My colleague Holly Schinsky and I were invited to be part of the super early beta program before MAX, which was extremely cool. This is huge for AIR developers because we now have a fully supported means of monetizing our applications. In the early days of Apollo (AIR’s beta name) I had come up with the idea for Attest (mock exam software for Adobe’s Flex certification) while studying myself. There was nothing on the market and I had compiled heaps of data while studying, so I thought it would make for a nice side project.

Attest was originally built in Apollo, but at the time it was beta and not ready to use as a release version of a commercial app. So I ended up going with C# to build a desktop app. Of course, there were one or two voices of dissent who asked why I didn’t use AIR at the time, I would have thought it was pretty apparent. Enough rambling, the point is that now, years later Attest PRO utilizes the Shibuya licensing, and makes life a lot easier for us at PXL Designs. Holly and I are still going to support the free version of Attest going forward, but for the upgraded, beefier version you now have Attest PRO available.

For the AIR developers out there, it couldn’t be any simpler to incorporate the Shibuya framework. It is still in beta, so there’s things to tweak and work out, but overall you have creative license to build any trial version of your application that you want.

• Time-based: If you want a 10 min or 10 day trial for example
• Feature-based: Turn off any features you want during the trial period

To get the license up and running is cake, there’s really nothing to it. You’ll know from the server whether an app is licensed or trial, and be able to turn on/off features wherever you like. For example, check the license, if it’s trial, set a boolean on your model and enable/disable certain buttons, or views, etc.

Keep in mind, the number of developers for the beta program is restricted for the time being. I’m not sure how many developers they’ll take right now, but it’s definitely something to read up on. Once Shibuya is a full-fledged product, there’s going to be tons of AIR apps for sale out there. For now, you can dream about writing AIR applications that make fart noises and becoming a millionaire (ok maybe not, hopefully you’ll want to actually build something with real purpose).

Technorati Tags: adobe air, flex, licensing, shibuya, try/buy service

Sorry, I had to share my euphoria though. With this thing in the office, I’ll have a hard time getting any work done. Anyway, I’ve been working my rump off on a bunch of different things but mostly I’ve been cranking on Attest 1.5.  It’s built in Adobe AIR (see PXL blog for the full scoop). This is current being tweaked and tested, and will be available shortly. The coolest news is that it’s free for non-commerical use. If you want to get certified in Flex 3/AIR, you’ll want to download this AIR app when it’s finally released.  I’ve taken a way longer time getting it out than I had originally planned on, but with my work load, and being a one man show so far, it’s been tough.

I’ve also been working on my first Ruby on Rails app for a client, amongst heaps of other things, and I have to say I really dig RoR.  Ruby’s syntax takes some getting used to for me because I’ve always worked with C-based languages. It reminds me more of Basic, but I like the whole set up and how easy it is to get a database connected site up and running fast. There will definitely be more Rails apps created at PXL in the future. For this release of Attest 1.5 (not calling it 2.0 yet) I wanted to set up the questions and answers with a RESTful webservice built with RoR. But that’ll probably come in the future (not that it makes a difference for end users) but I’d like to create it For now though, Attest is done differently than version 1.0.

When I had originally built it, it was done in Adobe Apollo but I couldn’t monetize the app. Many things happened since the first release, and with the economy sucking turd I don’t want to charge for regular devs like myself going forward.  So I’m going to give the full version for nada, unless you happen to be a large telecom who’s spying on my transmissions as I write this blog post (I’m looking at you Comcast, and I’m not laughing) then you’re going to pay for it! I’m all for Buy American, and that’s what ocurred to me after I got the Fender…it’s a small thing but I did technically help out the economy and my greedy guitar lust by buying this fine mama jamma! Attest, however, is made in the USA and you, the every day shmoe like myself  will no longer pay for it.

Onward and upwards, if you’re a developer like me, and you want to add yet another credential to your resume, study with Attest 1.5, take the exam for $150 bucks, and get it behind you. There was a discussion on the Adobe Flex Developers group on LinkedIn yesterday about just that…should I bother to get certified in Flex 3 or not?  I’m pretty biased obviously but I added my two cents regardless.  If you’re interested in taking the cert exam, if you’re looking for study material to gauge your readiness, enjoy Attest 1.5.  It’s another contribution to the community at large and will be available before the end of March. My apologies for being so late on this release.

The plan is to finish up what I have first, then I have some great Flex/AIR developers who have enlisted to help out on some  pre-release testing, and it’s on track to be released before the end of March.  Until then, relax your mind a bit…maybe buy yourself the Fender you always wanted, or read the news

and wonder if the folks at MXC (Most Extreme Elimination Challenge)

had advance knowledge of angry pink dolphins.  And look for Attest 1.5 on the PXL blog in a few short weeks.

Technorati Tags: adobe air, attest 1.5, flex 3/air cert, flex certification, study material

Going forward, I know which api I’ll be using for online image sharing I know some other AS developers, like Quentin, who commented on the last post were searching too and we didn’t see anything up on Google code yet, so we planned on maybe starting up a project. The guys at Photobucket beat us to it. So that was an easy job for us, can’t beat that!

Updating MyStylez with the Photobucket api for drag and drop went well easier than I had planned, that’s because I thought I’d be creating a brand new library to work with the api. Ahh a pleasant surprise! Nice work again!

So I guess you can call MyStylez a true mashup now that it uses Photobucket and Flickr. It has nothing to do with the MySpace api because there’s no fun to be had there. I think the MySpace api is just for apps that run purely on MySpace. Exciting…ehem.

If you were looking, like Quentin and myself, to mash up AIR with Photobucket, now you have something to do. You’ll enjoy working with the library. I’d like to try out a bunch of other methods on the api but that would entail having a creative brain wave on some new AIR app. I’ll keep you posted

Technorati Tags: actionscript, adobe air, flex, google code, library, photobucket api

I haven’t seen any ActionScript library projects yet, but then again I’ve been sitting in the dark for two weeks writing code and staying away from the sun…very healthy indeed. You may have noticed I didn’t exactly go to town on the blogging either, pardon my absense as I’ve been wholly absorbed with so much code flying through my neurons I feel like my head could split.

Does anyone know of any plans to crank out an AS3 lib for the Photobucket API? If so, I might want to jump on that one.

Technorati Tags: actionscript, adobe air, flex 3, flickr api, open source, photobucket

Nothing massive changed, its all pretty easy, but rather than chase all the new stuff down, I figured I’d post in case someone else runs into issues.

The first issue I had, was to remove references to Shell.shell and replace with nativeWindow inside the ActionScript. At least that’s one thing the new compiler was griping about and is now fixed. Referencing the application descriptor file from within the code had a few minor changes. The first thing I did after installing Beta 3 for AIR and Flex 3, was just create a new AIR project for AirSpace. That way, I had a new descriptor file to play with and seemed easier than chasing down any artifacts in the old one.

I had the version number and appID in the OLD descriptor file (Beta 2) right at the root node:

1

<application appid="AirSpace" version="1.0.0.5" xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/1.0.M4"></application>

In the new descriptor file, it’s laid out differently. I just put it all in together like so:

1
2
3
4
5
6

<id>com.pxldesigns.airspace </id>
<filename>AirSpace </filename>
<name>AirSpace</name>
<version>1.0.1.5</version>
<description>AirSpace is a MySpace Style Editor created with Adobe AIR </description>
<copyright>PXL Designs, LLC</copyright>

Big deal, right? So then I was no longer getting errors when trying to build the release version with my nifty self signed certificate, the one that warns people going to install it that I could have built a horrible nasty app that pops up ads 24-7 and eats up all the ram. Ha, kidding! I wouldn’t build such a thing…mental note.

Referencing the new app version from inside the MXML or ActionScript is slightly different, and I use this in a few places for AirSpace. Still no biggy, like I said, it would have saved some time if I remembered to check Rich’s code first, none the less, I figured it out quick enough.

1
2
3
4

private var appXml:XML = NativeApplication.nativeApplication.applicationDescriptor;
// use of name space from the descriptor file
private var ns:Namespace = appXml.namespace();
private var currentVersion:String = appXml.ns::version[0]; // <version></version> in the app descriptor

Next step, Shell.shell.exit(); became nativeWindow.close(); now. The compiler no longer liked references to Shell.shell, so that fixed my problem.

I thought I’d need to change some File refs because the compiler tossed up errors at first for this line:

1

var file:File = File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath("index.html");

but after running “Project –> Clean..” a few times, the compiler stopped griping. Dunno about that one yet, it works fine for me, I haven’t had time to check if there’s any massive changes with files and directories yet again, but after cleaning this wasn’t an issue for me anymore.

The only thing that gave me a headache was resigning my certificate and getting that up and running again. After “cleaning” a few zillion times, and creating the new app descriptor file, I created a new certificate by opening a command prompt, changing directories to “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3\sdks\3.0.0\bin” and running the ole adt command:

1

adt -certificate -cn yourCertName 1024-RSA ../newCertName.pfx yourCertPassword

Then packaged everything right in FlexBuilder 3 “Project –> Export Release Build” and browsing for the new cert, and entering the password. Whoopie, done!

The moral of this story? First, always check Rich’s blog before making a move save yourself the trouble of porting to Beta 3 by just creating a new AIR project (complete with new descriptor file) import your files, update your new desriptor file and pop out your self signed cert to notify the world that you haven’t yet purchased a Thawte cert like me because I’m too cheap.

Technorati Tags: adobe, adobe air, airspace, beta 2, beta 3, PXL Designs