Refreshingly new Flex Calendar controls

Flex is a very flexible language and I’m here to prove it again.

Today, I’m posting these two new cute flex calendar controls which uses inbuilt “CalendarLayout” class for functionality and has a completely new layout and interface defined in MXML.

I’m open sourcing these components and you are allowed to edit / use them in your projects with no restrictions.

So, go a head, have fun with these components and unleash your creativity bring out more cooler calendars.

Click here to Download Component / Source

Dear Readers, Please feel free to send me your Feedback / New Component Requests through comments or email.

CricketCentre - Cricket on your desktop

Although Cricket is played by a few countries in the world, it is a religion in the Indian sub-continent and followed by millions in India alone.

Thanks to Twenty20 cricket & IPL tournament, the craze has increased lot more in the recent days and added lot more glamour to the game.

Even though we are Web 2.0 world, people watching cricket match through internet portals miss the excitement of game due to plain vanilla interface.

However this can be changed using RIA technologies and many aspects of watching a match live such as chatting with friends, participating in contests, enjoying charts and graphics can all be brought to user following through internet as well.

So, CricketNirvana.com brings you “CricketCentre”, the next generation of Cricketing experience to your desktop through Adobe AIR. This is a Rich Internet Application developed using Adobe Flex and runs on your desktop using Adobe AIR.

Home Page -http://www.cricketnirvana.com/CricketCentreWeb/CricketCentre.html

Feature Demo - http://www.cricketnirvana.com/CricketCentreWeb/FeatureDemo.html

                                    

 Features

1) Realtime ball-by-ball score updates

2) Full & Mini-Scorecards

3) System tray & Pop-up notifications

4) Live Analytics & Statistics

5) Player profiles

6) Express Emotions

7) Gossip with friends

8 ) Watch Videos, News and lot more…

So, go a head and experience it…

Solution for HTML pop-up problem in AIR

From the past few days, I’m seeing a problem with AIR HTML Component that is being reported by many users in many forums. So, i thought of giving a small solution which will help developers to overcome this problem.

Problem

AIR HTML Component fails to open new HTML pop-up window when the “target” of the link is set to “_blank” or “_new”.

Solution

The solution is very straight and simple.

Step 1 - Get all the available links of the page after it is completely loaded and add “onClick” event listener to all required links.

Step 2 - Get the Link’s URL in “onClick” event handler and open a new browser window using “navigateToURL()” or implement a custom window in AIR to handle this.

Code


<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<mx:WindowedApplication xmlns:mx=”http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml” layout=”absolute”>
<mx:HTML id=”htmlComp” width=”100%” height=”100%” location=”http://www.rediff.com” complete=”addEventListenersToLinks(event)”  />
 
 <mx:Script>
  <![CDATA[
   
   private function addEventListenersToLinks(e:Event):void
   {
    var dom:Object = e.currentTarget.domWindow.document;
    var links:Object = dom.getElementsByTagName("a");
    
    for(var i:Number = 0; i < links.length; i++)
    {
     if(links[i].target.toLowerCase() == “_blank” || links[i].target.toLowerCase() == “_new”)
      links[i].onclick = linkClickHandler;
    }
   }
   
   private function linkClickHandler(o:Object):void
   {
    navigateToURL(new URLRequest(o.currentTarget.href),”blank”);
   }
  ]]>
 </mx:Script>
</mx:WindowedApplication>


IMAP/POP Email validation in AIR/Flex

I was developing an AIR application recently and wanted to validate the email credentials of the user.

I searched a lot and could not get any component, library or code snippet available to do this in Flash/Flex/AIR.

So, I thought of developing a small library of my own and sharing it with the community. And here it is…

IMAP/POP Email Validator

This is a small set of class library which Flex/AIR developers can use to validate any IMAP or POP email logins. This does NOT use Coldfusion or LCDS server in the backend. This connects to given IMAP/POP server using Flash Socket and executes required commands to validate the login.

Example

Checkout the above Sample ( Save the SWF locally and play with it )

Download source

Due to cross domain restrictions in Flash Player, when this application is hosted on any domain other than mail server’s domain, a “crossdomain.xml” file needs to be configured and kept on the mail server.

But, this issue does not come in AIR based applications and Flex applications that are running locally.

So, grab a copy, check out the samples and try it with your Intranet/Internet apps..

360 degree Video in Flash

Just have a look at this mind-blowing peice of technology. This is just amazing to navigate through a video in
360 degrees.

This is captured using special 3D Camera and fully decoded & rendered using Flash & BitmapData API.

Just think of a world where Sports matches or movies or TV Serials are delivered using this technology.

I just can’t wait to see the future of this technology.

Click here to experience this ( Football & New-york city are my personal favorites )

Hurray! Flex 3.0 & AIR 1.0 are released

The much awaited products by the Rich Internet Application development community are released and available for download now. And Flex SDK is now open source too.

What more can you ask for?

Get the latest version of Flex & AIR and unveil your imagination with engaging, cross-platform RIAs.

I would soon start blogging about very cool new features of Flex & AIR. And I will also be releasing a new version of AIR 1.0 compatible Scrapmate with whole bunch of exciting new features.

So, watch out for the cool stuff that I’m going to post in next few days.

Flex home page : http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/

AIR home page : http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

Adobe opensource site : http://opensource.adobe.com/

Flex public Bugbase : http://bugs.adobe.com/jira

Scrapmate

Stay Tuned….

Stat tuned, “Scrapmate” is currently working out very hard in the labs to come out with more exciting and powerful features.So, keep an eye on this blog to grab the new release and have fun….

Seeya…

Better By Adobe

Adobe . . .

  - The company that is being admired by millions of creative professionals and knowledge workers around the world

  - The company that is revolutionizing the way the world engages with Ideas & Information anytime, anywhere and through any media

  - The company that is producing the fabulous software and driving Web 2.0 revolution with stunning Rich Internet Application development tools

  - The company that is leading the industry with advanced solutions and new advanced business models that are attracting and inspiring customers

And the list goes on and on . . . .

So, let’s stop it here and have a look at these wonderful products though a cool application . . .

 
Click here to play with this application.

 

Hello World 2.0h !

Watta Wonderful World 2.0 !!!

Yes it is. Web is transforming the world of internet by bringing in Rich Internet Applications, Mashups, Blogs, Comminities, Social networking, Folksonomies and so on.

So, I would be dedicating this blog to write about my passion towards Web, RIAs & User experience.

I will try my best to make the content as much exciting, interesting and helpful as possible to RIA Developers around the world.

Now, lets gear up and dive into the wonderful world of RIA.