removing those restrictions on the SWF and FLV specifications! This is very exciting news and something I’ve been lobbying for since I started working for Macromedia (actually I think I began bugging Emmy Huang about this before I started working for Macromedia). Flash has become the standard for sexier web experiences with RIAs, video on the web, and interactive web content. Today that standard is truly open!

Adobe has also announced the Open Screen Project which aims to create an open and consistent layer on top of the countless small device platforms including consumer devices, phones, MIDs, and set top boxes. This is an extremely exciting project that will hopefully do for the world of small devices what the browser did for the PC world. You could also call this the “RIA Everywhere!” project. :)

Software keeps getting more exciting and the Open Web just got sexier and smaller!

]]> http://www.jamesward.com/2008/04/30/the-open-web-now-sexier-and-smaller/feed/ 4 Tamarin-Tracing: Mozilla’s New VM for ECMAScript 4 http://www.jamesward.com/2007/12/18/qvm-mozillas-new-mobile-vm-for-ecmascript-4/ http://www.jamesward.com/2007/12/18/qvm-mozillas-new-mobile-vm-for-ecmascript-4/#comments Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:03:25 +0000 James Ward http://www.jamesward.org/wordpress/2007/12/18/qvm-mozillas-new-mobile-vm-for-ecmascript-4/ [Update: QVM was an internal Adobe codename. The new VM's name seems to be "Tamarin-Tracing". For more info on this new VM read the announcement by Edwin Smith. Edwin doesn't explicitly state that the VM is for mobile devices but it is hinted at. However the research paper that Edwin references does state that this tracing type of VM is good for mobile devices.]

The mobile space has been heating up lately with Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, and Sun’s JavaFX Mobile. But what about all of us developing with JavaScript 2.0 / ActionScript 3.0 / ES4? While we have been able to build for Flash Lite with Flash CS3, those of us developing with Flex haven’t had an easy way to use our existing programming knowledge to build mobile applications. Part of the reason for this is that the core language of Flex (AS3 / ES4) isn’t yet supported on mobile devices. The good news is that Adobe has just contributed a new VM targeted at mobile devices, to the Mozilla Tamarin project. Tamarin is the open source core of Flash Player 9 and will at some point be the VM in Firefox that executes JavaScript 2.0. More specifically AVM2 is the VM piece of Tamarin which executes ActionScript Byte Code (ABC). ABC can be created using the soon to be open source Flex SDK’s ASC compiler which turns AS3 (or ES4) into ABC. Unfortunately AVM2 wasn’t written to work well on mobile devices. So Adobe built Tamarin-Tracing – a new VM in Tamarin which is much better suited for non-pc devices. This is very exciting stuff!

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