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Flash for CFers. An Introduction to Rich Internet Application Development. About This Session. Explanation of an RIA Examples of RIAs Advantages and “challenges” What Flash can do Deconstructing a simple RIA How Flash and RIAs relate to ColdFusion. What is an RIA?.
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Flash for CFers An Introduction to Rich Internet Application Development
About This Session • Explanation of an RIA • Examples of RIAs • Advantages and “challenges” • What Flash can do • Deconstructing a simple RIA • How Flash and RIAs relate to ColdFusion
What is an RIA? • Applications that download over the Internet, but run locally on the client • Primarily exchange only data over socket connections after an initial download rather than “pages” • Rich Internet “Applets” • Examples…
Advantages of RIAs • More interactive, intuitive, entertaining, streamlined user interface • More advanced functionality than HTML • More efficient application model (only data being transferred, not entire pages) • Ubiquitous, cross-platform support
RIA Considerations I • Performance gains may be negligible because: • The time it takes for components to render new data sets • Browsers are extremely optimized and render HTML very fast • CSS dramatically reduces the size of HTML files (though still has a somewhat limited audience) • Browsers are very good at caching
RIA Considerations II • There is an initial download with an RIA • The structure of RIAs can be tricky • People should only download what they are going to use • The Flash player doesn’t support file upload right now • People are used to HTML
RIA Final Consideration • Above all else, pick the right tool for the job!
How Does Flash Fit Into Your Application Architecture? • Integrate Flash into your ColdFusion/HTML application • Add a Flash interface to your ColdFusion application
Communication Between Flash and ColdFusion • loadVariables • LoadVars • XML • Flash Remoting • Web Services (SOAP) • Socket Connections
ActionScript 2.0 • ActionScript is Flash’s scripting language, like JavaScript • Object oriented • private, protected and public keywords • Typed • Compile-time error checking! • Exception handling • Java-like syntax • Import • Classpath • Inheritance
Flash Video • Flash supports its own video format (FLV) • Flash encodes, the player decodes • Sorenson Spark Codec (compression/decompression) • True streaming capabilities with services like VitalStream.
The Future of Flash RIAs • Flash Authoring • ColdFusion • Central • Flex • Breeze • FlashPaper • RoboDemo
Deconstructing an RIA • Application demo • A simple ColdFusion application architecture • WDDX for persistence • Using web services to talk to Flash • Flash media streaming • Simple Flash animation