Simplyprofound.com

Innerleprechaun.com Receives AIGA Experience Design Award

dave — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:06:00 -0500

Congratulations to Propaganda and all of the behind-the-scenes team members that brought their fantastic talents to concepting, designing, and developing Innerleprechaun.com. AIGA has recognized these efforts with an Experience Design award made even sweeter given the crushing deadline and not a little drama. Great job!

Flex Builder 3 Plugin for Eclipse ERROR: Serial number is invalid

dave — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:03:00 -0500

When my Flex Builder trial was coming to expiration and it was time to install my purchased license. Much to my chagrin, the Flex license manager (Eclipse > Help > Manage Flex Licenses) wouldn't accept my license with a confusing display: the checkbox was green indicating the serial was valid, but the message was "Serial number is invalid" and I could only close.

I contacted Adobe support via their web chat and was informed that this was a known technical bug, and I could either call tech support, or browse the User-to-User forums for the resolution. I haven't had good luck with those forums, but I figured it was worth a shot before searching the house for a phone. And I found the answer...

Sidenote re: chat customer service. Chat is available seemingly only when reps are available. A window will pop up and a button will appear on the page demonstrating a nice use of ajax. In my experience the reps are helpful, quick, and overly polite. I can just seem them with a list of phrases they only need to click to send like "Thank you for waiting", "Thank you for your patience", "Thank you while I read your issue". I suppose that's better than getting coffee or using the restroom while I wait (actual occurances).

Problem

Even when I'm logged into OS X as an administrator, Eclipse and/or the Flex Builder License Manager are unable to update the license settings file.

Solution

Close Eclipse or Flex and locate the license file to update it manually. On OS X it's at /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flex/license.properties. The license key entry should have a line:

flexbuilder3=SerialNumberNoDashes

When you save it you'll likely be prompted for an admin password since this is a protected file. Fire up Eclipse/Flex Builder and you should be good to go. Confirm the license key is recognized by running back to the Help > Manage Flex Licenses... menu.

Footnote

I originally thought my serial wasn't being accepted because I had also installed this serial successfully on my laptop and was now installing on my desktop. Adobe indicates that installing on multiple machines is acceptable as long as you're not using both simultaneously, and customer support confirmed this use was not prohibited.

Additional Resources

Adobe Serial Number Issues
Adobe Customer Service
Adobe User-to-User Forums

WebORB for .NET ERROR: Access to path is denied

dave — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:20:00 -0500

I want to write more about my recent experiences with WebORB for .NET, an amf remoting solution to integrate Flex with .NET, but that'll have to wait until I complete this project.

The day was going along swimmingly and I was testing my services via the WebOrb management console when I bumped into this error message as I selected a new assembly:

faultCode:Server.Processing faultString:'Access to the path 'C:\inetpub\wwwroot\weborb30\weborbassets\codegen\{guid}.codegen' is denied.

Problem
Although I have generated code from the previous version of WebOrb 3.4, this error is coming from v3.5.0 and evidently my file permissions were not set to allow writing to that temp path. It would appear this was not correctly setup during the install.

Running the WebORB diagnostics page verified this under the heading of "WebORB Permissions Summary > WebORB can generate client code"

System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path 'C:\inetpub\wwwroot\weborb30\weborbassets\codegen\{guid}' is denied.
at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
at System.IO.FileStream.Init(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, Int32 rights, Boolean useRights, FileShare share, Int32 bufferSize, FileOptions options, SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES secAttrs, String msgPath, Boolean bFromProxy)
at System.IO.FileStream..ctor(String path, FileMode mode, FileAccess access, FileShare share)
at System.IO.File.OpenWrite(String path)
at a.b(String A_0)

Solution
I granted the local IIS_IUSRS account modify permissions on my Vista workstation for the codegen directory, and this resolved the issue.

The diagnostics and console for WebORB have made this integration nearly painless.

Evidently Microsoft Thinks We Are Stoopid ASP.NET Developers

dave — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:13:00 -0500

Because they are letting Rob Conery spend most all of his time educating us on MVC, TDD, mocking, scalable architecture, Linq, the (his) repository pattern, pipes and filters, IQueryable, dependency injection, and plenty more for FREE to you and me.

13 installments into Rob's MVC Storefront series and we readers/viewers have been beneficiaries of 5 plus hours of screencasts on overdrive. Rob not only jams a ton of information into his fast paced presentations, but he has also been including rich "interviews" with some of the brightest and best at Microsoft as he transparently carries us through and includes us in his decision making process. Then there are the discussions carried on in the blog comments and now forums where the community calls Rob out on issues, offers suggestions, and most importantly teaches me SO much.

Which brings me to the heart of what I'm loving about this series, what I find to be the best and most refreshing aspect: the character and attitude of Rob and his teammates. How they go about their business is more important than whether or not you know how to use dependency injection.

I get the feeling that once the recording stops these guys aren't backbiting and ridiculing one another. They seem to genuinely like each other, or at least respect each other.

Rob isn't working as an island, but he's working "agile" including his clients, the community, and his teammembers all along the way.

And it's not just Rob, but it's Scott Guthrie (who I suspect sets the tone for this behavior), Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack, Joe Stagner, Ayende Rahien ... and these are just the guys I know of. These guys love what they do and they don't seem to have a bone of elitism in any of them. Check out the tone of the blog entries below.

Phil Haack - The Design is Never Right the First Time

Scott Hanselman - Professionalism, Programming, and Punditry and Success as A Metric

I can't count the number of times I've heard one of them write or talk about Ruby or Java or some other non-Microsoft technology. For a good while I was reading the blogs of a few ASP.NET developers who were abandoning ASP.NET for Ruby on Rails, sentiments I understood and at times shared. And then the community got the ear of the ASP.NET team and now we are all evaluating the MVC bits.

Contrast that to a Ruby on Rails user group meeting I attended where the first 20 minutes were spent ridiculing (all in good fun, but still) other web technologies one by one.

Clearly, my title was in jest to get attention. What Microsoft is doing with their team seems to be working. It's certainly working on me; my passion for ASP.NET development has been rekindled. And greater than the FREE training we are getting on the why's and how's of the technology, we are receiving a phenomenal education on how to function as developers within a team and a community.

Other great resources on this topic:
The Pragmatic Programmer
Practices of an Agile Developer
And any of the blogs listed in the blogroll on this page

Case Study: Northstar Church

dave — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:02:00 -0500

Client: Northstar Church
URL: www.northstarchurch.cc
Design: Becky Siegrist @ C1 Design

Overview

Northstar Church has fantastic design and needed to translate that to their outdated website. Currently, they maintain their content with Adobe Contribute. They didn't want to do a complete overhaul of the site implementing a new CMS, and figured a skin refresh would give them legs to make it until next year before pursuing a a bigger project.

Task 1 - Reskin
The old design was circa January 2007 and thankfully was pretty nice box model CSS. The new design matched up well, and with minor tweaks to the template I translated Becky's wonderful design from Photoshop files.

The major addition to the layout was a link laiden footer to provide sitemap-esque access to all content on the site.

Task 2 - Homepage Spotlight
Part of the revamped home page design is a rotating feature section. For this I leveraged Flex to build the flash player that transitions the features, triggers the ajax call that refreshes the matching sidebar content, and provides a controller for the user to toggle between features.

Task 3 - Video / Photo Features
Northstar Church also has fantastic video production and needed a way to present them consistently from anywhere in the site. This is a perfect scenario for SlideShowPro and SlideShowProDirector. SSP not only delivers the content in a skinnable, beautiful interface, but SSPD makes updating and maintaining the content very accessible for Northstar.

Users can browse the entire gallery of media albums, and peppered throughout the site are links directly to specific media. So, if Northstar wants to launch the video popup and play the Vision video bypassing the rest of the content, then they can do just that. I LOVE this tool because it has the APIs that I need to milk the technology, and it has the easy to use interface for my client.

To see this in action hit the Vision Video feature link on the Northstar Church home page.

Task 4 - RSS News
As with most churches, you have an abundance of news and events. Northstar Church is located in Frisco, Texas and caters to a tech saavy crowd, so adding an RSS feed was a no brainer. The current hosting supported PHP, and we really needed just a simple blogging solution that could be easily skinned to match the new design. Enter the all famous WordPress. Just like SlideShowPro, WordPress is easy for non-techy use.

Installing WordPress is generally a snap, but each webhost has its quirks. WordPress installation is basically a simple 2 step dance: 1) create a blank mySql database, 2) upload WordPress and hit it. WordPress walks you through the initial config and you've got your blog. This webhost is PowWeb and the problem was that WordPress couldn't connect to the database - bad server address. The control panel didn't have the server address visible and suggestions in the forums were wrong, but after a few emails back and forth with support we had this resolved. I'm so glad I stayed away from the hosting business.

Since we had the main site at the root, it made sense to setup WordPress in a sub directory: http://www.northstarchurch.cc/news/

Task 5 - Spread the Word
With a young, tech strong congregation, Northstar wanted to provide a way to their members to "spread the word" on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Eventful, and anywhere else they might drop a badge of the appropriate size and shape.

In addition to website banners, Northstar offers downloads for desktop wallpaper, instant messenger icons, and email banners. When you have great design, why not.

Conclusion

SEO is a key component to any website's life, and we've also done plenty of that. For a simple redesign, I'm very happy with how this has turned out. I'm always evaluating tools to find the best options not only for myself as developer, but for my clients. In this instance WordPress and SlideShowProDirector fit very nicely.

Flex 3 Optimization and SWF Filesize

dave — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:19:00 -0500

Let's talk SWF filesize for a moment. My current situation is that I'm building a Flash / HTML hybrid website and minimal filesize is still the name of the game for SWFs. On the page at hand I have 2 SWFs that talk to each other with ExternalInterface callbacks and fetch content using AJAX that loads bits into the page as well as the SWFs.

Flex 3 is the coder's tool of choice (above the Flash IDE anyway), but you have a number of ways to leverage that tool to result in a SWF. What's the right solution for my situation? I chose to begin with a straight forward Flex Project using MXML, and I couldn't have been more wrong.

MXML and AS code files are fine except for the shear weight of the SWFs plopped out of Flex. Holy cow! I've been searching for optimization tips to get the size down, and the best I can do for my current scenario is 148 KB. That's the Release Export's best on a good day with favorable winds. And it's completely unacceptable for a file that has nothing other than a Sprite, ExternalInterface, Loader and URLRequest. The debug version, even with the -optimize=true compile option enabled, chunks in at 240 KB.

I decided to try a Flex Actionscript Project instead and do without MXML. I coded up the exact same scenario in a single AS file and, poof, my SWF was 4 KB. That's more like it!

I'm still getting a feel for when and how to use a Flex Project with an MXML Application. My current conclusion, subject to change, is that Flex/MXML projects are best suited for an all Flex application; in other words, NOT a hybrid HTML/Flash website where filesize really really counts.

The publish options in Flex are extremely thin and the documentation for compile options at Adobe.com is totally lacking. This really feels like a first generation product documentation and not a 3rd gen.

But at least I'm not coding in Flash CS3 any more, and I couldn't be happier about that.

Generate PDFs with Actionscript using AlivePDF

dave — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:12:00 -0500

I recently had a Flash / AIR project that required the ability to render PDFs. Evidently, this hasn't been a hot issue in the past for Flash applications, however I get the feeling that AIR may change that. While a web application can utilize any of many server side solutions to render a PDF to the browser, it's not the same for AIR.

In looking for a good solution, I quickly had to reset my expectations to find ANY solution. The only option that fit the bill was AlivePDF, an open source Actionscript 3 port of a PHP library. AlivePDF is maintained by Thibault Imbert.

AlivePDF comes with a SWC that you can include in your Flex application, or an Actionscript package you can import to your AS code. Here's a brief, condensed example of how I used AlivePDF in my Flash AIR project.

import org.alivepdf.*;

// setup pdf
var myPDF : PDF = new PDF ( Orientation.PORTRAIT, Unit.MM, Size.LETTER );

myPDF.setDisplayMode( Display.FULL_PAGE, Layout.SINGLE_PAGE );

myPDF.addPage();

// add a background image
myPDF.addImage (myBackgroundMovieClip, 1 , null, null, false, ImageFormat.JPG, 100, 0, 0, 0, 0);

// add headline
myPDF.textStyle ( new RGBColor ( 41, 58, 140 ) );
myPDF.setFont( FontFamily.HELVETICA, Style.BOLD );
myPDF.setFontSize ( 18 );
myPDF.setXY( 10, 40 );
myPDF.addMultiCell ( 300, 1, "This is my PDF Headline" );

// add text message
myPDF.textStyle ( new RGBColor ( 0, 0, 0 ) );
myPDF.setFont( FontFamily.HELVETICA, Style.BOLD );
myPDF.setFontSize ( 14 );
myPDF.setXY( 10, 50 );
myPDF.addMultiCell ( 300, 4, "This is my text....lots of text..." );

// save PDF to the desktop
var f : FileStream = new FileStream();
var file : File = File.desktopDirectory.resolvePath("MyPDF.pdf");
f.open( file, FileMode.WRITE);
var bytes : ByteArray = myPDF.savePDF(Method.LOCAL);
f.writeBytes(bytes);
f.close();

Notice I'm using the method addMultiCell to add text. This may seem odd, but what this allows me to do is add a block of text that wordwraps. If I use addText then I only get a single line.

AlivePDF is definitely still young and I've run into a few oddities (read bugs). I logged a bug on the Google project site and within no time at all received a note saying the issue had been resolved and would be released in the next build. Nice!

The Google project site provides a few examples in addition to the samples provided in the download. And the documentation is fairly helpful.

Note: Thibault just released 0.1.4.1, a minor revision the codebase I've been using at 0.1.4.0. Hopefully this is a sign that the project is picking up some momentum!

If you need to generate PDFs from your Flash, Flex, AIR applications using only AS 3.0, then this is your best (only) solution.

Adobe AIR Publishing Annoyances in Flash CS3

dave — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:00:00 -0500

I've run into some minor annoyances in publishing AIR applications from Flash CS3 that I really hope Adobe fixes with an update.

Annoyance #1: Not all files being published with the AIR file

hen you install the AIR update for Flash CS3 it adds 2 commands to the Commands (duh) menu: AIR - Application and Installer Settings, and AIR - Create AIR File. The first menu item has all the settings in addition to a publish button. The latter just pumps out the AIR file.

The problem I've found is that when I have added directories and files to the "Included files" area, they are only being included when I publish from the AIR - Application form and NOT from the AIR - Create AIR File command option.

Annoyance #2: Digital Signatures files are not application specific

I have multiple AIR projects going and each has a different certificate to sign the application. Unfortunately, the certificate used for an application is not stored with the settings for that application. So, if I build application A with a development junk signature, and then immediate build application B with a Thawte digital signature, I must reconfigure that setting alone (and dig up my ridiculously secure password that I cannot remember).

Annoyance #3: No option to publish AND create an AIR file all at once

I kept wondering why my AIR files weren't showing my most recent changes. Turns out, the commands mentioned above will only use the most recently published SWF to build the AIR file. Fine, I understand, whatever. But I'd at least like the option to tell Flash CS3 to build the SWF and then the AIR file all in one motion, or the option to use the latest build.

Superscript Registered Trademark in Flash

dave — Fri, 02 May 2008 03:06:00 -0500

Some of the most elementary things can be so completely frustrating in Flash. In a recent project I needed to superscript a registered trademark^® in both static and dynamic textboxes.

It is well know that Flash only recognizes a limited list of markup for html, and <sup></sup> is not among them. Various CSS solutions also do not work because the necessary CSS is also not recognized.

The solution? A custom embedded font.

I tried a free font, CG Superscript, which worked find for regular text, but not ®.

The one that worked for me was Superscript, which rt now goes for $9.90. Originally, I dismissed this solution thinkin it was the same thing as CG Superscript. It didn't list ® on the site.

The instructions are simple and right on the homepage. They also offer a subscript font, same cost.

Much thanks to the illustrious Mike Creighton for getting me to take a second look at that font.

One Reason Ruby on Rails Appeals to Me

dave — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:49:00 -0500

RoR acolytes whisper the name David Heinemeier Hansson with a passion that is not a little eery. (google "dhh" and he's at the top, wikipedia brings him right up too). Nonetheless, the creator of RoR known for his strong opinions has some excellent, uncompromising ideas about development that are inspiring me.

I was watching the RailsConf keynote speech from 2006 (I'm a little behind the times, sure, but this stuff was way ahead of it's own time methinks) and DHH made a statement that I really thought well encapsulated what I like about RoR:

"If you have the initial assumption that things should be able to be done by hand without leaving you crying, it leads to better design."

In context he was speaking about REST and how adding additional methods to your controller may be easy, but it becomes messy and you should ask yourself why you are adding those additional methods. If you adopt the constraints of REST (giving you essentially 7 methods for CRUD operations in the controller), and you do not let yourself easily tag addt'l methods on the controller, you'll learn something about your design and a more simple solution will present itself.

He contrasts this approach against other frameworks that have become heavily dependent on IDEs in order to facilitate development. He likes to pick on java, but nobody is really safe from his barbs.

Checkout the keynote if for no other reason than to gain a great understanding of REST. Other books I've read recently and highly recommend:

Flexible Rails: Flex 3 on Rails 2 by Peter Armstrong
The Rails Way by Obie Fernandez (and others)
Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas & DHH

AIR: Error creating AIR file

dave — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:20:00 -0500

After a a few hours of grinding out the last bits of functionality, I went to build my AIR file and was greeted with a very unhelpful message:

Error creating AIR file
Usage error (incorrect arguments)

Eh? Debugging showed no errors, and I'm running strict. I turned up NOTHING on this error in documentation or searching. But I remember that I've been hand editing the app.xml (aka application descriptor) file for the project and figured I mucked something up in TextMate.

I removed the old file, recreated the settings in Flash > Commands > AIR - Application & Installer Settings, and then built the file. Viola! No errors.

So, I decided to compare files. Remember, the error says "incorrect arguments". Um, no. Far as I can tell there's an encoding or white space issue going on.

Modifying settings in Flash and resaving does NOT fix any formatting issues. It's saves fine, but you'll still get errors.

I copied over my size settings, and saved the file. This time I get a nice new error:

Error creating AIR file
Unexpected or unknown element or attribute in the application descriptor file.

At least this time Flash points me to the write file. In short, if you start getting errors building your AIR file like this, look to your "application descriptor file" and be careful...it's fragile.

If I didn't think someone else already had the motto, I'd coin "I break it so you don't have to".

AIR: Changing Filename

dave — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:41:00 -0500

I spelled something wrong. Oops. It's a pharmaceutical brand name, so get off my back. I fixed it in my filename, and code, and Flash library, and linkage, and....everywhere. The AIR program compiled and ran, done. Right? Wrong.

It was running and displaying an old version. I kept getting this error on my URLLoader when testing offline:

Error #2044: Unhandled ioError:. text=Error #2032: Stream Error

Duh, I know. I'm offline and trapping for that error so I can move on. I knew I shouldn't be getting that error. But what was strange is that the filepath and code lines in the error DIDN'T EXIST ANYMORE.

So, I checked my Flash properties for the FLA to make sure the SWF filename had updated properly. Yup, it had.

Then I checked my AIR Application & Installer Settings. I had to do all this by hand, and this is where my problem was. The "Included Files" portion at the bottom of the form includes a reference to the SWF and the filename was pointing to the previous file. As a result, debugging showed the old file and code.

Can I wrap myself in a try{}catch{}?

Email Campaign Sites

dave — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:05:00 -0500

I have a growing number of customers taking advantage of their subscription email lists to draw traffic and business back to their websites. There are a number online services and downloadable applications to make this easy and provide differing levels of reporting and CRM integration.

The two sites that I've been using most recently are Vertical Response and Campaign Monitor. Both cost about the same providing very similar reporting and tracking capabilities, but I think I may be done with using Vertical Response. My recent experience sending a campaign with Campaign Monitor was great.

Here are plus differences for me:

- I can setup multiple client profiles
- I can customize and brand my own login and portal for each customer to view reporting and manage their lists
- CM offers RSS feeds for customers who wish to track their own subscription list changes daily
- The email creation process was freakishly easy. You can give CM a URL for your HTML email rather than uploading HTML. I found that just a nice convenience.
- Reporting is organized a little nicer - not that the same info isn't readily available in VR, but I found it more customer friendly (for my customers)

If you're looking for a good email campaign solution, check out Campaign Monitor. If you have a better one, let me know.

Firefox Search Plugins for Adobe LiveDocs

dave — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:29:00 -0500

I stumbled upon some very useful Firefox plugins tonight. While I have LiveDocs in my linkbar anyway, I love being able to search Actionscript 3 and Flex documentation directly from the search engine field in Firefox. Check it out:

http://en.flash-ripper.com/firefox-search-plugins-flash-flex-air-actionscript-adobe-labs/