With the increasing popularity of various communication devices, now it’s possible with Adobe AIR writing single applications that will reach most other next-generation devices and support large range of screen sizes. Adobe AIR has made it feasible to write a single application that automatically adapts to any screen size and any resolution, and runs just about everywhere e.g. OS X, Windows 7, Ubuntu, an iPhone, an iPad, a Motorola Droid, and in the browser.
We have been implementing the flex applications based on Cairngorm MVC architecture for long. With an increasing buzz about PureMVC our development team decided to explore this framework and I would say we are fascinated by its power to create modular and scalable applications.
Originally implemented in ActionScript 3 language, PureMVC is a lightweight framework for creating applications based upon the classic Model-View-Controller design pattern. Initially introduced for use with Adobe Flex, Flash and AIR, PureMVC is now being ported to all major development platforms. It comes in two flavors; Standard and MultiCore. Standard version is simple implementation of the MVC concept while MultiCore version allows multiple PureMVC applications to run within the same virtual machine supporting modular programming.
It offers complete separation of UI controls from model and controller via Mediator pattern. Thus making it easier to re-use code for different UIs. It also makes it easier for multiple developers to work on the same project due to flexible model and controller layer. For large scale applications where response time is crucial, the Multicore version provides support for loading separate Modules within same application at runtime thus reducing the memory consumption at startup.
We can say that it might be a good alternative over Cairngorm for developing large scale applications. It rightly confirms to the title of the best Flex application framework.
We are building more Flex applications based on the framework to understand its benefits over other available frameworks and I hope we will end up in having two very strong framework options (Cairngorm and PureMVC) to choose from for developing Flex applications.
If you are a web developer and are NOT comfortable with any other IDE than Visual Studio, and you wish to develop Flex based web applications, then do not worry. You can continue building the desired Flex application using your Visual Studio IDE.
All you need to do is, download ‘Ensemble Tofino’ plug-in from tinyurl.com/yb8y5ow and installing downloaded plug-in.
“RIA” The most prominent buzz word in IT domain today. Let’s define it first, in my perspective; RIA an acronym for Rich Internet Applications means saying good bye to reloading & refreshing in page based web applications. RIA combines the full “content rich” experience of a desktop application with the “broad reach” of a website, delivering the best of both worlds. Please read more about RIA at http://www.rightwaysolution.com/rich-internet-application-pdf.html URL.
RWS’s CakePHP/Adobe Flex team is currently developing a high end restaurant management platform which will be available on SaaS based business model. The platform provides facilities for restaurants to register themselves in the system and take huge benefits like bringing their restaurant online, designing the layout of restaurant, online table reservations, online seating arrangements etc. It also provides iPhone client to end users.
We have used the latest technologies: CakePHP/Adobe Flex/Adobe AIR/iPhone
Keep watching for the release of the application online.
At Adobe MAX 2009 (October 4–7, Los Angeles, California), the next major release of Adobe AIR (AIR 2.0) was previewed by AIR engineering team. Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch highlighted several exciting new capabilities of the AIR runtime. Also, Mr. Christian Cantrell, a member of AIR engineering team discussed upcoming features of the AIR runtime.
The major new capabilities to be introduced are:
- Native process API
- Support for detecting mass storage devices
- Improved support for accessibility
- Open document API
- Improved performance
- Local microphone access API
- Multi-touch & gesture support
- Faster, more powerful WebKit
- Improved socket support
Adobe expecting AIR 2.0 Beta would be launched till end of this year and final version would be launched in first half of next year.
