This is just a prototype and doesn’t handle all the cases that a standard gantt chart should be handling. I would strongly recommend testing the code thoroughly before you start using it in production (if you are planning to, that is) I am unsure how much time I will be able to spend taking this project forward. I have opensourced this one under MPL, feel free to take the code and do more stuff as you guys deem appropriate. Please note that this is a resultant of a few hours of careless hacking , I am sure this has a lot of bugs too. I plan to set up a GitHub project for  the same, just thought I’d post it anyways.

It feels like yesterday, doesn’t it? It does, at least for me! I remember  sitting in the library of the Macromedia India office in Bangalore on the 2nd of June 2005 waiting for my interviews for a position in the Macromedia Flex SDK Quality Engineering team. I still remember waiting for that one call from Macromedia till it happened on the 6th of June, confirming my appointment at Macromedia! The dream job – in all respects! I have been working on Flash from the first year of my undergrad days (back in 1998) and Macromedia indeed was my ultimate destination. And here it was! I was now going to start working in the company that makes flash! I now have an opportunity to work for a new product that was going to change the landscape of rich internet applications – When I think about it, I still can feel all the emotions that I went through – a combination of excitement, happiness, nervousness – It was that kind of an unexplainable feeling! Yes, I am getting emotional, but that’s exactly how I feel!

And boy, what a great 5 years this has been! I had the great fortune of working on some really amazing features on the Flex 2.0, 2.0.1 & 3.0 releases! I also had an incredible time working in the Adobe Media Player team implementing the DRM features for the 1.0 release. The year 2008 was a significant turning point in my life – I was offered a position in the India Platform Evangelism team. This is the job where I get a chance to travel the breadth and depth of India spreading the love for Adobe Flash platform, I will be working with some of the best minds in Adobe Flash Platform in India in the community – Now, how many people get to do something as cool as this!

This post is incomplete without thanking  a few very important people – Arul Prasad for referring me to Macromedia, Lauren Park & Ram Krishnaiyer for hiring me in Macromedia, Ananth & Arijit for offering me a position in the Evangelism team, Raghu, my partner in crime in both the QE and Evangelism roles, Ramesh for his guidance & support and the whole of India Evangelism team, the best team in the world!

My job couldn’t be more exciting than it is today – With the release of Flash Builder 4, Flex 4, Flash Catalyst and with Flash Player and AIR running in all major devices – there can’t be a better job than evangelizing the Adobe Flash Platform! Here’s is looking forward to great times ahead working for the best company in the world!

Cheers!

This blog is the result of a small experiment that I did with the HTML5 datastore API. I wrote up a very simple ActionScript + JavaScript library that would enable developers to make their flex applications work offline in browsers that support HTML5 datastore APIs. The API will now let you use SQL statements (as of now, CREATE, SELECT, INSERT, DELETE & UPDATE) within your actionscript / flash / flex applications.

Check out a demo here . The demo creates a database “SampleDB”. You can perform basic operations using SQL statements that can be previewed live in this application. I have tested this application on Safari & Chrome. If you find issues, please do send me an email and I would take a look at it!

Tested browsers: Google Chrome 5.0.375.55 and Safari 3.2.3

You can download the source files of this experiment from here. If you want to see the demo in action from your own system, download the demo assets from here. Just unzip the contents and paste it in the webroot of your webserver and run.

Incase, you are wondering what SQL statements to try out, you could use the following to start with.

NOTE: The API supports prepared statements, but the demo doesn’t (blame it on my laziness). If you want to try out using prepared statements, download the source files and try out by making your own flex app.

There is a lot of excitement after the release of Adobe Flash Builder and Flex 4 framework last week. I can’t wait to meet the Adobe User Groups at various locations to share the excitement and be part of the celebration. I am looking forward to the AUG tour events at the following locations in the coming month(s)

Crystal Gaze – Adobe User Group, Chennai, India (Apr 9th, 2010) The Chennai user group along with RIA-RUI society is organizing Crystal Gaze – a very special event to celebrate the launch of Flash Builder and Flex 4. Chennai has a vibrant and passionate community and I am sure this event is going to be rocking. The event promises a lot of fun with music performances along with the tech sessions. I will be speaking here along with fellow evangelist Ramesh Srinivasaraghavan. The event was sold out in just 8 hours!

Kerala Adobe User Group, Cochin, India (Apr 10th, 2010) Kerala UG is still young, but it has some really great and experienced developers passionate about Adobe Flash Platform. Cochin also happens to be where my parents live, its going to be a great event!

Flex User Group, Singapore (Apr 15th 2010) I was in Singapore last year speaking at RIAction – The Singapore Flash community totally rocks! I will be speaking about Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst, we also have a session on Flex 4 by the UG manager Shunjie Hu. I will also be catching up with some of my old buddies from Macromedia during this trip.

FX4Tour – Adobe User Group, Bangkok, Thailand (April 17th, 2010) Another sell-out event! This time in Bangkok.  I will be speaking about Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst and LCDS 3. There will also be a session on iphone development using flash by local community expert Apichai Ruangsiripiyakul.

Flex User Group, Coimbatore, India (May 8th, 2010) Will be kicking off the first ever UG meet in coimbatore. Topics are still TBD.

If you guys are in any of the locations, I would love to meet each one of you – do swing by and say hi!

You can check out the application by visiting: http://www.flexgeek.in/nexus/c.html [Note: This will not look pretty on your desktop browser, its optimized for a mobile screen ]

Key Takeaways: The good

1. Flex 4 based applications run well on the nexus one, the rendering is fast, touch-based scrolling is snappy
2. Porting Catalyst based skins to make Mobile apps is quite easy, skinning can now be completely offloaded to catalyst once you know the screen size you are working with. Doesn’t really matter for browser based apps, we can always set the dimensions to 100%
3. The Spark List (Flex 4 List) works like a charm. Keep an optimized itemRenderer, you will get snappy scrolling performance.
4. Flash builder is amazing! with the new code hinting features coupled with network monitoring, enhanced debugging capabilities and faster compilation, building on Flash Builder is quite a nice experience.

Key Takeaways: The not so good

1. Flash Builder design view is far more suited for building apps for larger screen sizes. That said, the design view is far nicer now than the Flex Builder 3.
2. Flex 4 SDK makes the app heavy, makes me want the mobile flex SDK now!

*The color search is powered by Idée Labs

It was hard to tell which one was my favorite talk – each one of them were great in their own respect. Overall, it was a fantastic experience to be part of TEDxPilani. A special word of congratulations needs to go out to the organizers, who painstakingly made sure everything was done to perfection – right from booking our flight tickets to setting up the stage. TEDxPilani has indeed set a very high standard for any exclusively student run conference with the poise they demonstrated with this event. Take a bow, Guys!

I didn’t have an elaborate presentation, just a few slides that goes with my talk. You can check out the slides below

Adobe Flex Bootcamp – 21 – 23 February 2010, South India. I along with Ramesh will be kicking off the Flex bootcamps in Tamil Nadu, South India with consecutive events in two leading technical universities – Sastra University at Tanjavur and Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai. The events are already sold out.

Adobe Online Creative Festival, 23 February 2010 Take a deep dive into Adobe’s current technology, as well as discover what the future holds for you. Join this free online event and benefit from Adobe’s expert advice on how Adobe technology can help you extend your creative skills and deliver unimagined. I will be presenting a one hour talk on Adobe Flash Catalyst and Adobe Flash Builder. I will also be hanging around in the online chat rooms trying to answer questions on Flash catalyst and Flex.

India Game Developer Summit, 27 February 2010, Bangalore, India First ever game developer summit in India, With the mission to build a robust community, advance the careers and enhance the lives of game developers. I will be taking a focused session on Creating, distributing and Monetizing games on Adobe Flash Platform.

TEDxPilani, 13 March 2010, Pilani, India TEDx Pilani is slated to be one of the largest student-organized conferences in India. Organized by Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, BITS Pilani, TEDx Pilani aims at bringing some of the brightest Indian minds to the prestigious campus of Birla Institute of Technology & Science at Pilani, Rajasthan. Will be speaking on Rich Internet Apps.

Great Indian Developer Summit, 20-23 April 2010, Bangalore, India GIDS is the gold standard for India’s software developer ecosystem for gaining exposure to and evaluating new projects, tools, services, platforms,languages. GIDS is also one of the largest tech conferences in India.