Harish Sivaramakrishnan » Flash

Prototype: Flex 4 Gantt Chart

Harish Sivaramakrishnan — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:50:31 +0000

I had written a small proof of concept of building a gantt (like) chart using Advanced DataGrid component that shipped with Flex 3. The blog post with the source code happens to be one of the most popular posts in my blog. Folks keep writing to me asking for more details on the component. I haven’t really been able to keep that project alive, purely for want of time as I got busy traveling. Just yesterday, I was doing some Flex 4 hacking for my talk at the upcoming Adobe Flash Platform Summit in Bangalore and thought if I could re-write this component in Flex 4. I spent about 6 hours writing this and I got my first version of the Flex 4 gantt chart working. Doing this in Flex 4 is insanely easy and the folks at Ilog have done a fabulous job re writing their gantt chart component in Flex 4. Click here or on the screen shot to see a small demo. Please note that the demo is view source enabled, you can download the source code as well [Just right click on the demo and view source] or, just click here to view source

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.

Flash + HTML 5 : Offline Flash Apps using DataStore API

Harish Sivaramakrishnan — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:44:45 +0000

Have been hearing a lot of discussions and arguments about how HTML5 is going to replace (kill!) flash in the near future. And no, this blog post is not about which technology is going to replace or kill which one! I have been a flash developer for quite a long time now and I love the stuff that I can do with Flash and ActionScript. As a developer who cares about technology, I like to experiment with new technologies and try to see how they interoperate.

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.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT Exists CUSTOMERS (customername TEXT, customeremail TEXT, customerdesignation TEXT, customerphone TEXT)
INSERT INTO CUSTOMERS (customername, customeremail, customerphone, customerdesignation) values (‘a’,'b’,'c’,'d’)
SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS

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.

Video of my talk at TEDxPilani

Harish Sivaramakrishnan — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:33:11 +0000

The video of my talk on User Experience at TEDxPilani is now live on you tube.

ADC Video: Create Spark Component Skins using Flash Catalyst

Harish Sivaramakrishnan — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:45:52 +0000

My 5 minute video on creating Spark Component Skins using Adobe Flash Catalyst drawing tools went live on Adobe TV today.

My schedule for the upcoming Adobe UG Tour

Harish Sivaramakrishnan — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:47:17 +0000

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!

colrful mobile – Flex 4 app running on google nexus one (Flash Player 10.1)

Harish Sivaramakrishnan — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:32:44 +0000

I had build a small AIR application called colrful a while ago, which searches for images on flickr based on color. I have been working on porting this application to flex 4. In the meanwhile, I just wanted to do a small experiment with my new google nexus one phone which runs flash player 10.1. I had already finished building the skins and the basic UI for the the flex 4 port using Adobe Flash Catalyst. I thought I’d quickly port this application to run on my nexus one before I release the AIR version of colrful. This is what I got This version of the application will let you search for images based on color from a flickr image set*.

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

Flex 4 based applications run well on the nexus one, the rendering is fast, touch-based scrolling is snappy
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%
The Spark List (Flex 4 List) works like a charm. Keep an optimized itemRenderer, you will get snappy scrolling performance.
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

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.
Flex 4 SDK makes the app heavy, makes me want the mobile flex SDK now!

*The color search is powered by Idée Labs

Recap: TEDxPilani – a fantastic event!

Harish Sivaramakrishnan — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:42:23 +0000

I was invited to TEDxPilani to deliver a talk on rich user experiences at the TEDxPilani chapter on the 13th of March at BITS, Pilani – which also happens to be my alma mater. The event had an eclectic mix of speakers, it was a great privilege sharing the stage with some of the best minds in the country in their respective fields. The event started out with a talk by K N Ganeshaiah – a plant scientist and an award winning mythology book writer. My session was the next – I spent some time setting the context, speaking about the need for building great user experiences. I also got to sing a song on stage and closed my talk with a demo. My session was followed by Karthik Satyanarayan – co founder of WildlifeSOS, Cleo Paskal – climate change expert, Nitin Gokhale – a leading journalist with NDTV, Vishal Talreja – A social entrepreneur, Rahul Roshan (@fakingnews) – the funny guy who runs fakingnews.com and finally Nakul Shenoy – a brilliant psychic entertainer. We also had two TEDx fellows from Pilani present mini sessions.

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

New Flex 4 theme: Lemon – built using Adobe Flash Catalyst

Harish Sivaramakrishnan — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:48:45 +0000

Posting another Flex 4 theme I have been working on. The look of the theme is heavily inspired by the scheme of picnik.com – an application I use in daily basis to touch up my pictures. Picnik is also one of my favorite flex apps in the web. Do take a look at the application.

Check out the components individually styled using Lemon by clicking here

Give lemon a spin! Download the FXP (for use in Flash Builder) or the source FXP (for use in Flash Catalyst)

PS: This is possibly the most *incomplete* theme that I have posted, usual caveats apply. TODO: skin for toggle button / Regular list.

Flex Bootcamp at BITS, Pilani

Harish Sivaramakrishnan — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:42:23 +0000

Had a fantastic trip to my Alma mater – BITS, Pilani last week for the first ever Adobe Flex Bootcamp in North India. It felt great to be back in the campus, spent a good deal of time going around all the places I used to frequent as a student (including the classrooms ) The bootcamp had about 300 attendees who turned up exactly at 10:00 AM despite the biting cold (it was almost 0 deg celcius in the morning) Me and Sujit had a great time talking about the Flash Platform, showing off some demos and some really cool stuff with Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst. The hands-on lab was great fun too – BITSians are quite smart, most of them completed the 3 hour lab in less than 1.5 hours.

Here are some pictures from the campus and the bootcamp

New Flex 4 Theme : Plastic – Built using Adobe Flash Catalyst Beta 2

Harish Sivaramakrishnan — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:08:24 +0000

I have been working to get a minimalist theme for one of the Flex 4 apps I am building. I did some minor tweaks to my actual theme and created “Plastic”. This theme is inspired by the regular plastic ware that you would see everyday. It is a sober, light theme with a dash of boldness added by the sunshine-orange roll over scheme. As of now, I only have spark component skins built into this. I will add the styling for the halo components in the next iteration.

I cooked up a sample application mock-up with Plastic theme applied. View the application Give this theme a spin – download the source files (Plastic.fxp), import into Flash Builder 4 and you are all set! Due to the limitations of the Beta 2, you cannot import this FXP into Flash Catalyst again. In case you want to dabble with the skins in Flash Catalyst itself, download the FXP for catalyst (This FXP will not have constraint based sizing)

Plastic can be applied to all the spark components that are available as wireframe components in Flash Catalyst. View Components Demo

Some of the components are likely to have sizing issues, if you find any – drop me an email or drop a comment in this post. Download FXP