Som(a)niloquy

On Porting from iPhone to Netbook with Flex – Understanding the Syntax of ActionScript and MXML

by Ryan Green

I’ve spent most of my career on the web. Well, my first real job was as busboy at a local mexican hole-in-the-wall restaurant (love the salsa.) Then as proud crew member of a certain fast-food burger joint with golden arches (click here to skip to the meat of this post), then, as up and coming young web designer. It is amazing the job you could land in the dot-com bubble with some decent photoshop know-how and a copy of Microsoft Frontpage…

Anyhow, what I quickly learned in my stint as web master, besides the art of pixel perfect nested HTML table layouts so that my webpages could load inside the 1990′s on a 28.8 baud modem, was that if you wanted to give your customers any value besides a relatively accurate re-creation of their 4 page full-color brochure, you needed to know databases and some form of server side scripting.

I chose Cold Fusion. At the time this was due to the fact that it was the only book in our little office that didn’t have the letters ‘CGI’ and ‘Perl’ in the title. Cold Fusion provided some nice tag based syntax for connecting with a database and displaying tractor parts in a webpage. Then came Javascript and DHTML and VBScript and PHP and then, at last, Actionscript 1 & 2.

Now, lest you fear I die a quick death stuffed to the gills with obscure scripting language knowledge, Actionscript 3 arrived with Flex just in time to spare me the wrath of Java nerds hailing the death of ColdFusion and other “non-languages.” The language of the User Interface has steadily matured into Object-Oriented like syntax and smarter uses of XML to define the UI, and the “real-programmers” have moved native with Objective-C/C++/C#/C-flat and C#-minor. Oh, and don’t forget Java on that little mobile platform called Android… and how dare I forget ruby and python.

All this to say that, in this day-and-age, we face a fragmented amalgamation of languages and platforms all vying for title of “most-awesome-real-language.”

Well, my nomination for new entrant into the “real-language” lexicon is Actionscript/MXML, a syntax that gives Javascript its Object-Orientation and the HTML tag actual namespaces and custom tag names. Continue Reading…

On Porting from iPhone to Netbook with Flex – Interacting with the UI: Cocoa Delegates and Flex Observers.

by Ryan Green

Today we explore the emerging zeitgeist of two companies that I love. I submit to you that embedded in the very code of their developer SDKs lie the underpinnings to a complete corporate world view. I know, profound stuff. I thought so myself while typing this in the airline terminal of Denver International Airport while waiting for a friend to arrive. Perhaps I’ve waited too long and those funnel cake sticks from that other burger chain have started to affect my brain chemistry. We shall see.

My new working theory is derived by examining the use of patterns in the User Interface components of Cocoa and Flex.

Exhibit A: Apple believes the world and developers must be controlled and well managed. This is why the primary pattern for talking to User Interface (UI) Components is the delegate pattern. The delegate pattern means that when a user does something to a component, like clicking on a Picker, that Picker UI Component delegates responsibility to a delegat-ee. In other words, the Picker tells the delegate what to do and when to do it. There are a few benefits to the use of this pattern. Delegates clean up well (memory-wise), delegates have a clear and predictable function, and there is one and only one responder for any action by a UI component. Continue Reading…

The Lament of a Flex Developer

or “Why Apple broke my heart and Adobe is holding the pieces”

by our very own Ryan Green

April 8, 2010 was the day the first salvo was fired, all out war declared, and the following day an Adobe employee named Lee Brimelow had his emotions get the better of him. His blog post told Apple collectively to… well… ahem. Apply screws to themselves.

See, the following Monday, was a day that I, as a Flex / Flash developer, loyal Apple fan-boy and AppStore developer had eagerly anticipated with bated breath. Monday, the 12th, was the day when the world would open up. When those, like me, whose livelihood depends largely on the Adobe Flash Platform would finally be allowed into the mobile space; unencumbered; invigorated; and empowered.

Continue Reading…