After my second little project, I’m back with my opinion on Adobe AIR!

Working with Adobe AIR I had a revelation, in 2004 John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly presented the concept “Web as Platform”. These days, using the Web as a platform we can develop desktop applications. Basically we’ve left an environment to come back to it with a new perspective.

If the first time I had only 3 days at my disposal, this time I wasn’t constrained. During this time I had the opportunity to discover some of the features, like NativeMenu and the support for SQLite.

I believe that SQLite has the purpose of compensating for the storing possibility that are not available on this platform, like cookies. Of course, SQLite is using a database, and the storing is way superior to the traditional Web.

But way choose Adobe AIR compared to other platforms like Java or C#? Because it is simple! I don’t believe that Adobe AIR was intended to be a tool for developing large applications, even though only time will tell if that’s possible. This is a great tool for small to medium scale apps, which  can bring something extra to the Web. For instance in my app I had an alert system, I thought what I would like next to what I already have on the Web. With this alerts I don’t have to check all the time what’s new. Just as well I believe features like chats can be implemented or similarly features, after all if it can be done on the Web, it can be done here.

What Adobe AIR has is a very interesting distribution system, basically the platform is distributed with Adobe Acrobat Reader, thing that can make it available even on your computer without even knowing.

What Adobe AIR does not have, and I thing it would be useful, is a system for accessing COM objects for instance, possibility to access different database systems different then SQLite, which is quite simple.

Another feature that I would like is the possibility to access Adobe Flesh features from JavaScript. I know, I should use Flash if there are Flash features, but I prefer JavaScript as a platform. Probably the reason this features are not available in JavaScript is because this language has the HTML 5 features, like: Canvas and Audio, which somehow compensate with Flash features that are not available in JavaScript by default.

Adobe AIR 2 which is in beta version for the moment, will probably solve some of the need to access the system resources.

In my opinion, Adobe AIR is the platform on which a Web developer can develop desktop apps with ease!

Last week I was supposed to create a little project. Requirements were short: interoperability.Given the fact that I’ve never used Adobe AIR before, I thought it was a good opportunity to try it.

The result was a small project management app. For the server-size I’ve used PHP + SOAP + Zend Framework, and for the client I’ve used Adobe AIR with JavaScript.

I’ve created the server in a few lines:

 1<?php
 2// autoload class for Zend Framework
 3include 'Zend/Loader/Autoloader.php';
 4
 5// class that deals with SOAP requests
 6include 'SOAP.class.php';
 7
 8// initialize autloader
 9Zend_Loader_Autoloader::getInstance();
10
11// if it's a request for the WSDL descriptor file
12if(isset($_GET['wsdl'])) {
13 $autodiscover = new Zend_Soap_AutoDiscover();
14 $autodiscover->setClass('test');
15 $autodiscover->handle();
16// if it's a SOAP request
17} else {
18 $soap = new Zend_Soap_Server("http://localhost/soap/index.php?wsdl");
19 $soap->setClass('test');
20 $soap->handle();
21}
22
23?>

The descriptor is build automatically using PHP Documenter type comments from the class that handles SOAP requests, if this case it’s named “test”.

This was the easy part so I’ve moved on to the Adobe AIR client following this simple steps:

• Download and install Aptana Studio
• Install Adobe AIR plug-in
• New project -> Adobe AIR
• and voila! Coding can begin!

Adobe AIR is using for a JavaScript engine Webkit. Sounds familiar? Webkit is used by Safari and Google Chrome. So the JavaScript code should only be compatible with Webkit!

Of course there is a “but” and a plus. The “but” is that there are some restrictions, for instance “eval” can only be used to decode JSON, and the text introduced directly in an element (as text) can not be executed:

1div.innerHTML = "<a onclick=\"alert('ceva')\" href=\"#\">click</a>";

This link will get to the element by will not run anything on “onclick” because the parameter was send as text.

This was a pretty big disadvantage for me, but I’ve managed to figure out an alternative by building HTML elements using DOM and adding events using addEventListener.

Briefly Adobe AIR is using this formula:

1Adobe AIR = (Webkit)Web Development - security + air framework.

It seems very easy for a Web Developer to develop desktop apps with Adobe AIR.

Of course is not very fast and it’s not looking like a good idea for complex apps. But if your thinking about medium and small apps, if I had to choose between Adobe AIR and PHP GTK for instance, the first option seems a lot more viable and easy to use!

In the end the project was ready in less then 3 days and the graphics were gorgeous! It didn’t even look like it was build using only HTML and JavaScript!

Today the JavaScript Games section is officially launched! The games have been recently created, after the model of classic games.

I’ve started the first game to show a friend that it is possible to build this kind of apps with JavaScript. And this is one of the main ideas of the section: interactivity in the browser using only HTML, CSS and of course JavaScript!

Today I make them public because is a shame to not give others the chance to waste time playing :).

The games should work cross-browser, they don’t have HTML 5 or other stuff that can lead to incompatibility. They shall prove the power of JavaScript, without any other sophisticated tools.

Many games are not well finished, but I hope that with time I’ll resolve the issues, add new features and of course new games. For suggestions and issues, please send an e-mail to claudiu@claudiupersoiu.ro.

Have fun!

How does the rate of adoption of new software products and/or version influences the software development for Web and client-server type products?
From the perspective of a web developer, we are restricted by the servers for which we develop and our client’s browsers. Compromise often go very far for the sake of meeting a more broader market.

PHP

Currently stable version of PHP is 5.3.0, but using this version in production would be a childish decision. The version has been out for a little while and the probability to find this version on the hosting servers is very slim.

Of course, a more appropriate version is 5.2.10.  And yet, if version 5 was released almost 5 years now, why a popular framework like CakePHP yet uses the advantages brought by this version? Because until recently an important part of shared hosting servers that have support for PHP, still had version 4.

How is this translated in production? If you don’t develop internal products, or on your own servers, or servers which you can control, you should be aware that your product should be compatible with older PHP versions, and the new features of the language should not be used in production.
Ridiculous and sad but true.
PHP 5.3 brings quite a lot of new features,  but until these features can be used in production few years will have to pass. And until they get in frameworks probably even more (ie namespaces are useful in frameworks).

MySQL

Current stable version is 5.1.36. 5.x version, released in2005 brought many new features, some of them are: stored routines (functions and procedures), triggers, views, cursors, information schema, etc.

Stored routines is probably one of the biggest changes. They are probably most known from Oracle PL/SQL, although MySQL has implemented from the ANSI SQL 2003standard.

Because MySQL 5.0 was in beta for a long time, the rate of adoption is very low. Again, after almost 4 years since the version was released, and it is not yet sufficiently widespred.

Conclusion, simply put it is not recommended the use of the new features if you can not control the version on the server.

Browsers and JavaScrip

The browser problem affects both developers and designers.

Probably the oldest browser still used on a large enough scale is Internet Explorer 6. It was launched in 2001 and after 8 years it is still used by ~ 30% of users.

JavaScript in 2001 was still considered a scripting language infant, which was mostly used for visual effects.

After the “discovery” of AJAX in 2005 , JavaScript was reborn. JavaScript was not just a scripting language used for reduced visual effects, but was regarded as a technology of the future.

Browsers such as FireFox, Opera, Google Chrome or Safari have made progress to improve the speed of JavaScript execution. Even Internet Explorer 8 works better with JavaScript, but it is far from being as popular as version 6. And for the problem to be complete, Microsoft has a big issue with keeping the compatibility between their products.

The reason for this problem in adoption of new versions of Internet Explorer is the operating system. The most popular operating system is Microsoft Windows XP and it has pre-installed Internet Explorer 6. Given that Windows Vista had a fairly low adoption rate because of the initial bugs, drivers issues, resource consumption, and other problems, meant that Windows XP was still very popular. Of course not everyone using Windows XP use IE 6, many have updated or simply use another browser. But still many of them are using the browser that is default.

Speaking of this, Windows 7 will be distributed in Europe without IE installed. I’m very curious how will this influence the browsers market.

Lately “smart phones” and PDA devices have become increasingly popular. A lot of people use them to navigate on the Internet. So after the issues related to browsers on PCs, now there is a hole new set of issues on mobile device browsers.

For instance, my phone came with two browsers: Internet Explorer and Opera. Internet Explorer Mobile is terrible, so I’m using Opera which does a good job.

The problem is that many PDA / smart phone devices with Windows Mobile OS only have Internet Explorer in standard, and the previous problem returns.
When it comes to the famous Apple iPhone, Safari browser is used (and I believe that you can’t install another browser, but I’m not sure if that is true any longer).
So when you create an interface or a JavaScript application, you must take into account several aspects such as:

• device(eg PC, PDA, smart phone etc.)
• operating system (eg Windows, Linux, Mac, Symbian etc.)
• browsers and there versions (eg Internet Explorer 6,7,8; FireFox, Safari, Opera etc.) HTML 5 is almost here, but when it comes to browsers, I wonder when will we be able to use it on a large scale, given that the market is currently dominated by IE 6 and 7.

I give it about 5 years…