Software, Fitness, and Gaming – Jesse Warden

Category: Flash

  • Cairngorm’s ViewLocator & ViewHelpers Explained for Flash Developers

    Cairngorm is an application framework written by Iteration::Two for Macromedia Flex.

    About the same time I started learning Flex, I started getting into learning ARP, a light-weight framework originally created for Flash. ARP has a lot in common Cairngorm. There was some contention between Aral, ARP’s creator, and Steven one of Cairngorm’s contributors on a few points.

    One of which was ViewLocators/ViewHelpers. I tried for ages to get a frikin simple, 1 sentence description on what the hell they did. I had the same problem with Business Delegate. I fixed that by using a business delegate in a project, and seeing how they could help.

    Aral had some notes in the ARP documentation about them ViewLocator/ViewHelpers, but they didn’t really give a lot of detail to why.

    Steven responded to me personally, twice, as well as a couple times on public email lists and my blog; very long, and detailed responses.

    I still didn’t get it.

    Aral and Steven got into it on Flexcoders at one point, and Aral had a well formed counter-point.

    I still didn’t get it.

    I even asked my boss, Jeremy Bruck, a smart CTO. He gave me a 2 sentence answer, with an anology.

    Still didn’t get it.

    I downloaded the framework and read the docs, but really saw no point.

    SO, I’m in the company office today because I needed to have some meetings with the boss and co-workers on a project I’m working on as well as a have one of their admins set my computer up with ColdFusion & friends. One of their developers, Dave Buhler, is using Cairngorm now in one of their projects.

    I assualted him with questions, and he gives me a 1 sentence reply. I warp his words into a counter-quote, and he confirmed what I said as correct. HOLY SHIT, I GOT IT!

    “A ViewHelper is a class that calls methods on whatever View it’s associated with. ViewLocator is a Singleton that stores all of your ViewHelpers by name, like ‘MyLoginFormViewHelper’”.

    God, I should write a book; “Cairngorm for Flash Developers.” Suddenly it makes soo much sense as to why you would actually do that on a project that had a few team members with A LOT of views.

    Steven, why in the hell didn’t you say that in the first place?

    The jury is still out on how I feel about them, though. I’ve never had problems finding my views, nor calling methods on them; but that’s because it’s usually me, or me and 2 dudes that work with me, keeping in constant communication. I can see how if I had a lot of developers working on the same project where I was not in constant contact with them, and where there were a plethora of views where ViewHelpers and a ViewLocator would help.

    I’ll battle test her in the next few weeks to see if I dig it or not.

  • Test Flash Remoting Services w/ ARP

    If you are developing service calls, but the back-end (Java, .NET, ColdFusion, etc.) isn’t done yet, you can still be productive by setting up test services. Utilizing what the ServiceLocator in ARP does best, you can point to your test service class instead of the real service, which would be a server gateway.

    Your test service is merely an ActionScript class that has all of the methods that your back-end service would have. So, if you plan on calling “createItem” and passing a string as the only parameter to some Java method on the backend, you merely mirror that in ActionScript.

    You do this for all of your methods. That way, you can continue writing your Commands and Business Delegate server calls as normal with plans to use them as is. When the back-end is ready, you change 2 lines of code in your ServiceLocator from this:

    var CreateItemsService = new TestService("", null, "CreateItemsService", null, null);
addService("CreateItemsService", CreateItemsService);

    to this:

    var CreateItemsService = new Service("http://server.com/gateway", null, "CreateItemsService", null, null);
addService("CreateItemsService", CreateItemsService);

    Notice the only thing that changes is you instantiate a real Flash Remoting Service class (Flex RemoteObject’ish), and put in a real gateway URL.

    That’s it!

    Here’s an example of the TestService.as file. This class extends the mx.remoting.Service class so it operates like a real remoting class. It’ll create Operations, return PendingCalls to server method calls, etc. All you do is make an interval so the method call “waits” 2 seconds before responding so it “feels” like it’s taking some time to talk to the server, where in reality there is no server at all, just ActionScript acting like it.

    Bottom line, to avoid the waterfall effect where a client developer is waiting on a server-side developer before she/he can proceed, this allows you to continue coding without a server, and if the server gets fubarred during development, you can merely toggle this back on to continue testing.

    I reckon this would work in Cairngorm too if you chose to use straight ActionScript instead of RemoteObject tags.

    import mx.remoting.Service;
import mx.remoting.PendingCall;
import mx.services.Log;
import mx.remoting.Connection;
import mx.rpc.Responder;

class com.company.project.model.testing.TestService
{
        private var speed:Number = 2 * 1000; // milliseconds
        
        private var createItemID:Number;
        private var createItemPC:PendingCall;
        
        function TestService(gatewayURI:String, logger:Log, serviceName:String, conn:Connection, resp:Responder)
        {
                super.apply(this, arguments);
        }
        
        public function createItem(itemName:String):PendingCall
        {
                clearInterval(createItemID);
                createItemID = setInterval(this, "onCreatedItem", speed);
                createItemPC = new PendingCall(Service(this), "createItem");
                return createItemPC;
        }
        
        private function onCreatedItem():Void
        {
                clearInterval(createItemID);
                createItemID = null;
                delete createItemID;
                
                createItemPC.onResult(true);
                createItemPC = null;
                delete createItemPC;
        }
}

  • RealPlayer Sucks, Flash Video Rules- Co-starring Guy & JXL

    My long-running irritation against Real has inspired my homies across the planet in Melbourne, OZ… or, maybe not inspired, but rather provided a fitting target for Real’s arse in the face.

    Regardless, it has a happy ending; Guy and I pimp out to watching Jackie Chan use a ladder to beat people up streaming over the internet while Flash drops the hammer. Thanks for the grapes!

    Flash 8 Animations by Nectarine – Part 5 of 6: “Video”

    * Update: Holy cow, Guy and I screencapped the exact same section! Pimp co-ink-ee-dink!

  • Re-invent Yourself: Flash to Flex Developer

    Preface

    I missed David Samuel’s Re-invent Yourself Personal Retreat this weekend. Last week was stressful, and I got little sleep Thursday. When the alarm went off Saturday morning at 6:30am, rather than hit snooze, I just turned it off. In my fading moments of consciousness, my left and right brain had a friendly debate, neurons firing over postulates and hypothesis of the risk/reward ratio of getting up and going.

    I had decided 3 months ago I would go. I had decided Friday night I would go. Yet, I didn’t go. At 11:00am, when I finally awoke to a blonde licking my face and stepping on my neck, I was very disappointed in myself. I’ve been cursing myself since.

    When I look back on my life before I pass, I’ll have no regrets, but this will be one of my admittedly bad mistakes. I’ve seen David speak before, and he had 2 colleagues with him this time, so I’m sure it was off the hook and I could of gained a lot.

    Background

    Why so glum about a seminar I missed? Because I really could of used some insight on how to re-invent myself.

    11 months ago, I fell in love with Flex. Coupled with Flash, it makes for a great team to create great apps, web and fat client front-ends.

    After a few experiences in large Flash applications, I realized it was time to move on. I was hoping I could remain a Flash Developer, and support the Flex Developers like Nigel’s article describes, but it was not to be. The more responsibility that was bequeathed to me in terms of application architecture, as well as a growing amount of team members, the more I realized Flash isn’t cut out for large application development. Weekend contract jobs, 3 month web app stints, and components created for re-use? Flash owns.

    But when you start getting into 6 months, have significant amount of views, and large amounts of data that are kept with your apps state… there is no other alternative than to use Flex.

    Developer Attitude & Pashion

    I am not like a lot of my colleagues’ in the industry, however. A majority I would assert are definitely of the mindset that you utilize the appropriate technology for job. If an application requires AJAX, Flash, older browsers, MySQL, Oracle, .NET, ColdFusion… whatever combination of client, middle, and back-end tier technologies work best given the business requirements, technology constraints, and your current resources.

    I, on the other hand, am loyal to craft, not to company. An ex-marine (once a marine, always a marine) manager at a former job told me that. I always liked to ask him questions about management and other terms that had nothing to do with programming since he could explain it using terms and analogies I could understand. “Managing Einsteins” as he put it was challenging, referring to managing a plethora of engineers in our technology department. He used that phrase towards me, saying that because I am loyal to craft, and not to company, he as a manager needed to provide opportunities for me to excel and be challenged at my favored technology or risk losing me as a company asset. Bad ass concept!

    I find that extends, however, to my view on my career. I thrive in instability, work extremely well under pressure, and have a passion for what I do. So, if the appropriate technology to use on a project is AJAX… I simply wouldn’t do it. Hear me out. Am I qualified? No, I don’t do HTML + CSS + JavaScript for a living, so anyone who considered me a resource on that project has grossly misjudged my skill set. Can I learn to do it? Absolutely! It is very similar to what I do today; using an SGML markup to render form elements, connect the logic the forms use together via an ECMA script based language, and style them using CSS.

    Do I want to? Hell no. I’m not passionate about it, fail to see how I can excel at it since I hate it, view it as an inferior technology, and if Jesse Warden isn’t kicking ass and taking numbers, he’s finding a way to do so. And that way is finding an avenue where people can utilize my skill set for an appropriate job.

    What that boils down to is targeted employment opportunities. Meaning, my contracting and employment goals are focused on getting employment in a specific area of development, mainly Flex with a little Flash vs. just a steady job that pays. Many jobs, big and small, require developers to wear many hats. I believe any competent engineer can code .NET 1 week, and learn to code in PHP the next, and succeed at many projects in the long run.

    Do I want to? No, but will I? Well, in my experience, I’ve never had that happen. I’ve had to learn ASP because there were no programmers available, but I still used Flash for the front-end. I’ve had to learn enough about SQL Server to update database tables… but I still used Flash on the front-end. Currently, I’m learning about setting up and using ColdFusion… but I’m still using Flex on the front-end. The only thing I can conclude is that in my case, there is no question what Jesse Warden will utilize on the client-side, but on the middle-tier and back-ends, whatever is appropriate. It is already assumed that Jesse wouldn’t be here working on said project if it were not already previously established Flex was the appropriate client side technology.

    Hiring Craze

    So, with that being said & established things have been crazy this summer. Thanks to my large contractor list, I’ve managed to hopefully fulfill the daily job & contracting requests I get to potential clients & headhunters. There have been cases, however, where potential opportunities were actually in my best interest to see where they led. It doesn’t mean I’d actually take said positions, but hearing what people have to say is very telling of the industry, opens up new networking contacts, and at the very least hopefully allows me to find them a potential candidate I may know who’s appropriate for the opportunity.

    Usually February/March and October/November are “Hire a RIA Developer” months. Not sure what it is, but my guess is budgets are either approved by the beginning of the year, or there is enough left over towards 3rd quarter to hire more. Either way, I usually get inundated with contract positions and potential jobs for employers either seeking me, my skills from a website, or most often if I know anyone. My canned response is usually that I’m busy (which is true), and I then provide them with my list of contractors, with notes on who’d be most appropriate to contact.

    The ones that sound interesting to pursue, I’ll usually follow-up with I’m interested, but not available with the hopes that they’ll let me in what their company is doing; I’m always fascinated & interested in what companies are working on in the Flash & Flex sphere so take every opportunity to find out more about it.

    Three opportunities in the past 3 months have really hit home to me, 2 of which made it to employment descriptions and I had to decline because I already have a great gig going on, but again wanted to hear what they had to say.

    The first was a Flash opportunity working with a bunch of experienced and talented developers as well as some I could work with to train. I could make good money, work in a stable & growing company doing product based work (meaning re-use of code base without wildly different approaches to different projects), train fellow developers, and hopefully work towards management training. Problems? No room for Flex in the near future. I’ve had enough battling with Flash in my career to know that even when developing multimedia games, I’d prefer to utilize Flex. I couldn’t justify doing small time development; while extremely less stressful as well as leaving more room for getting myself mentored, something I’ve longed for from a couple past jobs, I know I have other areas where I should be to improve my career, case in point working on larger scope projects with more appropriate deadlines. Challenging my pragmatic assumptions is my current personal goal. Meaning, I know enough about OOP, encapsulation, and design patterns that they really falter under tight deadlines; I’ll use them until the boss starts giving me the stern gaze at which point they go out the window without much fan fair.

    Ok, cool, so at the time, I had 2 other real, Flex opportunities on the horizon. I’m ready to move to the my next level. Keyword, my, as I don’t think going from smaller time development to more Enterprise level development is the next level, because seeing Enterprise Developers put into a smaller shop is just as paradigm smashing, and fun to watch.

    I’ve had a series of emails that lead up to a 2 minute call this morning. Usually what happens is, if people press me to talk to them instead of sending them contact information of those of my fellow contracts, I give them my current contract rate and explain again how much I apologize, but I’m busy beyond belief, and am willing to take a few minutes to hear what they have to say, and recommend either a personal path or a technology path; they should look into hiring “X”, and/or using technology “X”, sometimes what they already have.

    The majority of the time, these extremely short phone calls are with recruiters, while I’m making lunch. I try to be as positive and helpful as possible, gleaning as much information as possible about the position(s), and recommend who they contact and why.

    When it’s an actual potential position, like today, I try to pry as to why they want X technology (Flash or Flex), how they found me, and why, all the while preparing in my head who I can recommend, and confirming they sound like they are on the right technological path.

    Tipping Point

    Today was the 2nd time I’ve seen a clear gap in Flash vs. Flex developer employment. This is big to me, because for the past 18 months, it’s been more about education. 9 times out of 10, they just had no clue about Flex, or had heard some information about it and Laszlo, but were investigating it at the same time as looking for potential candidates. At this point, I’ll proceed to explain the various options, and give my suggestions.

    I clearly explained I am not interested Flash development, I am 100%, gung ho for full-time Flex development, and recounted my past experiences up till now to give some context as to why. I heard him out, heard what he is looking for, and got a tiny bit of information on their existing products and plans.

    I’ve done this like 3 times this year, first 2 with recruiters, so it wasn’t anything new… hell, it’s getting routine. What was different about this call, however, was the clear cut & quick understanding that I wasn’t a fit for the position.

    People may think it’s obvious, but it’s amazing how easy this stuff is when you know what you want to do. Ask anyone what they want to do, and I bet you the majority have a guess, not a true, confirmed understanding. I do, so when people ask, it borders on yes or no.

    I guess what was scary is this was an additional incident in a growing series, and most importantly, it happened when I’m an already employed Flex contractor vs. a recently un-employed Flash contractor. It was confirmation I had crossed to the other side.

    Eerie.

    The only thing I didn’t like about the conversation was I gave the false impression that I use Flex for mundane, forms based development, creating SWF front-ends for CRUD (create, read, update, delete) back-ends, and how I no longer utilize my multimedia skill sets that flourished when using Flash. That isn’t really true, nor an accurate picture of what I do, but it certainly was illustrated in the gentleman’s response comment asking if I knew anyone who was good at doing creative, application development with Flash.

    Apparently, I failed at illustrating that Flex was more than capable of doing that was as well, even with Flash’ help via integrating the workflows. It was ok, though, because the current Flex 1.5 license doesn’t fit with their budget and team size. Regardless, Flex Builder 2 does (at least from initial reports), and I was frustrated at myself for not correctly articulating those points.

    I may give the impression I get these calls “all the time” and that’s not the case; it’s just the pure volume and frequency of emails & phone calls about asking for Flash & Flex talent, compounded by the re-invigoration in discussing Flex because of the Flex Builder 2 announcement at MAX is making me euphoric about the state of this industry.

    Conclusion

    Bottom line, I’m in the process of re-inventing myself as a Flex Developer, and it’s hard. I could really use some guidance and that’s why I was really upset about not attending last weekend’s Re-invent Yourself retreat. Although the work I do is more appropriate for Flex development, my years spent in Flash make it that much cooler, and I can see a lot of opportunities in mixing the two.

    Explaining that, formulating that into an actionable plan, and setting multiple personal goals at attaining & defining what a Flex Developer is, however, is proving extremely challenging.

    I know I want to continue doing what I’m doing currently, and that is doing Flex work for my current employer. At least I got a solid base to work from, and all your base are belong to us!