Not a single comment? Well, I’ll better stop developing this sh*t then 
Browsing articles from "June, 2011"
Nokia N9 – it’s the future without a future
Nokia introduced their first MeeGo device last week, the Nokia N9. It certainly looks good and actually contains a few new innovations (about time), like getting rid of that last hardware button (Steve must be furious that Nokia beat him to it).
However, many people have raised the question of why Nokia is discontinuing any development on further MeeGo devices and abandoning the platform entirely given that they just released a device that actually get’s very positive inital feedback from users and the press (the last time they did was about 5 years ago with the N95). Even people within Nokia are giving Steven Elop (and the board) a hard time (woth a read).
Still Steven stays firm and goes on record to say that no matter how huge a hit the N9 turns out to be, Nokia will still abandon MeeGo. As I’m lazy, I’ll just quote a Gizmodo comment, because it’s very much in line with my thinking:
Simply put, Elop has it correct. It really doesn’t matter how successful the N9 is because everyone wants to measure it by unit sales (short term success) and not the development of the ecosystem (long term success). Sales can be taken away from you (see RIM’s recent report on their Blackberry sales) but ecosystems live on for much longer. Everyone knows that Nokia builds excellent hardware but their software is so-so at best. What makes people think that it will create better development tools than Microsoft? What makes people think that it will line up the retail deals in the US so you can buy music, movies and TV shows? What makes the N9 different from webOS on a fundamental level?
Everyone says that webOS is probably one of the best mobile operating systems out there, but it hasn’t become all the rage since it’s release. Why? Sure, the hardware is a major contributing factor, but even if that were fixed, you’d be left with a device that would have ONLY succeeded in a world where the iPhone doesn’t exist.
The reason why people buy iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads is because of the ecosystem Apple has developed. Any app you’ve bought for your iPhone will work on your iPod Touch or iPad. Any song, movie or TV show you’ve purchased from iTunes will work. Or books from the iBookstore. Or having first-class podcast support. It’s a very, very strong ecosystem which Nokia knows Microsoft is far closer to achieving than their own company ever would be.
People need to stop thinking that only having nice hardware/software will save your butt today. This isn’t 2006. The iPhone showed that you need ALL your ducks in a row to win at this game.
New Flow Framework examples
Some more Flow Framework examples. This time with 100% more scrollbars and scroll containers.
A few points of interest on this one: Try the text input on page two to see how layout is validated. Try and hold down the vertical scrollbar thumb on page 5. Scroll containers validate their context correctly even though the whole container is resizing.
13 Comments
First examples of Flow
Straight from the workbench, here are a few examples what the Flow Framework will enable developers to do. Nothing spectacular and very much work in progress, but I wanted to share this as early on as possible. Jump right in and check out the source on Github.
Also, check out Sofanatics, the first app that has been built with Flow. To get timely updates on the progress of the framework, follow me on Twitter.
7 Comments
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Looks promising. Maybe you’ll team up with guy that creates as-ui-commons* and use some parts of it. Framework dev will be faster
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Sure thing, I’ll look into AS3Commons. Thanks for the tip.
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This is really nice, I think is pretty useful at the time to develop in iPhone, what do you think?
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Yeah, Flow will be excellent for iPhone dev due to it’s speed!
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Is there a mobile example of using Flow ?
Which are the steps to setup a mobile project with Flow, and publish to .apk ?
Thanks,
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Haven’t made an example, but setting one up should be pretty straight forward. Just create a mobile project in Flex and copy the source code from the example over and add the Flow src to your source paths.
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This is amazing… WELL DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!
very very nice, beautifull style, it is a promising framework. I’ll try to play with it
Thanks for the kind comments.
There is a chance that you will make it as3-signals based? It would be a neat feature
There’s not a lot of eventing going around to start with, but that might change once I finalize the API. I’ll look into signals and whether they would be a good fit. For the Binding part I still have to rely on Events, as these are compiled in by MXMLC.
You can use data binding with as3-signals:
http://www.ericfeminella.com/blog/2010/03/22/as3-signals-simulated-data-binding/
Signals are a little bit faster that native events, have lower memory footprint, adds useful helper methods, allows to create interfaces for event oriented components and works well with elements that only support native events like mouse clicks. Main drawback is that it isn’t native so it adds a dependency and few KB into app/framework but… its worth it
I think that there is currently no ui framework that implements as3 signals so it might be a strong point of Flow if this will be incorporated.
Anyway, I hope that you will not stop working on this project since flash world need a good, skinable, lightweight flex-like alternative. Good luck
Sure thing that you can use Binding with AS3-Signals, but it’s still requires some labour, as it’s not as easy as just to say [Bindable] on a property and then use curly braces to bind to that property.
Anyways, I’ll look if and how Flow could benefit from AS3 Signals. Stay tuned.
Good !!!
Take a look at the Flight Framework which as a package for AS3 data binding without mxml.
Could radically enhance your framework.
Don’t mind repeating this in twitter and here too.
I fetched “Flow” from github, compilation error with Flow Example, seems “avmplus” is not commited in GIT?
Flow only compiles when you target the Flex Framework 4.5. FF 4.5.1 will give you that error. Will fix
I have deployed the test you have above on iPhone 4S, using a Flex Mobile project.
The problem I’ve got, is that all content is smaller than normal to about 30-40%
All UI shrinks down for some reason when deployed as an app.
Any ideas ?
Thanks,
Interesting. Care to open a ticket on Github and share your project so that I could debug?