One out of two ain’t bad
There were shouts of joy and dismay today as Apple announced Microsoft Exchange support for the iPhone and disappointed users like me when they not only didn’t make an announcement about, but bashed Flash/Flex performance on mobile phones.
Technorati Tags: iPhone,Flex,Exchange,Apple
AIR 1.0 and Flex 3.0 are officially out of Beta
David Tucker has just announced the official launch of Air 1.0 and Flex 3.0. This will undoubtedly lead to an onslaught of Air applications as many developers have been waiting to release their applications until the official release.
Hats off to Adobe, as always they have done a terrific job of getting the message out and yes, it is an exciting time to be a Flex developer or even a wannabe like me.
My First Flex Application: Amazon Prime Search
I just returned from a business trip to the west coast. Yes, I have a day job, but I’m happy to report that I have started work on my first Flex application, a search application for Amazon. I think it will be a good mix of UI elements and web services.
I have been an Amazon Prime customer for a few years now. For $79/year, Amazon Prime gives me FREE two-day shipping on my orders. The problem is that not all of the items available on Amazon are eligible for Prime shipping. In addition, Amazon’s search does not let your filter based on whether an item is eligible for Prime shipping.
Therefore, I would like to create a Flex application that will allow me to search for any item available in Amazon, but filter the results to show only those items that are eligible for the benefits of Amazon Prime.
I will be using Amazon Associates Web Service, formerly named the Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS) to search Amazon product data. Amazon Associates Web Service allows you to search by numerous attributes, including keywords, phrases, brand, price, category and more. The challenge will be that Amazon does not expose Amazon Prime as an attribute. I’m not sure how I will overcome that, but that will be part of the fun.
What do you think, is this application too ambitious for my first?
Apple: Please Enable Flex applications on my iPhone
If you are an early adopter like me, you know there are certain things you can overlook with any new technology you adopt.. for a while. This doesn’t exclude one of the most innovative companies of our time Apple.
I got an iPhone within a month of their release, and for the most part have been very pleased with it. That being said, there are a couple of limitations that I can only keep defending for so long before I have to start to consider the move back to my Blackberry.
The first is the lack of Exchange support in the iPhone, which is critical to getting support from the business market. I have been able to cover for this glaring omission by using Visto Mobile, albeit it adds another $10/mo. to my mobile phone bill.
The second is the lack of support for the Flash player in the iPhone’s Safari browser. It’s bad enough that I cannot view Flash-enabled web sites, but the thing that bothers me more is the inability to use Flex-based applications. Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of fine iPhone based applications that I use regularly, i.e. Shredder Chess, Google Mobile, iDo to name a few, but their static pages seem out of place with the rich UI of the iPhone. In my opinion, enabling rich internet applications built with Flex would make the iPhone the most best mobile phone in the world.
I beg of you Steve, please give me support for the Flash player on my iPhone so I won’t have to consider the Blackberry ever again.
Welcome to my journey to build Adobe Flex applications and live to blog about it
I hope starting a blog is like anything else, where the first step is the hardest. I have spent my time installing and customizing the look of this blog while at the same time struggling with what to include in my first post. After a week, I’ve decided to just start at the beginning.
My name is Robert McDonald, a senior product manager at Intuit for the past 2 1/2 years. I am a mechanical engineer by degree and spent the eight years prior to joining Intuit as an application engineer and product manager for a very successful computer-aided design (CAD) company. It is over those years that I became obsessed with the Internet and the emerging ASP/SaaS market.
So I can almost hear you now… “What is a mechanical engineer doing blogging about software programming?”. What can I say? I am a self-described hack with little formal training, outside of a course in Pascal my sophomore year in college , but writing code is a passion of mine. I have written applications in Visual Basic, Javascript, some ASP and PHP and, of course, Flex.
I can trace the genesis of this blog to a developer conference where I first acquired my interest in Adobe Flex for building rich internet applications. I had just struggled through building an application in Javascript and was still reeling from the process of writing and rewriting my code to address the well-known incompatibilities across Internet browsers. I was blown away by the power, ease and visual beauty of Flex and the with the promise of AIR. The cross-browser compatibility of Flex didn’t hurt either. I couldn’t wait to get home, and ran out immediately to buy some Flex books and start experimenting with Flex.
It wasn’t long after that when I decided to blog about my experiences as I learn, build and deploy Flex applications. In addition, I will also share with you evaluations of new Flex and AIR applications, my thoughts about the future of Internet applications and any other ramblings that may come out.
I’m sure this blog will change as it and I evolve over this journey, and I thank you for your interest in tagging along with me as I go.
