I will presenting our media framework tomorrow night at the Flash Platform meeting.

The general outline of the presentation is to talk about our client work history, run through the framework, talk about what we are working on, and basically field questions and get input from folks.

Anyone that is interested please come out. The presentation will hopefully give you insight on what we have done and the field in general.

The meeting is being held at 7pm over at Round Box (King Plow)
981 Joseph E Lowery Blvd NW
Suite 100
Atlanta, GA 30318

You can get all the details at Meetup.com

I look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow night.

“Extending Flex 3 Components” and “Concurrency Approaches in Flex and Air” are the two topics for tonight’s Atlanta Flash/Flex User group meeting. From reading the description, it looks like the presentations are going to be winners. I’m definitely planning on making it out and you should to . If you want to chat, feel free to introduce yourself. I’m sure to talk your head off about programming!

Below are the details

Feb 18, 2009 Meeting Details
Date: Web., Feb 18, 2009
Pizza & Schmoozing: 6:00 PM
Meeting Time: 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Location: EchoEleven Offices
Dress: Anywhere from casual to business formal
Price: FREE!
RSVP

Extending Flex 3 Components
Presented by Matt Boles

Start your learning of how to customize both functionality and appearance of built-in components through this session. You will see now to manually add objects to the display list, as well as how to override built in methods to alter component functionality.

Concurrency Approaches in Flex and Air
Presented by Charlie Hubbard

As the Flex platform matures, our ability to write more complex programs increases. As complexity increases, so does the need for long running computations. Technologies like Air force us to solve these problems without the aid of a server. While Flash, on the surface, seems to be missing things like threads to solve running concurrent jobs there are techniques for handling this. In this talk we’ll explore those techniques for handling long running computations on the Flash platform. We’ll look at classic computational problems such as fractals, and more common place problems like parsing large XML and JSON data in Actionscript. We’ll also talk about the future possibilities for Actionscript in this area.

About the Speakers:

Matt Boles is the Technical Lead for the Adobe Partner Enablement group and has been developing and teaching courses on Flex since the 1.0 release. Matt has a diverse background in web development, computer networking, and teaching in both professional computer classes and the public schools. He coauthored the Flex Training from the Source books for both Flex 2 and Flex 3, and was also a coauthor on the Certified ColdFusion Developer Study Guide. He has also developed official Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe curricula in the Flex, ColdFusion and Flash development content areas.

Charlie Hubbard is a 10+ year veteran of the software industry, blogger, open source project contributor and project creator. His days are filled as a Senior Software Engineer at Nexidia working on a grid based approach for searching audio. In his free time he enjoys working with Ruby, Java, Flex, Javascript, and has been known to make a film every once in a while. Charlie and his wife live and work in Atlanta.

We released a minor update to the Dreamsocket Media Framework that addresses issues with streaming video and mp3s. The release is an update to all 3 versions (Flash AS2, Flash AS3, and Flex AS3) and is available for download in customer accounts.

Here is a brief outline of the changes:
[FIX] ondemand streaming not being canceled out
[FIX] duration not being reset on close for StreamingNS
[FIX] corrected streaming mp3 initialization
[CHG] added autoloading of content if closed and setting a url back to the same one
[CHG] re-added getLength calls for StreamingNS content
[CHG] handling of netconnection status events after connecting
[CHG] added netConnection as a property of AbstractMediaNS

For the full release history for each version please check out our release notes section.

Fellow Dreamsocketeer and partner in crime, Mr. Chad posted a short little article on Dreamsocket briefly outlining how we built the site. He mentions how he put together the store front, live docs, bug tracker and more all under one cohesive roof. If you are interested in how we accomplished it all, then definitely give it a read and post any questions you may have.

Based on all the feedback and site analytics, we've updated dreamsocket.com. The quick change list includes media framework demos, live support chat, code highlighting, and extra company info.

Check out our full blog post on the site for more details. We definitely care what you think so post your thoughts and ideas on what we are doing!

Yesterday I had Dreamsocketeer - Chad give this blog a much needed face lift. Unfortunately, I let it go to long with a dated default look that made it hard to read some entries. Obviously, most people just grab the feeds through a reader, but for those making the trek to the site it made sense to give you something that appealed to the eye. In addition to lovely new "clothes", I threw in some additional social links of mine in the navigation for those wanting more info on who I am, what I do. Enjoy the new lovely!

For anyone that isn't aware, Atlanta has a pretty solid IPhone user group that has been meeting frequently. Though, I've only been to one meeting, I was pretty impressed by the turnout and diversity of its participants. Whether you are just getting started or you are a veteran, it seems like a good fit for all. I encourage anyone in the Atlanta community that is interested in developing for the platform to go.

Tonight is February's meeting and below is the agenda
7:00 to 7:20 - Drinks and Introductions
7:20 to 7:30 - Mobile Strategy or User Experience Topic
7:30 to 7:55 - SDK Tutorial Topic
8:00 to 8:30 - Native Applications Show & Tell

If you are interested go sign up now. Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend tonight, but am trying to have a Dreamsocketeer to go in my place.

The base Event class in Flash has 3 parameters.

The first parameter, type, is required. The second two, bubbles and cancelable, default to false. This means that you don't have to pass either of these two parameters and they will incur values.

If you look at any of the native Flash Event subclass constructors, their additional parameters follow the Event base's default parameters and have defaults.

So the questions arise when you subclass an event and you have a new parameter you consider required: Should all additional parameters be required to follow the base parameters to ahere to the base signature? Should a developer have to type in values that almost a 100% of the time will be defaulted in order to type in one that is thought to be required? Obviously, if this is the case then the additional parameters can not be required by the compiler and only enforced by practice. These parameters would have to have defaults.

While working on our media framework, I debated on whether it was valid to follow Flash's native Event subclasses and make required parameters only required by practice or whether to change the subclass signature and make them required by nature. I settled on the fact that it's ok to switch up the order of parameters in the constructor's signature and place new required parameters before base default ones.

If the parameters were all defaults, a developer could forget a "required" one and end up having to debug unexpected results. By actually requiring parameters, a developer who forgets to put them in then will get warned by the compiler. This seems better practice and also feels more natural when programming. For example, when creating new instances, you only have to pass in required parameters and can let the base ones default.

Personally, I don't think signature familiarity is as important as context responsibility. It also doesn't make sense to force yourself into a practice that can actually be less productive and hurt you rather than be beneficial. That's my take.

At Dreamsocket we have been getting inquiries on whether will we allow upgrading of products. Simple answer yes! We will allow upgrading of the Dreamsocket Media Framework from compiled seat to source seat, source seat to source site, or compiled seat to source site. The cost to upgrade will be the difference in price along with a small amount to cover our costs for the additional transaction. Currently the site does not allow upgrading, but we are working to add support for this into our store front. Until then, customers who buy and choose to upgrade will be able to do this all digitally by emailing support and then making the transaction through PayPal. We will then manually update their accounts.

We really don't want you to fill that you are stuck with the version you buy. Obviously, people's needs change! We have had our own personal frustrations of emailing companies to inquire about upgrading, only to be told that it wasn't possible. So don't hesitate, go grab the Dreamsocket Media Framework and let us see what you can do with it!