We have been discussing the need for an AIR specific version of the as3corelib library, which would contain useful APIs for working with Adobe AIR. However, instead of creating a new library, I have added an AIR package to as3corelib which will contain AIR specific APIs.
Right now, there is only one class added, a FileTarget for the Flex Log framework, but I expect we will be adding more over time.
If you have any suggestions, post them in the comments.
If you have been in the Flash community for a while, then you may remember a chat app that I worked on for Macromedia Central, named “Central Dev Chat”. This was a decent chat client, but the thing I liked about it the most, was that it provided an easy way for the community to hang out and chat about the Flash community and development.
Since then, I have tried a couple of solutions to bring a persistent chat back (including IRC) but haven’t found anything that is easy enough to use and administer. I spent the past week thinking about building a new chat system using AIR and Python, and then remembered that this problem has already been solved with with XMPP / Jabber.
As I mentioned earlier, I am starting to build an XMPP chat client for the XMPP / Jabber community server I set up today. I am using the XIFF ActionScript 3 library. While the library seems to be pretty solid, there is not a ton of documentation for it right now.
Here is a simple example that shows how to connect to an XMPP / Jabber server, join a room, and send a message to the room. The example assumes that you already have a username and password on the server (I haven’t figured out how to get it to connect anonymously yet):
I have posted a new build of Flump, which is an Adobe AIR based Flickr image downloader. There are AIR files for AIR 1.1 (Mac and Windows) and the Adobe AIR Linux Alpha.
The biggest change in this version is that the app now supports Flickr account authorization, and also enforces image license restrictions when not authenticated.
There are probably a few bugs in this release, so just post them here or on the Flump issue page.
I just checked in some updates to the ActionScript 3 Flickr library. The biggest change is that I checked in a Flex control that will provide a UI and handle all of the communication to authorize an application with Flickr.
There is no documentation on it, and as I have built it for projects I am using, there are probably some API gaps, but it seems to be pretty solid.
Here is a simple example of how to use it:
I just uploaded a build of Flump (Flickr image downloader) that works with the Linux alpha of Adobe AIR.
The issue was that the the Linux alpha is based on AIR 1.0, and I had packaged Flump as an AIR 1.1 app.
You can find more information, as well as download Flump (and its sourcecode) from the Flump project page.
I have just posted a video over at gotoandlearn.com that walks through how to get AIR applications running on Linux using the Adobe AIR for Linux Alpha.
View the video here.
The video covers:
Here are some of the links mentioned in the video:
I am planning on doing another video shortly, showing how to build, test and deploy AIR application on Linux, using both Flex, Flex Builder for Linux and HTML.
About a year ago, Lee Brimelow and I released a simple application named flump that would download all of the images from a flickr account. We made this so we could download all of the webcam images from the bus tour, and put together a time lapsed video (you can view some of that video here).
The original version worked on the beta 1 release of Adobe AIR, and did not work on the release version. I have just uploaded a new version which works on AIR 1.1 and adds a couple of new features and fixes some bugs.
What are your biggest issues, bugs and annoyances with Adobe AIR? I am specifically looking for input on both developers bugs, and end user bugs. I am not looking for input on features you would like added (Ill do that in another post).
We already have a pretty good idea of the main issues (based on the forums, bug reports, blogs, testing and twitter), but your comments here will be another useful data point.
Well, now that I have finally sent out all of the books from the Ajaxian post (I ended up sending out nearly 400), I now have 100 Adobe AS3 RIA Reference Guides to send out.
As you can see from the picture, I will be sending these out and only have 100. If you would like one, send me your mailing info (the info will only be used to send out the guides).
