Flex 3 and AIR are getting close to launch and in preparation, Ryan Stewart from the Adobe Flex/AIR product team is traveling to select cities to show off the great new features and help prepare us for this exciting launch. Ryan Stewart will be in Sacramento to speak on January 23rd at 6:30 PM.
Flex 3 is a feature-packed release, adding new UI components like the advanced datagrid and improved CSS capabilities; powerful tooling additions like refactoring; and extensive testing tools including memory and performance profiling, plus the addition of the automated testing framework to Flex Builder.
Adobe AIR is game-changing in so many ways, extending rich applications to the desktop, enabling access to the local file system, system tray, notifications and much more. Now you can write desktop applications using the same skills that you’ve been already using to create great web apps including both Flex and AJAX.
Read more about the event, and RSVP, at the NorCal Flex User Group website. All are welcome, the event is casual and there will be food and drink provided by Adobe and Sanative!
Sanative has launched a desktop application utilizing Adobe® AIR for LiveCoordinator.com. Live Coordinator, which launches later this month,is an integrated communication solution for real estate transactions. It allows all team members who work together in completing a transaction to coordinate and communicate more efficiently than ever before.
Sanative worked with the Live Coordinator team to develop the widget based on an existing AJAX application. Using the Live Coordinator widget, a user can receive status updates directly on their desktop, in real-time. Home buyers and sellers will now be able to know what is going on with the escrow process every step of the way, as it happens. This unique capability is something not done before, and Sanative is excited to be part of the process.
Since the application is built utilizing Adobe AIR, the application will run seamlessly on Windows or Mac, and, very soon, Linux desktops as well. The application will automatically upgrade as new versions are released, removing confusion from the upgrade process for Live Coordinator users. Since the core of the application is based on AJAX technology, the LiveCoordinator development team does not need to have any knowledge of Adobe AIR. Updating their existing AJAX widget also updates the core components of the desktop widget. This unique capability lowers the cost of supporting a desktop widget for Live Coordinator.
Take a peek at Live Coordinator and see how the Internet is changing real estate and mortgage industries!
The Internet, as a business platform, has spread faster than any other medium. The ability to reach a global or targeted audience has become relatively inexpensive (compared to traditional methods of marketing) and easy. Just about every company can benefit in some way from having an Internet presence.
You have your website. It's really well designed and you receive glowing comments on how nice it looks. It has the typical contact information, some information about your organization's services/mission and maybe news about your organization. But really, is your website working for you?
When we collaborate with clients on building a new website a focus is not just how well the site looks, but also on how well the site serves your organization. Think about your current business processes, how you work with your clients, members or vendors. What processes do you do manually that can be done automatically over the Internet? What type of communications do you have with your clients, and how much time do these communications consume? Is there a way to streamline these processes that will free up valuable staff time for something else?
Often our experience is that streamlining processes such as event registrations, data collection or report generation can alleviate some of the tediousness of a staff member's daily duties, giving them more time to focus on the part of their job they like to do. In turn, this can lead to enhanced employee productivity. The end result offers considerable benefits:
Tedious tasks normally handled by humans are now completely automated
Removes the element of human error from the process
Interactions with members, clients and vendors happen faster, providing a sense of better service
Faster and more efficient collection of data
Reports and metrics are more easily generated
Attracting new clients or members based upon tools or features available to them
Increased productivity
With such a high number of benefits it is easy to understand how building these applications quickly pay off.
So how do you start?
We generally recommend that you have an idea of all those business processes that you perform in your day-to-day business which involve interaction with your members, clients, vendors or even remote offices. Also take a note of existing processes which happen via your website but require a significant amount of manual intervention to complete. Once you have documented these things talk to an application development consultant about what could be automated, or better automated. Generally, a good web application developer can identify aspects of your business processes which can be enhanced with a web application.
One last thing to note is that developing a long-term relationship with your consultant is important. The more they know and understand about your business and industry the more recommendations they can make which will improve your business.
In a few of our articles we have discussed Rich Internet Applications and Adobe Flex. In this post we will get more in-depth with Flex and give you a better idea of what Flex is, how it works, and why we feel it is an excellent solution to build your web applications.
Simply put, Flex allows developers to create applications that offer a rich user interface and a host of multimedia capabilities on the Adobe Flash platform. Most internet users are used to Flash as the pretty intro movies to websites, or flashy sites that offer smooth animations and sound. For example, if you have Flash installed and browse to Adobe's website homepage you will notice a very nicely done header with clean animations, video, audio or a combination of all three. This is an example of using the Flash platform to create rich multimedia experiences that run on any operating system and browser supported by Flash. Since Flash is installed on over 90% of desktop computers worldwide it has become a widely accepted format for delivering content.
Now, leveraging the Flash platform, developers can also build applications which allow us to create very user friendly interfaces that are fast and visually appealing. Additionally, displaying multimedia assets such as video and audio are quick and easy and the developer no longer has to worry about plugins and platform support.
A good example of this are the backend tools we built for the Roxie Cinema. The Roxie Cinema had a need to have a tool to manage the data which published movie information and showtimes to the site.
Additionally, they wanted to be able to publish multimedia assets such as audio, video and images without the worry of plugin support. As part of the requirement editors had to be able to preview these assets after uploading them. Utilizing Flex and Flash we would build an integrated solution without the need for expensive third-party tools and develop these tools quickly and at a relatively low cost to the client. The result has been a tool that allows management of all the website data via a single attractive user interface that is very responsive.
Additionally Flex easily integrates with many back-end technologies including ColdFusion, PHP, Java and .NET. Because of this it has become rapidly adopted by developers of many disciplines.
One of the most exciting capabilities of the Flex platform is the ability to push data to the user with LiveCycle Data Services. A good example of this might be an application which allows remote users to collaborate in real time on a document.
Let's say Kyle and Stan are working on a document that outlines a fundraiser event for Kenny's family, who's home was destroyed by Mecha-Streisand. Kyle has been grounded by his parents and is not allowed to leave the house, but he can access the internet. Using his super-secret password he gains access to Stan's website and loads the fundraiser document into his web browser. As he works on the document Stan will see Kyle's changes in real time. Stan notices that Kyle has a few typographical errors and decides to edit Kyle's work. While he is editing Kyle's document is updated in real time to reflect the changes. This can occur because the server realizes that the document has been changed and pushes those changes to all users who are working on that document.
There are many applications that this can prove invaluable for, such as providing real-time updates to news and information widgets without the need to refresh the page, or providing timed requests to the server. Real-time collaboration between you and your clients and vendors becomes an affordable and realistic application, even through your website.
Hopefully we have perked your interested in Flex. If you would like more information about Flex please give us a shout. If you are interested in seeing some Flex applications in use take a look at the showcase examples on Flex.org or contact us for a demo of applications we have developed.
This month we are going to focus on ColdFusion. There seems to be a lot of confusion about ColdFusion, what it does, and how it can actually save your organization time and, most importantly, money.
ColdFusion is a web application server. What does that mean? Simply put, ColdFusion allows you to dynamically publish information to and from a database or other source to make your site or applications interact in real-time with your organization's data. This can include something as simple as a contact form on your website or something as complex as a Customer Relationship Management system.
Many people argue against ColdFusion because it is not free. They argue that PHP, ASP, .NET and JAVA are all free and therefore are much lower cost than ColdFusion. True, the initial cost of ColdFusion, $1299 for Standard and $5999 for Enterprise, is not something to cough at. So why should you choose ColdFusion over any of the other previously mentioned languages?
For starters, ColdFusion has a very easy syntax, allowing entry-level developers to start making basic applications very quickly. It also allows more advanced developers to code their applications in record time because ColdFusion includes many of the tools developers often have to hand-code or integrate manually. ColdFusion code runs on many platforms, and very few changes ever need to be made in the source code to move an application from Windows to Linux to Solaris.
ColdFusion is also based on the Java platform, giving it the power of Java as well as access to the underlying Java platform and custom objects written by your own staff or third parties. For instance, you may have existing Java objects which run your business rules. ColdFusion developers can leverage these existing objects in their ColdFusion apps with very little effort, rather than rewriting them entirely for their own applications.
ColdFusion has a slew of built in tools which enhance it's capabilities including XML processing, easy file uploading, Flash integration, ability to quickly and easily consume web services, PDF integration and publishing, charting tools, SMS and other gateway integration. There is a huge list of these features available on Adobe's website.
ColdFusion also integrates with many Rich Internet Application technologies very easily. Flex (a Flash-based application development platform) and ColdFusion work together seamlessly to provide some of the fastest development cycles for large scale applications we have seen, with some awesome user interfaces. AJAX and ColdFusion work well together, allowing websites to be updated in real-time without the need for slow page refreshes.
Recently, with the acquisition of ColdFusion by Adobe, many of Adobe's Enterprise level products, such as LiveCycle and Acrobat, now integrate seamlessly with ColdFusion and allow ColdFusion developers to leverage these tools to provide solutions which have been difficult to accomplish without extensive Java development. With the release of ColdFusion 8 in mid-2007, developers will see even more integration to Adobe's products, making development of document management systems, presentation and comunication tools faster than ever before possible.
If you would like to learn more about ColdFusion please contact Sanative for a free one hour demonstration of the product and how it can solve problems which exist in your organization.
New College of California is a fully accredited college located in San Francisco, California. As with many educational institutions, there is a challenge of automating and integrating systems to enhance workflow and give students access to tools that allow them faster access to data and easier communication.
Sanative is working with New College to create a system that allows registrations to be received electronically and processed much faster than previously possible. This process also ensures more accurate data entry and instant confirmation to the student that their registration was received.
By utilizing Adobe products such as ColdFusion and PDF technology, registration forms can be distributed easily and be delivered electronically directly into a registration system. If the student does not readily have an internet connection available the same form can be printed then mailed or faxed to the school for manual processing.
This process also saves paper, and therefore is helpful to our environment. This is important to both New College and Sanative, and we are therefore proud to be working with New College on this very important project.
Sanative was chosen by the Nevada State Legislature to revamp a calendaring system written in Flex and ColdFusion. The calendaring system required additional features as well as fixing some current issues.
During the process of development many components were rewritten for better performance and more reliable behavior. This resulted in a noticable end-user performance increase, especially in the reports module.
Sanative also addressed many usability issues, making the application and work flow much easier for the calendaring system administration staff. This included redesigning the application's menu system and specific components of the UI (user interface).
Sanative was able to complete the redevelopment of the application using the existing ColdFusion and Flex applications within 7 business days, attesting to the rapid development process offered by ultizing ColdFusion and Flex as the core development tools for web application development.
flashy sites that offer smooth animations and sound. For example, if you have Flash installed and browse to Adobe's website