Friday, October 31, 2003
Community MXtra for Macromedia Central 11:37 AM
I just completed my first Macromedia Central application: Community MXtra. At first, when I saw the Central SDK documentation — Developing Central Applications (268 pages) and Building Applications with Central Components (462 pages) — I was a little nervous. In fact, I flirted with abandoning the idea altogether. But after working through some of the sample applications, it started to make sense. Fortunately, I was able to reuse most of the code from CMXtra for Dreamweaver, so that drastically reduced my development time. After a week, I now find the Central workflow very intuitive. My only complaint is that the Agent.onNetworkChange event handler only detects the state of the Online/Offline button — not whether an actual Internet connection exists. This means that, in order for your application to function properly, you have to depend on Central users clicking that button every time they connect or disconnect.
On the plus side, Macromedia Central supports Flash Remoting. This is great news for people like me who are more comfortable using the Recordset objects returned by Flash Remoting than the new SOAPCall and WebService objects. Another benefit is that all the Central components are preinstalled with the application. (On Windows XP, you'll find SharedComponents.swf in the C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Macromedia\Central\macromedia.com\pub\central\shared folder.) This means that, if you confine yourself to using Central's components — MListBox, MDataGrid, MCalendar, etc. — the component assets aren't added to your final SWF. As you can imagine, this results in very small file sizes (the CMXtra app is only 15K).
CMXtra for Central is still in beta (the current version is .70). In the next week or two, I plan to add a Pod to the Console, and possibly a notice feature that alerts you whenever new content is available. So be sure to check for updates periodically by selecting CMXtra > Check for Update. And don't forget to try out the Favorites tab, which enables you to keep a persistent list of your favorite articles. Last time I checked, there were over 350 articles on CommunityMX.com. Happy Halloween!
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Friday, October 24, 2003
DRK 5 Updates Flash UI Components 5:21 PM
Today, Macromedia released DRK Service Pack 1 — I mean DRK 5 — to DevNet Essentials subscribers. Flash 2004 users will be happy to know that DevNet Resource Kit Volume 5 includes Flash 2004-compatible versions of UI Component Sets 3-5. As a DevNet Essentials subscriber, I find it more than a little annoying that DRK 5 counts as my fourth and final DRK, since so much of it consists of updates to previously released DRK material. The only wholly new Flash extension is the Tab Bar component, which may be the component featured on Greg Burch's weblog.
For Flash developers, the following components have been updated to Flash MX 2004:
UI Component Set 3
- Loading Box
- Advanced Message Box
- Prompt Box
- Tool Tip
- Tool Tip Lite
- Rich Text Editor
- Smart Combo Box
- Advanced Calendar Component
- Color Picker
- Simple Menu
- Tab Component
- Week View Calendar Component
- Slider Component
- Accordian Pane Component
- TextField Component
Dreamweaver
For Dreamweaver MX/2004 users, there are a number of new extensions, including — finally! — an MX-compatible version of Waldo Smeets' excellent Conditional Region extension. This one's a real time-saver and hasn't been available since UltraDev 4. Another UltraDev 4 extension that gets an MX makeover is Stefan Van As' first-rate JavaScript Panel. Along with Massimo Foti's original Snippets Panel, this was always one of my favorite Dreamweaver extensions. It's especially useful if you're an extension developer.
ColdFusion
The ColdFusion offerings in DRK 5 aren't quite as strong as previous volumes. In keeping with the "update" theme, there is a new version of Pollster. According to the documentation, Pollster 2.0 is easier to migrate to SQL Server, so you don't have to read my Community MX tutorial. Macromedia also updated the application so you can install it in any folder in your web root. Other ColdFusion entries include Blog Man (a blog manager built in ColdFusion), two ColdFusion components (Socket.cfc and cfid3.cfc), a custom tag (HTTP Agent), and a user-defined function (queryRandomize).
All in all, DRK 5 is not the juggernaut that DRK 4 was. Think of it as DevNet's Greatest Hits: remastered oldies with a couple of new tracks thrown in.
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Thursday, October 16, 2003
Community MXtra 11:30 AM
Been busy lately creating a free Dreamweaver extension called Community MXtra. CMXtra is a "Flash Floater" that displays the latest articles on CommunityMX.com, and enables you to search the site's content, or browse articles using a calendar (the new DateChooser component). The accompanying article also includes a few tidbits about using Flash Remoting with Flash MX 2004 and Joey Lott's new ActionScript 2.0 classes. Check it out.
In addition, you've probably noticed that Macromedia recently began the public beta of Central. A lot of people complained that Central only shipped with two sample applications — AccuWeather and Movie Finder — but MM just released the Public Developer Beta, which means you can download the SDK and start creating Central applications of your own. For late-breaking news about Central, and additional Central applications — such as Amazon Central and Dev Chat — visit the new community site, Central MX. To set up your Central development environment, read Mike Chambers' Quick Start Guide. According to Mike, Central doesn't support Flash Player 7 yet, but "we will be moving to Flash Player 7 after the initial release of Central." After examining the SDK, it appears that you can create Central applications using Flash MX and Flash MX 2004, as long as you publish to the Flash Player 6 format. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, expect to see magic from Central developers. Maybe a Central version of CMXtra?
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