RIA Weekly Combo

RIA Weekly #53 - Catching up on JavaFX

comments@riaweekly.com — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:28:06 -0700

You can download this episode directly directly and it’ll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Joshua Marinacci joins me to talk about more about JavaOne and JavaFX. We discuss:

Josh’s coffee places: Allen Brothers, Dutch Brothers.
Josh’s take on JavaOne and CommunityDay.
In talking about Kenai and Zembly, we get into a discussion about moving parts of the software development process into the cloud.
We then talk about the Java Store, which he’s been working on in the recent time. See his recent Q&A on the Java Store.
The difficulty of collecting money in these stores - figuring out regional tax laws, income tax, etc.
JavaFX 1.2 - lots of control improvements & additions. Redoing GUI concepts - separating styling from controls. Button, slider, checkbox, but some things missing: table, tree, combo box. No more layout managers, there’s containers. No ties to AWT and Swing, everything is skinable with CSS. Also: charts. Linux and Solaris support.
JavaFX tools? Updates Production Suite for CS4. More people working on the open source Eclipse plugin. JavaOne showed sneak-preview of the design tool. Also the other fun JavaFX Wii-mote and motion sensing demos during the Gosling talk. See the JavaOne Toy Show replay.
Also, we rat-hole on JavaFX profiles - desktop and common, and I’d expect mobile out there. But Josh, says they’re trying to limit them.

Ryan wasn’t able to join as we recorded this at the ungodly hour of 8AM PDT ;>

Disclosure: Sun is a client.

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RIA Weekly #52 - Larry Likes JavaFX, Documenting RIA Patterns, the HTML 5 Meme

comments@riaweekly.com — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:57:24 -0700

You can download this episode directly directly and it’ll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I are back with a bevy of RIA topics:

Adobe Flash tools in beta: Catalyst and Flash Builder. See Ryan’s round-up as well. There’s a big, multi-city, global user group tour as well.
JavaFX at JavaOne - Larry likes it; JavaFX for OpenOffice? Java Store (desktop), Java Warehouse (“will eventually be used by TV and mobile service providers to create their own ‘private-branded storefronts’ for programs that run on their platforms”). See Project Vector post from Jonathan. So, you have the Warehouse which is the repository and “back-end” for applications submitted by developers (the apps are to be focused on Java and JavaFX desktop apps for now) and then the Java Store which is the consumer-facing store-front. In the future, the Warehouse may be a supply channel to other store-fronts, e.g., TV and mobile-based things. Also, see Joshua’s piece on new features in JavaFX 1.2, like Linux & Solaris support, chart components, etc.
The Rise of the “HTML5″ Meme - seems like we have Google + HTML 5 + Mozilla/Chrome as a new, emerging RIA/UI silo. After Google I/O last week, there was some zero-sum, horse-race framing around Google Wave being a front in killing off Flash and Silverlight. See also Ryan’s HTML 5 vs. Flash features comparison. And, though not mentioned in the episode, see the recent Bespin updates.
PhoneGap has been leaping in popularity. See a previous episode with Nitobi’s Andreé Charland on PhoneGap too.
Silverlight release date? July 10th event as reported by The Register.
After reading a brief piece on .Net RIA Services, I wonder if there’s pattern collections for other RIA technologies?
piece linking up ADO.NET Services (Project Astoria) with Silverlight. A RESTful approach to connecting with the back-end.
Reflecting on my recent vacation in Thailand, I speak to explosion in (unlocked?) cellphones over there and the abundance of pirated software available everywhere.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Microsoft is a client as well, as is Sun.

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RIA Weekly #51 - Dave Wolf from Cynergy

comments@riaweekly.com — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:21:26 -0700

You can download this episode directly directly and it’ll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I are joined by Dave Wolf from Cynergy Systems, a firm that specializing in RIA development. We spend most of the time talking about Dave’s take and Cynergy’s involvement in the RIA space, but we get to a handful of news items at the end:

Last week we mentioned a “working with RIAs” report they did with Forrester. We go over the suggestions and tips - small teams, rich experiences don’t come from cubical farms, but open places where you can “smear monitors,” getting designers and developers to work together. Moving beyond the “isolationist” phase of J2EE and web app driven development. Using mutual-respect and tooling.
Grooming developers and designers to fit into this milieu, applying the usual cultural fits for tech-people. Also, “you only use full-time employees” - talent becomes a competitive advantage for Cynergy.
We talk about the kinds of things they work on: telcom expense management, retail banking, fleet management, hip-hop site. Also, software companies realizing they don’t have to compete “feature-by-feature” as taught by the iPhone, growth in ISVs that is.
Ryan asks if the iPhone is the best way to pitch RIA to “the boss.” Pretty much, Dave says. It’s a good example of how RIA tricks and whatnot can be powerful and useful.
What kind of interest are you seeing with Microsoft Surface?
“Desperately trying to get away from The Mouse.” 60 years later, we’re still using the same input device - “Mouses are strange.”
How do you choose the RIA framework to use, out of Flash, Flex, Silverlight, WPF, etc? We ask Dave to go over the types of applications and audiences (”users”) that each technology works well with and doesn’t work well with. The IDEs on both sides are good.
Ryan draws out more of Dave’s negatives about each platform - this is all an attempt to get back to the desktop - Flash Platform struggles a little bit with the designer/developer workflow, the life-cycle for the software between the designers (with PSDs) and the developers (with Flex and other code). Microsoft’s difficulty is player penetration, learning through the difficulties very quickly - catching up with Adobe/Macromedia’s 10 years in 2 years - “the ability to chase tail-lights.”
All that said, Dave says, we believe they’ll be a duopoly in our work in the future.
We discuss the old idea of having one UI instead of many: moving beyond “least” in “least common denominator” - applying the multi-screen, multi-modal thinking to applications - making it OK to have 5 UIs, for example.
What’s the experience been like with maintenance, across many versions of years of the RIA-based software?
Moonlight 2.0 Preview - see some other coverage from Mary-Jo Foley and Tim Anderson.
Don’t forget to leave a note in the Flex Builder for Linux “bug” listing.
Ryan mentioned the New Your Times AIR app write-up, the Times Reader 2.0, which talks about how the Times used and RIA for their readers and why.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Microsoft is a client as well, as is Sun.

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RIA Weekly #50 - RIAs in Cars

comments@riaweekly.com — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:30:42 -0700

You can download this episode directly directly and it’ll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

Both of us being back from our travels to the other side of the world, Ryan and I finally get back together to catch up on the RIA news:

I was off in Korea - thanks to Ryan, I met up with Jung-woong Lee (Kevin), of SundayToz, while I was in Seoul. He was an excellent host taking me out to dinner and some drinks. I also tell about the open source talk I was there to give and seeing Koreans watch TV while driving!
AIR used for the Tesla.
Harping on Evernote needing an AIR or something interface - they got APIs, man!
RIA’s in New Zealand, where Ryan was for awhile.
Right before this recording, Ryan was a guest on enterpriseGeeks. This leads us into a discussion of RIAs in the SAP world, wherein I point out the upcoming Inside Track in in Lima, Peru.
Flash runtime for TV - this leads into a discussion of the Adobe Open Screens project being about a year old now. Recently, I talked with a reporter on that topic, so I looked through all the news to catch up. Also connected to Open Screens, Adobe and Nokia announcement some cash-money winners.
The new GMail interface for the iPhone is pretty nice.
Snorkle - Oracle’s on track to buy Sun, so we discuss how JavaFX fits in or falls out of this, in addition to general Oracle buying Sun talk.
Link dump: Mark Monster’s series on Silverlight RIA Servers (1 and 2), Forrester/Cynergy write-up, Apache Pivot.
Microsoft NAB announcements, like Smooth Streaming.

As a side note, if you want Flex Builder on Linux, go leave a comment on the bug/feature report for it ‘fore it’s too late.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Microsoft and Sun are clients as well.

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RIA Weekly #49 - RIA Data-pipes, Selling RIAs

comments@riaweekly.com — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:46:59 -0700

You can download this episode directly directly and it’ll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, while Ryan was living in the future (or, “down under” if you prefer), I had on a guest co-host, Charles Lowell. You may know him from one of my other podcasts, DrunkAndRetired.com. I had Charles on because he’s something of a UI specialist and has done much work with Swing, Ajax, and dabbled plenty in Flex and JavaFX. I wanted to take this chance to get one developer’s perspective on building rich user interfaces and, as you’ll see, some specific RIA frameworks and issues as well. Here’s roughly what we discussed:

Charles tells us his development history, esp. with respect to to UI’s, like Swing and Ajax
He tells us how his passion for ruby was translated into his current passion for JavaScript and the different UI glue-work he’s been doing over the recent users.
I ask Charles to detail the work he did at is company, The Front Side, with Freestyle, the Ajax UI->web server protocols and state sharing. We discuss the problems with the framework they developed, particularly with storing state on both the client and server side and how that makes garbage collecting a pain.
Now an indie-programmer, Charles works with several different clients developing UI’s. Recently, he tried to pitch using JavaFX to a client and he tells us how that went - not too well.
This gets us into a discussion of JavaFX and the technical and business reasons to use or not use it. He likes focusing on JavaFX as a way to do Swing better.
More generally, we talk about The Market’s desires when it comes to RIAs and rich-UI functionality. Charles is see a lot of pull for UI functionality that’s difficult to deliver in Ajax, but easier in more traditional desktop GUIs or, we hope, RIAs.
Getting to the only, major, even slightly-related RIA news of the week, I ask Charles how Oracle buying Sun purchase effects his view of JavaFX.

One items we didn’t cover was Adobe’s “Strobe” project. If you’re interested, I gave a small amount of commentary in this week’s Numbers post. Ryan has a small write-up as well.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Sun and Microsoft are clients as well.

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RIA Weekly #48 - Mobile Mania!

comments@riaweekly.com — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:36:07 -0700

You can download this episode directly directly and it’ll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I got over lots of mobile related news, sprinkled with some social networking items:

Adobe/Facebook deal - somehow I missed t he MySpace Silverlight SDK - Cf. Tim Anderson’s commentary.
Silverlight Mobile talk over at Silverlight Hack - Good round-up of the history of Silverlight Mobile from TechEd 2007. Sounds like release is a year away. Speculation about it taking longer. Nice discussion in the comments.
Also, .Net Services demo from MIX09 up. See also the Steven Martin overview.
CrunchGear Palm Pre Demos - several nice videos demo’ing applications like Pandora. Notice the background running, notifications bar, etc.
PhoneGap wins a Web 2.0 Launchpad award.
RIM App World - Blackberry app store - I have no Blackberry, so I have no idea. “RIM expects about 1,000 applications to be available this week, with more in the future. App World is initially available for BlackBerry users in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom. Users have to first download a smartphone application to connect to the App World Web site, via cellular or Wi-Fi links.”
RIA Download sizes from Mike Chambers - how much does this matter? Ryan says that Adobe does studies on completed downloads, and there is a significant drop-off at some point.
Any Korea RIA action in Seoul? Ryan says that Korea is way ahead of everyone else.
Ryan’s last post on ZDNet.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe sponsors this podcast and is a client, Microsoft is a client as well, as is Sun.

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Steven Martin on MIX09 Announcements - Web Platform, App Gallery, Silverlight 3, and Azure

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While at MIX09 this year, I had the chance to film three different interviews with Microsoft folks. The first of these interviews is with Microsoft's Steven Martin wherein we go over the bevy of announcements this year: Expression Blend, Silverlight 3, Media Server and Video, Web Platform, Web App Gallery, cloud computing with the Azure Services platform, just to name a few.

Our discussion starts around the Web Platform and the installers that were released at MIX09. We talk about they fit into the full management of an applications life-cycle. We then get on to discussing the support for PHP and many PHP applications in Microsoft's Web Platform. This leads naturally to a discussion of the the App Gallery where Microsoft is hosting community projects, many of them open source, that can be added to the Web Platform.

Getting into cloud computing and Azure, we next talk about the different deployment options (or runtime environments) that divide up Steven's world: the local host, in a data center, to a hoster, or cloud, here, Azure. This last runtime environment gets us into a discussion of why you'd use cloud computing and, implicitly, a discussion of what Microsoft's understanding of "cloud computing" is.

Silverlight, Microsoft's RIA and multi-media platform, is the next topic of discussion. Here, we talk about the the out of the browser experience, synchronizing across different applications, and a few other topics.

Disclosure: Microsoft sponsored this video and is a client.

RIA Weekly #47 - MIX09, Open Web Standards

comments@riaweekly.com — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:38:07 -0700

You can download this episode directly directly and it’ll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

Ryan and I have been traveling around frequently these past two weeks: SXSW, MIX09, and EclipseCon. While I was traveling back to Austin from EclipseCon, we finally pinned down to record a recap. It’s heavy on the Silverlight and MIX09 coverage, but there’s plenty of other RIA news as well.

First of, as always, David Tucker over at InsideRIA does a good job rounding up the RIA news. For Silverlight, it’s hard to beat Dave Campbell’s Silverlight Cream link-ups over at WynApse.
While we missed talking about it, check out some of our SXSW commentary and info: see Profiles in Courage interview with Mando Escamilla for a discussion of desktop RIA/Ajax and check out the two RIA Weekly specials from SXSW: JavaFX with Josh & Ryan with Augmented Reality.
Silverlight 3.0 - (Tim Heuer’s overview is great) deep linking, graphics improvements, more expansion of APIs and UI controls/widgets. Media: H.264 and AAC (moving out of an encoding ghetto mentality)
.Net RIA Services - uses LINQ to connect stuff up together. A middle-man for access between the front-end and back-end (or “data-tier”).
SketchFlow in Expression Blend - “SketchFlow is a fun, informal, flexible, quick and powerful way to sketch and prototype rich, dynamic interactivity with Expression Blend.” - Christian Schormann. See Christian’s Blend 3 write-up and also another quick take on Blend 3 updates.
Sorting out the Expression brand: what is Blend vs. Expression vs. Expression Blend? …vs. Expression Design.
Soyatec Silverlight on the Mac, Eclipse4SL.
Out of browser support - Ryan answers the big question, how is this different than AIR.
$25,000 JavaFX Coding Challenge. Develop an app with JavaFX 1.1 and NetBeans 6.5.
Web standards wrangling - Ryan, then Dion.
Ryan points out Tim Sneath’s post on Windows Azure as a good source for understanding how Azure fits into the RIA world. This gets us to discussing the role cloud computing might play as the back-end for RIAs.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Microsoft, Adobe, and Sun are clients, as is Eclipse. Adobe sponsors this podcast.

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RIA Weekly SXSW Special - Augmented Reality

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Ryan Stewart shows us some a short, funky augmented reality demo using Flash, a webcam, and a specially printed piece of paper to integrate meat- and cyberspace.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client.

RIA Weekly SXSW Special - JavaFX

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While at SXSW 2009 this year, I stopped by the JavaFX booth to catch up with regular RIA Weekly guest, Joshua Marinacci.

Disclosure: Sun is a client.

RIA Weekly #46 - Desktop RIAs with Titanium, SXSWi 09, HBO & Flash Video

comments@riaweekly.com — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:48:13 -0800

You can download this episode directly directly and it’ll also show up in the RIA Weekly feed for iTunes and other podcatchers. Or, just use the controls below to listen to it right here:

This week, Ryan and I are joined by Appcelerator’s Jeff Haynie.

Here are some highlights and show notes:

Jeff being on, we start out talking about the Appcelerator SDK and their desktop application framework, Titanium.
SOA become dominate on the server, but with RIAs and “connected applications” on the desktop, it seems like SOA (if only in the simple version) is mattering on the desktop more and more.
I ask Jeff what kind of usage are you seeing for desktop RIA stuff? Rather than look at the question as one about SOA’s, he starts suggesting that desktop RIAs are just desktop applications frameworks and platforms. Jeff uses Skype as an example of something that’d do well there. Going after a real, cross-platform GUI toolkit, application development stack. Titanium example: gaming, video surveillance. Also, bringing the web developer skills to desktop development.
Ryan asks how Jeff deals with complaints about native UI vs. cross-platform UI? Historic example: Java GUIs looking the same everywhere. But then, there’s web-native apps that look like GUI apps, like Miro the video player. Also 280 North Atlas stuff.
Titanium supports several web-languages on for desktop programming, like PHP, most interestingly.
Appcelerator’s business model - yes, there is one. “Open Source 2.0.” Goal is later this year to introduce some cloud-based services.
This cloud-based service model prompts us to talk about Acquia’s cloud-based services announcements this week: hosting drupal, search services, etc.
Ryan mentions Todd Biske’s further discussion of RIAs and portal.
Jeff gives us a nice, pat wrap-up quote on what desktop RIAs are: “building desktop applications with web applications.”
HBO with Flash? Ryan and Coté asked for more info, but there was not really any forth-coming. We each hope this means we can watch HBO shows on-demand, even if we have to pay for them.
Ryan asks about video support for Appcelerator, more generally, for open source. Jeff says that right now, it’s Silverlight and Flash. They’d like to see OGG/Theoria as the container/format.
It being next week, we go over SXSW: Adobe Awards panel, Ryan’s panels & session, all 3 of them! Chris Bernard’s curated SXSW lists; Coté recommendations, namely the free meat party. As we did last year, we’ll try to get a few video episodes of RIA Weekly out.

Sponsorship

This Episode is Sponsored by Adobe:

Use the Adobe Flex framework and Adobe AIR to create rich Internet applications. RIAs that combine the wide reach of the browser and the flexibility of applications that can also be delivered outside the browser. Adobe Flex combined with Adobe AIR provides an agile and powerful solution to develop and make quick iterations on applications that reach across platforms and deliver a consistent user experience.

Download the free Flex Builder trial and the Adobe AIR SDK and start building the next- generation of RIAs.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this podcast. Appcelerator, Microsoft, and Acquia are clients as well.

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