Archive for February, 2009

DevelopmentArc will be attending the 2009 Interactive South By Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas.  This will be the first year that Aaron and I have attended the Interactive conference.  I have been to the Music portion of the conference for the last three years and I have throughly enjoyed it.  We are looking forward to seeing what the Interactive conference has to offer and to meet fellow industry members.  If you are attending SXSW and would like to meet up with us, let us know!

Starting back in June of 2008, I became a regular contributor to the Adobe Edge Newsletter. My most recent article, “The Future of Flex Components” was just published in the February 2009 edition. In this article, I explore the upcoming Flex 4 (codename Gubmo) component architecture and how it will change Flex develop in the future. Understanding how the new components are designed is critical both from a developers perspective but also a designers perspective so that they can best apply their design in a functional and consistent manner within the technology.

In the same edition, our good friend Doug Winnie also has a new article. In “An iterative approach to the designer-developer workflow“, Doug discusses how designers and developer work using an iterative process and how this process can be applied to make a more cohesive team and product. Doug’s insights are always spot on and once again his detailed research into workflows is shown in this piece.

The newest release of DevelopmentArc Core is now available on the Google Code Repository.  This release is the first release of the library under the new Core moniker.  Previously the library was released under the Vivisecting Media Code Library, which has been now been deprecated since Core is publicly available.  All updates and new features will be added to the Core system moving forward.

From the code depot you can download a compiled SWC or a ZIP file that contains all the source and ASDoc generated files.  We have posted the ADoc files on-line so that you can easily access them if you do not download them.  Currently, we have 219 unit tests running and passing for the library, which are all available from the source tree if you wish to access them.

The current release of Core contains the following functionality.  We have marked new and updated features that have been changed from the Vivisecting Media Library to the new Core Library:

• Task Management System new! - The Task system is a priority queuing system that enables an application to execute specific bundles of business and/or server logic in a specific order leveraging priority and the ability to override previously queued bundles. These bundles are encapsulated inside of Task objects, which can be then bundled Task Group objects. Tasks and task groups have the ability to take priority over other Tasks or Task Groups inside of the queue, as well as replace existing tasks in the queue based on a set of overrides an individual task can define.
• Command Action Delegation System (CAD) new! - Provides a pre-built solution for implementing the Command Pattern within ActionScript/Flex/AIR applications. The command / action system allows for commands to be dispatched to the ActionDelegate which then executes any assigned functionality via an Action.
• Selection Management System updated! - The Selection Management system enables any kind of object to become selectable and treated as part of a Selection group. In most cases this would be a UI Component that should behave similarly to a radio button group, where only one item can be selected at one time. This system also allows for multi-select and deselection of items that are members of a selection group.
• Local Connection Management updated! - The Local Connection manager is a helper class to quickly establish and manage local connection instances within an application. The Local Connection manager also supports the ability to maintain strong class types when the data object is passed over the local connection instance.
• Event Broker Utility - The Event Broker is a utility class that acts as a router for specified events. The Event Broker is a single point of contact that any object can broadcast to or subscribe to. This functionality is intended to be the focal point for implementing the mediator pattern within the application.
• Instance Factory Utility new! - The Instance Factory allows for the ability to make sure there is only one instance of a specified class within the instance of the factory. This is useful for using in Locators that handle generating a new instance on the first request but then making sure the original instance of the requested item is returned on subsequent requests.
• Singleton Factory Utility new! - Similar to the Instance Factory, the Singleton Factory verifies that there is only one instance of a requested item, but instead of being limited to the instance of the factory, the Singleton Factory verifies there is only one instance of the requested item in the entire application.
• Adjustable Date Utility new! - The adjustable date wraps a Flash Date object and provides a series of helper methods to adjust time and dates quickly and easily. Example uses included the ability to adjust a date by a specific number of days forward or backwards, making sure that the number of days in the month and Leap Years are respected during the adjustment.
• Queue Data Structures updated! - The Queue system allows for items to be stored in either a LIFO or FIFO based queue order or in a priority queue order and then retrieved from the data structure depending on how the items are ordered.
• Hash Table Data Structure - The Hash Table is key/value that allows any value or object to be used as a reference key to another value or object item. The Hash Table is similar to Flex’s ArrayCollection in how items can be referenced but unlike the collection, this is ActionScript independent, is not intended for data pagination and is focused on performance for larger data sets.
• Browser Location Utility new! - Utility class used to query the current url in the application. The class provides static properties for each piece of the application url.

Here at DevelopmentArc we are really excited and proud of the work we have put into Core so far.  We are currently working on the version 0.9 release roadmap which includes multiple new systems, helpers and utilities.  FYI - the 0.5 release number is used to announce the step from the 0.4 release of Vivisecting Medias to the Core name.  The 0.9 release will contain all of the target features for the 1.0 release of Core.

It has been a long time coming, but we have finally launched our company website.  Aaron and I have been slowly adding content and building the site between client work, company work and intense development on DevelopmentArc Core.

We will keep the introduction brief, but for now we recommend that you explore the website and check out our current projects and services. If you have any questions or want to know more about what we do, please contact us!

Expect a lot more articles, in-depth anaylsis and updates coming very soon…