In Part I of Queued and AIR issues, I talked about some of the challenges we faced during the development of Queued, our AIR application that allows you to manage your Netflix queues. In this post, I’ll discuss five other issues we ran across.
Tags: air, JavaScript, queued
Posted in Dojo, JavaScript, air, api, queued | 5 Comments
During the course of developing Queued, we ran across a number of challenges developing with AIR that we needed to solve. Some were very difficult to get around, while others were the result of our team needing to think outside the web-based paradigm. In this post, I’ll talk about four issues we ran across that ended up shaping part of the Queued codebase.
Tags: air, JavaScript, queued
Posted in Dojo, air, api, queued | No Comments
Sometimes building an application from scratch is easier than building on an already existing interaction model. For Queued, our goal was to take the Netflix user experience and port it to a lightweight desktop application, while adding some modest enhancements.
Creating an alternate interface for an already well-known web site carries some unique responsibilities. First, unless there is something seriously wrong with the original site, straying too far from the established model can be counterproductive. Second, innovating on existing features becomes more important than replacing them. And third, adding new interface functionality without obstructing existing interactions remains a crucial consideration.
For the Queued project, SitePen faced the additional challenge of showing off features of Adobe AIR that might not necessarily lead to the most fluid interaction, but which were powerful enough to merit inclusion as a demonstration of AIR’s powerful capabilities. We’ll discuss a few of our interaction changes here, though these aren’t the only modifications that we decided to implement.
Tags: air, design ui ux, Dojo, interaction, queued
Posted in Dojo, UI Design, air, offline, queued | 1 Comment
I’m excited to announce a new BSD-licensed project created by SitePen and co-sponsored by Adobe: Dojo Extensions for Adobe AIR.
This new effort creates a new namespace, dair, making it even easier to create rich desktop apps, such as the Dojo Toolbox, using the Dojo Toolkit and Adobe AIR.
The extensions offer convenience methods for your application, wrapping many common AIR Patterns in Dojo-like constructors and providing an entire framework from which to grow. Built-in persistent storage, granular window control from creation to destruction, Window FX, Audio/Video helpers, and extra console debugging facilities are just the beginning.
This work was greatly inspired by our creation of the Dojo Toolbox. It simplifies Ajax application development on the AIR platform for not only Dojo users, but also anyone creating an Ajax application inside AIR. Thanks again to Adobe for helping make this possible.
I’ll be speaking in more detail about this on the afternoon of Monday, November 17th at Adobe MAX in San Francisco.
Visit the Dojo Extensions for Adobe AIR project page for full details, including a screencast, downloads, examples, documentation, and of course the source code and information on getting involved. Of course, if you need help creating a great AIR-based desktop app, contact us for more information on how we can assist you.
Tags: air, dair, dojo extensions for adobe air
Posted in Dojo, JavaScript, Open Source, ajax | 2 Comments
In the middle of May, we were given a mission: create a speedy, offline API documentation viewer and a graphical Dojo build tool. Here we are at the beginning of July, and the result is the Dojo Toolbox 1.0. This article is a first look at this new application.
Adobe® AIR™ has received a good deal of press attention over the past few months, and with good reason. It provides a way for web application developers to use the skills they already have to create cross-platform desktop applications. Starting with Dojo 1.1, Dojo has included support for AIR out-of-the-box. This made AIR an ideal target environment for the Dojo Toolbox.
Tags: air, dojo toolbox, dojotoolbox
Posted in Dojo, JavaScript, News, Open Source, Performance, ajax | 24 Comments