O’Reilly: Inside RIA

Amazon's latest release in its arsenal of web services is SimpleDB (still in private beta). This was an obvious advance for Amazon who already has a powerhouse group of web services including Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3), and the Simple Queue Service (SQS). The previous services allowed a developer to store static assets, deploy virtual servers, and create a line of communications between those servers. However, there was no easy way to replicate dynamic data between the virtual servers. SimpleDB fills this void.

Just about every application at some time or another needs to launch a new window... Its easy enough to open a new window. In flex, you can just use the navigateToURL window, but that has limitations.

The "Learning Flex From Scratch" series written by Adam Flater and Scott Sheridan, aims to help not only a Flex novice, but also a programming novice jump into the world of creating Rich Internet Applications using Flex. The installments of the series will cover everything from installing the Flex Builder I.D.E., to some background information on object-oriented programming. You'll even get to learn about advanced topics like source control and design patterns (a la Cairngorm) from the perspective of a beginner.

Finally! Yahoo maps has released a full-AS3 version of their map API. This version is much faster, and easier to use than the previous versions, which relied on an AS2 wrapper, and communicated through LocalConnection. It integrates seamlessly with your AS3 or Flex applications. Great work Yahoo!

This screencast will demonstrate how to use the Clipboard Explorer AIR application. This application can be used to experiment with Adobe AIR's clipboard support. As with all of the samples I will post here - 'View Source' is enabled and can be used by simply right clicking on the chrome of the application and selecting 'View Source'.

In the last article, I introduced the key aspects of the clipboard support within Adobe AIR. There are a few additonal functions of the Clipboard in AIR of which you can take advantage. In this article we will example deferred rendering, transfer modes, and custom clipboard data types. These additional techniques can expand your knowledge of working with the clipboard in your AIR application as well as utilizing clipboard data between multiple applications.

As a developer, I've known for some time now that my design skills are not exactly "professional level". Let me be honest - I typically walk past my wife in the morning to ensure I dressed in something that isn't too horrible. But while I may not be able to design my way out of a paper bag - I think I recognize good design. A perfect example of this came up this week. My city (Lafayette, LA), will soon be offering fiber to the home, much sooner than our local cable and phone company. (And trust me, they put up quite a fight, but that's another story.) They recently rolled out a Flash based map to show what areas would first be getting fiber service. You can see the map here.

Last week I was fortunate enough to have been given a demo and walkthrough of a new Discovery Channel Rich Internet Application built by EffectiveUI. The demo was given by Randy Reiland, (senior vice president, Digital Media, Discovery Communications), Anthony Franco (president, EffectiveUI), and RJ Owen (senior designer, EffectiveUI).

In the last installment of our Development Series Anatomy of an Enterprise Flex RIA, we looked at how we organized our project and described it with Maven. Now we'll continue looking at the project's structure, with an in-depth look at the three child projects for the purpose of learning more about project dependencies. Check it out!

360Flex is right around the corner and a few of us will be presenting on Adobe AIR. We will also have some new InsideRIA stickers that we will be handing out. Want to see the sticker? Click into this post and see it is all its glory.