Christoph Rooms

At Max Barcelona we will host a Livecycle ES Bootcamp session. In the bootcamp session a number of product specialist and Livecycle developers can share experiences, code samples, best practices, etc … So it’s a great session for every Livecycle developer to get to share and learn together with the community.

The way it’s setup for Barcelona is that a number of Adobe LS ES product specialist will spend the first 1.5  hour presenting a number of topics we’ll prepare. The audience can choose 3 sessions out of a list of 6 sessions … You’ll be able to choose from :

• Integrating Flex with Adobe Livecycle
• Using Events in LC ES Process management
• Customizing LC Workspace
• Building custom components
• End points in LC ES
• Prepopulate a form in LC ES Workspace

The last hour we’ll go into an interactive mode which means we’ll have 2 options …

• Have you guys present stuff you have build on top of LC ES.
• Answering specific “how-to” questions from the audience.

I’m sure this will not only be a great knowledge share opportunity, but also a great way to get to know some of the LC ES specialist in EMEA.

We are looking forward to meet you guys !

So if you are coming to Max Barcelona, prepare yourself for 3 days of great content and networking

Here is a list of some sessions i saw in Chicago and certainly can recommend :

• Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) Security by Lucas Adamski : Great technical session that explains what’s the security model for AIR, but also will give you an insight on the why.
• Flex Roadmap by Ely Greenfield : Get some insight in the Flex teams brains … It was interesting to see what might be the next steps …
• Fifty Reasons Why ActionScript 3 Rocks by Grant Skinner : Very technical but certainly not boring
• Optimizing Search for Rich Internet Applications by Craig Hordlow : A question that pops ups quite a lot … Craig tells you what approach to take, and also will give you background on why to take that approach.

A session which is new for Barcelona is the “Flex/AIR & Java integration for Parleys.com” case study by Stephan Janssen. This one is interesting if you are a Java developer. Stephan is the founder of the Javapolis conference.

I’ll be presenting these 2 sessions :

• Hands On: Building an Application Using LiveCycle ES
• Advanced LiveCycle Data Services for Flex Developers

And also will be hosting the “Livecycle Bootcamp”.

I’m certainly looking forward to meet you all ! Don’t hesitate to ping me or say hello

ps : only 18 registrations away from sold out … so you might need to hurry up if you haven’t subscribed yet

Finally get to write some stuff about the event … the last days really have been crazy ! It was intensive but rewarding Let me give you an overview of what i think are the highlights of Max 2007 Chicago.

• Thermo, the RIA designer tool certainly impressed everybody. Even though it’s created for designers, I think even developers will love Thermo. Check out the screenshots at Adobe Labs.
• Buzzword and Adobe Share : It’s great to see the Saas strategy is getting shape ! Share documents online using Adobe Share, and possible the entry point of all these great services that might come in the future. Buzzword, the text editor build on top of AIR, is probably a great example of such a service.
• CoCoMo : One of my personal favorites ! Flex components that allows you to integrate Acrobat Connect functionality into your own application is just way to cool ! This one is going to be a hit !
• Flex Builder goes Linux !
• LiveCycle developers @ Max : it was impressive to see the growth of LC ES developers attendees. The “Meet the LiveCycle team” session was “sold out” ;).
• The new Adobe Developer website has been announced … Check it out : http://developer.adobe.com
• Pacifica : High quality VOIP with the flash player ! Just imagine how this feature can improve the online shopping experience. Whenever you get stuck, you can talk to a representative just by clicking 1 button …

At the moment i’m in the airport of Chicago, going to Ottawa. Next week you’ll find me at Max Barcelona … Will post later this week with some of the must see sessions for Barcelona !

Last weeks has been pretty crazy … I was for example presenting at the Drupal conference in Barcelona. Drupal is a PHP content management framework, which is pretty powerful. Mike Potter and his team build the new Flex Showcase using Drupal as backend, with Flex on the client side. It’s great to see the PHP developers in the room getting the message and loving the integration !

Also on the Java side things are moving … We’ll be present at Javapolis again this year, as premium sponsor and  we’ll be bringing Bruce Eckel along to let him share his view on Java and Flex.

So I’ll be arriving in Chicago on Friday, it’s the first year Max is sold out so it will be pretty busy Come and say hi at the Livecycle bootcamp session on Wednesday, October 3 (9:00 am - 12:30 pm). Or drop me a message so we can meet to say hi !

As mentioned already in this blog, Adobe Max is coming up ! Registration is open now so go and get registered !

There will be a number of different sessions on Livecycle, but the one session i need your help on is the Livecycle Bootcamp session. In the Bootcamp session a number of product specialist and Livecycle developers can share experiences, code samples, best practices, etc …

If you are planning to come to this session, post your questions as a comment to this blog item if you want to get them answered during this session … If you have some code or a best practice you would like to share with other developers … ofcourse you are also more then welcome !

You can find more info here.

I created quickly this component to make your mxml code simpler if you want to support dragging files into your Flex/AIR application.

You would only have to add the FlexAIRDrag tag and link the UIComponent and react to the DropEvent which would occur the moment files are dropped inside the defined UIComponent.

Sample application :

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<mx:WindowedApplication xmlns:mx=”http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml” xmlns:etech=”com.adobe.etech.*” creationComplete=”this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN,onMouseDownTitle);” layout=”absolute” >
    <mx:Script>
        <![CDATA[
            import mx.controls.Alert;
            import flash.desktop.DragManager;
            import flash.desktop.DragActions;
            import mx.events.DragEvent;
            import flash.desktop.TransferableData;
            import flash.desktop.TransferableFormats;
            import flash.events.NativeDragEvent;
            import com.adobe.etech.DropEvent;       
            import flash.filesystem.File;   

        private function onMouseDownTitle(evt:MouseEvent):void
        {
            stage.window.startMove();
        }
        private function onDrop(event:DropEvent):void {
            for each (var file:File in event.dropfiles){
                  Alert.show("This file was dragged in window : " + file.name);
            }                               
        }
        ]]>
    </mx:Script>

    <etech:FlexAIRDrag uiComponent=”{panelDrop}” FlexAIRDrag=”onDrop(event)” />

    <mx:Panel id=”panelDrop”  width=”636″ height=”378″/>   
</mx:WindowedApplication>

You can download the source files here.

Livecycle Data Services 2.5 (previously known as Flex Data Services) has got a new feature that will allow you to generate PDF files. Cool stuff certainly if look at the way we integrate a part of the Livecycle solution.

Adobe Livecycle allows you already a while to generate PDF based on a template and data (xml). The template is being build using Livecycle Designer. LC Designer offers you a WYSIWYG interface to build templates. The data(xml) you will be merging into the template is being displayed as a tree structure. By using drag and drop, you can link a data element with a visual control in the template. This solution is based on the XFA specification.

This functionality will now be available for Flex developers through LC Data Services. Your Flex application will have to generate a XML file, so LC DS can merge the XML data with your XFA template. (the template is being build with LC Designer). To build the XML within your flex application use the mx:XML tag. This makes life easy as you can just reference variables to fill up the XML.

<mx:XML id=”xmlModel”>
<CompanyReport>
<TitleText>{panel.title}</TitleText>
<OverviewText>{overviewText.text}</OverviewText>
<BalanceSheetImage>{balanceSheetImage}</BalanceSheetImage>
<EarningsImage>{earningsImage}</EarningsImage> </CompanyReport>
</mx:XML>

Nice thing is that you can put images into the XML and map them in the XFA template with an image control. And to make it complete, the ImageSnapshot actionscript object, allows you to create an image/screenshot from flex controls in your Flex application. Check out this code example …

var snapshot:ImageSnapshot = ImageSnapshot.captureImage(balanceSheet);
balanceSheetImage = ImageSnapshot.encodeImageAsBase64(snapshot);

You just have to reference the balanceSheetImage variable into the XML model. ImageSnapshot can take a snapshot from any UIComponent. Think especially on chart components that can be shown in PDF.

The actual creation of the PDF will happen on the server, by calling a Remote Object. You’ll have to create a POJO that will use the “flex.acrobat.pdf.XFAHelper” java object (part of LC DS). Here is an example on how this might look like …

example : calling the remote object in Flex

<mx:RemoteObject id=”service” destination=”PDFService” fault=”faultHandler(event)” result=”resultHandler(event)” />

// call the remote POJO method (as defined below), giving the XML model as an attribute … 
service.generatePDF(xmlModel);

example : java source code of object that calls XFAHelper

// define a string with a link to the XFA template
String source = FlexContext.getServletContext().getRealPath(”/pdfgen/company.pdf”);
XFAHelper helper = new XFAHelper();
helper.open(source);

// Import XFA dataset : dataset is the XML constructed in your Flex application. dataset is a org.w3c.dom.Document
helper.importDataset(dataset);

// Save new PDF as a byte array in the current session
byte[] bytes = helper.saveToByteArray();

Download the Livecycle DS beta from http://labs.adobe.com and try it out for yourself.

Don’t forget that this solution is generating the chart on the client. So this is not a solution for generating charts on the server and merge them with a XFA template. 

Here you can find an example of a PDF generated through LC DS.

I presented yesterday together with Michael Chaize to a bunch of java developers at SUN Tech Days here in Paris. We had about 250 people in the room and got great feedback. Java developers love our technology and the concept of Apollo.

Apollo alpha has been released for about 5 days and it’s impressive to see how many people already have been playing with it … We had about 10 java developers stepping up to us and talking about it. Also surprising to see the number of apollo apps that are already available … The coolest ones is the Apollo Finetunes client. I got it installed and totally love it
Also yourminis.com came up with an apollo app that acts like a widget container … Another one to check out is Eli’s Apollo book … cool example that shows how Apollo allows us to combine flex and html.
Also the Apollo client for gmail is kind of interesting … This is a quite simple apollo app that will run the online google mail through the html component from Apollo, no Flex involved. It’s a 100% online experience as it’s online html. It is not the ideal Apollo application but a great way to get start. It can be the first step in a procces to build an Apollo application that will be able to run both online and offline. I expect you’ll see quite a few of these initiatives as i can imagine a lot of people like the fact that apollo makes your web application look like a real desktop application …

Anyway, I just have one advice … install it and get exited !

The dates and venues for MAX 2007 are public …

• MAX North America: September 30-October 3, 2007, Chicago, IL
• MAX Europe: October 15 - 18th 2007, Barcelona, Spain
• MAX Japan: November 2007, Japan

This year MAX should certainly be the event to attend with Apollo coming up !

More details will appear soon on the Adobe website … I will post whenever registration for EMEA MAX will be available.

Website is available : http://www.adobemax2007.com/ 

Sun Tech Days takes place from March 19th up until March 21th in Paris. Adobe will have a booth, and a complete Flex track on Wednesday March 21th. Michael Chaize and me will be speaking.

Wednesday February 28th I’m speaking at an event of the  Luxembourg Java user group. i’ll be talking about Flex&Java … check out the full agenda and don’t hesitate to come by and say hello !