Today I came across the following video…

The application in the video is a virtual dressing room! You can try out the clothes you want to buy in your living room and then purchase them if you like how they fit you or send the image to your friends on Facebook. What you need is only a webcam and you’re good to go.

The application is built on top of Flash Player 10 Platform, is made using Flex 4 SDK and uses the Unifeye AR product of Metaio Studio.

Enjoy the experience!

Table of contents

1. How to skin a container with padding in Flex 4 SDK – Spark
2. How to skin a button with icon in Flex 4 SDK – spark
3. How to transfer values from a Spark component to a skin part in Flex SDK 4

Sometimes you need to pass values from components to skin, for example having a dynamic layout. Using Flex sdk 4 you can transfer values using content property of the hostComponent ({hostComponent.content}).

I made a small example that use hostComponent.content, changing the values of HSliders the colors of the component will be changed.

So in mxml file you have to set the value for content property, that is an Object:

<fx:Script>
	<![CDATA[
		import com.flexer.skin.ContentButtonSkin;
		import mx.utils.ObjectProxy;
 
		[Bindable]
		public var colors:ObjectProxy = new ObjectProxy();
	]]>
</fx:Script>
 
<s:Button width="380" height="40" label="my custom button" 
              skinClass="com.flexer.skin.ContentButtonSkin" content="{colors}" />

Into skin file you can use it like this:

<s:HGroup left="1" right="1" top="1" bottom="1" gap="0">
	<s:Rect width="33%" height="100%">
		<s:fill>
			<s:SolidColor color="{hostComponent.content.leftColor}"/>
		</s:fill>
	</s:Rect>
	<s:Rect width="34%" height="100%">
		<s:fill>
			<s:SolidColor color="{hostComponent.content.centerColor}"/>
		</s:fill>
	</s:Rect>
	<s:Rect width="33%" height="100%">
		<s:fill>
			<s:SolidColor color="{hostComponent.content.rightColor}"/>
		</s:fill>
	</s:Rect>
</s:HGroup>

Please see attached project for a closer look.

Adobe provides Online Business Optimization through an Online Marketing Suite that enables marketers to unleash the power of their customer data to optimize ad spend and conversion while delivering customers relevant, personalized experiences. The Suite allows marketers to increase the efficiency of marketing processes, and spend marketing dollars more efficiently for maximum ROI.

To read more about Adobe Online Marketing Suite please vizit this link: www.omniture.com/en/products/online_marketing_suite. Basicaly, there are a lots of tools that help marketing people to take decisions based on online visibility and interactivity.

Since last November I was involved in developing extension for Adobe products that will help marketers and developers to instrument web sites and web based application for SiteCatalyst and Test&Target. Flash Pro and Dreamweaver extensions are developed in Flex, those are communicating to base products using JS API. (I will put a post, next month, about how to create an extension in Flex for Adobe products.)

Recently was lunch an update of all extension. You can download those extensions from here: www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/omniture/.

A few words about extension taken from their website:

Adobe SiteCatalyst Extensions for Adobe Flash Professional and Adobe Flash Builder

• Optimize customer experiences based on real-time analytics without implementing complicated tags
• Measure, analyze and optimize integrated data from all online initiatives to inform decisions and improve marketing ROI
• Gain efficiencies by incorporating content tagging as an integral part of the content-creation process
• Create a streamlined workflow where designers, developers and marketers can embrace a cohesive design, measurement and optimization strategy

Adobe Test&Target Extensions for Adobe Flash Professional and Adobe Dreamweaver

• Optimize the ROI of marketing campaigns to provide more relevant, engaging customer experiences
• Employ testing and targeting strategies identify which video, Web page, promo or digital assets perform best and deliver relevant content
• Gain efficiencies by creating regions for dynamic content as an integral part of the content-creation process
• Create a streamlined workflow where designers, developers and marketers embrace a optimization strategy

A demo video it’s also available on Adobe TV site and embedded  here:

Today, 11th of August, Motorola launches Droid 2 mobile phone on Verizon mobile network and it will be available in stores on 12th of August. The important is that this is the first mobile phone that comes with Flash Player 10.1 out of the box.

Droid 2 is running Android 2.2 Froyo for which Flash Player 10.1 was highly optimized.

Droid 2 is available in USA and it seems that it will be available also in Europe as Milestone 2.

Read more:
http://topnews.net.nz/content/27013-motorola-s-droid-2-launches-verizon-network-august-12
http://topnews.net.nz/content/26696-motorola-droid-x-and-milestone-2-hit-france-and-other-european-markets-few-months

Jozef Chúťka has did manage to create anaglyphs using Pixel Bender and displacement maps. The result is amazing!

There are multiple kinds of 2 color glasses used with anaglyphs but the demo in Jozef’s article is for the common cyan-magenta glasses.

To find out more read Jozef’s article: http://blog.yoz.sk/2010/06/anaglyphs-with-pixel-bender-and-depth-map/

The next release of Flex SDK is code-named Hero. It has three main goals:

• Multi-Screen Development: Allow developers to build applications that target the web, desktop or mobile devices using a single unified framework.
• Spark Maturation: Polish and grow the Spark architecture by adding new Spark components and capabilities.
• Large-Application Development: Support developers building large applications by improving fundamental Flex infrastructure pieces.

Previously, Flex for mobile was a separate branch code-named Slider. The rapid increases in performance on smartphone and the optimized performance of Adobe runtimes on these devices, now make it feasible to support Flex framework directly on mobile devices.

You can find out more reading this article on the official Flex team blog.

Serge Jespers did post an article regarding the new application Innovation Mecom has built for Dräger Carina medical device. The application is a simulation that reproduces all functions of the real device. So it is possible to get a real good impression of it even without using a real device.

Watch the following demo about it.

You can experience the application for yourself following this link: http://www.draeger.com/local/products/carina_trainer/start.html

You can read how it was developed on the creator’s blog: http://www.ketzler.de/2010/07/simulations-of-medical-devices-on-touch-devices-desktop-iphone-ipad-android/

Last two week I seen two great applications that make use of multi-screen experience capabilities of Flash Platform.

1. Androideroids by Grant Skinner
2. Desktop MP3 Music Player by Mihai Corlan

The first is a prototype multiplayer asteroids game in which each player uses an Android phone as their game controller. The player connects to the game and on the main screen he can see 3rd person view of the whole game while in the same time he can see the 1st person view on their Android phones.

The second one is a mp3 player that can be controlled by any numbers of Android phones. Mihai did the application using AIR and Flex Framework. The communication between the remote controls (AIR apps running on Android phones) and desktop player is done using the peer to peer features of AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1.

Demos of the running application can be found on each of the application pages. So take a look at them.

These two applications show the power of the Flash Platform for all types of devices: Computers, TVs, Phones, etc.

Enjoy!

Yesterday, Adobe has released AIR 2.0 runtime and can be downloaded at get.adobe.com/air/.

The new things in AIR 2.0 are:

• New Webkit with additional HTML5 and CSS3 support
• Multitouch and gestures
• Enhanced drag-and-drop support
• Enhanced socket support
• Enhanced printer interaction
• DNS resolution
• Local microphone API
• Native document handlers to open document
• Native process APIs
• Native installer
• Socket servers and peer-to-peer networking
• TLS/SSL sockets
• UDP networking support
• Global error handler
• IPv6 network support

I named just a few changes but there are a lot more, so please read the release notes.

If you to know even more read the Adobe AIR Team Blog article about the new AIR 2.0 at http://blogs.adobe.com/air/2010/06/introducing_air_2.html

Yesterday Adobe did release Flash Player 10.1 Release Candidate 7.

This public prerelease is an opportunity for developers to test and provide early feedback to Adobe on new features, enhancements, and compatibility with previously authored content. Consumers can try the prerelease of Flash Player 10.1 to preview hardware acceleration of video on supported Windows PCs, x86-based netbooks, and Android 2.2 supported devices. You can also help make Flash Player better by visiting all of your favorite sites, making sure they work the same or better than with the current player. We definitely want your feedback to help improve the final version, expected to ship in the first half of 2010.