Intro to Building and
Deploying Flex
Applications with Ant By Yakov Fain Unless your project is as
simple as HelloWorld
application, compilation
and deployment of this
application has to be
automated. Creating a
build script for any
decent size application
(i.e. hundreds of files
in Flex and server-side
Java) is a project on its
own. J... Dec. 5, 2006 05:00 AM Reads: 18,161 |
JBuilder 2007 - Borland
Must Be Crazy! By Yakov Fain It looks like Borland
could not find a buyer
for their IDE division,
and they've released a
new Eclipse-based version
of Java IDE - JBuilder
2007. They will TRY TO
SELL different version of
this product, and the
Enterprise Edition costs
$1999 (?!). They must be
cr... Dec. 2, 2006 03:15 AM Reads: 19,514 Replies: 18 |
Creating a Flashy
Monitoring Application By Yakov Fain  Do you know what's the
main goal of any gas
station owner? To get
lots of trucking
accounts. Business from
small car drivers is
worth pennies, and it
gets on my nerves to hear
them ask again and again,
'Five dollars of regular,
please.' Trucks are
different. They ... Nov. 22, 2006 11:30 AM Reads: 19,832 Replies: 1 |
Adobe Flex 2 -
Experimenting With Frame
Rates By Yakov Fain This command will build
the swf file with the
frame rate of fifty
frames per second.
Display list rendering
and the ActionScript
execution take turns,
hence the frame rate can
affect your application
performance. Setting the
frame rate to fifty does
not mean that... Nov. 21, 2006 09:45 AM Reads: 20,325 Replies: 2 |
Adobe Flex 2: Advanced
DataGrid By Victor Rasputnis; Yakov Fain; Anatole Tartakovsky  In Part 1 (CFDJ, Vol. 8,
issue 10) we introduced
the destination-aware
grid, formatters, and
renderers. In this
article we are continuing
our discussion about
datagrid renderers and... Nov. 20, 2006 08:45 PM Reads: 47,943 Replies: 1 |
Spring + Hibernate EJB3,
POJO + JDBC? By Yakov Fain  In the beginning there
was nothing: no Java and
no data. Then someone
said, let there be data
and relational databases
with SQL were born. And
someone said, let Java
talk to databases, and
JDBC was born. And
someone saw that JDBC was
good, but someone else
saw tha... Nov. 16, 2006 09:00 AM Reads: 34,244 Replies: 14 |
Comparing the syntax of
Java 5 and ActionScript 3 By Yakov Fain This is a short
comparison table of major
elements/concepts of
these two languages for a
quick reference. Nov. 12, 2006 01:30 PM Reads: 24,382 |
Working with Large
Applications By Victor Rasputnis; Yakov Fain; Anatole Tartakovsky  In this excerpt from our
book, Rich Internet
Applications, we'll cover
how to set up large
applications intended for
Web or, more broadly
speaking, distributed
deployment. As an example
let's consider an
enterprise application
that consists of hundreds
of screens,... Nov. 11, 2006 03:00 PM Reads: 26,129 |
Thoughts on open sourcing
Web components By Yakov Fain Every now and then we
create reusable
components, and so far we
are giving them away for
free. Some pathetic
bloggers call this
'giving back to the
community'. We look at it
simple: if we do not have
time to productionize
the component, we donate
it. Nov. 1, 2006 07:30 AM Reads: 18,558 |
PHP Eats Rails For
Breakfast? By Yakov Fain Ran into some stats
trying to show that PHP
is the king of the open
source. I'm neither into
Ruby nor into PHP, but
something in these charts
does not sound right to
me. The author states
'The world is shifting
away from rich client
applications, and towards
the w... Oct. 31, 2006 11:30 AM Reads: 9,453 Replies: 2 |
An Exclusive Interview
With Creator Of MyEclipse
IDE By Yakov Fain Recently I had a chance
to chat with Maher Masri,
the CEO of Genuitec, the
company that offers the
Eclipse-based Java IDE
called MyEclipse. My goal
was to find out why would
I want to purchase this
IDE if free Eclipse fits
the bill for most of the
developers. Oct. 30, 2006 05:30 PM Reads: 17,657 Replies: 2 |
How AJAX Works By Yakov Fain When I was learning how
to work with AJAX, I went
through a number of
101-type articles. The
biggest problem with
these tutorials is that
the authors are trying to
explain several things at
once, which is confusing.
I'll try to offer you a
very simple example of an
Ajax application. Oct. 30, 2006 12:30 AM Reads: 25,306 |
Jonathan Schwartz: Java
Goes Open Source By The
End Of This Year By Yakov Fain I do not know why people
make such a big deal out
of the open sourcing
Java. I do not know who
started this 'Freedom to
Java' movement, but Sun
decided to respond. Fine.
I like IT news and I
never hesitate to
express my opinion on any
of them, but this one is
jus... Oct. 26, 2006 08:30 AM Reads: 15,607 Replies: 2 |
SAP Is Using Adobe Flex By Yakov Fain SAP TechEd conference
opens in Vegas. The big
guy is using Flex as a
client for Java. Here's
an abstract of the
presentation called 'Next
Generation of Client
Technology for SAP.' When
I suggest my clients
using Adobe Flex as a
front end for Java, the
first questi... Oct. 25, 2006 03:15 PM Reads: 21,334 Replies: 4 |
Introducing Adobe Flex to
Java Developers By Yakov Fain Christophe Coenraets, a
senior Flex Evangelist
from Adobe has published
a blog showing a number
of sample Flex
applications that
communicate with Java on
the server side. Oct. 23, 2006 12:45 PM Reads: 17,033 |
PowerBuilder, Java, Flex,
Agile Programming By Yakov Fain Ten years ago I've been
doing PowerBuilder and my
mentality was different:
first, I was the best
friend of business users,
and second I did not
really worry about what's
under the hood. I could
do stuff quickly, or
using the modern jargon,
I was an Oct. 20, 2006 08:00 AM Reads: 16,952 |
Some Thoughts After
Watching AJAX FABridge
Flex Demo By Yakov Fain There is this blog and a
nice looking demo showing
how AJAX can happily live
together with Flex
charting. This vendor's
AJAX grid component is
populated with the data
first, and then using
FABridge the data is
being passed to the Flex
Charting component.
Typical... Oct. 18, 2006 12:15 PM Reads: 11,456 Replies: 1 |
Passing parameters to
Flex that works By Yakov Fain The subject of this piece
is how to pass parameters
from HTML to a Flex 2
application using
flashVars parameters. Oct. 12, 2006 07:30 AM Reads: 30,467 Replies: 1 |
Flash Player 9 on Linux
and Adobe marketing By Yakov Fain Flash Player 9 enters
pre-Alpha stage on Linux.
Adobe marketing needs to
work harder. Oct. 6, 2006 08:15 AM Reads: 18,072 |
End-to-End Rapid
Application Development
with Data Services &
Adobe Flex By Victor Rasputnis; Yakov Fain; Anatole Tartakovsky  The simplest way to
explain Flex Data
Services (FDS) is to
compare them with Flex
Remoting. Simply put, FDS
addresses only a subset
of operations facilitated
via Flex Remoting -
result set requests.
However, whereas Flex
Remoting enables one-way
requests, FDS comb... Oct. 5, 2006 12:00 PM Reads: 24,631 |
ActionScript 3: Dynamic
classes By Yakov Fain In Java, if you've
created an object from a
particular class, you can
use only properties and
methods that were defined
in this class. This is
not the case in
ActionScript 3. This is
one of the examples of
unusual (from the OOP
perspective) programming
techniques. Oct. 3, 2006 07:15 AM Reads: 20,470 |
Hey, Wall Street, Flex
Your Muscles! By Yakov Fain  On August 14, I attended
the seminar RealWorld
Flex in New York City. I
was really impressed by
the endless number of
presentations showing the
use of Adobe Flex 2
technology in the real
world applications.
Real-time processing,
vector graphics,
collaboration, m... Sep. 26, 2006 12:15 PM Reads: 16,016 Replies: 1 |
Adobe Flex: Program in
Style or an Elevator
Pitch By Yakov Fain Each of our students
comes with different
understanding of how to
program in Flex according
to their 'legacy'
background. So I'll tell
you the story that might
have happened in a real
life, but first, let me
remind you of an old
Indian tale about seven
blind men a... Sep. 24, 2006 07:30 PM Reads: 19,263 Replies: 2 |
Java Does Not Need Botox By Yakov Fain During my 25 years in
software development, I
lived through different
trends in programming and
usually changed my
primary programming
language every five years
or so. While teaching
students to program in
whatever language was hot
at the time, I kept
warning them... Sep. 24, 2006 06:15 PM Reads: 13,376 Replies: 4 |
Java Bookshelf By Yakov Fain  Finding and buying Java
books online is
great...as long as you
know what to look for.
The thing is in many
cases it's not obvious
from the book title what
the book about (I'll give
you some examples below).
So visiting a real
bookstore can be a much
better experie... Sep. 21, 2006 04:30 PM Reads: 11,779 Replies: 1 |
How To Write an RSS
Reader in AJAX By Yakov Fain IBM Developers work has a
tutorial on how to build
an RSS reader using AJAX.
The amount of code you
need to write is scary
(and this is not the
complete code). Adobe
Flex 2 plus a simple Java
programming to support DB
interaction allows you to
achive the same
func... Sep. 21, 2006 01:15 PM Reads: 15,966 Replies: 10 |
We've Taught Adobe Flex
and Microsoft Excel Talk
To Each Other By Yakov Fain We are finishing writing
our book on RIA with Flex
and Java , and the last
chapter is called
'Integration with
External Applications'.
It's sixty five pages of
some advanced read. After
writing this chapter one
of us suggested that it
would be easier to
re-write ... Sep. 19, 2006 06:15 PM Reads: 13,359 Replies: 2 |
We've taught Adobe Flex
to talk to Microsoft
Excel By Yakov Fain This sample application
shows the data exchange
between Adobe Flex and
Microsoft Excel Sep. 18, 2006 11:15 PM Reads: 17,696 |
AJAX: How To Rename A
Language By Yakov Fain A means asynchronous,
which is an attempt to
say that an
XMLHttpRequest object
supports the
client-server data
exchange without the need
to refresh the Web page.
On the other hand, it
does not support server
push but uses polling
instead. So calling this
asyncro... Sep. 18, 2006 06:00 PM Reads: 8,893 Replies: 5 |
Who's Winning the
Desktop: Sun, Adobe or
Microsoft? By Yakov Fain The readers of this
respected online forum
are actively
participating in this
discussion and, as usual
they try to protect their
ten year old pet called
Java. Some say that Java
is improving on the
desktop and has good
opportunities there. The
reason is simple and... Sep. 8, 2006 01:30 PM Reads: 12,861 Replies: 5 |
Is Sun Moving in the Ruby
Direction? By Yakov Fain As per Charles Oliver
Nutter, two core JRuby
developers, Charles
himself and Thomas Enebo,
will become employees at
Sun Microsystems this
month. To me, this is a
clear indication that Sun
Microsystems is seriously
evaluating where to go
with Java: 1. Keep adding
n... Sep. 8, 2006 12:30 PM Reads: 8,431 Replies: 2 |
Adobe Flex 2: Development
On A Budget By Yakov Fain Can you put Flash
Player's pretty face on
your Web application
written in
Java/.Net/Python/PHP et
al? Yes. Can you do it
for free? Yes. Aug. 27, 2006 11:15 AM Reads: 19,427 Replies: 2 |
Dead Souls From Overseas By Yakov Fain Today's topic is how to
lead offshore
programmers. To make this
discussion a bit more
interesting, let's go
back in time into the
first half of the 19th
century. Aug. 22, 2006 01:00 PM Reads: 13,916 Replies: 5 |
How I Improved My Java
Skills Over the Weekend By Yakov Fain Over the breakfast after
my prediction that AJAX
will be gone from the
business applications
landscape in three years,
Stuart Halloway has
immediately bet a beer
that this was wrong and
AJAX will become even
stronger. Aug. 22, 2006 10:00 AM Reads: 12,897 Replies: 3 |
Adobe Flex 2 - Answering
Tough Questions About
Enterprise Development By Yakov Fain There are cool software
tools and there are
practical tools. People
who make their living by
development of the
enterprise Web
applications, are very
careful in selecting the
language or technology
for their needs. There is
a huge difference in
requirements for
... Aug. 21, 2006 06:00 PM Reads: 32,082 Replies: 4 |
Hey, Wall Street, Flex
Your Muscles! By Yakov Fain Adobe Flex 2 is one of
the best choices for
developing your business
rich Internet
applications. This holds
true for financial
applications as well. Aug. 15, 2006 08:00 AM Reads: 10,543 |
Java Editorial —
Unofficial History of
Programming: '96 - '06 By Yakov Fain  I want back in the
'90th...seriously. Ten
years ago I didn't know
Java: I'd been using
PowerBuilder and was able
to program pretty much
everything in this RAD
object-oriented tool. To
find a job back then, all
I needed to have on my
résumé was PB, a single
framew... Aug. 14, 2006 01:00 PM Reads: 15,470 Replies: 2 |
WTFM By Yakov Fain If you know what RTFM
means, you should be able
to guess what WTFM stands
for. If you don't, here's
the polite version: Read
The Freaking Manual. RTFM
is a part of
programmers' jargon. For
example, you're trying to
figure out how to write
something in Java. You
t... Aug. 9, 2006 06:45 AM Reads: 13,210 Replies: 14 |
Ruby on Wheels? By Yakov Fain Something should happen
with a programming
language to bring it to
life. For example, Jesse
James Garrett came out
with an acronym AJAX, and
JavaScript became
popular. David Heinemeier
Hansson created Ruby on
Rails and Ruby became a
household name. (On a
side note... Aug. 8, 2006 10:15 AM Reads: 11,364 Replies: 2 |
Adobe Flex 2: Before Your
Application Is Loaded By Yakov Fain The SystemManager is the
main manager that
controls the application
window, creates and
parents the Application
instance, popups,
cursors, manages the
classes in the
ApplicationDomain, and
more. The SystemManager
is the first class that
is instantiated by Flash
... Aug. 3, 2006 11:15 AM Reads: 26,996 Replies: 1 |
About Newsfeeds / Video Feeds
Yakov Fain is a managing principal of Farata Systems, consulting, training and product company. He has authored several Java books, dozens of technical articles. SYS-CON Books released his latest co-authored book , "Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex and Java: Secrets of the Masters" in Spring 2007. Sun Microsystems has nominated and awarded Yakov with the title Java Champion. He leads the Princeton Java Users Group. Yakov teaches Java and Flex 2 part time at New York University. He is an Adobe Certified Flex Instructor and an Editor-in-Chief of Flex Developers Journal.