Recent Updates Page 26

Unknown's avatar Chris 12:24 pm on June 5, 2009  

Project Natal – Milo

As a total “geek”, many people assume that I sit at home after work and play X-Box or Playstation all night. But the truth is, those game consoles are just to complicated for my taste. In fact, rarely do I play video games. What I do enjoy in the arena however, is my Nintendo Wii. I enjoy the simple, yet interactive and challenging games such as the Wii Fit, Disney Trivia, Tetris, Wii Sports, Mario and others. However – I do wish the graphics where a little more modernized and the AI pieces just quite aren’t there. Another thing you should know about me, is I’m not really a big Microsoft fan – yet I use their products everyday such as Windows and Office. Along comes Microsoft’s Project Natal and its creation Milo. WOW! Project Natal is a new way to play the XBox. There is no controller to stick in your pocket as you run down the track. No lights to turn down so they don’t interfere with the IR signal. Just a cameara looking at you, interperting you and the other player’s motions. Not to mention the AI! Check out Milo in the demo below. Granted, Milo may bore me quickly from what I’ve seen from the demo – however I can envision so many other possibilities that would grab my attention party night after party night. Voice Recognition, movies, and more… I think I know my next new toy!

Unknown's avatar Chris 12:38 pm on February 11, 2009  

CSS Frameworks

Lately I have been experimenting with the YUI Library CSS Tools and Blueprint. Both are an open source CSS framework, which as Blueprint so gracefully puts it “gives you a solid CSS foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid and sensible typography…”. After experimenting with both, I have continued to lean towards YUI’s framework. It seems to be a little more matured and well-known, so I will focus on YUI.

Unknown's avatar Chris 7:51 pm on February 2, 2009  

Wireless Printers

I went on a new printer mission a couple of weeks ago for my home. I had an Epson printer for a few years, but lost my power cord after my move (which of course I found after I bought this new printer). I have a laptop that I like to use on my lap while watching TV in the living room. But if I ever wanted to print something I’d always have to plug in the USB port to the printer in the next room. Wouldn’t it be great if I had a network printer? But those costs hundereds if not thousands of dollars – right? So went to my local electronics store a low-and-behold a wireless printer! (Well, they haven’t made wireless power yet without cooking yourself to death) And what’s more, it’s sub-$100! I picked up a Brother MFC-490CW Multifunction printer. I had my reservations thinking wireless might be slow and not reliable. However I found just the opposite. It was easy to setup and a breeze to print, scan, copy, etc. Plus there’s no wires! Looking at the ink prices, they’re pretty cheap too – (yea eBay!). I highly recommend this product to anyone looking to free themselves yet not do away with any of the advantages of this type of system.

Unknown's avatar Chris 5:51 pm on January 20, 2009  

HTML Tag:

There’s an interesting HTML tag that I just learned about:

Uses:

<label>
First Name:
<input type="text" name="firstname" />
</label>

OR

<label for="firstname">First Name:</label>
<input type="text" name="firstname" id="firstname" />

The label tag associated the text inside to the input field. There are two advantage to this.

  • For a disabled user, the screen reader can read to the visitor what this field is asking for.
  • The standard user can click on the label which will bring focus to the input field, similar to many desktop applications.

Internet Explorer will only support the second example above to allow clicking of the label. Also think of the advantage of styling the label tag in CSS. So I’d recommend using the second example above. The for attribute references the id attribute in the input tag.

A good video to watch: Creating Attractive, Usable, and Accessible Forms. This was a presentation at Adobe Max 2008.

 

Unknown's avatar Chris 12:31 pm on November 21, 2008  

Flex Learning Paths

Adobe added a new resource to help everyone including designers, web developers, programmers, managers and architects learn Flex the way they need to. It’s called http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/learn/. I can’t wait to dive in and make use of this. From what I’ve seen so far, it includes real-world examples, videos, links, white papers, articles, excercises, quick starts, and documentation.

Also be sure to check out Tour De Flex. It’s an AIR application that explores Flex capabilities and resources, including the core Flex components, Adobe AIR and data integration, as well as third-party components, effects, skins, and more.

 

Unknown's avatar Chris 12:58 pm on November 20, 2008  

Adobe Cairngorm Plugin

For me, the Cairngorm Flex Framework has been a bit challenging. Keeping up on different frameworks and libraries for Flex, ColdFusion, JavaScript, etc. can be a bit daunting. So every bit of help is a blessing.

Adobe has released an Eclipse Cairngorm Plugin “that augments Flex Builder to provide tooling that improves productivity when developing Cairngorm-based RIAs.”

According to Adobe, “the initial focus of the Cairngorm Plugin is on the Controller. It aims to improve productivity by removing the repetitive action of creating a new Command and associated Event and adding them to the Controller.”

It provides a new class wizard for the following Cairngorm artifacts:

For me, the Cairngorm Flex Framework has been a bit challenging. Keeping up on different frameworks and libraries for Flex, ColdFusion, JavaScript, etc. can be a bit daunting. So every bit of help is a blessing.

Adobe has released an Eclipse Cairngorm Plugin “that augments Flex Builder to provide tooling that improves productivity when developing Cairngorm-based RIAs.”

According to Adobe, “the initial focus of the Cairngorm Plugin is on the Controller. It aims to improve productivity by removing the repetitive action of creating a new Command and associated Event and adding them to the Controller.”

It provides a new class wizard for the following Cairngorm artifacts:

  • Controller – creates a new Controller
  • Command – creates a new Event and a new Command and adds them to the Controller.

View instructions on how to install it.

Learn how to use it by viewing the documentation.

  • – creates a new Controller
  • Command – creates a new Event and a new Command and adds them to the Controller.

View instructions on how to install it.

Learn how to use it by viewing the documentation.

 

Unknown's avatar Chris 1:33 pm on November 3, 2008  

Backing Up Your Computer

I was recently engaged in a short discussion regarding Amazon’s S3 Storage Service. This reminded me of a great backup solution I use for my personal computer.

Most people do not backup their computer for a number of reasons; too complicated, too cumbersome, too costly, “I need to backup?”. But fate comes to play, and poof! there it goes. All those family photos, legal documents, music, etc.

Here’s a cheap, easy way to backup your computer. Download, install, signup, and forget. Introducing Jungle Disk (and no I’m not getting paid to promote this). It cost me $20.00 upfront with lifetime free upgrades and 15 cents per GB-Month of storage used, plus a little for data transfer. All-in-all I’m getting charged about $3.50 to backup all my photos, some videos, personal website projects, documents, and more.

The software Jungle Disk uses Amazon’s S3 Storage Service to store my data, keep it encrypted, automate the backup, and make available on Amazon.com’s datacenters for high availability.

So unless your bank account is at zero, there’s no reason not to backup your computer anymore. What’s more is you can actually use it like a network drive if you want and you only pay for what you use.

 

Unknown's avatar Chris 5:39 pm on October 17, 2008  

HDMI Cables and Your Money

Lately I’ve upgraded my TV from the tube to the LCD. Nice. But wait – now I need new furniture to replace my bulky entertainment center. Ooh – now I need better sound; yep 5.1 dobly digital sound. Well, standard cable just isn’t up to par, so now I have to go get a HD cable box.

Upgrading to the HD “lifestyle” is like a Jeep. It’s a never-ending money pit. Good luck catching me buying Blueray, well at least not yet.

But here’s one money saving tip – eBay! I went to cox to pickup the HD box, something like $6/mo. But wait to hook it up via the HDMI cable, it’s another $60 upfront! No way! Go to eBay, search for HDMI Cable (at least ver 1.3) and wam-bam, six bucks. That’s a $52 savings for a stupid cable! Granted you may not get the pretty packaging, but who cares. eBay! Audio cables, video cables, all cheap cheap cheap, and they work the same.

Unknown's avatar Chris 1:12 pm on September 17, 2008  

Binding in Flex via Actionscript

Here’s an example I created to bind a text field with a label. This needs to be done with you are dynamically creating components inside of your app instead of using MXML. Be sure to use the if statement on the unwatch function to avoid an error for null pointing.

private var watcher:ChangeWatcher;

private function watch():void {
var SampleLabel:Label = new Label();
SampleHBox.addChild(SampleLabel);
watcher = BindingUtils.bindProperty(SampleLabel,"text", sampleText,"text");
}

private function unwatch():void {
if (watcher != null) {
watcher.unwatch();
}
}
Unknown's avatar Chris 5:23 pm on September 15, 2008  

Automatic Logger via Trace for Flex

Here’s a great tool to help with Flex debugging. Put <mx:TraceTarget /> into your code and run your app in debugging mode.

You will see valuable debugging information appear in the console area. Great for hassling with remoting like ColdFusion CFC’s.

Form more info: Adobe Flex 3 Language Reference TraceTarget