Abdul Qabiz on Web Technologies, Flash Platform, RIA, India

I heard about SWFObject html/javascript generator from a colleague. An useful tool for people who want to use Flash/Flex in their blog/webpage and not comfortable writing html/javascript code.

Technorati Tags: swfobject, generator, html, javascript

I spent some time playing with Google Gears LocalServer (ResourceStore) to cache some video files from YouTube/Google-Video on client. It seems, you can only cache (store) data from same-origin. I might be wrong, but this is what I found.
I would spend more time to find out if there is a way.

I just installed Google Gears (Beta) and checked out some examples. I love the all the features (SQLite-DB, Cache-Server and Workerpool to manage script execuation), Google Gears surly rocks!

Some links to get started:-

• Install Google Gears – It takes some minutes only (You need to restart the browser after installation)
• Check out examples
  • Simple Database Demo
  • Simple ResourceStore Demo
  • Simple ManagedResource Demo
  • Simple WorkerPool Demo
• Check out the API

Gmail uses mouse-down event instead of click (mouse-button-release) at many places (Compose Mail, Inbox, Chats etc) in it’s frontend. 

I face following problems because of their wrong choice of event (mouse-down instead of click):

• I can’t select text while in list view. For example, if I want to select the sender’s name or subject, instead it opens the mail thread.

   

• If mouse-button is pressed by mistake on any of links (Compose Mail, Inbox etc), associated action takes place and I am forced to click on browser’s back button (or equivalent) to get back to previous state (screen/view). I don’t get a chance to change my mind by releasing mouse-button outside of link area.

   

Niall Kennedy has posted interesting article, where he compares client-side-storage of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Adobe Flash Player.
Though, the title of post talks only about AJAX, I still find it useful in general. I thought to post it, you might find it useful.
Check it out.

When I was in Yahoo!, I heard about this new plugin architecture in Yahoo! Messenger. I was very excited because I could extend the capabilities of Yahoo! Messenger with my current skills set (ActionScript, HTML, JavaScript, C++). Now this is public, I can talk about it.
You can download the latest beta of Yahoo! Messenger and get the Yahoo! Messenger Plugin SDK (which contains a sdk documentation and one example plugin).
Justin has also blogged about it. I am sure, we would soon see some cool plugins. Yeah, I also have my own ideas which I would hopefully able to do in my free time.
Meanwhile, check out plugin-gallery for some cool plugins.

In my last post, I talked about JavaScript Flex 2 component that can inject Javascript code in HTML wrapper’s context. I experimented to see, if we can load Javascript files (.js) using HTTPService (or flash.net.URLLoader) in Flex2/AS3 projects and inject it.

Example Flex 2.0 code:

<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
xmlns="com.abdulqabiz.utils.*"  width="100%" height="100%" creationComplete="onAppInit ()">
<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
import mx.events.*;
import mx.rpc.events.*;
import mx.rpc.http.HTTPService;
import com.abdulqabiz.utils.JavaScript;
private var javascript:JavaScript;
private var service:HTTPService;
private function onAppInit ():void
{
service = new HTTPService ();
service.url = "test.js";
service.useProxy = false;
service.resultFormat = "text";
service.addEventListener ("result", injectJavaScript);
service.send ();
}
private function injectJavaScript (event:ResultEvent):void
{
javascript = new JavaScript ();
javascript.source = String(event.result);
trace ("javascript injected: " + event.result);
}
private function invokeSayHelloWorld ():void
{
ExternalInterface.call ("sayHelloWorld");
}
private function invokeSaySomething (str:String):void
{
ExternalInterface.call ("saySomething", str);
}
]]>
</mx:Script>
<mx:Button label="invoke javascript saySomething () function" click="invokeSaySomething ('Hey, how are you?')"/>
<mx:Button label="invoke javascript sayHelloWorld () function" click="invokeSayHelloWorld ()"/>
</mx:Application>

Test.js used in example:

//test.js
var myName = "Abdul Qabiz";
function saySomething (str)
{
alert (str);
}
function sayHelloWorld ()
{
alert ("Hello World!");
}

You would need JavaScript.as (with proper package directory structure) and test.js (code posted above) in place to make above example to work.
I am thinking to load FABridge using this approach. I know, it’s practically of no use except keeping code and logic at one place.

In last post, I showed, how can we inject JavaScript using ActionScript or MXML into host HTML container/page.

One more use-cases, I can think of:

• Request server-side script to send a JavaScript (for specific browser) as string.  Using JavaScript class, I can inject the javascript in HTML

If you are AJAX, Javascript or Web Developer, you should look at the posts of Philip. Quite interesting stuff.

• 
  Progressive Enhancement via μMVC – I
• Rich, accessible pagination with unobtrusive javascript