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Thursday, July 29, 2010

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and Use of Adobe Flex in creating RIA

Rich Internet applications (RIAs) offer a rich, engaging experience that improves user satisfaction and increases productivity. Using the broad reach of the Internet, RIAs can be deployed across browsers and desktops. It enables a new class of applications that combines the responsiveness and interactivity of desktop applications with the broad reach and ease of distribution of the web. RIAs can yield increased return on investment (ROI) by providing simple means and improving the user interaction-enabling users to find information more easily, complete tasks quickly and accurately, and use rich data visualization to make better presentations as well as improved decisions.

Basically RIA is a technology that caters to following two need of the hour:
• A new class of client runtime that can support the range of needs inherent in rich Internet business applications
• Tools and technology that can provide a productive environment for building, maintaining, and managing these applications throughout their lifecycle


As mentioned by Adobe Official Website, RIAs offer organizations a proven, cost-effective way to deliver modern applications with real business benefits:
• Offer users a richer, more engaging experience.
• Keep pace with users' rising expectations.
• Increase customer loyalty and generate higher profits.
• Leverage existing personnel, processes, and infrastructure.


It is very important to note that business executives increasingly recognize the value customer engagement brings to their businesses. For example, in a recent study on engagement conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of Adobe, 80% of executives said that better engagement translates into improved customer loyalty, and 75% said they believed it meant higher profits. In March 2007, Forrester Research published "The Business Case for Rich Internet Applications," a report based on interviews with RIA technology providers and designers, as well as Forrester Research clients and customers. The report revealed that "well-designed RIAs can produce eye-popping results that can help prove the value of current investments and make the case for future RIA projects."


The first point before adopting RIA is to identify which technology is best. Undoubtedly, a unanimous choice would be Adobe products and framework. This becomes so easy choice because of primarily two reasons:
1) Usefullness and effectiveness
2) Less effort to adopt and build applications
3) Beautiful animation and visual appeal
4) Prominence of Flash Run Time Environment over computers worldwide.


If I try to analyze the fourth point in a better way, I would conclude that building RIAs with Adobe technologies offers additional benefits. Adobe's clients have a long history of delivering consistent, cross-platform experiences. The Adobe® Flash® Player runtime reaches 98% of Internet-enabled desktops and more than 450 million devices, offering businesses greater reach than with any other client technology available. Adobe AIR™, the latest client from Adobe, leverages the power of Flash Player while adding the capability to deploy RIAs directly to the desktop.
Finally, since Adobe technologies enable designers and developers to build RIAs with their current tools and skills, businesses can leverage existing personnel and assets to enhance customer engagement while minimizing expense.


Flex is a standard-based programming model for high performance rich internet applications. Flex application will take advantage of adobe flash player 9, 10 et. Al. and this will enable developer to extend the capabilities enables the client with richer applications in real time. Technically, the Flex framework represents the presentation tire in multitier architecture applications and will be easy integrated with server-side functionality. If you want to create flex application then, you will start this application on Flex builder, which is IDE with visual layout, debugging, skinning, coder hinting and styling for developing rich Internet applications. In my opinion, the biggest advantages of using the Flash player as a runtime for your RIA as opposed to using AJAX: Firstly, the Write once, deploy cross platform capability. Secondly, You can turn your Flex application into a desktop application without much changes. So that means switching your application from Web based to Desktop and Vice versa is so easy in Flex. Thirdly, you can build UI's that look and feel the way you want them to, and not forced into having limitations by your development technology. Fourth, Flex provides many many tools, data grids, containers, components, 3d integration etc. Fifth ActioScript 3.0 provides you endless features and capabilities. And lastly, you can run Flex based Flash swf files even with PHP, Java or Asp.net. And in addition, there are many other benefits that compel anyone to learn, try and use Flex.


So wish you all great applications to come up from Adobe flex. Rich Internet Applications have started blooming and I can only see them in coming future. A long time to reign for RIAs particularly Adobe Flex and AS 3.0. (IMO (, in my opinion) ;) )

Happy Flexing!!!
Mohd Anwar Jamal Faiz
View ToughJamy : An Informal Me!!
View MeOnShow Website

Monday, July 26, 2010

more shortcuts in Mac OSx for taking screenshots

Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

Taking screen shot in Mac OSx

Taking screenshot in windows is very simple. A keypress can do that but on Mac it requires a combination of keys. But on the other hand, the added advantage in Mac is that you can select the area under screen shot very easily.

1) Taking full screen shot
Command[Apple] + shift + 3 = take a screen shot. The screen shot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop.

2) Taking selective area screenshot
The same instead of 4 brings up a cross and can take a screen shot of a selection. A cross-hair cursor will appear and you can click and drag to select the area you wish to capture.

3) Taking screenshot of an application window
To capture a specific application window, press Command-Shift-4, then press the Spacebar. The cursor will become a camera, and you can move it around the screen. On moving cursor over an application window, the window will be highlighted. When you have the cursor over a window you want to capture, just click the mouse button and the screen shot will be saved as a PNG file on your desktop

Thursday, July 8, 2010

How can you Free Download Google Video or YouTube streaming video

Though playing video online has become easier, yet buffering and low internet speed can spoil everyones's mood. Watching Shakira's new waka waks for the FIFA world cup 2010, I was aghast to see the speed with which it played. I tried finding out ways to download the content rightaway. Here are my findings:

1) There is an old hack as follows--
• Go to Google Video and find some video.
• View the web page source code from View->Source and search for the keyword ‘googleplayer‘
• Copy and paste the videoUrl parameter. That means all the characters after the keyword ‘videoUrl=’
• Press Ctrl-L to go to URL location bar. Type Javascript:unescape(”videoUrl”) where videoUrl should be the last parameter you have copied into the clipboard. This will execute javascript and return you unescaped text.
• The unescaped text has actual URL on the broswer, copy and paste that URL onto your browser location bar again to download the FLV movie.
• You can try playing it with a FLV Player or convert using standard converters.

2) There is yet another method. You can use many online tools. These tools directly expose the correct URL. They may even download the video content rightaway. You can use websites such as:
a)videodl.org
b)javimoya.com
c)saveid.com
Incidentally, the above three websites happen to have top three results in Google search.

3) At last I must tell you the best thing that I found. There are many softwares that are Free of cost available and they work for Youtube, Google video and on many other famous video publishing and sharing websites. Fo instance:
a)Sothink Video Catcher
b)Moyea FLV Downloader

So enjoy!!!