HCI, Interaction Design, Journey, UX

How and why I chose HCI?

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How I chose HCI and what drew me here !!!

Let me brief a bit about my golden days in high school. For all my class tests, I used to try remembering textual content from my book to write it in an answer sheet. However, that was always hard for me to remember all information, though I spend a lot of time remembering and understanding the subject. This pushed me to think of some other alternatives to remember the concepts of the text book. And that’s when it strikes that I could draw relevant pictorial representation that are specific to some textual information. In other words, Text Content to Image or Diagram replacement. I immediately tried to implement this and for some reason that I did not know at that time, I was able to easily remember all that I wanted to remember from my books. I realized that I was actually conceptualizing textual information into its related representation, so called Infographics. I used almost all sorts of shapes and symbols and colors to shade out what I wanted to remember. It helped me to score good grades in school very easily. I shared this finding to some of my friends and it worked for few of them as well. I started following it all the time from that point in time.

From then on, I have always been a visualizer of many things around me, as to how things were and how things could be. I always tried to connect and visualize products that we use in our day-to-day lives. Somebody would have visualized how a Washing Machine, Fridge or a Television Set or a Cell Phone or a DVD Player could interact with Humans. So, every product I noticed had by all means been visualized, designed, and developed for interacting with human beings. From then on, Visualization and Human-Technology Interaction became my prime interest.

I realized that every product was carefully designed for use by a skilled visualizer. I was impressed with the ATM machines, car dashboards and almost every product in this world. Well, I was actually getting drawn to all the items that were visualized and designed. I’ve seen a number of Hollywood movie scenes that keep adding intuitive yet amazing interaction experiences with computing devices especially Avatar, Ironman, Star Wars and many more. This also induced some effect in me to get into the Interaction Design field. So I have decided to step into the field of Computer Science to enhance and prepare myself on technology interaction and I got successfully graduated from one of the premier universities in India. I did carefully chose to work in the field of User Interface Design and Development, to pursue my passion that I loved the most.

During my tenure as professional web designer and developer I upgraded my skills on user interface design and development. The skills that I honed during my work helped me develop real-time web applications in Adobe Flash Platform. One of applications I worked with the banking client team was awarded the Most Usable Rich Internet Applications of 2009 by InsideRIA.

Apart from work hours I chose to work on Augmented Reality (AR) projects using FLARToolkit (Flash Augmented Reality Toolkit). This toolkit gave me an initial step to enter into real-time User Interaction through Augmented Reality. And I then planned to use FLAR with Mobile Camera to create a Mobile AR applications. But after some point in time I came to know that the full fledged support of Flash Platform did not came into the Mobile Eco System. However, I got “Point and Find” AR application in my Nokia 5800 Xpress Music mobile device and used it to find some cool information about the places using a mobile camera. And another important place where I nurtured some knowledge on AR is LAYAR.com, which is an Augmented Reality Browser. LAYAR.com has played a catalyst role in my interaction design journey. I also did a couple of Proof of Concepts on Brain-wave Computing using Brain Computer Interface (BCI) from Neurosky called Brainwave headset. This is where I realized the real usage of Human Technology Interaction. Like, how you can take advantage of technologies and build something amazing for humans that simplifies the way of living.

Some of the people who have inspired me greatly include Matt Mullenweg, who has changed the entire blogging system through his WordPress Blogging Software during 2004-2005. He was one of my great inspirations to start my career in Interaction Design. Another person that I would admire the most is Pranav Mistry, the man behind Sixth Sense who is also my inspiration to get into the field of Human-computer Interaction. And I had built some small level Sixth Sense project using his Sixth Sense API way back in 2010 – 11.

Most of the things happening in my day-day to life is closely related with User Interaction and User Experience. So I have decided to contribute something valuable and needed by a majority of users. I strongly believed that this contribution cannot be easily done by undergrad education along with few years of work experience; it requires expertise in various things that studies the Psychology, Usability, User Experience, User Testing, User personas and many other things that are related to build a better product. This is where I end up deciding to go for Master’s education that hones my UX skills not only from design perspective, also an engineering aspect.

So here I’m at Rochester Institute of Technology and about to complete my Master’s in HCI in few months and looking forward to work again with the industry that is humanizing the products.

Adobe, CSS3, Flex, HTML5, Java Script, JS

Flex to HTML 5 – My Thoughts

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Hey folks… It took very long time for me to set up my blog site back on block (and my laziness too :D)… So here is my first post in 2013.

As most of you know me, I’ve been working as a Hard Core Flex Developer for the past few years, however the latest buzz around the block is HTML 5 and it is getting momentum nowadays, so thought of post something useful to the people like me who want a smooth transition from Closed Web (Flex) to Open Web (HTML5). This has given me a great chance to explore the wide variety of open web technologies and frameworks including the some which I had experience on.

When we talk about Flex to HTML 5 application migration or portability, the first thing comes to most of the developer’s mind is “INSTANT CONVERSION TOOL”, meaning MXML to HTML and Action Script to Java Script and make them work as it is across the browsers, sounds simple, isn’t it ??? But the answer is difficult. The output may not give the complete set of features from the actual Flex Application or may not convert based on the complexity of the application, but some extent the conversion could happen a bit (say 1%). So what about Flex / Flash developers who have been working so long and look for the opportunity to move to a platform where he / she can survive for the future? There is been a number of questions floating around the Flash Platform community over the last 15 months on transition, supports and features and so on and on… During the early stage of the movement the community has come up with many conversion tools and frameworks, to name some – SWIFFY, Wallaby, FalconJS, Jangaroo…

            However, talking from enterprise application perspective the code should adhere to many things mainly Standards, Portability, Feature Persistence and Ease of Use Development, but those conversion tools have failed to achieve these essential things. So when it comes to migration preserving every aspect of the existing application we need a powerful framework to complete the migration without any hurdles. At the same time, the framework should allow the developer to use their existing skills – meaning very small learning curve.

Flex_to_HTML5

So far, we talked about the facts behind the migration / conversion. Based on my experience, reading articles, and analysis I have come up with some set of findings

Discover The Features

  • Connectivity needs

HTML 5 has great advantage in working offline because of the introduction of Offline Data Storage and Local Storage features. Look for the existing connectivity based features in Flex Application and go for it.

  • Code

Code wise, moving from Flex to HTML5 takes some significant analysis, which includes the complexity of UI components, models, delegates, services, and data workflow across the application.

  • Usage of Assets (images, sounds, videos, PDFs…)

Again, it depends on the application’s new design whether we can go with existing set of assets or not. Generally, people prefer new design. So, obviously one cannot use all the assets from the existing application. In other case, if the same design is going for migration, one can use existing set of assets. However, most of the Flex applications have huge number of assets in .SWF format (to reduce the size and increase the quality), in this case new assets creation will be the only choice. Here, if the source (.fla) file is in place it will reduce some significant amount of time in re-creating all the assets from scratch.

  • Architectural dependencies

If the Flex application is developed using some MVC frameworks like Parsley, SWIZ, Mate or Cairngorm, then the amount of effort in analyzing and moving the code would take more time. We have many options to migrate such MVCs. (some of them are listed below). One important point to note, it requires significant knowledge of the existing application architecture (say an Architect or Tech Lead).

Availability
 Available JS frameworks which supports the results of discovery,

CreateJS – A suite of Javascript libraries & tools for building rich, interactive experiences with HTML5. Has excellent set of JS Libraries to manage assets, so when it comes to managing assets Create JS would be the better option for it. It has Sound JS for Audio files, Preload JS for loading assets with various conditions, Easel JS for manipulating Canvas objects including SVG, Tween JS for handling animations and ZoE – A stand alone tool for exporting SWF animations as EaselJS sprite sheets that can be used in Canvas and CSS. Since it is now a part of Adobe Edge Tools and Services, it will definitely grow faster and would be the better option for various web applications.

Sencha (Ext JS) — Ext JS is a cross-browser JavaScript library which enables developers to use MVC architecture when building their app while also providing some very helpful features and widgets that can accelerate development timelines.

    • Ext JS enables apps to leverage features like infinite scrolling and widgets for high performance grids, trees and menus. Flex developers can easily adopt the migration because of the usage of components and models as same as Action Script and MXML.
    • As of now, this is the best framework available for moving applications to HTML 5. It has numerous features comparatively same as Flex, and more over the problem with other frameworks are handling server side data especially binary data, but the upcoming version of ExtJS has powerful feature for transferring the same binary (AMF) data between client and server.So the amount of effort in migrating the code when it comes to client-server communication will reduce significantly. Due to this feature, it would be the best ever option for huge data transfer applications. No other framework has this feature as of now, however AMF.js has some set of features for binary data transfer (can use this for low budget application). After Flex, ExtJS community is growing. And moreover it has industry leading support.
    • The best testing suite JASMINE JS is part of this framework, makes the testing of application is easier than ever. Alternatively, we also have QUnit, JSUnit… for testing.
    • It has in-built Build JS files, which is highly essential for enterprise application. Since I everyday interact with Build Engineers here, I know the importance of Build Scripts. Like Ant and MAVEN build frameworks, it also has super cool features.

Sencha Touch — Sencha Touch, the mobile counterpart to Ext JS, is a web application framework intended for developing applications that look and feel like native applications on supported mobile devices. Its approach differs significantly from jQTouch and jQuery Mobile: instead of enhancing pre-existing HTML, it generates its own DOM, based on objects created in JavaScript. It provides an extensive library of custom user interface components, optimized for touch input; transition effects; touch and gesture events; application data interchange (AJAX, JSONP, YQL); data bindings; and offline storage. Like jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch integrates well with PhoneGap.

jQuery UI — jQuery UI builds on jQuery to provide user interface behaviors (including drag and drop, resizing, selection and sorting); animations and transitions; advanced effects; and high-level, themeable user interface controls (e.g.: accordion, auto-complete, date picker, tabs, etc.).

Bootstrap UI – One of the powerful UI frameworks for building excellent User Interfaces with super simple customizations. This would be the better option for application which is mainly targeting User Interfaces.

Kendo UI – Kendo UI is JQuery-based framework for rich UI, builds HTML5 apps that look native on any device, and builds desktop and mobile applications for any browser. Like Sencha ExtJS, this framework has numerous UI components for different set of devices. And moreover this framework is part of TELERIK (one of the leading UI components kit in the market).

jQuery Mobile — jQuery Mobile is a cross-platform, cross-device, cross-browser user interface framework with strong industry backing from tech titans such as Adobe, Mozilla, Nokia, and BlackBerry. Through progressive enhancement (using CSS3 and JavaScript) it enhances basic HTML content and form elements into a unified set of touch-optimized, accessible, platform agnostic, theme-able controls. Built on jQuery and jQuery UI, it adds Ajax-based page loading and navigation; touch and gestures events; mouse vs. touch event abstraction via virtual mouse events; and integrates well with PhoneGap. It supports all major desktop browsers and mobile browsers alike.

jQTouch — jQTouch is a jQuery plugin from Sencha Labs targeting mobile web development and offering native animations, navigation and history management, and user interface themes for mobile WebKit browsers such as the iPhone, Nexus One, and Palm Pre. While jQTouch is well documented and easy to use, development has all but stopped and initial sample applications show that it is a bit buggy and even the sample applications has some performance issues.

jQuery — Possibly the most popular JavaScript library in use today, jQuery provides concise, elegant syntax for DOM element querying, traversal and modification; CSS manipulation; event handling; effects and animations; and Ajax. It also serves as an extensible host for a vast and growing array of third-party plugins. In addition to this, jQuery 2 would be our best option for HTML5 applications.

KnockoutJS — Knockout simplifies the development of complex web application user interfaces by applying the Model-View-View Model pattern. It offers declarative bindings in the DOM; automatic wiring of these bindings to their backing view models; automatic UI refresh based on observable and dependent observable model properties; easy extensibility through custom bindings; and the ability to generate sophisticated nested UIs from templates dynamically based on model data. Knockout integrates with many popular web frameworks, supports all mainstream browsers, and allows developers to use their choice of template engines.

Backbone.js — Backbone.js is a prescriptive web application framework that defines a structure consisting of JavaScript-based models, collections, and views. It offers models with key-value binding and custom events; collections with a rich API of enumerable functions and change notifications; views with declarative event handling; history management via a client-side URL router built on the HTML5 History API; and an implicit API for client-server data interchange via RESTful JSON. It has minimal dependencies and optionally integrates with jQuery or Zepto. It has been used to power the new LinkedIn Mobile app, and an increasing number of web applications such as MetaLab’s Flow, FourSquare, Groupon Now!, Basecamp Mobile, the new Pandora website, TileMill, and more.

Angular JS — Angular is a web application framework similar to KnockoutJS. It provides declarative UI templates; two-way data binding; implements the MVC pattern; integrates with RESTful JSON services; and offers dependency injection. Developed by Google, its ambitious goal is to re-imagine HTML markup as if it had been originally designed with dynamic applications in mind. Like KnockoutJS (and unlike Sencha Touch), it does not provide a library of user interface controls, but instead focuses on generating and updating HTML from templates driven by application data. Google’s favorite framework now.

Google Web Toolkit – GWT is a web development toolkit for developing and debugging complex web applications in Java and cross-compiling that code to JavaScript for deployment. Its stated goal is “…to enable productive development of high-performance web applications without the developer having to be an expert in browser quirks, XMLHttpRequest, and JavaScript.” Google has used GWT internally to develop their own products, including Google Wave and the new AdWords. GWT is particularly well suited for use with Google App Engine, Google’s cloud computing platform as a service (PaaS) for hosting web applications.

Yepnope JS – Yepnope is an asynchronous conditional resource loader that is super-fast, and allows you to load only the scripts that your users need. For critical asset management purpose this would be the ideal option.

JSCoverage – JSCoverage is a tool that measures code coverage for JavaScript programs. Code coverage statistics show which lines of a program have been executed (and which have been missed). This information is useful for constructing comprehensive test suites (hence, it is often called test coverage). This would be useful for application which follows strict coding standards and conventions. Alternatively, we also have JSLint for code coverage.

In Shortlist

  • Sencha Ext JS
  • Adobe Edge & CreateJS
  • jQuery
  • Knockout and Angular JS
  • Backbone JS
  • GWT
  • KendoUI
  • Bootstrap UI
  • Yepnope JS and more …

So in conclusion, we have many options to go with for migration. However, choosing frameworks and technologies is purely based on the set of features, the implementation of client-server communication available in the existing application and last but not least developer’s learning curve and their skills (costly as it goes).

Disclaimer: The views / thoughts expressed on this blog are entirely mine.

Flash, Flex, RIA

My first foot-print in Augmented Reality (FLAR Toolkit experiment)

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As discussed in my earlier post Augmented Reality from Adobe Flash Platform, I’ve successfully created my first Augmented Reality application with Carousel Effect using Flash 3D framework.

Here is an image of AR application,

If you closely observe the image, you can see the Carousel effect with my image playing on top of the paper( the illusion, you can see this in a Web Camera).

The Application will read the pattern in a paper and draw the Carousel Effect in the target. If you see at the left hand side of Carousel, there is a Red Color arrow button which is used to operate the Carousel.. If you click that Red Color arrow Button it will rotate the images in Clock Wise…

Little confused… ???? …  ah ah…  😉  Application  details and work flow in my next post … Stay tuned for more cool info…  😉

Adobe, AIR, Events, Flash, Flex

Announcing AFPS 2010: Ready for the awesomeness from Adobe

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                          Before announcing this year’s most awaited Adobe Flash Platform Summit 2010 let me share some wonderful moments from Adobe Developer Summit 2009, Bangalore, it happened exactly on the same month one year before.  🙂

                      “Adobe DEV Summit 2009, Bangalore – behind the theme Awesomeness Defined – as this line says there were plenty of awesome, cool, and more useful sessions organized by Flash Platform team from Adobe.”

What an amazing crowd, there were nearly 1400+ Flex /Flash Developers had attended the Summit. There were two tracks – Track1 and Track2. The sessions under Track1 are mainly for Flex Developers who is already having some experience. Track 2 is for designers / developers who are ready dive into Flash Platform. Since I have had little bit experience, I joined in Track1.
Audience @ Developer Summit 2009

Some of my favourite Platform Evangelists – Serge Jespers and Ben Forta came there to give Key Note and Introductory speech of Flash Platform Technologies.

Ben and Serge during the Key Note Presentation.

The features were shown on Flash Platform Technologies was awesome; if you would have there you could really taste the awesomeness.

Here is the list of things were demonstrated and presented

*  Flash Platform Technologies and its road-map.

*  Adobe Flex 4 SDK.

*  Flash Catalyst (My favorite ;)))

*  Flash Builder (Next version of Flex Builder) as we are playing today.

*  LCDS / BlazeDS ES for J2EE Integration.

*  Integration of Flex App with ColdFusion / PHP.

*  Features of Cold Fusion 9.

*  Mobile Applications Development using Flash Lite.

                      This year after the tremendous effort of Adobe Flash Player team we are able to run Flash Player in mobile devices. Really encouraging the Flash Developers to do more. Kudos team ! ! !  😉    The journey of Flash Player (10.1) on mobile devices started from Android based phones, especially Google’s Nexus One. Let’s wait and see for some more cool demos on Mobile App Development – Time to see the mantra – Develop once, run across the devices is not so longer we are almost near to that.  🙂

As I mentioned in the list here we go for the brief details about the sessions,

Flash Platform Technologies Introduction by

Ben Forta, Director Flash Platform Evangelism and Serge Jespers, Platform Evangelist.

                      Serge has opened the Developer Summit with the introductory speech about Flash Platform; moving further Ben started his speech from Features and Availability of Flash Platform Technologies across multiple devices. Everyone in the Summit were thrilled and got freeze for few minutes, not because of the climate, because of the awesomeness, features and future of Flash Platform.

                      Ben speech mostly about the business and marketing aspects of Adobe Flash Platform, since he is from Director of Evangelism team especially from Cold Fusion. Serge speech was related to the Key Features of Flash Platform Technologies which includes Flex, Flash Player and AIR.  During this fun filled and thrilled session, Serge took a challenge to himself. Here are the words of Serge, “I’m going to build the Flex Application starting from the Design to Back End Connectivity within 15 minutes”, everyone in the Summit was murmured with themselves about this hard challenge 🙂 Hope the developers would know that. 😉 Finally he had finished the Challenge successfully within the fixed span of time, which shows the POWER of Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder. If you won’t agree, just give a try.. 😛  During this challenge everyone was keen to watch his activities, it was very interesting and funny ;). After this interesting Challenge, the video was shown from Adobe Flash Platform Team – it’s all about the Features of Flex and AIR Applications from Advertising Industries to Enterprise Industries.

 

Adobe Flex 4 SDK Features a Walk-through by

Anirudh Sasikumar, Technical Evangelist

He was talked about the following main things in Flex 4 SDK over Flex 3 SDK,

* Spark Architecture –  it has advanced UI Components, this is fully based on the skin level design / development. They have introduced lots of pre-defined skinnable components. It is the cool and interesting feature to work with.

*  MXML 2009 – it has the new tags and namespaces in Flex 4; more tags available for Playing with Effects and Animations even with skins. Separate namespace for Spark Architecture like <s:ComponentName/>, we can also use the existing MX components along with Spark Comps.

* Flex 4 Effects – This is about the new ways and tags available for doing and playing Effects and Animation (I like this very much, since it has plenty of new things to play) . It has rotation, 3D and more..

* Layout Containers – Introduction of new Layout Components namely Group, VGroup, HGroup, and many more..

* FXG – Flex Graphics Components. This is very cool, nice of defining and declaring the graphical elements.

* Finally Advanced CSS having more style selectors – we can use descendant and ID selectors, and multiple style name in the styleName attribute.

Give a try guys.

In general Flex 4 SDK mainly focused to avoid Designer – Developer Gap.

 

Adobe Flash Catalyst Features and Demo by

Harish Sivaramkrishnan, Platform Evangelist

WOW.. He is one of my favourite and frequent meets-up platform evangelists, because most of the times he used to roam around the country. His demo was started from Adobe Photoshop-to-Flash Builder to build an end-end application. He has developed the mini Twitter application in Flex 4 using Photoshop (PS), FlashCatalyst(FC) and FlashBuilder(FB).  He has given a quick and simple four steps for this Application Development.

Here we go,

1.    UI Creation in Photoshop / Illustrator / Fireworks

2.    PSD / AI / FW files to Flash Catalyst ( FC )

3.    Conversion of UI parts to Flex UI Components. (PSD Layers to Flex components)

4.    Flash Catalyst to Flash Builder (FXP to Flex)

FXP is the file format of Flash Catalyst design to Flash Builder. We can also test and run the design directly from Flash Catalyst by pressing Ctrl + Enter. As we do in Flash Professional 😉

About the developed mini-Twitter Application,

Components:

  • One Text Input
  • One Data List (New list on Flex 4 SDK).

ItemRenderer :  Image (Profile Image), Label( Tweets) and one more label for Profile Name. This ItemRenderer was used in the DataList to show the list of Tweets and Profile Image of the Particular person (typed from the TextInput) – hope you knew this.

He has completely designed this Renderer in Flash Catalyst (you can also check with duplicate data on-the fly) and switched to Flash Builder by importing the FXP file. While importing the FXP file to Flash Builder, it will create the Complete Package Structure (model/view/components) and main.mxml file for you. So there is no need to create the separate package by own, WOW.. what a feature it is ! ! Really it will help you in terms of productivity. Then he added the Twitter API inside this package and connected with real time Twitter site. Application was finished within 30 minutes. Everyone gave their applause with smile.

In Flash Catalyst we can do the following main things,

*     Build and design the New Components apart from the imported UI Layers.

*     Common states Effects and Transitions.

*     ItemRenderers creation and testing with duplicate data.

*     Apply the event handlers for the UI Components.

*     SWF / AIR file export options.

*     Code and Design view checking.

 

Flash Builder 4 – Deep dive into the Data Centric Development by

Mayank Kumar, Computer Scientist.

              He talked about the RPC Services in detailed. He has demonstrated the simple employee application, with the integration of MySQL database using Apache server. It shows the Powerful feature (RPC Service Panel) of Flash Builder 4.

             In this Employee application, he has written the code to fetch the Employee details from the MySQL database using simple configuration in the Flash Builder. Done within 5 mins of time, if you did the server side code already. It is the great and much need feature of Flash Builder. It will really help and save our developer time to connect with the server-side.  He also added two lines of code to create the complete employee form (details of the particular employee).

             Abouth the application :  It has data fields namely First Name and Last Name in the DataGrid, while selecting any item in the Grid, the respective Employee details will be fetched and displayed in the Form on the fly.  We need not write any code for this form, using simple wizard with few steps we can easilt create. 😉 can’t you do on the fly ??   This wizard has full set of Configuration of Services.

            The interesting thing here is Automatic Paging; it saves more space in the Browser. Next interesting thing is, if any item  fetched from the DB, it is stored internally, if the same item needed in future, we need not make a new service call to get that item.  It will get the data from the internal storage and display it on-time. WOW.. superb feature.. It’s the power of DataCentricDevelopent (DCD) framework in Flash Builder. If you start using that you would really rejoice the freedom and awesomness of Flash Builder.

In Flash Builder we have the following cool features,

* Services Panel like Properties and Navigator Panel, which will help us to integrate with backend connectivity. The back end connectivity might be J2EE , PHP , .Net , Ruby, WSDL and ColdFusion services. You can also montior the data-transfer and performance.

* Pre-defined Themes availability.

* ActionScript Doc generation. Most awaited feature. 😉

* Auto Event handlers and getter/setters generation.

* Profiler for performance and memory leakage analysis.

* Unit testing facilities.

* Report Generation.

* Live Recording of the application.

* DataCentricDevelopment (DCD) framework.

* Custom File Templates (we can customize the MXML file structure for maintaining uniformity across all the developers). My favorite one  🙂

* SVG Support.

* Conditional break pointers.

              and more..

 

LCDS / BlazeDS ES for J2EE Integration by

Sujit Reddy G, Technical Evangelist.

            He has started the discussion from comparison of LCDS (Live Cycle Data Services) and Blaze DS.  Both are used for J2EE integration. BlazeDS is an OpenSource Data Management service from Adobe having optimal features compared to LCDS ES. Live Cycle Data Services – Enterprise Services (LCDS ES) 3 Beta having powerful features for the J2EE Integration. It can support AMF/AMFX encoding as well as SOAP related web services. It has improved RTMP / RTFMP Streaming facility.

          They also had introduced new DataModel – FIBER for flexible Data Objects management between Flex and J2EE.  This Data model provides the Entities, Services and Annotations details of the Class and Data Objects present in the server. Easy way for accessing the data model…  The File format of this DataModel is .FML ( Fiber / Flex Markup Language).   Due to short span of time, he was unable to demonstrate the complete Integration of Flex with LCDS 3. 🙁

It was fully about J2EE technology integration with the Flex front-end. 🙂

 

Mobile Applications Development using Flash Lite by

Raghuram CG, Senior Program Manager.

Theme of this session was  Create -> Package – > Distribute -> Discover.

How effective and easy it is !!!

            This session was started with N95 application demonstration; in the pipeline they have shown Flash Lite 3.1 in mobiles. Finally he has deployed some Flash Lite Applications in mobile using Adobe Mobile Packager. The output format of this Adobe Mobile Packager is .CAB file, which is capable to install the application in most of the mobile devices.

Finally the Adobe Team shown some interesting features on Flash Player and its availability across the world. Everyone in the Summit were excited about this real-tim technology. Really impressed ! ! !

Video about Flash Platform

                According to the survey, there are millions of Flash Player download happening everyday, Adobe Team said. Adobe AIR is about 27+++  millions downloads on the desktop. This shows the Power of  our favourite Flash Platform. 😉

                   Hey guys this year we have Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2 as we requested in last year summit, Adobe brought this two great run-times on time. Thanks a lot team 😉 …We also have this two runtimes in Android mobile devices !!! awaiting to see more info on these two incredible runtimes. 🙂

Within a Single day and single track I got plenty of things on Adobe Flash Platform Technologies, but this year we have two cool days. Oh my god ! ! ! It is going to be two awesome days in all the flash platform developers journey..

Coming to Adobe Flash Platform Summit, 2010 the theme behind this summit is Functional Intent Meets Pixel Perfection. Going to hack thousands of developers-designers mind as already hacked last year. 🙂
Mantras @ AFPS 2010
Design


Develop

Plug-in to the Web


AFPS, 2010 will feature everything from innovations in Flash and Flex to bringing great experiences to mobile phones and devices, to the future of the Flash platform. You have the opportunity to learn new technologies that enable integrated design and develop workflows, and innovative ways to monetize content. You will go back to your home with the skills, insight, and contacts to take advantage of these opportunities as they transform our industry.

              Adobe community members and Adobe teams from across the sub-continent, a diverse set of topics ranging from the more technical Flash, Flex, AIR and processing to pure design, mobile, and the coolest and best from the industry going to offer two awesome days for us. 🙂

An overview of AFPS 2010,

* Two full days of conference and networking with leading designers and developers
* Over 40 sessions and workshops presented by industry leaders and Adobe experts
* Over 2000 attendees expected from around the sub-continent
* Over 70 internationally renowned design and technology presenters
* All tickets includes Lunch, Coffee, an event grab bag and a special Adobe giveaway

          Are you going to miss this great show ???? Ah ah.. If your answer is yes, you’re really going to miss the two awesome days of your life.

If NO, come and join with me.. 🙂  Let’s enjoy the awesomeness …. 😉

How can you join in this great show ??

Register now >> AFPS 2010 web site:  http://www.developermarch.com/adobesummit/registration.html

If you register, you will get the following benefits from AFPS 2010 along with the awesome technology experience.

Benefits and features

 

You also get the latest updates on AFPS 2010 through Twitter,

Follow now >> AFPS twitter: http://twitter.com/adobesummit

For more details on AFPS 2010 : http://bit.ly/adobesummit

You can also post the banners in you Blog or Web site showing that you’re one among awesome Flash Platform community and part of esteemed AFPS 2010. Get the banners and logos >>

Still 54 days guys .. Register now and get early discount…  Bye bye ! ! ! See you there @ NIMHANS Convention Center, on Aug 25-26.

Adobe, AIR, Flash, RIA

Amazing Technology – ‘Augmented Reality’ from Adobe Flash Platform

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“Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time.” — Wikipedia

In other words, “Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer science that involves combining the physical world and an interactive, three-dimensional virtual world.”

My simple and tiny observation of AR, “Using a web camera, the Adobe Flash player, and open-source tools, it is possible to generate animated 3D objects in real-time. This Flash Augmented Reality utilizes the Papervision3D project and the FLAR Toolkit.” These are two tools for generating 3D objects that are free. Hope this will help you to identify the play behind Flash AR.

What is FLARToolKit?

FLash Augmented Reality Toolkit. It is a Flash Actionscript port of ARToolKit, a software library for building Augmented Reality applications. The FLARToolKit will bring all of this to your webbrowser when you have a webcam and a latest Flash Player.

This is one of the most exciting and great Flash Stuffs I’ve ever seen  as of now. Saqoosha, a Japanese Flash developer has developed this FLARToolkit with plenty of cool features. You will need a the Flash Player 9, a webcam and you’ll need to print out this marker. This is Flash!  My Favourite Flash’s best one . 😉

Augmented Reality @Adobe MAX 2009,

This is the sample widget of Adobe MAX 2009 AR Show.

SmartGrid Augmented Reality by GE

General Electric corporation showcased Augmented Reality in a recent marketing campaign for its Smart Grid, renewable energy program. http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality

Best Sources which I’ve found for you to get the complete idea of Augmented Reality in FlashPlatform,

Step by Step procedure to create AR using Flash CS4 Professional by  Samuel Ashe (Flash Designer/Develoepr)

FLARToolkit Details | Start-up guide from Saqoosha (original developer)

Download the sample and Source of FLARToolkit

Some interesting Getting  started article (Superb tutorial to implement AR in real-time)

Augmented Reality @ MAX 2009 – Perfect demonstration of AR

Real time play by FLARToolkit

Grid Card | SmartGrid

Videos : Interactive 3D Boating | Topps 3D (good meat for eyes 😉 )

Do share your thoughts on this real-time Technology.

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