Recently I tried to set up a Java backend with Tomcat 6.0 to use with Flex. I have to say that I ran into a few problems that caused me a bit of a headache, so I thought I would share my solution to hopefully help anyone else who might have this problem.

If you are looking to create a Java backend with the Database wizard that comes with Flex Builder you will need to install the Web Tool Platform (WTP) plugin for Eclipse. WTP contains various tools for developing Web and J2EE applications.

The problem I ran into was locating this plugin inside the “Find updates” feature of FB. Unfortunetly the WTP plugin is called something else so I was searching around for the words WTP only to realize that it’s not present in the list of addons and features that comes up. What your actually looking for is the “Web and J2EE Development” features which includes the Web Standard Tools (WST) and the Java Standard Tools (JST) which from my understanding are two of the main components of the WTP.

Here are the steps to install WTP in Flex Builder

1. Select Help > Software Updates > Find and Install > Search for new features to install

2. Check the Europa and Eclipse Project depots

3. Under Europa Discovery Site select the “Web and J2EE Development”

4. Click the Select required button to include all the dependent features for the install

Hope this helps someone!

Poll Everywhere - Is a SMS voting system for US cellular phone customers.  You can sign up for an account and have Poll Everywhere host your SMS vote contests.  Prices are anywhere from free, to over $300 per month.  The voting display is done using Flex and Flex charting options.  For Canada, LiveVote.ca is a similar solution.  LiveVote only works in Canada, and Poll Everywhere only works for US cell phone customers.     

Adobe® Flash® Player 10, code-named “Astro,” has just been released on the Adobe labs website. The player has some neat new features including native support for 3D effects, GPU hardware acceleration as well as some overall visual performance improvements. Here are some of the new features in more detail.

Taken from the Adobe Labs site..

3D Effects - Easily transform and animate any display object through 3D space while retaining full interactivity.  Fast, lightweight, and native 3D effects make motion that was previously reserved for expert users available to everyone.  Complex effects are simple with APIs that extend what you already know.

 

Custom Filters and Effects - Create and share your own portable filters, blend modes, and fills using Adobe Pixel Benderâ„¢, the same technology used for many After Effects CS3 filters. Shaders in Flash Player are about 1KB and can be scripted and animated at runtime.

 

Advanced Text Layout - A new, highly flexible text layout engine, co-existing with TextField, enables innovation in creating new text controls by providing low-level access to text offering right-to-left and vertical text layout, plus support for typographic elements like ligatures.

Enhanced Drawing API - Runtime drawing is easier and more powerful with re-styleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line.

Visual Performance Improvements – Applications and videos will run smoother and faster with expanded use of hardware acceleration.  By moving several visual processing tasks to the video card, the CPU is free to do more.

 

To get the Flash player 10 prerelease go to the Adobe Labs site and download a copy!

One of the things I’ve been waiting to see is an AS3 API for google Maps to surface. Well on May 2nd the people over at the google’s Maps API Team finally released one! This API lets Flex developers embed Google Maps in Flash applications. The API provides a number of utilities for manipulating and adding content to maps through a variety of services, enabling you to embed robust, interactive maps applications on your website.

This is not the first time you have been able to embed google maps into your Flex apps. Previously it could be accomplished using iFrame but that was not a very elegant approach. Then the people at AFComponents implemented a google maps provider into their UMap component. But that was soon replaced with Microsoft Virtual earth due to licensing issues. I have hopes that UMAP will support google mapping again in the future, I prefer the idea of one Universal Mapping API for multiple providers as opposed to being restricted to one provider once your application is written.

You can read the press release HERE

I’ve been looking around for a good icon resource and the good people at Ntt.cc have given me one. Lots of beautiful royalty free icons here to use in your Flex applications. They also did a post on the best free vector graphics that might come in handy as well.

Icon Sets

Vector Sets

Enjoy!

See how users in different locations can utilize fields to complete forms. This article is another great example of enabling collaboration in a Flex application using the publish/subscribe messaging infrastructure of BlazeDS. Users in different locations can fill in forms “together” in a real-time and in-context collaboration session: changes made by one user are automatically reflected in the other user’s application.

Click Here to read the Article on Adobe.com  

At the Ottawa Flex Usergroup tonight Zee Yang gave a great presentation on Deep Linking in Flex. He also made a post about it in his blog which examines Deep Linking with SWFAddress. He explains it quite well and also provides some sample code. Head over to Flexlive.net to learn more.

Here’s a great article put together by James Ward and the people at InfoQ.com on the 10 biggest mistakes you can make while building a Flex Application. I particularly like number 8, I had no idea about the Runtime Shared Libraries (RSL) feature that you can use to reduce the size of your applications by externalizing shared assets into standalone files that can be separately downloaded and cached on the client machine.

Today Adobe announced the Open Screen Project which is an effort put on by Adobe as well as some major technology Leaders to deliver a consistent Rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics.

This is a big move by Adobe, and I think if everything goes as planned the Flash Runtime will become the standard platform for devices, whether it be mobile, set-top or desktop.

In essence the Open Screen Project will allow developers to have the ability to write an application once and deploy it anywhere across any device. To make this possible Adobe has recruited a wide range of partners to help with the Open Screen Project. Some of these companies include ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless, and leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal. One of the big players missing from the List is Apple, but I already saw that one coming after Steve Jobs made it very clear how he feels about Flash. The iPhone and iPod are some of the most innovative mobile devices out there and not having Apple on board will be an issue I think in the future. For Apple to ignore the impact and adoption Flash has on the internet is a big mistake on their behalf in my opinion.

Adobe also annouced some major changes in support of the Open Screen Project today that remove barriers for developers and designers to allow them to effectively publish content and applications across multiple devices. The changes annouced today are:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Castâ„¢ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

By Adobe publishing the device porting layer APIs companies can now create a version of the players that is custom for their device, but the source code for the Flash player itself still remains closed source and proprietary. The removal of the licensing fees will allow a company to have Flash pre-installed on their devices without paying Adobe anything!

To learn more About the Open Screen Project check out

 

Spent the last 20 minutes trying to figure out how to return the primary key back to Flex from an SQL insert command in ColdFusion. Turns out to be a really easy thing to do.

private function insert_ResultHandler(event:ResultEvent):void